time is flying by

It is the end of another recovery week so of course I feel like capturing a bit of what I have been up to..

I actually went up to Snoqualmie Pass and went snowshoeing with some team mates. I had so much fun being back in the snow that I really did not want to go home and just wanted to keep playing in the snow...

Lots and lots of swim, bike, run training but I actually feel like my biggest gains have been in strength training. I have been very consistently going to the gym twice a week with Kyle and pilates once a week so I am so happy that I finally feel like my legs are getting back to where they were when I skied all winter. I am now back up to being able to do the 3 sets of 12 of single leg press with 2 (well 1 on each side) 45lb plates.

I have a new addiction - I can't get enough O.N.E. Coconut Water especially the new one's with "a splash of juice". I blame Jill who always raves about how great the stuff is for her. I pretty much live on the stuff after training. (this is just to get me through the weekend).

After a week of recovery I had so much fun getting out on a good hilly ride with Cathleen and Greg at our team bike ride and run in the SUN.
It started out pretty chilly but after climbing a long hill I felt good the rest of the ride. It was good I actually felt strong and rested on the ride and then it was great fun to run with Cathleen who really pushed me to pick up the pace off the bike.
Which I immediately fallowed up with a good 12 min soak in the lake - even managed to talk Joe into joining me for part of it.
My training levels have picked up to the levels that I feel like it is time to start taking ice baths again.. So what better way to start the next build with than a chilly soak in 46°F water. My legs feel so much better tonight and will thank me tomorrow night when I have to run intervals...

After starting the next buid phase with a 4k swim at masters I got the ok from Kainoa for my pre Ironman CDA race plans - big no on Mercer Island half marathon but a YES to the 10k. Mostly because I have got hurt on that course last summer and it is better not to risk it. I got a yes for the Wenatchee Half Marathon in April. Since the Carnation TT series is not happening this year due to construction she is going to see if she can hopefully find something else.. I will also do the Issaquah Sprint Tri just for fun since it will be the 1st time in 3 years that we will be in town for it. Since I don't have a half Ironman race on the schedule I will have to do it on my own (well hopefully with help from some great friends but not in an official race) around the end of April. I will also be doing 2 3 days training camps so that I can get to know the course.

Alright time to get to work. Only about 124 days to go and probably about 60+ ice baths :)

getting into the swing of things

I am in the middle of a much needed recovery week so what better time to go over what I learned from the last 3 weeks of building. Though I say learned but it is more of the things I need to remember as the hours training keep increasing.

It took me 2 weeks to really figure out that I have to eat enough all day and all week. I noticed it the most the 2nd week of the build - I felt tired all week and then I only ate 3 gels and 2 bottle of gatorade for a 3:30 bike ride and I did not eat before the fallowing run off the bike. Needless to say I completely hit the wall during the run. I know from all the training last year that I need a bottle of Gatorade an hour and at least 1 gu or something every :45 - :30 min depending on effort and temp. Part of my issue has been keeping enough gu around for the weekends so I finally just ordered a couple 24 packs of my favorite plain gu and a 6 pack of roctain online. They also sent me a couple Blackberry gels and Banana to try...
With my supplies refilled the fallowing weekend I had the same brick workout but actually ate more during the ride especially. I felt so much better during the ride and most importantly I was able to stay strong on the run off the bike.

The second part of the nutrition puzzle is making sure I eat enough the rest of the day when I am not training to both pre-fuel and recover from training better. I stocked up on strawberry recoverite, chocolate milk, O.N.E. coconut water, healthy snacks and even made my Mom's Lentil soup on Sunday night so I could eat it for lunch all week. Mostly I have just been trying to make sure and eat way more food. I noticed last week that I felt more recovered from the long weekend by mid-week.

Other than dealing with nutrition I have been really working on making friends with my bike trainer at least for my midweek rides. Luckily we have a HUGE projector tv to almost surround myself with ironman broadcasts from tivo and Kainoa has been giving me good interval workouts to keep me distracted. It seems to be helping - bike training seems to be going the best out of everything. I feel stronger every week so I just keep telling myself "I love the trainer".... at least until it is light outside in the evenings then I will let forget all about it ;)

Last but not least training is way easier and more fun with friends - I have been very very lucky to have some wonderful people to train with the last couple weeks. From the group at masters swim who help wake me up at 6a to everyone who has been willing to ride outside for all or most of my long rides and the fun team runs (with treats afterwards) every other weekend. Huge thank you to especially Kyle, Sam, Laurie K. , Joe, Cathleen and so many more - having such great friends really makes training fun and I am looking forward to the next 5-6 months :)

