Timberman 70.3 2010 Race Report

Going into this race, I wasn’t expecting much. This was my first time doing Timberman and Justin’s second (it was actually his 70.3 debut back in 2007 so I think it was an exciting time for him to return to the scene of the crime). I was calm. I hadn’t taken a real taper as my A race is mid-September, so I was looking to race well but certainly did not have any high expectations.

Justin and I arrived at race check-in around 3:45pm on Saturday. Right off the bat I fell into a rotten mood. First, what’s up with K Swiss’ shirt sizing? As with every race, I marked off a size small and when they handed me my shirt I gave it a quick glance and asked with all seriousness, “is this a kid’s shirt?” It looked like the perfect size for my 9 year old niece. They assured it was a woman’s size small and said I would have to come back at 7pm when everyone has checked in to exchange it for a different size. Screw that, way too much effort; I just won’t be wearing it around (which is too bad cause they were nice shirts). Second, we ran into the expo shop to pick up a pair of yankz shoe laces for me and saw that they were charging $5 for a Timberman water bottle (which they typically give you for free in your goody-bag, but not this year). All the other ridiculously overpriced branded items in the expo made me want to ban these races forever – I hate seeing money hungry corporations. Then, as we left, I stopped by the information tent to ask how much tickets were for the pasta dinner. There response: “We don’t have any information about the dinner, it’s not run by us so we don’t know” GIVE ME A BREAK! Really?! The freakin’ pasta dinner is put on by the police department where the proceeds go to a cause and because they're not getting any of the money they’re not going to give out any information about it? Christ, so ridiculous!! A bit ticked off, we went to transition, set up our bikes and made our way to Applebee’s (where we had the most boring dinners ever but healthy nonetheless) and then our hotel. We were in bed around 8pm. Wakeup was 4:20am and we were out door at 5am.We lucked out on parking and got a spot across the street from transition – happy we didn’t have to wait in the shuttle lines after the race! As for weather, it was an overcast day, high 60’s at race start with some sprinkles that arrived later during the bike and run.

Swim
[Liz- 39:41,  Justin- 44:31]
Last weekend I tried on some wetsuits at a local tri shop. I was in the market for a new one because I hate the one I was using. One suit I tried was the QuintanaRoo Hydrofull suit and I fell in love – the easiest, most comfortable suit I’ve ever tried on. That night we did some internet searching and found the suit for a nice price and ordered it. I received it in the mail on Friday, hours before heading out the door! I was a bit concerned about doing my first swim in the suit at the race, but luckily I had no issues. It felt awesome. I did dolphin dives up to the first bouy since it was so shallow, after which I caught a groove and just swam. I got stuck in a couple jams before the first turnaround and the waters were choppy so it wasn’t ideal but either way, I think this was the fastest half swim I’ve ever done so I was happy with what I posted. I’m just ready to get faster because the swim really hurts my time.

T1
[Liz- 2:15,  Justin- 2:57]
I ran into transition just behind Justin. Fairly quickly, I was out and on the bike.

Bike
[Liz- 3:00:04 for 18.7 mph,  Justin- 2:57:55 for 18.9 mph]
I was expecting the bike course to be a lot more difficult than it actually was. To my surprise I was able to hold a decent pace for most of the ride. There were a lot of false flats which I am really good at going fast on. What I’m not really good at going fast on are hills and for each one that I approached I was passed over and over again. Hills drive me absolutely crazy and I’ve decided that hills need to be a major focus of mine for next season. If I can conquer hills, I’d be pretty fast on the bike. It started sprinkling halfway through the bike but thankfully, it just sprinkled. My stomach started getting weak at mile 36 so I decided to skip on taking more GU’s. Justin passed me (surprise, surprise…on a hill) somewhere around miles 40-45. I caught him again on a downhill (he’s a big ol’ chicken and was breaking down a hill because the roads were wet from the rain) but only to get passed by him again on an uphill… haha. At mile 52-ish, I decided to take a 2x caffeine GU to help me make it through the run. I wanted to throw up the second I took it and told myself I wouldn’t take anymore GU’s until absolutely necessary for the remainder of the race.

