Bike and Wetsuit Porn!!!

Photos here.

First, a big shout out to my 2 favorite mechanics, Drew (my illegitimate Dutch son) and Anthony (the Italian Stallion), who are doing a 24-hour bike race today!

Yesterday I got Bitchie's Ergomo mount issue taken resolved, and picked up LGL all newly (well she was already pretty sexy) sexed up and got my new wetsuit.

I'm going to ride Bitch tomorrow on my last 100 mile ride before NothingMan. I'm "sort of" doing a race rehearsal ride, but since this will be the first time I get to observe my watts as recorded by the Ergomo, I could end up shooting somewhat in the dark, but I don't really care, as NothingMan is not a race and I'm not really training!

I get to use the new wetsuit next weekend up in Wisconsin. Originally, I was going to sleep in next Friday and lollygag my way up there in the afternoon, but now I'm looking forward to a few more open water swims, and will most likely leave real early Friday just so I can swim in Lake Monona on Friday and Saturday. Maybe. All plans are subject to change. All I know is I can't wait to get this wetsuit wet! It was super easy to get the thing on totally dry without any lube, and it came off in a flash. Turns out my Orca is kaput--the gash from IMLP is not repairable.

Now that LGL is sexed up to the max (neither I nor my LBSG can think of anything else I can "do" to her), I suppose I should ride her before the weather takes a turn for the worse here. I may take her up to Wisconsin next weekend instead of Bitch--I've never ridden the IMWI course on a road bike, but having done Horribly Hilly on her, I'm sure it would be fun.

Today I'm taking an easy day (:45 run and 1:00 swim) instead of running 1:30 like I thought I'd do. I'm sort of itching to get on a bike, but it's best I start winding down. What the hell--I guess I'm tapering or something. Well, I will be on Monday, for sure. It's interesting to be training for something that is not a real race, yet I am looking forward to really resting after it. And then I will fire up 1/2 Ironman training for a bit. Even though MiamiMan isn't an A race for me, I want to do better at it than I did last year, and in order for that to happen, it's going to be critical that I rest up after NothingMan.

Enough of this crap--I have other things to do today besides train!

Doing Something You've Never Done Before

I guess this will be the 2nd time in a week, since Sunday was my longest ride (in miles) ever.

I swam 4,000 yards pull this morning (after 800 yds. warmup). Never done that before! Why? Why not? I was going to do some long intervals, but once again, I just felt like swimming continuously. It's an opportunity to think about everything and nothing. Sometimes I feel like nobody can get to me while I'm swimming, although one yahoo did rap me on the left hand while doing his worst impression of breaststroke.

I hope we can swim in a lake for NothingMan. My buddy, Jostein, is doing reconnaissance for that. A pool would suck, but it is what it is. After all, that's why we are calling it NothingMan.

Happiness is a Warm Gun...er...Cool Run

Had a great long-ish run this morning. Plan (in case you didn't know, I've been training with my own sketch of a plan which has been 100% flexible based on how I feel) was to run anywhere from 1:40 to 2:00, since I may squeeze in another 1:30 run on Saturday or Monday (again, I haven't made that decision yet).

Aaaaaaaanyway...now that my body is starting to want to sleep more (fuckin' A), which nicely coincides with shorter days, I had to set my fucking alarm clock to make sure I would get up at 5:00AM! I woke up once during the night and lay in bed awake doing some mental scrolling (still working through something --I have some of my best revelations around 3AM), but fell back asleep and had some weird-ass dreams. I can't recall them right now, but they seemed entertaining at the time.

Then I was awakened by the alarm clock. Shit! WAKE THE FUCK UP!!! I initially hit the snooze, but then immediately thought HARDEN THE FUCK UP SHEILA YOU NEED TO BE FINISHED RUNNING BY 8:30. I had slept naked, and there was no good reason for me to put on clothes since I'd be running soon enough. So I ran downstairs to turn on the coffee pot without even putting my glasses on (I'm nearly blind without them but I can still get around), and then I put my running clothes on. Within 5 minutes, I've got coffee and am eating a Power Bar Triple Threat (my usual breakfast). Coffee tastes great. Suck down one cup pretty fast, check weather, only 65, looks great! Manage to get down 2 more cups (visited bathroom 3 times I won't go into details), fuck around online, make Voodoo Mix , it's GO TIME!

