Change of Direction

Since this is supposed to be an endurance sports-related blog, I'll start with a fitness update. We are registered for the 2012 Marine Corps Marathon on October 29th and are (were? going to be?) determined to get back to a strict training regime and diet. Since we've been saying that for the last 3 months and somehow wound up having hot dogs and brownie sundaes for dinner tonight, you can guess how well that is going. Clearly much harder to crack down than I would have expected...life and having fun have made it difficult to focus.

With that out of the way, the purpose of the post...I have a crummy memory and like jotting down notes so I don't forget stuff later on. Until we finally crack down on training, I'll use this blog to note people and places that have been truly dog friendly (some obvious, some not so much) as we like to take Maggie with us everywhere.

First a little background: Since adding our newest training partner on Jan 20, 2012 (Maggie- a 8-9 month old Redbone Coonhound mix), life has completely changed. Prior to rescuing a dog, I think I glorified pet ownership a bit and completely glossed over the difficulties (I miss sleep). I love her to death but never expected the sheer amount of work it's taken, and will continue to take. She pees, a lot, and wants constant attention..when ignored, it's completely possible you'll lose the insole to your running/biking shoes. The shoes may look fine but good luck when putting them on...that's assuming you can find socks. The worst part, just when you want to kill her, she curls up in a ball next to you and makes you forgot the previous 12 hours. If parenting is anything like this, we may have to reconsider :)

Places that stick out from the last couple months:
- Bed, Bath and Beyond Fairfax Towne Center: only worth noting b/c they let us walk Maggie around the store, she peed in the corner and they haven't banned us from the store :)
- Wylie Wagg Pet Store (Fairfax and Falls Church): Given us good advice and always excited for Maggie to visit
- Flag Ponds Nature Park: One of the few truly dog friendly beaches w/ minimal restrictions (must be leashed) in MD or VA on the Chesapeake Bay. Great layout for Maggie to swim, run and bike...nevermind, scratch that last one
- Red Rocks Firebrick Pizzeria (Alexandria): the whole Old Town area is fairly pet friendly but this place brought out water bowls and treats as soon as we sat down
- Jim McKay Chevrolet: Odd, I know. But while car shopping (no I didn't but a Chevy), they basically forced me to put Maggie in each car to see how she fits and whether she liked the car (which if you know Mags, she hates all cars equally). They also brought her back into the offices for lots of treats...she showed approval by falling asleep under the desk on the salesman's shoes
-Nielsen's Frozen Custard (Vienna): no way it's healthy but they said lots of customers ask for the frozen leftovers from the custard machines to give to their dogs. As first time customers, we said we give it a try and were a bit surprised to receive almost a full pint of frozen custard for Maggie for free- which she wolfed down in 5 minutes.

I'm forgetting a lot of places so plenty of additions to come. Plus, now that Liz has weekends off, we'll be checking out new places each weekend.

Ironman Canada Race Report - 8/28/11

It's been just over a week since Ironman Canada. The race is still sitting sourly for both Justin and I. It was a hard, hot (95 degrees) day and things didn't roll out exactly how we had hoped. Having done Lake Placid, we (secretly) had grand goals of sub 12 hours as we did 12:30 and 12:35 in 2009 - we both felt like we saved enough during Lake Placid that sub 12 was absolutely attainable, and we still hold this true. However, with each race is it's own conditions and complications and it can either be the best day of racing or the worst. With that said, here is my Ironman Canada race report:

One side note: Justin sent me this article today from RunTri. And I quote, "It was a tough race, 11% did not start, 9% did not finish, and the average finish time was 13:12, ranking among the most difficult of our Top 25 Toughest Ironman event ranking.... The average splits and finish times illustrate just how tough the course was, especially the marathon, in 2011.... Not a single age group averaged less than 12:30 for the event. Very rare."

Pre-race:
Please read the previous post for this... there was sightseeing in Seattle, a road trip to Penticton, a pasta dinner and a couple freak out moments thrown in the day before the race as my bike seat broke. The town was oddly calm for hosting the Ironman - very different from previous races...  kind of nice and a bit relaxing though you didn't get the adrenaline rushes like you usually do just by walking around town.

Joey's bike rack, but no Joey.

