Obligatory Race Number Post

Some of my lucky things I bring to Ironman races: happy shoes (they flash when I move), lucky panties (from Shelley), lucky lobsters (*NEW* for 2008 since Triple T) and lucky tiara













Testing out the run gear...new Fuel Belt with streamers attached, new race belt (to be worn on bike as well). Not sure whether I'll wear the hologram swimsuit, though :)












Back view (you KNOW you wanted to see it)












Back view without all the race crap. Yeah, yeah, my ass is white and HUGE!












Front view without all the race crap. I feel fat :(

I am dangerous now. I got a tripod. I suppose I could have managed with just duct tape like Blink, but I like a certain amount of gadgetry.

Anyhoo, guess what? I'm TAPERING. Lots of time to play with a new tripod and start to get the race gear organized. The most important thing was to work out the setup of the new Fuel Belt and race belt. So I've got that covered. I won't know exactly what I'll be wearing on race day until maybe the day before, because the weather in Lake Plastered is pretty changeable. But it never hurts to pack a hologram thong swimsuit, right?

After my little meltdown yesterday (which was totally necessary, by the way), I got a good night's sleep only to waken to thunderstorms. In looking at the radar, I decided it probably didn't make sense to drive 55 miles to go swim in a lake if there was going to be lightning, not to mention the E. coli counts have been high up there lately, and a lot of rain doesn't help that. So I felt good and actually happy about just going to the Y to swim my 2-mile TT in a wetsuit. I wanted to try out my Desoto T1, and I haven't worn it in over a year. I soaked it in the laundry tub yesterday:









although it was difficult to keep the thing down in the water, which is good, no?

I started my swim at 6:40AM (one hour before the race would have started, so I'm ahead of schedule). I swam 3500 yards comfortably in 1:05 on the nose. Not bad considering that has brought me to almost 17,000 yards for the week (about 500 to go tomorrow!). The wetsuit felt great, and since someone else will be ripping it off of me, I don't need to worry about how long it takes to get off! Wait...read that last sentence back out loud. Oh well, too late, I typed it.

Happy with my swim, I thought it might be good to go hang on some bars to stretch out my back, and I spotted Tony, one of the trainers, in the personal training area. I had seen him yesterday when I was one mile into my run--he was in his car, and I asked how he recognized me, and a big smile came over his face, and I knew, and said, "My ass, right?" He shook his head in agreement. Anyway, we chatted and he was training a woman who wanted to know about what I'm up to and she seemed pretty impressed, but the first words out of her mouth (I was wearing a T-shirt and baggy shorts) were, "You don't look very muscular." Well, you know what I had to do--I rolled up my T-shirt sleeve and flexed a biceps for her, and then I showed her my thighs! I mean they are HUGE right about now (21" as compared to my waist which is 23.5"). That was pretty funny. Tony was kind enough to gift me another stretch cord that I will now use to do some rhomboid isolation exercises.

I came home and putzed around a bit and decided to do my strength workout which I just hadn't gotten around to earlier in the week. This might fuck me up for my sprint tomorrow, but I don't care. The sprint is for fun, and I'll go as fast as I can, laughing at all the people who are all "tapering" for it. I mean, yeah I'm tapering for an Ironman, but I'll still hit 14 hours of training on the week! The weights and core stuff felt good, and then I thought it was time to try out the tripod, and well, you see what happened!

I'm about to go ride CF to the bank to deposit a check and that will be the essence of my working out for the day. Even though I've done a lot this week already, not having a long ride looming over my head is HUGE! Those basically blow your entire day, so I feel like a slacker now, but I'm enjoying it.

Oh yeah, my race number is

2538

in case you didn't already stalk the participant list and notice that my occupation is

CRACKHEAD

The I Want to Tell Everyone to Fuck Off part of Tapering

Well, I knew it would happen eventually...life conspired to fuck some things up, and it looks like I will be driving myself to Lake Placid. In a way, it's a good thing--I can bring whatever the hell I want, and do it the way I want. In another way, it totally fucking sucks. It's a long trip! The way back I am sure will be hell, but then I get to pick when I want to leave and head home and I may make a stop on the way back.

