Camp!!!!!

You haven't heard a lot from me in a few weeks because I've been working my way through the second build phase for IMTX while also having to use my brain a lot at work. This combination doesn't make using a computer at home very appealing! But now I'll make up for it in the next week, because I'm heading out to Hillary Biscay's epic Tucson tri camp and I intend to document it fully!

How much fun to see this on my training plan this week:

We're driving out to Tucson this morning - Coachie, Aixa, Linda, and Jeff. And Herb will be meeting us there for a week of smashfests that include 3 epic rides: Mt. Lemmon (longest continuous climb in the continental US), Gates Pass (Leanda Cave, Ironman World Champion, had a photoshoot on this route for Lava magazine), and Madera Canyon (includes the famous Shootout route). We'll do some trail running too, and the thing I'm most looking forward to - 100x100 in the pool! Yippie!

This is my second time to attend the camp and I am looking to see some big improvements over last year. I'm so excited! I'm sad that Shelly isn't joining me this year, but I'm psyched to get out there again and swim, bike, run (and make some new friends!) with some of the fastest AG athletes around. But for now, let's figure out how to pack 6 bikes in Coachie's Escalade before the 12-hour drive to Tucson.

Bike Focus Week

Every other Sunday, I find an email from Coachie that gives me my next two weeks of workouts. This time, I got an extra email telling me I have plenty of "volume in me to play around with" which meant I'd be getting a bike focus week. Bike focus week means that in addition to all the usual daily workouts, you get to ride your bike every day for 1.5-2 hours as well.

I love riding my bike. I will hands-down tell you that the bike is my favorite part of triathlon. But a bike focus week is pretty daunting just because a "regular" week leaves me pretty whooped!

Monday
Notes from Coachie - "ride strong for an hour and a half. You can even do this outside on your road bike!" Hooray! My favorite kind of ride, and permission to do it on the road bike too is just a dream come true. Shelly and I packed our bikes and happily brought them to work after our swim, then took 2 hours of vacation time for that afternoon especially for riding. (It didn't hurt that Monday was her birthday. Happy Birthday Shelly!)

Well, then the wind picked up and a wind advisory was in effect. Power lines were down in wind that was blowing at up to 52 mph. An email from Coachie read, "ride on the trainer today. It's too dangerous to ride outside." Ugh. We took advantage of the time off and got manicures (lovely!!) and then I headed home to do my ride on the trainer instead. At least I had pretty nails to look at while suffering on the trainer.

This is what the wind looked like; while I was sitting at the light, it blew out the power on these traffic lights.

Tuesday
Today called for a trainer ride, but after we got robbed on Monday, Shelly and I were determined to ride outside. We rode to Castroville and back (don't worry Coachie, I got in my intervals) and then did a 20 minute transition run. These are favorite workouts of mine too because I get to chat so much with Shelly. AND we had the added treat of wearing our Jenny Jerseys - hand-me-downs from one of the baddest ass cycling chicks we know, Jenny Park, who also happens to be a swim team friend of Linda's from high school. Jenny was going to donate some old jerseys and then decided to ask Linda if any of us would like to have them - of COURSE we would, wearing a jersey of an awesome Cat 1 cyclist that we totally look up to can only be good luck!

Here are Shelly and I sporting our Jenny Jerseys. They make us faster.

Wednesday
Oh, this was not a fun day. After a 7.5 mile crushing track workout in the morning, I didn't even understand how I'd get in an hour and a half on the bike after work. I was thinking maybe I'd fall asleep in my aerobars. I didn't pass out and I got it done, but it was a pretty lame effort and did not leave me excited for Thursday.

Thursday
Today we got to do the outdoor road bike ride. And oh my goodness, it was awesome. Shelly, Linda and I headed out from Helotes to ride around the 211 loop. This 25-mile route gives you 7 miles of hills followed by 7 miles of awesome, mostly downhill speeding. Shelly and I always play a game with the last part - we try to stay above 20 miles an hour the entire time. With a tailwind you can go way faster than that, and you just want to scream "woo hoo!" the whole way like a little kid.

It was one of those perfect rides. The weather was nice although chilly, and the three of us rolled along in a happy little pack, commenting on the beauty of the nature around us. This was Linda's first ride on the 211 loop and she crushed it! Shelly and I have never ridden this loop as fast as we did today. I can't believe how strong I felt at the end of this week full of bike rides.

And that's it! The bike focus week is in the bank; I get a day off riding tomorrow to "only" run and swim. Then we get to ride more hills on Saturday's 80 miler. I can't wait. Me and my Jenny Jersey are ready to go.