Race Morning:
We went to bed around 8:30pm, woke up at 3am to eat a bagel croissant (grocery store was all out of bagels, not a surprise and all they had were bagels shaped like croissants... interesting) with PB, honey and nutella with sliced banana on top. We hopped back in bed for another hour and half. At 4:30am it was shower time and prepping last minute things. We were in the car at 5:15am for the 20 minute drive into town. Parking was easy to find. At check in, they made you walk about a half mile around gates and the town to get to body marking and transition when they very easily could have saved us the energy and created an entrance closer to transition. I walked right up to get marked, headed into transition to my bike, checked the tires, added my bottles and nutrition and left my bike for good... I don't think it's smart to fuse with your bike the morning of the race, I do that all the day before. As long as everything passes the very quick checks, I leave that thing alone! Justin and I got coffee and used the restroom (found one that no one was using so didn't have to wait in line!) and made our way to the swim.

Swim: [Liz - 1:22:39, Jus - 1:32:36]
The water was shallow so everyone started out standing. At 7am the gun went off and we were off. I had read in other race reports that this was an awful swim as you never get your own space - SO TRUE! It wasn't until 8 buoys in (which I think there were 12 buoys until the first turn point) that I finally stopped getting kicked, smacked and swam over. That doesn't mean I had room to myself, there were still people all around me but at least I had enough room to relax a little and not be on edge ready to fight someone who punched me as they swam by. It was such a hectic start to the swim. I kept getting irritated with the men because they would come up behind me on both sides and corner me in so I had no option but to slow down so that I could free myself from their trap. It kept happening and I was getting so frustrated! Once I passed the first turn point, I seemed to have found my groove and just tried to focus on staying relaxed and getting through the swim, after all I hadn't trained but twice for the swim (I know, very stupid) so I wasn't in the best shape to try hard. The water was warm and very clear and clean. I made it to the exit a 1:22:39, a minute faster than Lake Placid... impressive as I truly trained very hard for Lake Placid.

T1: [Liz - 4:45, Jus - 4:39]

Bike: [Liz - 6:48:11, Jus - 6:46:46]
This is where the race fell apart for me. I felt great coming out of the swim and took the first couple miles very easy to take in some fluid and gather myself for the 112 miles ahead. Within just a short time, I was holding a solid pace and was feeling fantastic.  I was passing a lot of people on the side fixing flats which made me nervous. Then, come mile 30 I hear my back tire making a funky sound. I turn my head, look down and see what I had dreaded... FLAT TIRE! Ugh. I pulled over and took probably 10 minutes to change the flat. Not sure why it took so long but I didn't want to rush anything and screw up so I just kept telling myself to take the time to breath and rest a bit. The cause of my flat? A itty bitty tack... turns out all those people I kept seeing on the side fixing flats had run into the same problem... a volunteer said someone had thrown tacks on the course the night before - awesome, really. I hope those people got enjoyment out of that.

Once my flat was fixed I was really deflated, so many people passed me while I was on the side. I kept trying to keep myself in a good mood. I gave myself the goal to pass as many people as possible and try to catch someone I had been riding with before my flat. I gave great effort to try to regain some time but was freaking out most of the time checking on my tire to make sure it wasn't flat... paranoia. Around mile 50 I was riding a downhill. I looked down at my bike computer and it said 39mph.... I look back up to spot myself and looked back at the computer and it was reading 0mph. WHAT?! When I hit the next flat I glanced down at my wheel to find that the cat eye chip had fallen off... again, awesome. From that point on I didn't know my speed and my timing for nutrition was all screwed up because I had been basing it off my bike computer, not my watch. Whatever, I am perfectly fine riding without knowing my pace. I had gotten through Richter Pass, a 10 mile gradual climb and seemed to be surviving the constant sun rays and heat - it was starting to get really hot out there and I was taking salt tabs every hour. At one point on the course, around miles 70-80 you come to two out and backs, one right after the other. The race started to really feel very difficult for me at this time. My neck hurt, being in aero position was very painful and I could start to feel my sunburn on my back. Soon after I came across the second out and back which is where you pick up your special needs bag. I pull over to grab my bag and yell my number "2367"... 20 seconds later the volunteer yells back "2367? I don't see a 2367!" .......................A-W-E-S-O-M-E! After checking again it was official that they had lost my special needs bag which had a PB & honey sandwich and the remaining gu's I needed for the bike. I didn't have any nutrition from there on until I started the run. I was taught a lesson to pack for the race not needing my special needs bag - you can never rely on anyone else on race day. At that point, I started crying. I was so fed up with the day - nothing was working for me and I wanted to just give up. Crying while biking does not really work. I wound up having a very hard time breathing and snapped myself back into it. Ironman is not just physical, it is mental as well, and I let the race get me for a moment. I decided to take the remainder of the bike easy, very rarely getting into the aerobars, afterall I had no nutrition and I was really hurting and was super hot. The last few miles are all downhill which was a relief. I rode back into transition at 6:48:11, very happy to be off the bike. I was 14 minutes slower at Canada than Lake Placid... but don't forget I had my flat which I took a significant amount of time to fix!