Other than that, I am trying to chill. I swam this morning, after waiting for thunderstorms to roll through. I went to the outdoor pool (drove), and Lou was there, and while we were waiting for fucking Thor to settle down, we had a lot of time to chat about all things functional exercise. I really enjoy talking to Lou. If you think I am Crackheaded, well, amp that up by a factor of about 10 and you would have Lou. I am really glad I met him.

So anyway, Thor finally gets his fucking shit together and we are allowed to swim. I had about 3/4 of the pool to myself. It was great! I wore my pink whore suit, which drew looks from anyone else brave enough to show up. I just did some drills and whatnot. 1600 meters. It was fun, and I wished I had more time to stay and just lollygag.

Around noon I headed out to run and it didn't feel too bad, in fact I ran the first 2 miles really fast, even though I was holding back. And then my body said FUCK THIS as it was fucking hot and humid, and I started to feel like shit, as I couldn't cool myself down. But I struggled, and I had to stop and soak my hat in cold water, and when I looked at my watch, I realized I wasn't going to make it back home for this business call and what the fuck am I supposed to do? I'm looking for anyone with a cell phone, and I thought I'd try and break into a church, but all the doors are locked, so I'm like what the fuck, I kept going until I got to the Y and asked if I could use their phone for a toll-free call, and they, of course (they are SO nice to me all the time!) said yes. So I'm sitting in a chair dripping like a mofo and doing business and that thing worked out.

I run home and then I get the notification that I am now on my own for transportation to Lake Placid. Nice. I am really, really pissed, but I am dealing. I briefly looked at flights, and while I might be able to get one, the hassle of getting myself to the airport, packing the bike box, limiting my luggage, renting a car from Albany or bumfuck somewhere in the Northeast, I just am not up for that, so it's a long, long drive.

Right now I am feeling pretty much like shit. There is always a point during taper where you have to just start letting emotions out, and this is it. It's my 11th Ironman, and I'm an orphan, and I am going there by myself and it sucks. Makes me think about the life I've chosen for myself and whether all this crap is worth it, and as usual, I hope some of this is just taper shit and I'll be fine once I get there. It's just one of those times when I wish there was someone--family member, boyfriend, friend, whatever--who was HERE RIGHT NOW and could help me out with some of this shit. It's another fucking test. It always comes down to that. I know I'm feeling sorry for myself and gee, wouldn't it be fucking stupid to let this get to me when I have a race to do?

YES. So I'm going to go have cocktails. Attitude adjustment should help! In the big scheme of things, I have a swim race tomorrow, a sprint on Sunday and plenty of time to pack my shit and be ready. The only hitch in the plan now is a lot of driving by myself. Oh well! I just have to get over my disappointment and move on.

On the bright side, I saw a beautiful rainbow today and several people asked me about my upcoming race without me saying anything. I know it will all be OK, but allow me this moment to break down a little. You know what? It's good to be breaking over about something that does not include death!

The Truth About Tapering, Part IV

I had a nice swim yesterday--just got in and swam 2200 meters straight (close enough to 1/2 IM distance, right?) with the pull buoy. I could tell I've really been giving it to my arms lately. As usual, I swam in the gutter lane, where the jets of incoming water are shooting in at a pretty high speed. They toss me around a bit, so I know I'm not swimming as fast as I might be able to, but that's OK. The water was nice and cool.

When I finished, I had to tell myself that I was done and didn't need to do more. On such a lovely day, I can imagine just hanging out at the pool for an entire day. Someday I need to do that--swim like 2,000, lay around, swim another 1,000, lay around--you get the idea. I did manage to stretch for a few minutes in the pool.

