Feeling Bullet Proof

I have a two month period with no races, so I've been looking back at past ones.  Below is a race report from my first (and only so far) sprint triathlon.

As for things currently, I am looking forward to racing the Scottish Duathlon Championships in a few weeks.  I've been feeling so good in training, which I know I keep saying but I just seem to absorb the work and keep on going.  I had a run on Sunday that I wasn't sure how it would go, 1:45 of warm up and then intervals of 1-2 min sub 7 with equal rest just slowing down slightly.  I was shocked at how great it felt, I didn't have to push for most of it, until the 1 min intervals when I knew I was going to make it to the end so started to pick it up.  It was unreal, I still cant get used to seeing the paces I am after doing a solid base period.  With the weight training and base period I just feel like my body has become bullet proof, something like this would have had me shuffling by the end just hanging on, and now my form felt strong the whole way through.  When it got hard, I just tightened up form and relaxed into the discomfort, felt like I was practically being pulled forward.  I'm paying such close attention to how my body feels because making it to Ironman injury free is goal number one, but there wasnt an ache or sign of breakdown.

I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record saying how good I feel when everything I read is talking about how people are beat down, hurt and exhausted from training.  All of these articles about trying to get motivation to go out and do the next workout, and I'm still craving each one, and cant wait to get out there and have fun training.  I think its a combination of a solid plan, building up to be able to hold the work, the strength training to have the foundation, and the mindset of just having fun that has me seeing such gains in my running and biking and still feeling fantastic and full of energy.

I'm not the only one seeing it, I had a massage today after a few weeks without one and it was the easiest massage I've had in a while. My muscles just melted, everything loosened up right away. So I'll keep on cruising along, preparing for Ironman Kalmar.

Anyways after all my blabbering on what was just supposed to be a post about my first sprint, heres the race report from last year:

First Sprint Triathlon RR! Would have been faster…but had a coughing fit in transition :s

7/31/2012 9:40 AM CDT

Yay I survived my first sprint triathlon, and second one ever. I was worried about this one, after doing Ironman 70.3 last month my legs just did not want to go fast :s They were in endurance mode, and with a 500m swim, 22k bike and 5k run I needed to pour on the speed!! 

 

Now this was a local race, and I’ve been trying to break into the triathlon scene around here, so I wanted to bring it with a good performance. My legs had started picking up speed the last week before I was to taper a bit (just 5 days) to absorb all of the training and I was feeling sooo pumped just to get out there and push! 

 

I know there has been a lot of talk about 5k’s how some people say its “only” a 5k, or they “graduated” from that distance to longer, and the sprint tri is the equivalent. Well I don’t know that I have ever entered the pain cave like I do in 5k’s in any other distance I’ve done so far, the pain of going fast is so different than the endurance work, and I love it! So this was the 5k equivalent (even ending with a 5k run) and I have a reputation of winning 1^st female in 5k’s, or at least AG (not as impressive as it sounds, small running community) so I had a little to prove out there :p

 

Unfortunately things don’t always go to plan…day before the race wake up with a sore throat and swollen glands :’( With running, and triathlon, so much of it is mental, I knew I could still race with how I was feeling but I was feeling deflated and upset that all the hard work I put in wouldn’t be reflected because my body decided to rebel…even though I had been tapering and not beating it up like usual! This is the last tri I had on the schedule, and I really wanted to try this distance, so I decided if I wasn’t feeling incredibly worse the next morning I would race, if for nothing else but the experience.