T2: [Liz - 5:35, Jus - 9:36]

I don't have any pictures from the bike... so you get us racking our bikes the day before :)

Run: [Liz - 4:53:49, Jus - 5:03:43]
Heading out of transition I ran to the sunblock stand and had a volunteer slather block on me. "OUNCH!" she says, "you are burnt!" Thank you for that... now please let me continue on to my way in the sun, with no shade, as I complete this 26.2 mile run. Grr.

I started my run off nice and easy. To my surprise, my feet weren't numb and I didn't physically hurt as much as I did in Lake Placid. The start of the run is a bit brutal because you run right by the finishing shoot...not cool. I was heading out right as the first place pro male was finishing - ugh, I have such a long run ahead of me! The run course actually didn't seem too difficult to me. Had it not been so freakin' hot and I hadn't mentally fallen apart on the bike, I think I would have been able to kill this run course. However, that was not the case and I took this one real easy. I walked each and every water station, grabbing 2 waters, 2 sponges and 2 cups of ice at each. I drank the water, ate a peice of ice and dumped the rest down my shirt and in my hat and cool myself down by squeezes the sponges over my head - the heat was getting the best of everyone. This was my routine. At the end of the water stations I would begin to run again. Everyone was walking the hills but I would run them, keeping my eyes on the ground so that I wouldn't see everyone walking ahead - way to easy to influence me to walk as well. At one point, while I passed a guy walking a hill, he says "there are two people running this hill, you and the man up there, everyone else is walking! What is wrong with you two?" The run was entirely along the side of Skaha Lake. There were boats out playing music and a sad sounding steamboat that I couldn't seem to get away from. One of the boats was playing a really good song and I tried to remember the lyrics as I was running but now I have forgotten them - I think it was Ludacris but all my searches for the song are coming up empty :( Anyways, I was pacing an easy pace throughout until mile 16 when I felt the awful side cramp that I had suffered from before in my long training runs coming on - NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! All I could think was that it figures, this is obviously how my days was meant to play out. Now when I say cramp, I am talking serious pinching to the point where it hurts to stand straight. I started taking in double the liquids, cola and pretzels as soon as it started at the aid station and was running VERY slowly as I leaned to my left side. It came to the point where I had to walk it out so I took 5 minutes to walk and stretch at the same time. Still in pain I began running again and just hoped for the best. Maybe 4 miles later it had disappeared and I was running smoothly again. I warned myself not to run too fast now as I know the cramp could very easily come back. So it goes for the next several miles and with 3 miles to go the cramp of course came back and I slowed down. I stopped to walk several more times after this point. With 2 miles to go I told myself to suck it up and run the rest of the way, which is what I did. In pain, of course, I made a bee-line to the finish line, finishing in 13:14:57, running my slowest marathon ever, placing overall 36/80 in my age group (Justin's finish was a 13:37:19).

Finish:
I wanted to see Justin in at the finish as I knew he was also having a bad day out there but as I stood there, I felt like I was going to throw up. A volunteer walked me to the medical tent where I stayed for a hour and drank broth and sports drink. I was freezing cold and wanted to go home. We check out bikes into BikeTransport (awesome company, highly recommend them!) and went home. We wanted to stick around for the last finisher but the thought of a warm shower, dinner and bed sounded much better.

And so that was my Ironman Canada. I would like to head out there again one day to do the race again and see what I can really make of it, but for now it's so long! Happy to have raced another 140.6 and proud of my accomplishment, overcoming the bad times and finishing what I came to do... and that is to do another Ironman!

On a final note, let's go back to the article... I quote "If you beat one or more of the split times in your age group, consider your race a big success." Let's take a look...

W25-29
Average Overall Time: 13:29:48
Swim: 1:18:40 (4 minutes over)
Bike: 6:45:17 (3 minutes over)
Run: 5:13:50 (20 minutes under) <-- This qualifies my race as a BIG success!!!!!!

The night before...

Here we are just hours away from the start of Ironman Canada! We'll give it one word from what we've seen: brutal. Tomorrow is going to be a really difficult day - not only because it's a tough course but also because it's going to be 91+ degrees and sunny. Who would have thunk that in Canada, eh?

We flew into Seattle on late Wednesday, well, more like early Thursday since we didn't land until about 12:30am. We were at our hotel and in bed by 2am only to wake up nice and early the next day since we were still stuck on Eastern time. We spent the day having fun playing tourist around Seattle. We love that city!