Ode to My Iron Sherpa

You start picking up lingo pretty quickly when training for Ironman. One of the phrases I heard early on was "Iron Sherpa." As in, "You're going to have to teach Robert what to do as your Iron Sherpa!" Sherpas are the guys who help people climb Mt. Everest by carrying all their gear and other crap up for them. I was told that the Iron Sherpa helps on race day by helping you to organize your stuff, maybe picks up your bike for you, maybe carries you home when you're too tired to walk.

Well, I'm proud to say that my husband Robert is the World's Greatest Iron Sherpa! On race day, he learns the course and figures out where to be so that I can see him during the race. He's awesome at cheering and shouting encouragement - and he knows what to say (you look great!) and what not to say (you're almost there!). Some of the best race photos of me and my friends are taken by my hunny bunny. He's never in any of the pictures, but he records the day for all of us and he looks really cute behind the camera. 

That's on race day. But what you don't learn until after you get into the training is that the Sherpa works year-round, not just on the big day(s). I feel so grateful for my Iron Sherpa, who daily listens to the tiny details of my workouts - he congratulates me on the days I do well and encourages me on the days that I'm feeling bad. He's a night owl by nature and doesn't complain (much) about my ridiculous bedtime of 9 pm. He understands my drive to do this even though it takes me away from our family for hours at a time, even on Christmas day. He knows who the pros are and which ones are my favorites and why. And oh my goodness, he cleans my bike for me! 

After driving all the way to Lubbock, TX, for Buffalo Springs last year, instead of hanging out and drinking beers with his dear friend from high school who lives up there, he drove an additional 56 miles so that I could check out the bike course, while Coachie shouted race day instructions at me through speakerphone. And then he stood out there on race day in the Texas summer heat for 6+ hours while we all played triathlete and raced. And then he drove me 6+ hours back to San Antonio while I regaled him with tales of the day; what I did well, what I should have done better, what I will do next time. And he never told me that any of this was ridiculous, which I will fully admit, some of it was.

And of course at Ironman Arizona last November, he hugged me tight and said all the right things while I cried like my heart was broken over a DNF. 

I love my Iron Sherpa hunny bunny husband! The Iron Sherpa does so much more than carry stuff around on race day. If you're lucky enough to have one, give them an extra hug and kiss today and let them know how much it means!

The only triathlon-related picture I could find of Robert.

Hard Hill or Easy Hill?

As Shelly and I headed out for our Wednesday morning hill repeats this week, we turned to each other during the warmup mile and simultaneously asked, "hard hill or easy hill?" We have two hills to choose from on these runs - a steep, short hill and a longer, less steep hill. This is the last week in the first build for Ironman Texas, and I'm exhausted. I'm walking around daily in an Iron Fog, forgetting to hit "send" on text messages and spending more time than usual staring into space trying to remember what I was just about to do. So the answer for me was easy - "EASY HILL!"

We arrived at the hill and started the 1/4 mile repeats - seven of them today. After the first one, Shelly complained that she was already "tingly." I told her I wanted to throw up. After the second one, we stopped talking. And then, somehow, we picked up the pace on each following repeat and crushed the workout. The "easy" hill wasn't that easy after all - we made it hard with speed and effort and determination. As we ran our 2-mile cooldown afterward, we congratulated ourselves on a job well done and confessed that we couldn't understand how it happened.

Throughout the rest of the day, we had another decision to make. "Swim or skip the swim?" I don't think either of us really considered skipping it. But the thought of going to the pool after work made me actually want to cry. We walked out of the office at 5 and agreed to meet at the pool. Then we both got stuck in horrible traffic on the way. Uggg! Delay means we'll be home after 7. Hate that. Should we just skip it? No! We both showed up and whined about it all the way up until sticking our toes in the water, and then guess what happened? We crushed the workout. It was the first time that Coachie had given us actual interval times to go off, and we made them all! So awesome! And at the end of a big build! Woo hoo! An "easy hill."

Today, I nonchalantly grabbed my bike and put it on the trainer, preparing to bang out a 2-hour trainer ride. No big deal, right? I mean, the efforts will be hard, but whatever. Well, the "hard hill" picked me today. I was totally useless on my trainer ride. I couldn't hit my zones, couldn't get anything out of my "efforts" today. Today, just completing the efforts was a victory, and I'll admit that I only did the first set.

Some days you get the hard hill and some days you get the easy hill. But as Coachie once said, there's no such thing as an easy Ironman. ("It's not called Easyman!") So come on hills, bring it. But maybe we can squeeze in a recovery week first.