T2
[Liz- 2:33,  Justin- 2:30]
I was happy to be off the bike. I threw my sneaks on, pulled my hair into a pony-tail, left the sunglasses behind and started my run. As I was leaving transition, fellow CREW member Grant told me Jus was just ahead of me and to go get him. Happy he didn’t make up too much time, my next goal was to catch Justin ;)

Run
[Liz- 1:54:41 for 8:46 min/mile,  Justin- 2:04:28 for 9:31 min/mile]
With every race, I tell myself to run the first mile or two at a nice and easy pace. I can catch my breath, undo the numbness in my feet and get my running legs together. This is exactly what I did this race only to find out my fastest running was the first several miles! The first 3 miles I apparently paced an 8:14min/mile! Surprised again, the run course was not too difficult. I caught Justin somewhere between mile 2 or 3, chatted quickly, and was off. The run was pretty uneventful. They had plenty of water stations and food along the course which was really nice. 13.1 miles of running (no stopping to walk for me!) and I finished with a personal best! I was SUPER excited. I waited at the finish to see Justin run threw and get awarded his finishers medal from Chrissie Wellington which was super awesome.

Final
[Liz- 5:39:14,  Justin- 5:51:58]
This is the fastest half I’ve ever done and I can’t wait to see what I can do in next month’s race. I am still unsure of how many girls were in my age group (official results haven’t been posted where they tell you) but there were over 100 and I placed 25th – which I’m really excited about. I have been training really hard and hope that with some more serious workouts, I'll be in a good position to finish my last tri of the season strong. Justin posted a great time even though he was in a calorie deficit most of the race. Congrats, Justin! We need to find some better race day fueling as GU’s don’t seem to be doing it for us anymore.

We headed to the food tent and filled our plates with food. However, I only ate the clam chowder, roll and banana in the pic below... everything else went into the trash.

Parting thoughts
I had a lot of fun racing Timberman. Take out the greediness that makes up these races and the “God’s gift” athletes that seemed to flock to this race and I’d have to say it was a beautiful race and well organized. I had a great time. The drive was a little too much for me, especially our drive home which took over 11 hours thanks to heavy rain and major traffic. All-in-all it was a successful day and happy I came out to race! I received a text from my brother congratulating me on the finish and said he’s bringing the competition next season… need to be doing 5:20’s – BRING IT!!!!

Timberman check in. This is my last scheduled tri of the year before a run focus. Even though I'm not trained for this race its fun to come back 4 years later to my 1st long distance race. And same as the 1st go round, wake up temps will be in the low 50's...

Timberman- Transition Area

A little running, a little biking

As I write this post, I am 2 hours into my recovery from a long run. I headed out late morning ready to rock a 2hr 15min run. It was hard to get myself out the door given the severe storm that was rolling through the area making it look more like 10pm than 8am. I waited out the storm by falling asleep on the couch while watching the news and when I woke at 9am the sun was shining. When I stepped out the door at 9:45am it was hot and humid – ugh. I tucked my shirt up, pressed play on the shuffle and started the watch to count me down to my turnaround. I ran around the Mall, over the Memorial Bridge and down the Mt. Vernon trail until I hit 1h 7m 30s. I back tracked the same route home. My purpose of doing the Mall twice is 1) the high activity of tourist keeps me preoccupied from my actual run, 2) there are water fountains so I can refill the needed 2 times throughout the run, and 3) there are bathrooms in case of emergency. I did a total of just under 16 miles, running 3 mins longer than planned, coming out to an 8:46 min/mile pace. Not too shabby, I must say! Let your mind wonder and your legs do the work and you’ll be running faster than you actually think you are.