Friday morning we hoped in the car and drove 6 hours over the border and into Penticton. We went straight to race registration, ate lunch and headed to the condo we rented to relax for a bit and then back into town for the pasta dinner. It was ok. Lake Placid was way better and much more motivational. We called it an early night and fell asleep almost immediately once getting back to the condo. I was ticked off immediately at Ironman at registration as I was going through the stops in the tent and arrived at the chip activation stand and the woman says to me "and do you have your chip strap?" (to hold the chip on your ankle). My reply was "No, I didn't know I was suppose to bring my own" and she says "oh, well, that's ok, you can purchase one here for $5 - this is something new that we will be doing at our races" OH MY GOD IRONMAN - SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!?!?!? I said no thanks, I'll get one somewhere else. I would rather give my money to a local bike shop than give it to Ironman. I just don't understand how it's ok for them to charge you for a chip strap when we are required to wear a chip. Thanks for the forewarning on that one!

Today we spent the day prepping for checking in. I had a mishap while on my bike ride... my seat bolt broke. Eek!!! We brought that guy straight into the bike shop (Bike Barn, who also received my money for a chip strap) and the crew there was AWESOME! It was fixed AND tuned up in no time. Luckily, I only had to pay $50 for the bolt piece and not $300 for the entire stem, phew! Justin's bike got a nice surprise tune up as well and both bikes were looking good for racing! We dropped the bikes, bike bag and run bag off, drove the run route home and are now sitting on the couch about to eat dinner and go to sleep nice and early. I had a nice volunteer give my VIP treatment at check in who gave me step by step instructions on where and how everything is going to go down tomorrow. Ha, loved it - he was awesome!

Well, this is it! My number is 2367 and Justin's is 331. You can track us on Ironman (http://live.ironmanlive.com/Event/Subaru_Ironman_Canada).

WISH US LUCK!!!! Oh and Joey, screw you for not being here!!!!! hahahahhaha.....

Taper has begun!

Just a quick update... I completed my final long workout on Monday with a 20 mile run! Paced a 9 min/mile, so I'm happy! I tried Sports Legs for the first time, just out of curiosity and have concluded that they suck. It's suppose to prevent/delay lactic acid build up in your legs during endurance workouts. While my calves were fine, my thighs started burning with about 5 miles to go which never happens. When I say burning, I mean with every step I wanted to cry. To top it off, my legs have never felt worse the day after a long run than they did after this one - I threw out the rest of the sample pack and will not be taking those ever again. Now, time for some tapering... ahhhhhhhh. It's good to not feel guilty for not working out crazy amounts :) While our bikes have already begun their journey to Canada, Justin and I hop on a plane Wednesday night - I'll write a post on final thoughts and what not before I leave... now kick up your legs and relax a lil!

Bike riding

On Saturday, Justin and I went out for another long ride. With an 82  mile route mapped and added to the Garmin, we made our way to Potomic to start our ride. Again, we started late at 11:50am and the humidity was up and temps hot, already above 90 degrees. Before starting we decided to make this a race pace ride. Properly fueled and prepared for the efforts, we headed on out. Within 5 minutes of the ride, I was glistening (more like dripping) with sweat from the humidity. It was crazy, I hadn't even given any serious effort yet and I was soaked. At mile 20ish, we made too early of a left turn onto the wrong road and instead of the Garmin redirecting us or telling us to turn down the NEXT road when we made a U-turn, it instead decided to redirect us immediately back to the start. Not being completely familiar with the roads, we had no idea at the time. Then at mile 30 we saw a familiar road and thought "this isn't right, we shouldn't be here", and discovered we were 3 miles from the start of our ride - DANG, we're going to have to do the route over again plus add some miles at the end to get in the distance we want! I got frustrated because I hate doing loops but Justin was successful at getting me to chill out and realize doing another loop wouldn't be so bad. After all, it was a great route with some challenging hills. So, off on loop two we went. We stopped shortly into the second loop to get some shaved iced at a rickety stand at an intersection. They were delicious and perfect for a bike ride snack! After completing almost all of the second loop we noticed how lucky we were to have missed all the rain storms that seemed to have rolled through our route as the roads were wet the second time around... that is until we had 4 miles left in the loop and downpours just opened up above us. It was not so awesome. If forced us to take the last of the ride very slowly and when we got back to the start we agreed to call it quits and not add on the extra miles to make it an 80 mile ride... so in the end it was a 66 mile route with 5,056 elevation gain. We paced 16.3 mph which is not race pace but the day presented several challenging factors that slowly ate away at us such as the humidity, temps and rain.