*The photo at the top is of my running buddy Jenn, from the Reach the Beach Relay in 2008, when Shelly and I were fledgling runners and there really was no such thing as an easy hill. 

Tips for Nailing a Half Marathon (Herothon 2013 Race Report)

1. Don't do it alone. A month before the race, get a few of your closest friends together and talk them into running "just for fun." Then tell anyone who knows you're racing that you were peer pressured into it, and that you don't have any high expectations. Hey, we're not runners. We're triathletes.

2. Make some good excuses in case you don't nail it. We're "training through it." This isn't our "A" race. That's Ironman Texas in May. Hey, did I mention that I'm training for an Ironman? Yeah, we crushed 80 miles on the bike yesterday. This is just a training run for us. No big deal. We do this every Sunday. Because we're training for an Ironman.

3. Dress to impress. Choose a race that welcomes costumes, like the Herothon. Nobody will take you seriously if you're wearing a silly costume. Additionally, it might get you a segment on the news (Fox and the Spanish channel), or a chance at being a Monster drink model.

4. Choose a race that's guaranteed to have good running weather. What, it's January and unseasonably warm and humid? Well, I guess we'll try to do our best anyway. Good thing we decided to wear Captain America swimsuits instead of tights or a musclebound Halloween costume.

5. Run with a faster friend and hold on. Hmm, that was supposed to be the plan. But they dropped me at the start line. So...maybe amend this one to "try to catch your faster friends." Or, you can find another superhero to chase. Supergirl was an awesome rabbit for me.

What a day! All 5 Iron Whiners got a new half marathon PR today. Here's why everyone is awesome:

• Orissa ran the Endurathon yesterday, a hilly half marathon, and got a PR there. She bested it by 5 minutes today. Outrageous!
• Shelly is coming off an injury that set her training back for months. She took 15 minutes off her open half marathon time today. Amazing!
• Aixa matched her super fast half marathon time today after her longest bike ride ever yesterday - 75+ miles and then straight to hospital rounds until 8:30 pm. Rick-diculous!
• Linda and I both had an awesome training ride yesterday and then PRed at the Herothon today. I ran 10 minutes faster than I've ever run at a half marathon before. Yahoo!
• And although he's not an official Iron Whiner, Allen "Super Chi" Alvarez crushed it today while carrying a sword and shield and sporting the headband as always. Awesome!

What a way to start the 2013 racing season. Way to go, girls! I couldn't be prouder to be an Iron Whiner! And as always, a huge thank you to our team photographer, Robert; our Coachie, Dawn Elder, who continuously shows us that "anything is possible;" and all our friends (Brian, Jamie, and Lexa, to name a few!) who were out there cheering and supporting us today!

Chasing Boys (And Other People Who Are Faster Than Me)

Everyone wants to get faster, right? Well I certainly do. Countless (fast!) people have said that the best way to get faster is to ride/run with someone who's faster than you. In trying to keep up with them, you'll get stronger. The issue has been that on the weekends when we work out in groups, we're also doing zone 2 training, so it's really easy to just say "let's keep it easy, it's a zone 2 ride today, people!" And then you end the ride, look at your Garmin, and see that your average heart rate was in zone 1. Blah.

Last year, Shelly and I figured out (with Dawn's help) that zone 2 is big. A zone 2 ride or run can happen in the bottom, middle, or top of zone 2. If you're riding or running significantly faster at the top of the zone than at the bottom, you're getting your zone 2 training in, and getting faster. Right? I'm hoping that if I'm wrong here, Coachie is going to read this and step in and correct me. But I watched it work for Shelly last year as she ran to the top of zone 2 and away from our little group on every training run. And now I want it to work for me! Our first build for Ironman Texas started this week, and I made a plan to GO FASTER this weekend.

Luckily, Brian was in on this plan and he loves to help people, so he joyfully agreed to be my rabbit and let me chase him on the bike this weekend. Alphanso decided to join us on Saturday's ride, too, so I had not one, but TWO boys to chase! The group arrived at Soler's to find wet roads (no actual rain) and 70 degree temps, and we headed out to Castroville for a 60 mile ride. The promise of a Haby's donut in the middle of the ride made us all smile. As did the GoPro camera mounted on the front of Alphanso's bike, although I'm sure it never captured any faces, just butts. We'll see.

We rode out easy and then when we got to the gas station at Culebra, we put the gas ON. Shelly jumped on the train too and we rode to Castroville faster than I've ever done before. At the 30 mile turnaround, we had a 19.3 mph average, which is fabulous for me. And Alphanso got his first Haby's donut.