Speaking of which, Justin read an article in Men’s Journal about a new sports mix that is getting signed into the market. It’s called the Sims drink. A woman has researched the most ideal sports drink for over 8 years and has finally come up with the formula. Through her test, she found that runners who drank her formula ran 15-20% faster. We decided to give the formula a try and have been drinking it for a couple weeks now. I haven’t done any self-tests as to if it’s actually making me faster, but I def. haven’t felt fatigue on any of my runs and given today’s pace, I have to say that maybe it’s working. Here’s the formula if you want to try it out:

32 oz. water
¼ cup sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 sachs of Emergen-C
½ packet of unsweetened Kool-Aid powder for flavoring

Fruit Punch is good – but really fruity. Lemonade is DISTGUSTING. Orange is superb and our favorite so far. Here's a pic of the special brew:

Onto other news, last week, we were up in CT for a visit. On Saturday morning, Justin and I left for a 60 mile ride. I mapped the ride out myself and purposely went out of my way to find hill after hill to make up the ride. YIKES! I didn’t know it would be as hilly as it actually was. We started with Hilltop, of course, and then continued onto the Hilly 100 ride. We cut off the route near Sherman for our turnaround but not without doing the hill that makes me want to cry from pain. Joey took me up this hill last year (I think it’s Kirby Hill Rd) and I didn’t realize I had included it in last weeks ride.  When we approached the hill, I said “what is this?!” and not far after I realized, “oh god, this is THE hill”. We were both out of the saddle just trying to pump the pedals as fast as possible. I was gasping for air as my legs were shaking, certain I’d fall over at any point. Well, we both made it up! There is no better feeling than completing a hard hill with a nice downhill on the other side. Near the end of the ride we took Joes Hill Rd then Dingle Ridge Rd, both of which are NOT easy. We ended up climbing about 6K ft total. It was a tough ride but I certainly don’t regret it :-D When I got home, my sister’s dogs, Reese and Bailey attacked me with kisses in an attempt to lick up all the salt!

I’ll leave today’s post by showing off a bowl that my nieces, Jillian and Haley made for Justin and I. They asked us for our favorite colors a few weeks back and this weekend we received this adorable, and my most favorite, bowl!!

Culpeper Sprint Race Report

When we moved down to DC, we started looking immediately for local triathlons to race in. One of these races was the Culpeper Sprint. It’s put on by Setup Events who covers a crazy number of races in Virginia and the Carolinas.  Hands down, this was one of the best races I’ve ever been to. Well organized, friendly, beautiful area, sufficient water/Gatorade/food/port-o-potties, a great transition area, and everything else you could ask for in a race. Count me in for more of these events next season!

We woke up at 4:20am, showered and jumped in the car for the 1:20 drive to Culpeper, VA. When we showed up at 6:30am, the place was buzzing with people already. It’s an 8am start so I was surprised to see lots people there, hanging out, relaxing before the race. And, these people looked like serious competitors – decked out bikes and fit. We checked-in and set up transition and had an hour to hang out ourselves. We jumped in the water and did a short barefoot run.

Swim:
[Liz: 16:14] [Justin: 17:10]

Justin was the first wave group, men 35 and under, I was second. It was an in water start, wetsuit illegal (water temp was 84… 14 degrees warmer than the outside temp at the start!). Lots of weeds in the beginning but it didn’t bug me so much. The start of the swim was kind of brutal. I wanted to try to swim hard but I was getting caught behind other girls or sandwiched between two. I found it hard to break from the group but at the first buoy turn, I found my space and decided not to kill it as I was pretty tired from fighting the group. And, let’s face it; I’m an awful swimmer, so killing it would probably mean I would come in 20 seconds faster than I had, haha.

T1:
[Liz: 1:28] [Justin: 1:33]

The mounting line was up a short hill which sucked because you had to push your bike up but other than that, an uneventful T1.