This weekend we're planning on doing 100+ miles for our last heavy effort on the bike. Let's hope we are able to get ourselves up nice and early so that we aren't biking in the smack middle of the day. We're dropping our race bikes off either after our ride or early next week at Bike Transport to send them on their way to Canada. This is crazy how close we are to Ironman!!! I should probably start swimming...

Summer heat

Today I had plans to do a 20 mile run - I cut that one short by 1 mile and did 19 due to heat. I was stupid and left at 11:45am so it was already above 90 degrees at the start and the day wasn't cooling down (it hasn't for about 3 weeks now).
I mapped out a run where majority was on the Rock Creek Park Trails which is mostly shaded so figured it wouldn't be too bad. However, I started and ended my route along the mall making the Washington Monument my turnaround point - putting the first and last 4.5 miles in dead sunlight. I held strong for the majority of it but lately, again, due to heat, I've been needing to stop in the shade and rest for a couple minutes to cool down - but I made it until mile 15 before needing my first break in the shade. That was followed with three more rests in the last 4 miles. When I hit the street before my loop around the monument, I decided to cut it short and head straight home instead- after all, I looked like a salt stick, had gone through 5 water bottles and had heat radiating off my body. It wasn't pretty.

When I got home, I quickly downed some recovery mix with ice cold water. I weighed myself (I'm now keeping track of my weight until Ironman to make sure I don't get too out of control with the food, hehe) and had dropped 4lbs of water weight from that morning! Holy cow... my lunch never tasted so good and I treated myself to a bottle of Coke - it was delicious!

I've worn my yurbuds for two runs now (including today's) and so far I kinda like them. Yes, they definitely stay in my ears unlike other ear buds so big plus for that but they're designed for you to hear the noise around you (i.e. if you were biking you can hear cars coming) and because of this, any wind overtakes the music and when you're running along a road with lots of cars, you really have to turn the volume up. It's a bit annoying. Still would like to do some more runs with them before I give my definitive recommendation on them :)

That's it for now! Until my next post...

What's that? Things are better?!

Well, training has been.... BETTER! Yup! After my last post, I tried my best to turn the switch and make a positive out of a negative, and I did. While I still can't seem to get myself motivated for the pool (let's admit, no one is EVER motivated to go swim), running and biking has been successful. Whenever I can get the chance, I'll go for a run or hop on the trainer. The trick to getting on the bike more? Leaving the trainers set up and sitting right next to the couch. That way, 1) it never takes more than 2 minutes to get everything ready for a ride and 2) when I'm sitting on the couch watching TV, the bike is sitting there taunting me and making me feel bad. It's working (it helps that the Tour was on, too). I've done several 2+ hour rides on the trainer and many 1+ hour rides in the last two weeks. Last weekend, Justin and I headed out for a 75 mile ride in MD (though the Garmin says it was only 70 miles). It was in the 90's and no cloud coverage but we enjoyed every minute of it! You can see the ride here. This was our first official long ride so while we went slow, we were feeling great at the end and happy to have gotten out there for the day.

On the running front, I try to get a run in whenever I can... like yesterday morning, I had to be at work at 10 which means I have to be in the shower by 9 in order to leave by 9:30 for my half hour walk to work. So, I woke up at 7 as usual, had breakfast with Justin, walked out the door with him at 8 and got an hour run in - perfect. I am sacrificing my appearance by showing up to the store with wet hair as I don't have time to do anything with it - oh well. The same weekend as the bike ride, Jus and I got out for a 15 mile run bright and early Saturday morning - I headed off to work immediately after as Jus went to play kickball (jealous). Tonight is calling for a 10 mile run and I plan to hop on the trainer for a bit in just a little while. With the heat wave of last week, the runs have been HOT but they only make you feel that much stronger. I've been loving it. Today is no different... 92* but you gotta do what you gotta do!

I am thinking I need to set some goals in order to get in the pool more... brainstorming ideas now.

Last note of the post, I got some new earphones from the store this week - yurbuds. I have been hearing great things about these things and I can't wait to try them out myself; they were created by a triathlete who had gotten fed up with his earphones slipping out and hurting while on long training rides and run. I wear over the head earphones because ear buds *ALWAYS* fall out during workouts. These guarantee that they will not with their patented ear-lock technology. They are comfortable but I have yet to test them, perhaps that will happen tonight. I'll let you know what I think. Seems as though each package comes with a card with an inspirational quote. Mine was: You think I'm chasing you? You think you've got me beat? Well, you've got me all wrong. Pace is my trick. My focus is my inner strength, my iron will. Triumph is upon me. It can't be had without the struggle. I move up on you. I push past you. I cross the line focused and my doubts overcome.