Happy. Healthy. Heathen.

In 1999, my family went on our annual trip to Ragbrai in July to ride our bicycles across the state.  For the only time in our 20 years of riding this ride, the midwest was experiencing a heatwave like no other.  112 degree daytime heat, high 90’s at night, extremely high humidity.  Also for the first time ever, our family packed up and went home…south to Tennessee where it was cooler.  Until today, I would have said that was my worst experience on a bike.  Until today.

I expected it to be bad.  I expected it to be cold.  It was the most bitter, nasty, hateful ride I have ever taken.  It was only 10 miles.  A cinch, right?  20 minutes out, 20 minutes back.  I had on leggings and my bike shorts, sports bra, tank top, 2 long sleeved riding jerseys, a hoodie, riding gloves, socks (non-wool), and my cleats, which happen to be sandals.  About 1/2 mile from the house, I knew I was in trouble, but it was only 10 miles, right?  I had to stop for 6 or 7 minutes to dig the mud out of my left cleat (live on a farm), so that added those minutes to my exposure. 

It wasn’t just the 29 degrees…oh no.  It was the 18 mph wind, combined with my 15 mph speed, combined with the complete lack of sun and total exposure on the main road.  It was the fact that my eyes water when I ride in the cold, which makes my nose run, which together makes my face wet, which gets me even colder.  But it’s only 10 miles, right?  So I’m determined to gut it out, and by the turnaround point, I was thinking of everyone I knew with a truck or hatch vehicle of any kind who could rescue me.  But I currently have no dirt on ANYONE, so I let that go, and off I went for the 20 minutes back.  I was already experiencing excruciating pain in my face, fingers, and toes, and was even worried that I was risking my career.  I couldn’t tolerate riding any faster, but I couldn’t tolerate staying out any longer, so I pegged my computer to 15 mph and put my head down.  Then, 2 miles from home, I discovered the only thing that could possibly sustain me and help me finish.  I started screaming.  I had been gritting my teeth and groaning, but I gave in to all-out screaming…I don’t know that it kept me warmer, but it sure helped express how I felt.  No sane person was out, so I didn’t have to worry about alarming the community, but the cows all raised their heads, and if some passing driver happened to have his/her window lowered the half-inch it takes to flick out a cigarette, perhaps they commiserated with me for a fraction of a second.

Lesson learned:  I do have a minimum riding temperature.  It is far above 29 degrees.  I will have to resort to those awful bikes in the gym on these worst days.  In addition to that, I will be going to see my friend Krista at Fleet Feet for some kind of glove/sock combo that will help on warmer but not quite warm days.

11 hours later, and I’m still not recovered.   Not after a shower that drained the hot water heater.  Not after an hour under my electric blanket.  Not after the glass of wine at dinner, or the cup of tea afterward.  Not after sitting in front of the fire for all of Jon Stewart and Colbert. 

I cannot tell you about my exertion level, my time, my split time, my heart rate.  I vow that this will be the whiniest blog I will write during this training.   Hold me to it.

Thanks for reading.

So on this balmy 40 degree day I ran 4 miles…down the driveway, out onto 96, to Kroger and back.  For some reason my iPod keeps dying after about 30 minutes, so I had to finish in silence, but that has its own appeal anyway. 

It was cool, but I got warmed up as I got going, and about a mile and a half into the run, I get that euphoric, can’t-stop-smiling, all’s right feeling.  I’m sure passing drivers wondered what I was smiling about…then my iPod shuffled onto Jim Gaffigan doing the Hot Pocket routine and I was downright laughing.  Made breathing a little harder but it was worth it.  Try that if you are struggling getting through your mileage:  download a comedy routine – Ellen, Dane Cook, you pick – and play it through your distance, especially if music doesn’t keep your attention.  I did that quite a bit when I trained for a marathon and had those 3 and 4 hour training runs.

Three unusual and interesting things happened over the course of the run:

• I started the run with my cell phone in my hoodie kangaroo pouch.  About a mile into the run, I noticed it was missing..what a drag.  I did the full distance out, running against traffic, then turned around and headed back, crossing over to run with traffic at the point where I noticed the missing phone so I could search for it.  No luck all the way back to the house, so called hubby to ask him to begin continuously calling it as I got on my bike to retrace the route…about halfway down the drive, I heard and saw it – balanced precariously on a rock beside a large juicy puddle, vibrating its way to its death.  It was very visible; I jogged right past it.  Lesson learned.
• When I got to the turnaround point, I went to do a U-turn across two lanes, and wanting to have my negative split time, I sort of shot through a gap in traffic with much more speed than my regular pace; somewhere in the turn and the speed, I tweaked my left calf, and it has left me with a limp for the rest of the day.  Don’t run again til next week since this week’s brick is swim/ride, so maybe that will help.  One of the perks of owning a massage therapy business is access to massage therapists….
• While running the shoulder on the main road, I saw on the ground a blister pack of medication.  I picked it up…full pack, no damage, info printed on the back identified it as some kind of cold medicine/decongestant.   A mile further, I picked up another unopened pack (not the box, just the full, unused blister card) of a DIFFERENT kind of cold medication.  On the way back on the OTHER side of the road on the shoulder, yet another full pack of cold relief tablets.  Such a mystery.  This is middle Tennessee, we do have a meth problem in the state, and I know that cold medication is used for that…some connection?  Delivery truck accident?  Far too random.  I don’t guess I’ll ever know…

Today also included the obligatory strength training session, my favorite, and day one of week two was complete.  Have the pain in my left calf, but what’s training without something on your body asking for attention?

