The Triing Lizard

Friday, March 24, 2006

Today was my first outdoor bike ride of the season! I've been waiting for my knee to heal and today was the first day that I dared to cycle. Hopefully it won't get swollen again. I think my right pedal is forcing my leg to track too much inward so I'm going to see if Jeff can help me adjust it out a bit. I'm hoping that will solve my knee problem. Funny how I can train and finish a marathon with no knee problems to speak of but the minute I start upping my cycling mileage my knee goes out!

So the course I chose today had a few gradual hills on it, I figured I would take it easy since it was my first ride since being injured and the first ride of the spring! I averaged 13.8 mph which I was pretty disappointed about. I was hoping to average 16-17 at Columbia.

Elevation Gain for Columbia bike course:




I think I have my work cut out for me!!!! Hopefully 8 weeks will be enough time to get back into the same cycling shape I was in at the end of triathlon season last summer, we'll see!

Jeff and I are headed to Cleveland this afternoon to visit my family and to attend my sister's Indonesian Coffee Tasting Workshop tomorrow morning. I'm really looking forward to it! I'm sure we'll be really wired by the end!! Can't wait!

Sunday, March 12, 2006

I am proud of myself! I completed my first early morning workout of the year this morning! I managed to drag myself out of bed at 5:00 AM to squeeze it in before heading to work. I was pleasantly surprised at how much energy I had! My next challenge will be to try to do this early morning thing twice next week!

I just started following the 12 week heart rate based Olympic distance training plan at beginnertriathlete.com to get ready for Columbia in May. My planned workouts today involved a swim workout and a run time trial. I didn't want to do the swim workout and the time trial back to back. So I knew the swim was either going to be in the morning or not at all. I wasn't going to give up the time trial because I want to use this time trial to calculate my lactate threshold so that I'll be able to figure out my ideal heart rate zones.

The swim workout went as follows:
Endurance Speed Workout
48 minutes
1750 yards
300 wu. 5x50 (sprint 1st 25) - on 20 sec rest. 4x - 2x50 Z3 (15 sec rest), 1x100 Z3 (60 sec rest) then sprint a 50 Z5 (15 sec rest) - 200 cd.

This is a super high energy swim workout as far as I'm concerned. My normal workout would include back and forth for 45 minutes, mostly crawl, some breast, some back crawl, and some drills thrown in for good measure, yes, kind of haphazard. The thought of sprinting kind of scared me! But happily I was able to "sprint", well, go as fast as I could before I started to get scared that I wasn't getting enough air and that I was going to pass out in the water and drown. Felt like I was going faster than a speeding bullet! Though to other people it probably just looked a little less slow than when I'm swimming normally! :-)

I had a little bit of coffee and half a harvest bar. That seemed to do the trick as far as pre-workout nutrition. I think it was the right amount of food and liquid, I had plenty of energy and didn’t feel like I was still digesting - bonus!

I'm looking forward to my time trial tonight! It will give me a good base level so that several weeks from now I can measure to see my progress. It's going to be a tough run though.
Here's the plan:

After 10 minute warm up, you are going to run for 30 minutes as hard as you can for the entire 30 minutes. After starting the run, hit your 'Lap' button so you record the average HR over the last 20 minutes. This can be run on track the or measured course (flat). Record the time and get a 10 minute cool down.

My conundrum is I'm supposed to go to happy hour tonight. So I guess I better not drink or maybe I better not go? Doing a really hard run after a beer or two could be a little challenging! But I'm definitely planning for a Guinness tomorrow night at my favorite non-smoking pub Mike McGovern's!!!


I completed my maiden voyage at Gasparilla! My first marathon!

Race report:
Alarm went off at 3:30 AM. Yes, that's really damn early. When I first started to do triathlons I used to really worry that I would completely want to fall asleep half way through the race because I would be so tired. But no, it's amazing how adrenaline can always carry you through!
I made coffee with my trusty pour through (didn't expect even Starbucks to be open at this time). Drank coffee and gatorade and ate a bagel with peanut butter and a banana. Wrote my goal pacing on my arm: miles 1-5 - 11:30, miles 6-10 - 11:20, miles 10-20 - 11:15. I figured that should be doable since my pacing for my low heart rate training runs has been around 12 minutes per mile. Drove to Tampa. Sat in traffic in Tampa since I think the only parking garage that was open was the convention center one and there were a thousand cars all trying to get in at the same time. Definitely chaotic. I was a little panicky but luckily my bf Jeff who has done dozens of races before was really calm that kind of rubbed off on me. We finally parked, donned our garbage bags and headed to the start. Found out start was delayed which allowed for an additional and much needed bathroom stop.

Going into the race I really wasn't sure what my pacing was going to be. My biggest limiter as far as triathlon went was my aerobic endurance so I've been training using the Maffetone method to bolster that. All of my training runs have been around 11-13 minute pace per mile (varied based on distance). Based on all my calculations I was pretty sure that I would stay within aerobic if I could keep my HR below 170. Once I hit 170 I told myself that I should probably slow down. So I was in the low 160s for the first 5 miles and was maintaining a pretty fast pace, almost 2 minutes per mile faster than my training pace. I kept going at the same pace, only slowing down a little when I saw the 170s on my monitor. When I hit mile 16 and I was at 2:45 I knew I was going to make my goal time of 4:45, I knew I could run 10.2 miles in under 2 hours. I was so psyched!! And then when I got to mile 20 and saw that 9:14 pace I decided to go full out and deal with a crash if it came. I sped up as much as was possible given the strong headwind. It was awesome having people call out my name as I was running, that definitely energized me! I had a gel every 30 minutes which worked out great, I didn't have any stomach problems or cramping. Drank gatorade or water at every water station. With the exception of the water stations and a couple times where I had trouble opening my gel packet and had to stop to use my teeth I was able to run the whole thing!

After I crossed the finish line, I got my metals, hugged Jeff (well, really fell on him might more accurately describe it), collapsed on the side of the road to eat a bagel and drink some coke and water. With Mindy and Jeff's help, hobbled over to get some food which I ate as quickly as I could shovel it in, definitely wasn't pretty. :) I looked down at my watch and I had burned 4800 calories! About an hour after I ate probably the equivalent of two meals I asked Mindy if she could get me the biggest milkshake she could find. For some reason that was the only thing I wanted. She returned with this enormous thing that I had to hold in two hands. I drank it down in about 10 minutes. It was the yummiest thing ever. Later on Jeff and I stopped for Krispy Kremes and then we drove to his parents house and ate a full dinner and had key lime pie for dessert.

Crossing the finish line:







Next up: Columbia Triathlon!!!