Head out the door a little after 6:15, and the weather is beautiful. Still a bit humid, but not bad. The sun isn't up all the way and cars still have headlights on, and so many people are going to work, I spend a lot of time running on the sidewalks, which I don't typically do. I just ran comfortably; although technically I should have inserted some 1/2 marathon pace stuff in there, I just wanted to have a good, consistently paced run.

About 3.25 miles in I was going past a park and the lawn was being mowed, and the guys stopped the mowers so they wouldn't spray me with grass. I always smile at people out working while I'm running, and one of them said, "Nice body" to me as I ran by. I thanked him and smiled. What's not to like about that? I was running uphill at that point, and I just felt weightless. Since there were so many people on their way to work, I had a lot of people looking at me. I felt great, and pretty much smiled the entire way.

I ran all the way to my beloved, now closed, outdoor pool, let out a little sigh, ran past it to go out for :50 (my math skills were fucked up at the time because I definitely wanted to do more than 1:40 total), then flipped it. When I got back to the pool, I stopped there to pee in their nicely mulched yews and then drink some water. I hadn't yet drank any Voodoo even though I was almost 6 miles into the run, since I had had coffee and food, and my stomach just didn't want anything until this point. But I figured it was time to start drinking, so I took a hit of Voodoo and then some water, and blech...the water was lukewarm. So I kept the fountain running, but it never warmed up, so I just sucked it up and drank warm water. Tasty!

I ran back to the Mile 5 mark in about the same time as I had going out, and that section is flat, so it was time to hit the hills again. Some days I just get more motivated to stay on pace with the hills, and today I just felt great, so the first hilly mile back I negative split and thought, huh, I wonder if I can keep doing this? If nothing else, I'm always happy if I don't positive split when I take this route from home, since the hills are worse on the way back. Next mile has some decent climbs, too, and I negative split that one, too, and then the big fucker of a 1-mile long hill, where I had to HTFU again (although I did briefly stop to pet a yellow Lab puppy named Fenway). And I negative split that one, too. The mile after the hill I usually slow down some because I've charged the 1-mile hill. No worries, I'm keeping a decent pace. Last mile home, negative split again!

And then it hits me I've only done 1:40 and feeling really good, so I go in and grab some Gatorade and head back out, deciding I'll do another 15 minutes and call it a day. I took that last 15 minutes fairly easily, and all in all ended up at 12.9 miles in 1:55. Looking back at my long runs over the year, this goes down as one of the best, so I'll take it. Cool weather ROCKS!!! And I feel great--like I coulda run a full marathon today at that pace. Nice!

It was just one of those days where the running felt effortless. I think I'm going to do a 1:30 run on Saturday just to get in a decent run volume for this week, and then I begin "tapering" of sorts for Nothingman.

Weekly Workout Totals 8/20/2007-8/26/2007 and Hottie Inspiration

I was feeling slackerish this morning in getting ready for my swim. Not sure why--I had a pretty good run yesterday (albeit on the dreadmill), even though my legs were still tired from the Sunday festival.

So I donned my Vegas pink suit, pink flip flops and grabbed a pink cap and headed to the pool. On the way in, I ran into a friend who had done the Bike Psychos ride on Sunday, and I think it was his first 100-miler, and he said he had 110 miles! Again, that meshes perfectly with me ending at 134 miles on the day. I congratulated him for toughing it out.

Arriving on the pool deck, I ran into Brent, who I've only seen once at the Y. I told him I must be psychic, and by that I meant that I was wearing my pink suit. We chatted, and I laughed because he knew what was going on with me because he reads this blog. I warmed up, and we chatted some more and he asked me how much I was going to swim today. I said I should swim 3500, but that I had looked at a workout and wasn't doing that and would just make something up.

I took off and was cycling through what I might do--5x500, 8x300, 6x400 or what. Initially, I settled in on swimming 2000 straight, then I was thinking 2x1500, but at 1500 I just wanted to keep going (which is odd, since I rarely do long, straight swims), so then I thought I'd keep going to 2000, but when I finished that, I figured I would just swim until 8:30. I ended up swimming 3000 straight, so with my warmup, 3800 yards.

So thanks, Brent, for inspiring me today. After all our talk about HTFU, I got that in my head and it got me going. Oh and yeah I enjoyed watching you swim there for awhile. I mean, ladies--have you ever known a guy named Brent who wasn't a hottie? I'd put him in my Hottie Brigade, except I don't have a pic of him (yet). Guess I need to take my camera to the pool...