20 mile run

To be completely honest I was a bit nervous about this long run all week. I was not really sure where to run and how it would go since it was so long after a full week with lots of running already. Last night I prepped and planned. Kyle had offered to ride support for me but he had to work ski bonkers around 10 am and to be honest I wanted to sleep in so I decide I would do 2 loops of a 10 mile route. I needed/wanted hills so I figured out how to make my 7 mile hill loop into 10 miles and then I would be able to refill my hand bottle and grab more Gu.

Elevation of the full 20 mile route


Now compare to the Nike Marathon Elevation (see why I wanted to make sure I ran some hills)



In the morning I kind of stalled even more, took my time getting everything ready and waited for my breakfast to digest a bit. Really I was just nervous and unsure if I could really run as fast as I wanted to.

First I had to put enough music on my iPod Shuffle to get me through the run. I wore my favorite Sugoi tri shorts (shorty short 4") that I have worn so much they so broken in/comfortable but still stay in place and a Sugoi fizz tank. I also decide to run no socks because the last time I wore socks I got more blisters than when I went without (I know seems weird to me to). I made sure to use TONS of bodyGlide on my feet and where the Fizz tank always seems to chaff under the arm (sorry but stupid place for a seem). I thought it was cold so I grabbed arm warmers but with in a mile I was burning up and they went in the pocket. I even remembered to weigh myself - 133lbs pre run. As far as nutrition went for the first loop I had a plain Gu at mile 2, 5, 7, 10. I would have liked to have gatorade but my hand bottle does not seem to seal anymore and it makes my hand sticky so I went with plain water. I also took 3 sportlegs and 1 salt cap.

Finally around noon I got my butt out the door and started running.

The first couple of miles I realized it was not that cold and it actually was warm and rather muggy. My legs felt pretty good but i had a hard time finding the right rhythm. To be honest my head was not in the best place today. I had a very hard time trusting myself and just running. I kept over thinking everything and almost running scared that I would not run fast enough. So the entire run I was fighting myself and my legs. I knew I wanted to run the 10 mile loop in about 1:25ish. As always I went out very strong running sub 8 min mile pace and slowed to about 8:30 pace on the hills. I was very happy when I finished 10 miles at 1:22:11 ahead of my goal time :)

My personal aid station.


I emptied my pocket of wrappers and grabbed the rest of the Gu's I needed for miles 12, 15, 17. Drank some Gatorade Endurance, refilled my hand bottle with water. Took 2 salts because I was sweating so much - I felt like I had gone for a swim I was so sweaty. I also decided to put on a very thin pair of socks because a spot on my left heal felt like it might have been forming a blister.. Of course I also had to txt Kyle and let him know I was half way and post it on twitter/Facebook (yes I am a super dork). I joked with Kyle if it was ok if I could take a nap before doing the 2nd loop... It really was very tempting.

Once I was refilled I was back running in a couple minutes (yes I stopped the watch/garmin since it is just a training run). The first couple of miles my legs did not want to run as fast as before but at least they stayed under my goal pace. As expected the 2nd loop was harder. I started to feel more tired though my legs actually still felt pretty good and continued to the rest of the run which was wonderful. At this point my entire take was sweated through and I'm sure all the people staring at me were wondering how I could sweat so much when it was not that hot.
Since my legs actually felt pretty good I managed to keep pace with the first loop and actually ran the hills a couple of seconds faster. Though I to do that I had to yell at myself a bit more. I was glad I wore a bracelet from the IMC crew that said "Toughen the Fuck up" and I repeated that to myself a lot, that and "pick up your feet", and generally tried to think of what Kyle would tell me if he was there. I would have also expected my heart rate to go up because I felt like I was having to work harder but actually it stated about the same..

The last mile is flat and I pushed myself to make sure I made my goal time. Now saying that I am horrible at math so I finished the 20 miles at 02:44:07 (4 whole minutes ahead of my goal time). The last mile I ran in 7:41 lol. No surprise as soon as I got to my drive way I just laid down and stayed there for about 10 minutes (or so it felt). I only got up because Toko (my cat) was meowing so much from the window. So i moved inside to the living room floor, laid down a towel and proceeded to fall asleep for an hour or so. I blame Toko because he curled up next to me and just purred.