Riding home, as always, felt harder than the ride there, even though I hadn't used my legs to swim at all. When I got home, I finished up the bike bottle of Gatorade and poured myself my post-swim cup of coffee. I also noticed I was very hungry, meaning my evil plan to deprive myself of carbs was working. So I ate a 1/2 pint or whatever size it is of raspberries and 1/2 pint of blueberries, and within an hour I was still starving so I made myself an egg salad sandwich. This, mind you, is all before 9:30AM!

I did a bunch of work and something came up that put me on delay for my brick workout. In the meantime, I was feeling plenty tired and decided I needed to violate my no mid-day caffeine taper policy, so I drank a can of Coke and ate one of those Gu Roctane things. The Gu tasted pretty good (blueberry pomegranate flavor), but I didn't notice anything special about how it felt. I also know now that I will want Ultra Violence in my Fuel Belt for the IMLP marathon and not Coke, although I'm going to start defizzing a liter of each tonight (professional defizzing, you know!).

And then I saw clouds rolling in, checked the radar, and WTF it looked like it was going to rain! Usually a threat of rain gets me to giddy up, but even though I put on the aero helmet and was pretty much naked on Ultra Bitch, I decided it best to hold down the intensity yesterday. With the extra pool riding I've been doing plus the extra yards because I'm doing meters (trust me, in my case it adds up!), I realized I'm doing a bit more than I need to be doing and need to get my legs rested. So in addition to riding easy, I also cut the ride short by about :15. When I got home, I got ready to run, and my legs still felt iffy, so I decided I didn't need to run for :30, but anyway the clouds were really building, so I just started running around the block (my block is pretty big), and adding on all while watching the clouds. Of course, it was impossible to avoid hills, so I turned onto one of the steepest closest to home, I'm running up it mumbling, "Fuck, fuck, fuck," but it's OK.

I managed an even :15 of running, and just as I approached my house, it started sprinkling, and my neighbor directly across the street had just arrived back in his car, and he says to me, "You made it just in time, kiddo!" You know that just made me smile hugely, because I'm thinking here I'm 51 and someone is calling me kiddo! Anyway, literally as soon as I got in my house the sky opened up, and I was happy for it, because we needed the rain. Later on I got a haircut, and when I got home, I decided a salad was not going to cut it for dinner, so I did have some rice. Part of my heavy leg feeling is the carb deprivation so we'll see if I feel more normal today.

So when I add up yesterday it was still 2.6 hours of "work," and through Thursday, I'm up to 9.5 hours of training (lots of swimming). Today I'm going to swim 1/2 hour to 45 minutes, depending (I hope it quits raining), but I am not riding a bike to the pool. Later on I'm running 1:15 and that will be that for today, a good stretch, hopefully I'll see my friend Lila passing out painkiller (booze) after work, and then I'll really start my preparations for next week. My new Fuel Belt arrived yesterday (yeah), so I need to play around with that plus race belt plus streamers. The forecast calls for rain tomorrow, so maybe I won't do that 2-mile open water race, who knows? At this point it doesn't matter, but I'm sort of looking forward to that sprint on Sunday!

The Truth About Tapering, Part III

First, check out my new bitch! Sorry, Cindy, she's mine! I pre-ordered her a few months ago and completely forgot and then she arrived on Tuesday! Here's another tip for your taper, while you're at home, anyway: arrange to have gifts delivered to yourself! It's really a mental boost to get something brand spanking new during your taper, considering that by this time everything you have for race day should have been tested out already.

Yesterday was another gorgeous day. I awoke after another good 8-hour sleep (I guess my evil plan of cutting out any mid-day training caffeine is working) to a crystal clear blue sky (once the sun came up, that is!). For some reason, on my training plan, I had a hefty swim workout planned for Friday, but that is the day before a swim race, so I had decided I'd do the big workout today (yesterday) because I only had to do a :45 run later in the day.