The country roads were full of mud from farm trucks driving off the surrounding dirt roads and shaking debris onto the shoulder of FM 471. Brian actually had to stop to scrape the mud out from between his frame and rear wheel. It was ridiculous. Photographic evidence (Brian and Orissa's feet) below (those are not tan lines):

I chased Brian back towards town and even though we had one mishap (Shelly hurt her knee and had to be picked up by Orissa, who had finished her ride with Aixa earlier and luckily was able to come and get Shelly), I ended up having one of my fastest rides ever (in zone 2!). A big "thank you!!!!" to Brian and Alphanso for the motivation. Then we all went home and spent hours cleaning our bikes. Here's the before picture of my poor mistreated Slicey. See the caked on mud - argh!

I planned to apply the same reasoning to today's 12 mile run and informed Linda that I'd be trying to stay with her. She promised to bring her A game. And she did!

Well, actually, I really had to pee (sorry, maybe too much info) so we ran really fast to the nearest gas station (2 miles away). When we got there, Linda said "great pace! Let's try and keep it up for the rest of the run! And also, my watch just ran out of charge, so we'll have to use yours." Now I felt responsible for keeping up the pace and keeping up with Linda so that I could report her times back to her at the end of the run. So that's what I did. It was a GREAT run, although cold and we both suffered chafing from wearing arm warmers with our sleeveless tanks (yes, that's what we get for this fashion no-no, I know).

Here's the group, post run. At 40 degrees, it really was ridiculously cold and windy out there today. But what a great weekend for training!

Monica's Mile 2013

Today was another first for me - participating in a swim-only event. Dawn and her Master's swim coach, Susan Ingraham of Masters of South Texas coordinated Monica's Mile, a fundraiser for our friend Monica Caban, who was paralyzed after being hit by a car on her bike last year while training for Ironman Arizona. The options for the event were a 1-mile swim or a 1-hour swim.

Dawn informed her athletes that we'd all be doing the 1-hour version. This means swimming in a 25-yard pool for an hour while someone counts your laps for you (thank you Patrick!). Sounds awesome, right? Not really. But we would be doing this for a VERY good cause and the girls and I found a way to have some fun - we wore coordinating Captain America swimsuits. Here we are with Coachie in the middle, looking speedy in her swim skin.

Shelly and I shared a lane, which happened to be next to Coachie, who, I must say, was a little screamy this morning. "No stopping! Don't stop to drink water! You swim for an hour! You can do this! I'm going to base all your intervals off this time so I want it to be right! Get in the water! Warm up! What are you dooooiiiinnnnnng?!" In her defense, getting all of us to behave may sometimes be like herding cats. But anyway, the 8 am swim start went off without much warning and 32 people in 16 lanes were swimming!

As we started, Shelly and I stayed together, perfectly in sync, for the first 12 laps or so. Then I fell back and stayed about half a lane behind her for the rest of the swim. I watched and made sure that she didn't get too far ahead of me, and we settled into a "comfortably hard" pace for the hour. Until the 2-minute warning when everyone on the deck started screaming. At that point, I hustled to catch up with Shelly and we finished the swim together - 3450 yards in 1 hour. 138 laps. I worked that out to be 1:45 per 100 yards, or 1:55 per 100 meters. Not our fastest, but not our slowest pace.

But my goodness, was that boring. It's so weird to be bored and out of breath at the same time. I lost count of the laps after about three and after that, it was torture not to know how far we had gone and how long we had left. I kept looking at the lanes around me, watching Coachie and Linda lap me on either side, and watching Aixa and Orissa turn at the ends of their lane, 2 lanes over. There were no buoys to let me know that the swim was almost done. Only a black line at the bottom of the pool.

Once we were finished, we were happy happy campers. That's Linda beaming next to Shelly. She swam a thousand yards further than us and that includes stopping to drink (yes, Dawn! She stopped to drink!) and to take off her Captain America suit (she had one under it) because it was too big. She's a real swimmer, and my swim hero.

Then, because Coachie loves us, she sent us out to run for an hour and a half. And after several snot-rocket-blowing laps of McAllister Park's trails, we headed back to the pool to cheer the 10:30 group that was finishing, and to give Monica a hug.

The coolest moment of the day was when an older lady came up to greet Monica right after we took this photo. She told Monica that Monica had inspired her to swim further in an hour than she'd ever done before - 4500 yards. Now that is speedy. Monica graciously thanked her and I think we all wiped a tear away.

It was an awesome morning with some awesome people! Absolutely worth getting up early on a Sunday in 29 degree weather to get into a pool. :)