Finished!!!!!!!

A race report will happen. Soon.

Overall results:
352/901
640/901 swim
240/901 bike
45/901 run


Age Group results:
47/148 in age group 35-39
53/148 age group swim
20/148 age group bike :)
39/148 age group run


Also, I thought it would be interesting to show what I did to train for that triathlon. I did screen captures of my log from May - August. The beginning of September was kind of light because of my back and tapering.

Final Week and a Back Pain

Tuesday night we did yoga, and that was a huge mistake. I had felt a tweak in my back, but stupidly thought yoga might help. No. Yoga is not flexy relaxing time. It is pull your body into weird ass positions time, contorting muscles into doing things they haven't done in a while. I'm so mad at myself for going.

I now have a bad back pain. It's deep, perhaps connected to my ribs, because it hurts when I breathe. It hurts to arch my back and move my arms in a swimming motion, so right now I'm not sure how I'm going to swim on Sunday. I really can't do much except pop the ibuprofen and rest and wait. I stretch, but actually don't think it's helping. I will get the back into a hurt position and let it sit there, trying to control the spasming and taking my breath away...and actually feel that may be helping. Sitting at my desk is really painful and I feel nauseous.

So...great news, huh.

In better news, I got my bike back from the bike shop with new breaks, new wraps, new break and shifter cables. I am going to try it out today to see how it feels. The guy said it would ride a bit different. I'm excited.

I have today and tomorrow to get this back thing better. I'm hoping the pain meds will help, but I know they don't heal. We shall see what happens I guess. Maybe this is some sort of triathlon god working a forced taper for me.

Second Open Water Swim

On Labor Day, I dragged Greg back out to Stonelick State Park so I could venture out into the open water again. I tried to drag other friends too, but they weren't interested.

This time, it went WAY better! It didn't take me long to get used to the water. I could just swim in it without freaking out. It did take a bit to get my breathing warmed up, but c'est la vie.

I swam a couple 6ish minute sessions. I kept getting really worn out. After a break on the beach, I went back out to swim 20 minutes. I learned I needed to kick less and then could keep my breathing in control.

So for race day, that will be the plan: kick barely, think pull buoy exercises, reaching and pulling. I'll get through it more enjoyably this way!

Allergy Season

The brick workout wore me out some, but not too bad. I got a swim in Monday, and did an "easy" run that evening. It was a 10 min/mi pace, which felt a bit rougher than it should have normally, but I think I was just tired. Tuesday I spinned in the morning. It was a hill interval class and I actually kept it kinda easy. My heart rate didn't get above 160. Tuesday evening J ditched yoga for a spinning class because she didn't go in the morning. That was pretty disappointing to me, but I decided I'd not go and give my shoulders a break before Wednesday's planned 1 mile swim. When I woke up today (Wednesday), my shoulders hurt pretty bad. I didn't go in the morning and opted for an early afternoon swim instead. I warmed up about 200 yards and then did 35 laps (down and back, 50 yds=1 lap). My my it was rough. I had a bad asthma thing going on, and my arms just hurt. I tried to keep my form, but I was terribly slow. I wanted to stop somewhere in the 20s, but I kept going and did the entire mile. 

When I left, I noticed how bad my asthma was. I sneezed a few times and that didn't help anything. There was a ton of congestion in my chest. By the time I got home, my breathing was shallow and I felt terrible. I took two puffs on my inhaler and relaxed. I still feel icky, and my chest feels tight, but I blew my normal suckiness on my peak flow meter. 

I have an allergist appt tomorrow and I'm glad. I guess I need to be on some more medicine. I'm really frustrated with the breathing issues and how my inhaler makes things worse when I exercise. I hope to get some help in place before next Sunday. 

Holy crap the tri is NEXT SUNDAY!

Brick Workout

The mile in the water really wore me out! I was sore for a couple days. As I mentioned, Thursday's run was kinda slow and painful. I took Friday off because I felt I needed it. Saturday morning I hit the pool (and was the only swimmer there) and did 1100 yards, with poor breathing. Today I decided I'd do a brick since I wasn't doing a long weekend ride. 

I set the trainer up and had a fan pointing on me. It was cool, but I knew I'd be dripping eventually. My plan was to ride for 20 minutes at a steady pace, then practice quickly tying my shoes and running for a mile. I set up Casey's spin mix #2 and started getting busy. I held a 17-18 mph and was beginning to warm up...