I have successfully not worn bike shorts on LGL or Bitchie for 2 weeks now, and as it's July, I stopped wearing a shirt over my swimsuit on the way to the pool effective yesterday. I'd rather not wear shorts, either, but CF has a wide saddle, and I need something over the bottom! It was almost 70 when I left for the outdoor pool, and I was glad to not induce extra sweating from wearing a shirt.

I got to the pool by about 6:20, and my posse of cops in training were there. We started chatting right away, and when I finally got in the water (apparently I was in no particular hurry), I demonstrated a bunch of drills to the guys. I'm trying not to bombard them but I did want to show them where this is all going. They are all brutally strong, but they already realize that swimming is about technique more than strength. After all, me, a tiny Yard Gnome, can move through the water pretty well!

Well, the cops were finished, and by the time we went through the drills and all it was 7:00. No worries, I have plenty of time to get in 3300 meters! So I was just about done with my warmup, and Chuck shows up. I stand corrected--he has not done an Ironman--he's done a number of HIM's--but still from what he tells me he trained like a complete fucking maniac when he was doing them. He picks up my baggie with swim workouts in it and inspects what I'm doing. I pointed out that I'd do the big workout today so I'm a little rested for Saturday's swim race (although I could care less how I do--it will just be nice to swim in Crystal Lake, which is beautiful). Chuck got in, I finished my warmup, and now it was time for my main set:

30 x 50 (20"), as odds very Hard, evens very Easy.
3x300 (20") pull at race pace

I haven't done this workout since last year, and for once, I was looking forward to all those 50's! Plus, I had Chuck in my lane, and that was plenty motivating. So I actually blew the carbon out of my arms and was surprised that I had some speed in me, but I tell you, after about 20 of those 50's, even though half of them are easy, your arms are pretty much screaming from the lactic acid buildup. And then I just rested 20" before getting onto the 300's, although I did one 300 and was sick of turning (in a 50-meter pool, go figure), so I swam 600 straight after that. And my pace wasn't bad at all! I was sort of in shock that I was able to swim well, especially since the water was pretty warm.

Chuck and I finished about the same time and then we just hung out in the water talking about who knows what, and we live near one another and so we agreed to meet for our ride home. I'm laughing thinking about us riding home because we rode pretty much two abreast and were just talking and talking and it was beautiful outside (bright sunshine, no clouds) and we both had good swim workouts and it was fun. Chuck peeled off about 1/2 mile from where I live, and he may make it to the pool on Friday, as will the cops, so that will be fun.

One of the things we talked about on the ride back was how there's a lot of riding uphill, because it seems much easier on the way to the pool, but we laughed that part of it is that we've just done a serious workout. But my legs were now letting me know, hey, dumbass, you pretty much did a race yesterday, what the fuck are you doing? Too bad, I just can't justify driving to the pool when it's so nice outside. Although since Chuck and I were riding side by side, I think we both may have been pushing the pace a bit even though we were both on hybrids--ya think???

Back home to work, and I'm feeling a little tired, like I actually worked out or something (go figure!). When it was almost time for me to go run, I could tell my legs weren't going to be too happy about it, but I only needed to go out for :45, so no worries there. I decided to go into the wind, which took me west and north. It is odd for this time of year to have winds out of the NNW, especially when it's in the 80's, but hey, I don't care.

Running this direction took me through a whole bunch of rollers, and I also made sure I ran right out in the open just to make it harder on me even though my legs felt like crap. That run had everything--tired legs, wind, hills, bonkiness and heat. You can't beat that! When I got home, all I could think was fuck, that felt kind of hilly, so I went to this website to check it out (I don't own a Garmin and don't really want one), and what the fucking hell, I guess I was right:





See, even though I live in Illinois, which everyone thinks is pancake flat, the nice little suburb I live in has a good amount of rollers. And I live in a little valley, so pretty much anywhere I go from home is up and then rolling, but this particular run was about one of the rolliest routes I've picked in a long time. But it's all good, since I run on rollers pretty much all the time, that I'm used to it, and I actually don't like completely flat runs (well ask me that in about a week!).

