Wow, is all I can say to the last week of my life. I came out alive and kicking.
Yesterday I awoke to about 3" of not really snow--it was more like the remains of a Snow Cone machine--covering my driveway. I am a nice guy and didn't want to drag the snowblower out at 6AM on a Sunday (not even to spite my neighbor who was the cause of no sleep the day before), and I wasn't sure whether the snowblower would handle it. But I had to leave home at 7Am to make it to my race, allowing for extra time to travel, since it was sleeting now, too.
It took me an hour to shovel my 75' driveway, and I didn't even do it as well as I usually do, because I didn't have time, and the snow was so heavy. I started a little before 6 and when I got back in the house, I had estimated :45, but it was an hour! So it was 7AM and I had to get rolling. I had packed earlier in the morning, so there were only a few more things to get ready and then get out the door. I removed my thoroughly sweaty shoveling clothes (it was 37 degrees outside), put on my swimsuit and street clothes, and took a moment to decide whether I was still going to race. I knew I had just cost myself some speed and power by essentially doing a strength workout (I don't shovel slowly) first, and as my mind quickly recounted the week's events, I just about lost it. The streets were not in good shape, and was I crazy to want to drive anyway just to do an indoor sprint? I thought about what I had written the day before and decided
HELL NO I'M GOING.I went to the bathroom one last time, and just for dramatic effect, the toilet (which I swear wasn't clogged) decided to overflow, as if to give me one more test of my will. At that point, I began laughing like some sort of crazed monster who is able to crush anything in its path simply by looking at it. I've got a race, dammit, and I'm like a bionic mailman at this point, because no snow, sleet, freezing rain, blizzard or some stupid dog who bit me is going to stop me. And I am the mailman that
BRINGS IT.When I got outside my house, it was raining. Not just light rain--big, almost pouring, rain. Great. Let's do this thing. My residential street was a total mess of snow, ice and slush, but as soon as I hit the main street (literally,
"Main Street") the roads were pretty clear, but there were patches of ice and slush, so I had to keep things to the speed limit or slightly less.
As I got to the destination town, Wheaton, I recalled the last time I had raced at this venue--2 years ago, and the weather was almost as bad. On the bright side, I had wanted to get my car washed, but the driving rain did a pretty good job of rinsing the salt off! I got to the club, and some nice volunteers asked me how I was doing, and all I could do was laugh hysterically. I couldn't believe I was there, wanted to put myself through a redline sprint race. But I was going to do it. To add even more to the event, I noticed that I was all bloated from taking only one of the antibiotic pills. My body just doesn't like foreign substances in it. I felt fat (the scale showed 5 extra pounds), tired, but determined.
I changed and went to the pool deck. I had to ask another woman to clear her stuff off a bench so I could stretch out my back. She asked me, "You need the whole bench?" I said, "Yep." She wasn't sitting on the bench--it was her precious dry towel that was on it. What a bitch. She's lucky I didn't deck her right there, but I was more interested in stretching.
I met my "person," or my personal timer guy, Cedric.
SCORE! I got another hottie, just like 2 weeks ago. He asked me if I wanted him to do anything special while I was racing, so I told him what position the bike seat needed to be, and a few other things. He had done one triathlon, and asked me if I'd done any. I said, "A few." Of course, I smiled and told him it was around 60 now.
I warmed up 100 yards and felt all wrong. I think the torque applied to my core from shoveling had messed me up. Oh well. I still managed 500 yards, all the while struggling mightily to overcome my body's attempt to stop me in my tracks, as well as the pontoon boat swimming in the same lane with me.
Hey, I'm still moving around--I'm OK. Head to the locker room and ask someone to point me to the shower. Another woman racer asked me why, as if I shouldn't want to rinse off the chlorine? Come on, we had 10 minutes to change and get to the bikes. That is like an eternity of time! So I took my shower and went to change.
We got to the bikes, and my main man, Cedric is there with everything set up. I tell him I'll be on my own tunes, Best of Motley Crue (as always in these races), and that I won't be able to hear anything else. They start us off, and I'm doing my same methodology as 2 weeks ago. The effort is extremely hard, but it isn't painful. I think I can do better in 2 weeks. At any rate, I once again put out the most miles in my wave (all of whom were younger than me and a few men included)--5.96 miles.