Here's how I finished out last week:

Weekly Workout Totals	08/20/2007-08/26/2007
Swim:	10800 yards (6.13 miles) in 3.67 hours; 18% of weekly workout time; approx. 1284 calories burned
Bike:	Approx. 200.41 miles in 11.53 hours; 57% of weekly workout time; approx. 5191 calories burned
Run:	Approx. 28.16 miles in 4.42 hours; 22% of weekly workout time; approx. 2009 calories burned
Strength:	0.72 hours; 4% of weekly workout time; approx. 180 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 234.7 miles in 20.34 hours; approx. 8664 calories burned
Sleep:	7.61 hours avg./night
Stretching:	1.83 hours. Massage: 1.5 hours

Now THIS is What I'm talkin' about!

It just hit me, and yes, I checked my Ergomo was set properly for wheel size--I did, in fact, ride 133 miles on Sunday. People--Harden the Fuck Up!

Tiki Hut Update: Tiki Hut Still MIA; Barbies get New Furniture!!!

The bitches were growing weak due to only have one rotisserie chicken and a few cocktails, so they got naked to conserve energy, and some silent patron of the Barbie arts donated a fridge and some new furniture.

Man--these bitches sure can eat a lot considering how skinny they are! I also have no clue how they hoisted that bike on top of the fridge.

Thing 2, as always, is being lecherous, hiding in fridge drawers and staring at the girls.

And what's up with those dogs?

Harden the Fuck Up

OK so the wrist band to the left is pretty crude--I only had a pen to write on it, not a magic marker like I had at Dairyland Dare.

Sometimes HTFU works, and sometimes it doesn't, but it's always a welcome phrase to me now.

At IMLP during the run, when Nick (aka Colossal Quads) yelled it at me while pointing at me, it woke me up out of my lackluster performance.

During Dairyland Dare, it reminded me that sometimes I make stupid training errors (like thinking I could ride 300K 3 weeks after an Ironman, for example, without really resting properly first).

Yesterday, I didn't know what it would do for me. After a solid week of rain (including Saturday, which saw me on a fucking stationary bike at the Y for 2:10 because I couldn't even use the trainer at home because the basement was still drying and too damp for my liking), it was going to clear up and be beautiful yesterday. My plan was to ride the Bike Psychos 200K, which is a gorgeous ride that takes you around and through several Illinois State Parks, including Illini, Starved Rock and Mathiessen. Each of these parks are on or around the Illinois River, which is pretty big as rivers go, so you know what that means--up and down in and out of river valleys. Somehow, I didn't remember it as very challenging when I did it last year.

Bitchie got the Ergomo and compact cranks installed last week, so I was excited to see how that would work out. I got to the ride start by 6:15AM, and wanted to start at 6:30, but it appeared that the bike club didn't want to start registering us until 6:30AM, so whatever. I stretched a bit while standing in line. My legs were a bit stiff from spending time on a stationary bike (they don't fit me quite right), but I had got plenty of sleep, and have started many a ride with slightly sore legs, so I wasn't worried.

I registered and got my wrist band and wouldn't let them put it on me--I told them I needed to write something on it. So I went over to the table and did my thing and put it on, knowing I might have a tough day, knowing I might not make 200K (there were several shorter options), but feeling good. I ran into a guy I know who said he had the black rubber wrist bands made for his swimmers, and he said he'd give me a real one! He's doing IMWI, and I'll be there, so I'm going to hold him to that.

The day started a bit cool, but I didn't put on arm warmers. It was supposed to get into the upper 70's, so I figured I'd be quite comfortable with what little I was wearing. I had my hot pink IMLP bottles loaded with 6 hours worth of Infinit, and I was off. Right away I noticed that the Ergomo didn't seem to be reading correct watts--either that or I really sucked. But it did look like the speed and cadence were OK, so I was just going to need to ride powerlessly.

The first 3 hours were pretty good, and I rode with a few guys. It was then (after about 60 miles) that the ride split off--you either decided on 100 or you went out and added the special loop that was just for the 200K. I wavered slightly but thought I'd head out on the extra loop. I had forgotten my cell phone and ID like a dumbass, but didn't notice until I was about 10 miles into the ride, and no way was I going back for them, so I just needed to hope nothing happened.