So I laughed at what I had done to myself, and then my legs were pretty much toasted and I wanted to take a nap or at least lay down, but I couldn't. I finished up working for the day, and then I headed to The Bike Shop to get my tubulars checked out, a final derailleur check and just to hang out a bit. On the way, I felt compelled to stop at Binny's to get some booze for the guys at the shop who take such good care of me and my bikes, and also a few liquor-filled candies, which Anthony and I enjoyed. I had Anthony reattach the X-nut on my Hydrotail, which had fallen out on Sunday (I needed a lock nut on the screw), and it was hilarious because he needed my small fingers to get the nut inside while he inserted the screw, and I'm telling him, "Wait, don't stick it in yet!" while I was positioning the nut over the hole. Well, it was funny at the time...

As soon as I got home, I had to mow the lawn, and I must say, I've never seen a better looking lawn in July, but of course, that's from all the rain we had in May and June, and I'm not complaining! My flowers are looking stupendous, life is just fucking awesome!

After mowing, I came inside and chopped ingredients for my dinner salad, popped a beer and stretched for :25, then sat down to eat dinner finally around 7:30. Last night's salad was greens, 2 hard-boiled eggs, a can of albacore tuna, 2 apricots, a handful of blueberries and a tomato, liberally doused in olive oil, balsamic glaze and a freshly squeezed lemon. Yum! I've gone through almost a dozen eggs in the last 5 days.

This morning I'm sensing a little sadness, as I can tell the days are shortening up, but that helps me to sleep a little longer, and I got almost 8 hours again. I'm going to do a flop around in the pool swim, and then I've got another brick workout to do, but I am not going (famous last words!) to go out at sprint pace--I don't think I can today, but we'll see. I'm going to ride Bitchie with the disk on and maybe the aero helmet. Scratch that. If I go out like that, I have to ride hard! We'll see how my legs are--while I ran hilly yesterday, I didn't run very fast.

It looks to be another gorgeous day. Have I said this is my best summer ever? Sometimes when I stop and think about that, I think how could that be when I just lost my parents so recently? But then I think they know how much I am kicking the living shit out of every day, and in the end, we all make our own happiness, right?

The Truth About Tapering, Part II

Even though I only slept 7 hours yesterday, I didn't feel any worse for the wear after a little pool riding and an easy swim. But another aspect of tapering for me is to lay off the extra caffeine, i.e., none after my morning coffee. I'm not working out so much, so I shouldn't need it, and besides, it should help me sleep better.

When it was time for me to go and do my brick workout, I had two brilliant ideas--first, let's ride LGL, and second, let's just go out wearing the 2-piece swimsuit I had worn in my morning swim--the one in the photo from a sprint I did in 2006. The swimsuit was still wet and also nice and cold because it was hanging downstairs in the laundry room where it's plenty cool. When I put it on, it felt good, and made me think I was racing--I may actually wear it on Sunday.

I put on my bad ass Catlike helmet and the matching sunglasses and headed out. It was a beautiful, beautiful day--a bit humid, but just about 80 and sunny. I only needed to ride for 1:10, and was supposed to warm up for :15. I sort of blew that--my mind was just on racing!

I rode really, really well, and my legs felt stupendous! Of course I got lots of looks because I was riding around nearly naked, but I know the men don't mind--as usual, I got a number of scowls from soccer moms and assorted unhappy and/or out of shape people.

The brick run was supposed to be mostly at IM pace, but fuck that. I needed to see what I had after a hard ride in the sun. When I got home, it took me maybe 3 minutes to drop the bike and get ready to run. I decided not to take any fluids with me to simulate racing on Sunday, although I did down 1/2 bottle of ice water, which was awesome.