As we mosied a few feet to the track (the bikes were inside the track), one of the other women asked me how I got so many miles. I told her it was a secret. I would write it here, except you never know who's reading! At any rate, it's more a matter of the stinking hard bike workouts I am accustomed to. This woman and I exchanged names of our coaches (I knew hers; she didn't know mine), she told me she rides Computrainer, and I told her I bet I still do harder bike workouts than she does. I've been training by power for almost 4 years now--and unless you've worked up to it, many people would have a hard time doing what I'm doing.
Anyway, the next gun goes off for us to run. Running does not feel so good--I can tell I am going to be a little off here, and I was right, but I start out at a good pace (my man Cedric is calling out lap splits for me), and manage to hold it.
In the end, I was only slightly slower than 2 weeks ago. As it turns out, 2 weeks ago I was in the top ten women overall! I hung out to get a massage (the folks from the school were happy to seem me again), and then I saw a couple of guys I know on the bikes, so I went over to harass/cheer them. One guy, Jason, only did 6.2 miles on the bike, and he's a good athlete, so I think that shows my biking ability. I hope to actually beat him on the bike in 2 weeks (he's maybe 30?).
On my way to the treadmill, I decide to have a cup of Accelerade. The company had reps at the race 2 weeks ago, only I didn't drink any then. I figured it couldn't hurt, seeing as how I needed to stay fueled for my next workout. I was going on cup #2, when the dude hands me an Accelerade water bottle and tells me it's mine.
SCORE!I needed to go get my long run in, so I headed to the treadmills. At this facility, the treadmills are upstairs. Not a good sign. It has GOT to be hotter up there, and it was, but not as bad as my silly Y. I was about :50 in and feeling plenty tired and wanting to bag it when a young woman gets on the machine next to me. She sees the numbers all over me (I had a volunteer who was new to body marking do mine, and at first she did really small numbers, so I taught her how to do them right, and ended up with extras), and asks me about the bikes. I ask her if she's raced before, and she says yes, and I ask her if she expects to win her age group (seeing as how she's asking about bike strategy), and she tells me she intends to win overall! So I ask her her name, and it turns out I have heard of her--Jennifer Garrison, a local oustanding triathlete. I am delighted to meet her, and we share all sorts of stories as she warms up, and I continue inflicting pain on myself (she was also going to do a long run after her race). It was great, because by having a conversation with her, I got myself to run longer than I thought I could. I ended up doing 1:20 on the machine, and then went downstairs to run :05 on the track, which would be good enough for today (I was supposed to run 1:40, but no worries, this week has been challenging enough).
I'm running on the track and people are looking at me since I have numbers galore, and am running a decent pace, but I smile since I am just about done working out for the day! I get one more massage, where one of the therapists tells me I should go to massage school since I already know so much about the body (she's right, and I am thinking about going to massage school, and I had asked the school's owner and teacher earlier what the cost is, and I can easily swing it), meanwhile the girl working on me is a bit tentative as she's only been to school for a month or so. Still, she does a great job and I tell her so, and I look forward to some pizza.
I head to the post-race food area, and they only have sandwiches, but I'm told pizza is scheduled to arrive in about :20, so I grab a small sandwich and walk around a bit, and end up talking to a couple more volunteers, who notice that I am salivating over the Clif Bloks. They tell me I can have as many as I want, so one of them makes a bag of about 20. I've never bought them, but I think that was another
SCORE!While waiting for the pizza to arrive, "Dumb and Dumber" is on the beautiful plasma TV (I am low-tech in my house--I don't want to make it more attractive to do something I don't need to be doing in the first place, but I understand the allure of big, beautiful TV's), which is perfect, as that about describes several of the people I've interacted with in the past week, only they aren't charmlingly dumb--just numbingly dumb.