Bike:
[Liz: 54:39, 17.7 mph] [Justin: 52:23, 18.3 mph]

The bike course was a 16 mile, rolling hills through the farmlands that just made for a beautiful ride. I tried hammering out the bike but the uphill’s always get me, though I think I did well on the downs and flats, at least I was happy with my pace. I love seeing how many girls in my age group I can pass on the bike. I feel fairly confident in my biking outside of hills so it’s always a fun game for me to play to pass the time. I passed three or four girls, mostly all within the first 15 minutes of riding. The bike went by quickly and before I knew it, I was heading into T2.

T2:
[Liz: 1:33] [Justin: 1:25]

We had to run our bikes down the same hill we had to run them up at dismount which wasn’t so fun. I need to start learning how to dismount barefoot, it would have made running downhill much easier and my time at the rack quicker.

Run:
[Liz: 24:23, 7:51 min/mile] [Justin: 25:02, 8:04 min/mile]

Running out of T2, a girl in my age group passed me and she had great speed. She ended up placing second in my age group. I tried to just keep a good pace as the first half mile or so is slightly uphill – no walking allowed. My feet were a bit numb but they always are after my bike. I thought I was running slowly, as it certainly didn’t feel as though I was going very fast. You break off from the main road twice onto side roads for two out and backs. I saw Justin on the first out and back which is always nice to see a familiar face when you need it! Each back in the out and backs were slightly uphill but didn’t seem so bad when running them. With about a half mile to go, I heard a girl coming up on me breathing quite heavily. She passed me and I looked down at her calve to see the number 28 and thought, OH NO! I’m not letting you pass me this close to the finish! So, I picked up the speed and passed her back… she passed me back again. I see, she’s a fighter. The last stretch to the finish is on grass and there is a sharp curve that turns right into the straight away to the finish. I passed her again as we reached the grass and just kept screaming at myself in my head to go fast. She was on my heels until we hit the sharp curve in which I dug deep and shot out a full out sprint, finishing first! :) Exhausted from the final stretch battle, I took a second to breath, turned around, gave her a high five and we laughed at what a nice finish that was. It was fun.

Total:
[Liz: 1:38:15] [Justin: 1:37:31]

So…from the results Justin ended up beating me by 44 seconds. Whatever dude, I beat you badly in EagleMan!!!!!

Post Race:
We grabbed some food and packed up our stuff and put everything into/onto the car and headed back to relax and hang out for the awards. The race waited until the very last finisher came in before the awards ceremony started which was pretty cool and very respectful. AND, even cooler, most of the racers stuck around for the awards ceremony so you had a large crowd… most races everyone leaves immediately but this was cool that people actually wanted to stick around.

This race was awesome! Will def. be doing it again next year!!

You big dummy!

This past weekend, Justin and I took a ride to his office to see what he would be looking at if he wanted to bike one day a week. Most of the ride is on trails, so away from cars, which was nice. It was hot outside (in the high 90’s) so we prepared by taking as many liquids as possible ( three water bottles for me). I’m not sure what went wrong but when we got to his office, I was starting to get cranky… WARNING! A sign of bonking. I had gone through all my water bottles and the grocery store across the street didn’t have any cold Gatorades, just waters. So I rehydrated by downing a large bottle of warm Gatorade and refilled the rest of my bottles with half Gatorade and half cold water. I snacked on a Powerbar and apologized to Justin ahead of time that I was probably going to be slow on the way back.