 

RACE MORNING:

 

Ugh…my body was definitely still fighting this bug, usually my HR when I wake up on a race morning is around 43-55…it was at 90!!!  I pumped up my tires and it shot up to 160, and I was breathing heavy…this is going to be a tough race…

 

Showed up to the race, the great thing about a local race is the swim was in the pool I train in, and the run on a course that my run club meets at. It’s so nice to have a familiar course J Got my transition set up, and it was nice to see a few members of my running club out there, there are just two triathlons within 5 hours of here and they are on the same weekend, so the runners start tri training, it was so nice to see familiar faces….even though I got some comments on how I should probably just go back to bed :s

 

Swim start, my goal for the swim was just not to get passed by a bunch of people, it was so nice that this was a wave start with people starting every 30 seconds according to estimated finishing time. Sooo much more of a fan of starting by myself than the terrifying traumatizing experience of starting with hundreds of other swimmers in open water and being dunked and swam over…I think I need more time to forget the experience before I try another Ironman event (but a full WILL be happening next year). Finished the swim only being passed by one person, and just happy to be out of the pool, onto the bike!

 

1^st transition went pretty well, got out on the bike, and again started seeing HR and it was 30 bpm higher than its ever been on the bike…even though my legs weren’t feeling too taxed. Other than that bike went well, never really felt the burn in my legs like I had in training, my HR was just too high even though I wasn’t putting out much effort. Transition 2 was pretty slow for a spring at 1:50…a coughing fit while trying to tie my shoes slowed me down…which doesn’t seem like much but would have moved me up 3 spots! The 5k was the same as the bike never reached the burn that I usually feel in the 5k run, HR was high and lungs burned from the coughing, which reduced me to half marathon pace…

 

Overall though finished in 1:14:19, which I am ecstatic about considering how I felt!!! It was enough to win my 1^st in AG and 3^rd female overall. I really like this distance, and cant wait to do another one. However now my focus is running for a while as I prepare for my first marathon. Last time I tried this I got a pelvic stress fracture, so name of the game is stay injury free!!

Runners who tri!!  Running club cleaned up in the local tri...I'm the one in the middle :)

Ironman Buffalo Springs 70.3 Race report

I wrote this a while after the race on another forum, just wanted to document.  A good lesson to train for the race terrain...especially those damned hills.

Ok so I have the crazy sometimes obsessive personality that anyone outside of endurance sports doesn’t understand, and am now doing things that just a year ago would have thought was bat shit crazy!  5 weeks of training, followed by 2 weeks of taper in hind sight probably wasn't enough, but hell I finished!

 

THE RACE!

 

WHAT AN EXPERIENCE!! Leading up to this a lot of people warned me about this course, calling it a ¾ Ironman and saying how I chose such a hard one for my first one. I figure get the hard out of the way for the first one and fine tune for the next one :p I probably should have paid a little more attention though!

 

So I am a terrible swimmer, never had lessons growing up so I was nervous about just surviving the swim…my longest non-stop swim before the race was about .75 of a mile… I put on my wetsuit for the second time, and head up to the beach with a group of bobbing heads in pink swim caps. It was a wave start, going every 3 min and all of the women were in the second wave, with 3 more waves of men behind us. I never heard them say go, but all the sudden the mass of wetsuits around me started sprinting for the water so I followed suit. We got into the lake and you can barely see your hand in front of your face its so murky…this was my first time swimming in open water and freaked me out a little bit, but I just started thrashing trying to make forward motion. 

 

That first 5 minutes was the most terrifying thing I have ever done…and the only point in the race I really considered quitting.

 

Heart rate was racing, the wave behind us caught up I think it was 35-40 yr males, the water became a frenzy with a few slaps and kicks as the fast swimmers swam over me. Then came the first buoy along with the next wave, everyone crunched up and I had someone latch onto my wetsuit Velcro…opening it up. Well great now I have a wetsuit filled with water :s There goes the buoyancy advantage! It wasn’t until half way through when I got some space to breath, just tucked in and finally found the familiar rhythm of my stroke through the water, that’s when I started to feel strong again and knew that I was going to finish no matter what!