Thanks for reading…

One week down, 17 to go.  But as everyone who does sequential training knows, each week is higher mileage/longer sessions than the last.

Yesterday’s session was a quick 10 mile ride.  Those are fun…I just take off down the driveway on my bike with my heart monitor on, my bike computer set to distance, my buds in my ears.  I just start peddling until I reach the half-way mileage, then, wherever that may be, I turn around and head back, and a 10 mile ride takes about 30-35 minutes so it really is a quick dash.  I wanted to go further, but I know that in the weeks to come the mileage will just increase, so I’m trying to save and bottle up some of that enthusiasm for those days.

I also did a strength training session, always my favorite, at SportsCom, which completed my week of training.  Today is miserably cold, wet, and rainy (a typical Tennessee winter day), so I don’t intend on even leaving the house today.  Then the next week starts all over again tomorrow…

Thanks for reading…good wishes for your week to come.

Anytime you read that I enjoyed the run more than the bike ride, you can assume it was weather-related.

Today was my first official “brick”:  triathlon lingo for any dual-sport training event; in triathlon it’s either swim/bike or bike/run, since that’s the order in which the competition is structured.  Today was a pretty simple 10 mile bike ride/3 mile run, which sounds manageable until you know that the temp was about 40, and the winds were 20mph.  Here’s how that affects cycling:  it’s cold.  It’s cold, the wind makes the bike squirrelly (Jesse’s spectacular near-wipeout was unrelated to the winds, however), my eyes are constantly tearing, which makes it near impossible to see, and it makes my nose run, so the ride was less than pleasant today.  By the time we ran, the wind had died down some, and since I run at about the speed of smell, it didn’t affect me so much.

It’s nice having the big event out of the way for the week…just a quick 10 mile bike ride and another strength training workout between now and Sunday. 

17 weeks to go…

I’m a day behind on today’s entry due to the internet being moody at my house last night.  Yesterday was the first swim of the schedule, and it felt great to be back in the pool.  Last Saturday I leapt into the outdoor pool at SportsCom with 400 of my closest friends in our community’s annual Polar Bear Plunge; immediately after we all got into the indoor pool to warm up.  As I watched everyone jumping in, splashing, laughing, I thought of how different the pool is on regular days:  4 or 5 of us committed to swimming laps, one bored lifeguard, no echoing screams or laughter, just the constant strokestrokestoke of the faithful.

The swim was technically just a quarter-mile, but that’s only 14 minutes or so, so I added in an extra few laps, just to make it worth getting in the pool.  I admit that I’ve complicated the whole thing by adding some equipment, but I’m enjoying what I have.  For my birthday this year, I got (to me from me) a waterproof iPod case, so I’m swimming with my tunes.  It’s such an unusual feeling; you don’t ever think of hearing music while you are swimming.  It’s always just the constant bubbling/splashing sound, and the tunes go a long way toward keeping me entertained.  (If you are keeping track, this is the second entry in which I’ve complained about being bored during training…noticing a theme?  Sometime I’ll recount the circus story my parents tell all the time…reveals a lot about me).

My other new toy is a portable lap counter.  It attaches to the pool wall and has an electronic touch pad, so that I’m not reciting my lap count over and over in my head.  Haven’t gotten it figured out yet, but I’m working on it.  It should really be convenient when the sessions get longer…it’s no fun counting  40 laps.

In between the running and swimming workouts, I did a strength training session.  I’m a absolute believer in strength training as the foundation of fitness, especially when asking your body to respond to training for a distance event like the Half-Iron.  I enjoy the strength training probably more than any of the three cardio workouts.

Thanks again for reading.

After days of sleeping in, overeating, and overdrinking, the real training has begun.  Day One of Week One of 18 weeks to my Half-Iron competition.  Today was a simple 3-mile jog to loosen up, elevate my heart rate, clear out the holiday mush.  The weather in Middle Tennessee has been dreary –  rainy and cold – so running on the farm was out of the question.  I took the lazy way out and just took off down the driveway for 18 minutes, then turned around and ran back.  It was cold, rainy, boring, and I loved every step.

There is real pleasure in running for fun, for health, for the sheer joy of feeling your feet pounding the ground, hearing your breathing, watching the sights roll by.  But there is equal pleasure in training to a goal, a race, an event.  We eventers relish the writing out of the training schedule, the backwards calculating from Race Day, through the taper, past the longest runs/rides/swims, counting the weeks back to Week 1, Day 1.  Which brings us back to today.

I’ll try to blog on training days from now til the big race…1 day each devoted to swimming, cycling, running, then one day a week the Brick:  triathlon lingo for a dual event training session.  Biking/running or swimming/biking since that’s the sequence in the actual race.  Add to that two days each week of strength training and that makes up the full training schedule…18 weeks to the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and 13.1 mile run that is the Gulf Coast Triathlon in Panama City Beach on May 9.

Thanks for reading.