Eventually i woke and txt Kyle - he had already txted me asking if I was done yet. oops Eventually I got up and weighed myself - 131 lbs post run (lost only 2 lbs). Then I had my favorite recovery drink of strawberry Recoverite and chocolate milk and Kyle brought home 2 bags of ice for me to take an ice bath :)

So some overall lessons.. Trust my legs and relax about times/pace I can do it - no need to run scared. It is not arm warmer time yet. BodyGlide is a good thing because I got no chaffing or blisters :) My nutrition went really well plain Gu and 1 Roctain Gu half way for some extra caffeine. I need to continue to work on my pacing I seem to go out pretty harder then I need to. It is defiantly time to wash my Newton shoes they smell HORRIBLE and even made the socks I put on dirty. At this point I need to just keep after it - I am getting stronger and within my goal pace for the race in October.
Finally my reward a yummy Trophy cupcake called snowball (Toko thought he should get some to).

Bikram yoga

On Wednesday night I once again took on the challenge of surviving Bikram/hot yoga with the main goal to not get to dehydrated. I needed a do over after Sunday (see last post). The major difference is I planned out a hydration plan and stuck to it.

During the day I drank Clif shot electrolyte instead of plain water. An hour before I drank a bottle of gatorade endurance. 30 min before I took 2 Thermolyte Sodium-Electrolyte Caps, 2 SportLegs and drank another 10 oz of gatorade endurance. During class I continually drank gatorade endurance (even though they look down at this) - got though a full 24oz bottle. Afterwards I drank another bottle of watered down gatorade endurance and took a very cold shower. On my way home I drank a recovery drink and had dinner and more fluids when I got home.

Luckily all that planning worked. I felt better during the class and did not get a headache afterwards. Not a huge surprise that if I drink more and get in way more electrolytes my body will be much happier - defiantly something to remember in the rest of my training. After all that I don't think I will be making Bikram yoga a regular thing. It just takes to much planning and I am pretty much at capacity with all the swim, bike, run stuff and not to mention my day job. As for the main reason I went back to Birkam yoga - to stretch out - I have been spending some extra time on the foam roller and some very simple yoga stretches pretty much every other day.

dehydration or electrolyte imbalance...

Yesterday I went with a friend to Birkam/hot yoga for the first time in probably a year. I used to go a lot more frequently in my pre-triathlon years esp in the winter. Anyway I went yesterday in an effort to work on flexibility, start some heat training and hang out with my friend Cynthia. We went to a studio in Bellevue that focuses on Birkam yoga mostly because the studio we used to go to closed... I prepared for the heat by taking a Thermolyte Sodium-Electrolyte Cap, 3 SportLegs and tried my best to be as hydrated as possible beforehand and had a bottle of ice cold cytomax with me for class.
As soon as the class got started I started sweating a lot - way more than I ever remember sweating years ago. Makes me wonder if it is possible to increase sweat rate over time ect... In general the class was good - I could defiantly tell I am stronger these days but still need major help with flexibility. I really enjoyed the breathing exercises and good chance to work on focusing on the present. My biggest issue is that I'm so used to eating and drinking while training that I had a really hard time with only having 2 chances to drink. I could tell by the end that I was very low on every thing - I felt a little dizzy and shaky. I made it though class but as soon as I was done I drank the rest of my cytomax, a coconut water drink and then went to lunch and drank and ate more trying my best to rehydrate.
I was good for an hour or two and continued to drink and eat. But by the early afternoon I started feeling a slight headache that just continued to get worse and I was burning up. It was the same kind of headache I get after races and long workouts. I drank and ate more but it got worse even after taking 2 tylenol. Finally around 10pm I resorted to taking a midol and within 30 min it mostly faded away.

This is nothing new - I have a tendency to get these headache on Sunday nights especially and almost always after races. I'm hoping I just need to find the right combination of calories, fluid and electrolytes. Maybe I need to take more salts caps and drink more during class/workouts.
The last week or so I have tried drinking nuun though out the day but it winds up giving me a headache. so I'm still looking.. This week I'm going to try cytomax during the day and increasing how much I drink dramatically before, during and after workouts (pretty much all day).
I know it is crazy but I agreed to go again on Tuesday morning so we will see if I can figure something out that works and I would guess would benefit the rest of my nutrition/fluid plan for races and training esp in the heat.