 

Out of the water, got my wet suit stripped by 2 girls (I know your jealous boys) ran up to transition. I was so happy to get on my bike, this was familiar. We had become very intimate friends over 5 hours weekends of training together. Now I am in Midland Texas….which has zero hills…the largest grade is a .2% grade incline that is known as “The Hill” but what we do have is wind. I’m talking 25-35 mile per hour wind on most of my training days so I wasn’t worried about the hills too much…hills end…the wind just keeps beating on you! Well the one part I didn’t prepare for hill wise was gravity…yea I should have seen that one coming….my bottle between my bars with all of my nutrition fell out on the first downhill….damn. So I got the pleasure of trying the Ironman perform…not bad…not great, but it got me through. The bike was comfortable most of the way I wanted to save my legs for the run…which it turns out didn’t really matter how my legs felt off the bike, little did I know they were about to take a beating. I did pass about 300 people on the bike, just keeping it at a pretty easy effort.  Legs never burned, surprised to see how many people I was passing going uphill without spiking my HR.

 

 

 

The Run. I figured the run would be my weapon, I had been running really well since I started incorporating the biking, most of my run training of the bike was done around noon so 100+ Fahrenheit was familiar and race day was only calling for 90 when I would start the half marathon. What I didn’t prepare for mentally or physically was the hills….those damned hills. It started off with rolling hills…that were a little larger than my definition of rolling and more than any hills in midland…then there were the 3 big ones…7-10% grade, ranging from 400-800 meters in length. I had to walk them…I’ve never walked in a race before but there was no other option…I was running up them slower than I could speed walk them. It hit me hard mentally on top of the physical.  Then came the downhill….first downhill was the begging of a very large blood blister that would continue to form. The second half I started to get into a groove, there was never a question that I would finish, but there was the thought of just walking the rest of the way…I was feeling shattered, my legs didn't know how to handle the incline and blood blisters had formed on both my feet from the decline, not to mention the beating my quads had never experienced before. Funny enough a lot of people talked about how tough the one flat section leading up to the turnaround is, it’s just flat and hot, and there is nothing around you but tumbleweeds and pump jacks….that was my favorite part! It felt like home :p

 

 

JENNA-CAER FROM MIDLAND TEXAS CONGRATULATIONS they announced as I crossed the finish line, (butchering my name but its all good). I felt such a sense of near delirious happiness that I had made it. It was a wild journey, with just over a month of training for a Half there was always the question of if I would finish…if I had stepped off I would not have been the only one that day…but I was determined. It really amazes me what your body can do if you put your mind to it and believe you can do it. This former fat kid, that never won or really competed in any sports growing up realized that there is an athlete inside her. I can’t wait to take on my next one! Next month I will do the sprint triathlon that got me thinking about this crazy sport. 

 

Finished in 6 hours 01 minute.

 

Long Run Magic

18 miles.  I've run this distance only a handful of times in the build up for the marathon.  Usually feeling broken down and exhausted by the end, starting to hunch over as my form gave in, and watching the watch closely waiting for it to hit the mark so I could stop.  Thinking about the fact there would be another 8.2 miles to make it to the marathon finish line.

That is worlds away from how I felt today.

I didn't know how I would feel after Fridays weight lifting and monster bike ride, I actually woke up this morning feeling some heaviness in my legs that has been lacking for a while.

Last week was an eye opener; I wasn't allowed to wear my heart rate monitor, and even though I was running through a hail/rain/snow storm, It was so freeing just to run, with no pace, HR or distance in mind.  This week I had a HR monitor and a ceiling, so I just set my watch to Alert me if I hit 175 bpm set it on a screen that told me nothing of importance and just ran.

The sun was out (a rarity in Scotland), I had zero expectations on pace or distance and took it nice and easy to start.  I felt so relaxed, just smiling to myself that it was a beautiful day and everything felt smooth and efficient in my body.  Its so easy to get tied up in numbers and expectations, putting more stress and pressure on yourself to perform.  While structure is needed, and you cant always run nice and easy if you want to race fast, its nice just to have that run where its all about how you feel and enjoying just being out there.