Then I hopped off my bike and changed my shoes. I undid the trainer wheel, hit pause on my playlist and ran out the fence gate to begin the mile. It was sunny and I forgot my sunglasses. The run felt ok...but I didn't feel I was warmed up. Mile 1 was 9:15. I didn't know what to expect for my times since I was biking too. 

The second bike session was ok. I was uncomfortable in my seat and my wrists hurt, but soon it was time to run again. I fumbled around with my shoes this time, putting one on, dropping the other, not taking my cycling shoe off very well... Just wasn't thinking. The run was pretty good though! 8:54. I felt like that was it for my legs though. 

The last bike was kind of rough. I felt like I had so much lactic acid built up in my legs. I tried to push but it was kind if hard to maintain 16-17 mph at the resistance I had set. 

I didn't have much hope for the run. And finally my legs had that familiar filled with concrete who's legs are these feeling. At least I could practice pushing and pacing with them in this state. However, I wasn't moving all that slow. The last mile was 9:03 and I was pretty happy. It was hard to move my heavy heavy legs, but I just kept pushing, knowing this is my last big workout before the race. 

Again the results:

19 min bike

9:15 min mi

20 min bike

8:54 min mi

21 min bike

9:04 min mi

I'm pretty happy with this!!

1 mile in the water!

This week the pool is closed due to maintenance. They drain it and clean it and I hope paint the air tubes above because they look pretty nasty. The competition pool is open however. I didn't swim Monday because I was in the water Sunday practicing my open water swim. I figured I'd swim Wed and Fri in this cold cold competition pool.

I was nervous about negotiating that side - it's where the swim team is and I didn't want to interfere. I went Wednesday after lunch (right after lunch to be specific...after a "your last day as a contractor" Mexican lunch). There was only one other person there, so turned out to be a good time.

The water was certainly chilly. But after a lap down and back, it felt fine. The competition pool has a movable floor. I thought it was the entire floor, but it's just half. The rest is the deep end. So it was the coolest thing to start swimming, looking down at the bottom, and then see the floor slowly moving away from me as I progressed into the deep water. I am not sure why this was so awesome, but it was.

I warmed up some. Some freestyle, some pull buoys. Then I was going to swim my half mile, like last week. About 3/4 of the way through it, I was having such a good time I thought "why don't I just keep swimming?" I thought about how hard the open water was and had already made my decision to increase my pool distances. And last time I had taken a short break then went another 1/4 mile. Maybe I could swim a full mile straight?

And that I did. It was pretty easy, and by the end, my breathing was even fine. I was going slow of course. I did it in 44:35. And I think I was swimming meters in this pool rather than yards. I'm slow and steady. I don't push off the wall either.

That evening, I rode my bike from the house around the neighborhood. I went 14 miles and kept it easy. Later I was exhausted!

Thursday my legs were sore and my arms...oh my goodness was I sore. I decided I'd run, but keep it easy. It was ridiculously slow. A 10:50 pace overall. But at least it felt easy, aside from my legs feeling like bricks.

Today I'm toying with swimming easy. But I don't want to thrash my legs more for the group ride Saturday morning. Casey probably isn't going to make it, and last time he had to pull me along in the beginning. I'm nervous I'll be dropped. So maybe I won't go if he can't go, and I'll do a brick instead. Still haven't done those yet...

Mile repeats

So I've been doing 1 mile repeats lately for my running. One night I was setting out to run, and just didn't feel like slogging along. So I thought I'd switch it up and just run hard. I ran around 9:15. Then I did the next around 9:02 (after a short break) and the last around 8:55. 

I think it's a good workout. It makes me push comfortably hard, but isn't a straight up speed workout, so my legs aren't toast afterwords. 

Tonight, I was going to warm up for one and then do 3 hard. My asthma kicked in immediately. Actually, I'm guessing I was already having problems before I started and just didn't notice. It felt like I was breathing through mesh, and my chest was super tight. But I still managed a nice warmup mile of 9:40. I did my inhaler and hoped for the best. The next mile was 8:44. The third mile was 8:39. :) It was a struggle, but I did it. Then I finished with a cool down mile, because my lungs just weren't going to cooperate anymore. It was 9:49 and felt really easy :)

Now I'm pretty pooped. But still. 40 miles on the bike Saturday, open water swim Sunday, and 4 1-mile repeats tonight? I'm feeling pretty awesome. 

In other news I have a huge knot in the middle if my back that I can feel when I lean on things. Plus it just hurts. Foam rolling errrrrrvrything tonight.