The loop was in wide open country that took us away from the river valleys, and the wind had kicked up. I tried to hang with this guy (Jim, I think) and girl (never got her name), but after hearing how fast they'd covered 58 miles (2:40), I knew I wasn't that fast today (hell, that's my 1/2 IM pace!), and let them go ahead, but they were never too far ahead of me. We all got lost, but then we all found our way. Someone had removed one of the road markings. When we finally found the next one, I asked the guy what it said. He had seen my wrist band, and so he said it said HARDEN THE FUCK UP! We all cracked up over that, because being out there seemingly the only ones riding the loop, we knew that's what we needed to do.

I kept wondering whether the Ergomo was reading the correct mileage, but I compared to my buddy Jim and we were the same, so I'm saying it was right. That loop seemed endless, and there was one climb in there that totally sucked--a la Horribly Hilly or Dairyland Dare. We went down a short, steep hill, and there's the Vermillion River, and then you look up and what the fuck! About a 1/4 mile steep fucker. At that moment, I was really wondering if I could make it up, and I could hear the cars' gears grinding as they passed me. All I could think is how much I suck and what have I done to myself, but I looked at my wrist and thought I will make it up this thing one way or the other. Sweet relief!

We finished the loop about 8 miles after that (I think), and everyone who was back at the park that had done that climb remarked at how truly bad it was. I told several riders how happy I was to hear that because I thought at the time that either a) I sucked really bad or that b) it was very steep. (b), thank you!

So now I'm at about 80 miles, and seriously wondering if I'm going to finish this bad boy, but I figure I have no choice but to keep riding. Every time I would think I sucked horribly, I would pass someone else who must have sucked even more than me. And now it was headwind all the way back (why is that there's always a headwind on the way back?), and I couldn't tell what my power was or how bad I sucked except by my speed.

What kept me going at this point was the prospect of a turkey sandwich. At the rest station (we had already been there on the way out) we'd hit next, they have sandwiches. And I really wanted one! Even though I didn't feel like I was nutritionally bonking, sometimes on these really long rides (and considering I haven't been eating enough carbs lately--that's another story for another day), I figured extra food couldn't hurt. Well I got there and they were out of meat! I was crushed! Well, not really, but still...I had a slice of bread with some peanut butter. I took my sweet time there, but then realized I needed to get going. I was at 101 miles, so a good ride already, but 20-something to go, only I heard people talking there was 35 more miles??? WHAT THE FUCK!!! It was another of those days where I wasn't really up for 130 miles, you know? And there were other riders there who had done Horribly Hilly 200K which had turned into 130+ miles depending on whether or not you got lost. Oh well, how long could another 35 take?

So I head out of there, and thank you, fuck me up the ass, there's another climb right out of there. Because, you know, we were in another fucking valley. It wasn't like the Vermillion River, though, so not so bad, but it was at least 1/2 mile long. Oh well, grind up and hope it flattens out. It sort of did.

I passed a bunch of people who were only riding 100 miles as suck-ass as I was riding. We got to Ottawa and were right above the Illinois River, and you could see a bunch of stop signs in the water! It really showed just how much rain we had received, and it was definitely a sight. I wished I had my camera with me, but considering how much not fun I was having, I was glad to not be carrying anything extra. Right by the river, I came up on a guy on an MTB, and I asked how far he was riding. He said he was trying for 100. I was impressed! I also thought how much I sucked because for awhile I couldn't even stay with him, but then I got some semblance of legs back and passed him.

Somewhere after Ottawa, I came up on a group of 4 riders and again, couldn't believe I was catching anybody, as poorly as I thought I was riding. I socialized a bit, and one woman rode up to me and said, "Are you Sheila?" I said yes, and she said she reads my blog all the time, and she's doing IMWI, and has found a lot of good tips here! Nice! So I thought I'd be a Good Samaritan and chat with her awhile and spill anything she wanted to know since it will be her first Ironman. I enjoyed talking to her, as it took my mind off my sorry ass legs.

We got to the last rest station and I was at 121 miles. OK, how much further to go? They said 12 miles. Yippeekayay. I told the girls to come with me, and they said they didn't want me to hold them back, but I said I sucked not to worry. We got about 5 miles out and for some reason I got a bit of a second wind and I just took off. Apparently I didn't suck as much as I thought.

Well, the speedo gave me just about 12 miles more, so then I knew it was accurate, and I ended up at 133.5 miles. As tired as I felt (and I didn't even stay to shower there, and it was a 50-mile drive back home), for some reason I felt good that I had done it. 133.5 in 7:40. How??? Why???

HARDEN THE FUCK UP