I let my body dictate this run completely.  I started out easy, in zone 1 for the first bit, built up to zone 2.  I let my effort ebb and flow, pushing a bit when it felt right and backing it off when I felt like it.  Smiling to myself as everything was feeling good, no tightness, no soreness,  I've never run this distance without feeling like something was breaking down before today.

Even better, once I got home and uploaded the data, I ran the same course I did last week, with an extra 2 miles and more hills at 7:46/mile pace, compared to 7:53 last week.  I cant believe some of the numbers I'm seeing, my Half Marathon PR was at 8:00 min pace!

I love seeing the improvements each week, but even better how good I've felt doing it.  Between training at MAF, and incorporating strength training I have a foundation that can now be built off of.  I don't remember the last time I've had an ache or pain, that I just assumed was part of running before.

Off to visit my friend the foam roller, and focus on recovery so I'm ready for some intensity next week. One thing I'm looking forward to is a Retul Bike Fit on Monday.  Time to get some free speed by fine tuning my bike fit.

Run with a smile!

Carpe Diem

I need an outlet for all of my energy...wait..what?

This is just ridiculous.  Oh Saturday, a rest day, physically and more importantly mentally, a day to put my feet up and recover from the week, be lazy and enjoy aspects of life outside of training.  Except...I cant sit still!  

I've been bouncing around all day, my plan of sitting with my feet up and enjoy a good book didn't quite happen that way. 

Its just so counter intuitive, the more energy I expend in all this triathlon fun the more I seem to have to burn.  So I put some of that energy to good use and had a massive foam rolling session, with some dynamic stretching.  My training load is starting to go up, intensity is starting to be introduced to my schedule, and yet I have just felt fantastic.  I think the big difference has been the focus on recovery, a new commitment to foam rolling, weekly massages, nutrition and my pretty much zero stress lifestyle.  I'm exploring a new country with my amazing husband, studying to change my career to something I'm passionate about, and training for a sport that has been such a positive in my life.

A big part of that zero stress has been how I approach training now, before it was stressful if I missed a session or didn't hit mileage thinking about how I could fit in an extra session to make up the time.  Heaven forbid my Training Peaks summery said I ran 6 less miles than I planed!  My attitude has changed and instead of training being the burden to hit set targets, its play time to enjoy what my body can do.  

Play time - Thats how I feel about my sessions right now.  Last week I had a long run, the weather was crap, a mix of hail, sleet, snow and rain.  Sounds terrible, right?  I had a blast, its all about attitude and how you approach it. While it wasn't ideal, it was something so different than what I was used to in Texas, a novelty still to be running in Scotland.  One of those days where you think to yourself, I wonder if the competition just stayed cozy inside, and I just got the leg up.

Dont get me wrong I'm doing some hard work right now.  This last week was tough as training shifts from base phase to the build to Challenge Half Barcelona-Maresme.  But while these sessions in the moment I feel maxed out, just trying to make it through, I've been recovering so well.  

Yesterday I had a monster bike session, one that had me questioning if I would make it through just an hour into the 3 hour session.  Serious sweat fest that tested my resolve, I had to take in some rest minutes just to catch my breath, and I was just hanging onto the watt range.  I was shattered after that workout, it was brutal and I loved it.  Especially since yesterday started with a Swim session and strength training before the bike ride I figured I would be crawling out of bed this morning.  

Queue bounciness and energy high.  No soreness, and low fatigue.  I'm paying really close attention to how I feel, for signs of fatigue or soreness, because I can not afford another extended break for an injury.  Especially since I've see what almost a full year of uninterrupted running has yielded! I may feel a bit more tomorrow, from that lovely DOM's and all that, and my long run will depend on all systems feeling good.  

Soo another all over the place post of rambling to keep me sitting still for a while.  Think of your next session as play time, and have fun!

Carpe Diem