The pizza arrives, and I get a plateful and tie into it. Yum! I eat pizza maybe 3 times a year, but this was great. I washed up and went back to the track to see who was racing, and I spotted the woman who beat me 2 weeks ago--well let's just say I could pick her out of the wave. She's about 6" taller than me, so of course, she's a torpedo in the water, and she looks incredibly fit, so my guess is she beat me again. But I'm at peace (pissed I can't win, but still at peace) with it, given my life circumstances, so I finally get in my car to head home.
It is still pissing cats and dogs as I leave the club, but hey, my car is cleaner than when I arrived! The rain is pretty driving, and I approach a railroad crossing in town and a freight train is at a
DEAD STOP. WTF??? I look up and roll my eyes and shake my head and ask the higher being why do you keep testing me? I drove a few blocks to see if I could see beginning or end or a way to get over the tracks and home. Even though I was refueled, my body was insisting that I
lay down now.In less than 5 minutes, the train began to move--slowly, but it was going. I only had to wait about 5 minutes more, and we were clear to go.
When I am about halfway home, the rain changes over to sleet and then snow as I watch the thermometer in my car go from 37 to 35, to 34 to 33 in all of 10 minutes. Great! At least I will make it home before it turns into another bloody mess.
But by the time I get home, my driveway has another 2" of new snow on it, and I decide I better get a head start, so I drop my bags in the house and go back out to shovel some more. I get lucky, because my youthful neighbor, Matt, arrives back home, and I decide to have a chat with him about the noise levels. I had rehearsed a nice way to do this the night before, so I was prepared. I told him I needed his help, but that it was quick. Of course the guy doesn't wear "real" winter clothing, because he's a young hipster (er--what is it you call a stoner with a job?), so he walks over, we meet halfway, and I tell him I can hear his stereo loud and clear in my bedroom. But I don't want to be a fuddy-duddy, and I'm OK with it up until about midnight. But after that, not so much. He says he didn't know (and I think he was stoned while I'm talking to him), and he was glad I had said something. I told him I would have called, but his number is unlisted. I was nice, but let him know that if it keeps me awake again, I will not be getting out of bed and knocking on his door--it will be the police (not so good if you are stoned, huh?). I told him I hope it doesn't come to that, and he is actually a bit apologetic. At any rate, he knows that I was being honest AND nice, so let's hope I don't get awakened at 3:00AM any more!
Once I am safe and sound in my house, I decide to look up what my race times and workouts were 2 years ago when I did these races and won my age group to see how I compare now. Turns out I am as fast as 2 years ago, but with much longer and harder workouts the day before. So in a twisted way, I feel pretty good, and I believe I can go even faster. We shall see in 2 weeks, as I taper off the long working hours and a few more things.
Now it's time for me to get back to weekly goal-stating here, since I've been a slacker about it, and if I really want to race well in 2 weeks, even if I do a nasty 2:30 brick the day before and even if more snow comes and I'm tired when I begin, I want to do better.
So here's what I managed to pull out for last week in the face of too many obstacles to count:
Weekly Totals 02/19/2007-02/25/2007Swim: 4400 yards (2.5 miles) in 1.5 hours; 14% of weekly workout time; approx. 525 calories burned
Bike: Approx. 77.13 miles in 4.4 hours; 40% of weekly workout time; approx. 2114 calories burned
Run: Approx. 23.02 miles in 3.54 hours; 32% of weekly workout time; approx. 1608 calories burned
Strength: 1.67 hours; 15% of weekly workout time; approx. 418 calories burned
All Sports: Approx. 102.65 miles in 11.11 hours; approx. 4665 calories burned
Sleep: 7.57 hours avg./night
Stretching: 1.47 hours.
Massage: 2 hours
Goals for This Week:- Work no more than 40 hours
- Sleep at least 8 hours per night
- One less cup of coffee in the morning
- No alcohol for the foreseeable future
- Stretch :30/day except the day I get a massage
- No more Valentine's candy until my weekly hours go over 14
- Back on strength training (I skipped it last week except for shoveling)
- Get in 3 solid swims of at least 2500 yards
Gee, from the sound of it, these goals are to get me back in line with my usual life. YEAH, BABY!