Slowly but surely we were kicking away at each mile when about halfway through, dark clouds starting rolling in. I know far too well that this meant bad things ahead. Trying to out ride the clouds, we started cranking away. That plus a gusty tailwind from the oncoming storm meant we were flying in the 35+mph range. It was very cool and fun. However, not fun was when the clouds inevitably caught up and we took shelter under a bridge as the downpours, lightening and thunder did their thing. About 30 minutes later, the sun started coming back out so we hopped back on the bikes to finish the ride. Reminding you that just before we stopped at the bridge, we were flying on the bikes, which means I was in the hardest of gears, which means when I got back on the bike and tried pedaling up the short hill coming out of the bridge underpass, I couldn’t get enough power and ended up falling flat on my side. Awesome. After a minute to regroup myself, I walked the bike up the hill and got on at the flat. Not even 10 minutes later, Justin, slows  down after a split in the path and yells “go left!” but I’m already past bonking and had delayed reactions and ended up slamming on my brakes and sliding out from the wet path, once again falling over and skidding on the cement. This is why you ALWAYS wear a helmet, because you never know what is going to happen even on the easiest of rides. I hit my head (thank you helmet), but out of instinct I threw my hand out and ended up with a nice cut on the side of my pinky finger and shoulder, let’s not mention the bruise on my leg. Instantly I started crying because I was hurting and thought I might have broken my wrist. Jus rinsed the cuts down with some water and told me not to look at my hands (at the time, they were quite bloody). When I had calmed down, we walked about a quarter mile while pushing the bikes. Getting the guts to get back on, we attempted one last time to finish the ride biking. This time I was truly going SLOW as I didn’t have much use of my hands. We made it home, and I immediately tended to the wounds.

My wounded hand (it's much grosser and painful than it appears here)

Now that it’s been a couple days, the only thing that still hurts is the cut on my hand. It’s still trying to scab over, and I hope it does before the weekend because we’re racing and I don’t want to have to worry about it. Ugh to unsuccessful rides!

Some pics (PS: I have no idea why there are borders around every picture... stupid blogger):

We're now playing kickball... this is our field - awesome!

On a long ride last weekend where we saw ridiculously large houses.

Under the bridge... I look happy (and sweaty, ew).

Under the bridge... bored, taking pics. HI JUSTIN!

Hot Summer Days

Acclimating to the DC weather has been a work in progress. My wake up call was racing EagleMan – it was absolutely brutal. I drank 6 full water bottles on the run alone, never mind filling my hat with ice AND eating a cup of ice at every water station.

I think I could easily estimate that since we’ve moved here, 90% of the days have been 90 degrees or above. I learned this morning that this past month was the hottest June recorded worldwide. That is pretty insane, and scary. I receive weather bug alerts multiple times a day on my cell warning me to stay inside due to air quality and heat advisories. Last week I noticed a camera man from the news taping me run down the National Mall – it was hitting the 100’s that day and I am sure they aired footage that night with something along the lines of, “don’t be this crazy idiot, stay indoors.”

I simply cannot though – I need to train, plus, I like working out outside!

Before I head out the door, I load sunscreen onto my face, hands and shoulders, the three areas I burn easiest. There is a bottle of sunscreen sitting on the table next to the door just so I don’t forget! I’d pass on wearing a tank and opt to wear just a sports bra so just to remove one extra layer but I don’t for the very reason that I think I would get yelled at by the building I live in on my way out. Seriously, we don’t meet eye to eye : )

The other day I went for just over a 9 mile run along the Mt. Vernon Trail. I thought I was going to die from the heat. I kept a very decent pace but the entire run is in dead sunlight (as it seems all run paths here are). After a long stretch around the Roaches Run Waterfowl Sanctuary (gross name) that seems endless, I took cover under a tree for a few minutes. It was just so hot. I continued on but decided to turn around early, cutting the run short by a total of 10 minutes – no big deal. I was quickly running out of water and the path doesn’t have any fountains, so it was smartest to just turn myself around. On my way back, I stopped 3 more times to get shade coverage for just a minute each time. Even though it was brutally hot out and I was soaked in my own sweat at the end, I was happy and felt fantastic.

The new shoes are working out great, too. I’ve taken direction to powder my socks and glide my feet where I commonly get blisters. Haven’t experienced any pain yet, so that is good news on my end! Yay! My running shoes have been a size 7.5 since I can’t remember but they put me in a size 8 this time around. Maybe my big ol' feet just needed some extra room?

This weekend is our FIRST weekend in DC (outside of when Cork and Kyle came down), and we’re looking forward to exploring new places while getting some bike miles under our belts. I love weekends.