And I took off running. It was fucking hot, and I have to run uphill right out of my house. But too fucking bad. I was in the mode. I didn't want to look at my watch until I hit 1 mile out. I could tell I rode plenty hard by the way my legs felt, and I wasn't really smiling--more like grimacing, but inside I was feeling really happy that apparently I still have some speed in me, or so I thought.

Mile 1 was hit in 8:24. That's about my 5K pace in a sprint, so it was good, and it was, did I say fucking hot? I did stop at the water fountain after about 2 miles, because I had to have something. I thought to myself why am I busting it out like this when I've got a race on Sunday? Why? Because I can. Because it felt good even though it hurt. And I kept up that pace for 3.5 miles, just under :30. Perfect!

Later on in the day, I felt like I had raced, but not too bad. I ate some starch right after I finished and then had another salad for dinner. This morning I woke up after a blissful 8 hours of sleep, and I am FUCKING RARING TO GO!!!! It's going to be another great day, and I guess my taper is working out great so far!

The Truth about Tapering, Part I

I thought I'd do something for posterity here and record as much as possible about my taper--how I feel, what I'm doing, what I think works, etc.

My "official" full taper began yesterday. I began my run taper pretty much 2 weeks ago (my longest run was 3 weeks ago now). I began my strength taper last week, and yesterday was the start of my bike taper. I don't really start my swim taper until next week--there's really no point to that with me since I'm not a fast swimmer. But I can tell you that swimming 2.4 miles won't feel hard to me on race day, since I'll have done it like 4 or 5 times in training, and my weekly yardage has been up there (I might hit about 16,000 yards this week).

So, how did yesterday go? I woke up after 8.5 hours of sleep, which hasn't happened in a couple of weeks. But when I woke up I felt like crap. My eyes were puffy, and I felt a little dizzy, like I have a sinus infection coming on. Some of this I am attributing to the annual changing of the diet, because by about this time in training, I am fucking sick of carbs, I mean stuffing myself to the point of discomfort because I need the calories. I have switched over to more protein (which I probably need anyway), and am now trying to eat a ton of fruit and veggies. My GI tract doesn't exactly like this, but too bad. I'll get back on carbs a few days before the race, or maybe even this weekend, since I'm racing Saturday and Sunday!

Anyway, I wanted to at least swim yesterday. It looked like maybe rain, and my legs felt like shit, and I just couldn't justify using my car to get to a pool, so I decided to walk to the Y, which is only about .5 miles from home. I decided to do a drill workout, as for some reason I had this 3400 yard monster on my training plan! WTF, I did not need to do that! It actually felt good to swim--the water was a decent temperature, and it was nice and relaxing. One of the things I dislike about taper is that you have all this extra "think" time. For me, exercising is an opportunity to get away from all the thinking. So it was nice to swim and well, just swim.

After I finished, I spent a little bit of time stretching in the sauna, and then walked home. I enjoyed the walk and took my sweet time. When I got home, now work was facing me, and as usual, once I'm officially tapering, I find it difficult to focus on work. But I did my best, and got lucky, I suppose, because my boss is on vacation this week. Not that that gives me license to slack--but it gives me even greater flexibility, and when I'm done for a day, I'm just done.

I wanted to also get in a strength workout yesterday, but my muscles were telling me NO FUCKING WAY TAKE THE REST OF THE DAY OFF. So I did, but since I couldn't concentrate on work and really not much of anything else, and since I wasn't exercising and don't want to eat too much, and I really didn't want to be thinking either, all I could think is I want a drink. So now I had to distract myself from that thought since it was maybe 2:00 in the afternoon and I'm supposed to be working. So I gathered up all the paperwork required for getting to the start line (driving directions to Cindy's and then Lake Placid, packing checklist, to do checklist, 3 days before race day and including it checklist including transition bags, proof of registration, daily workout and life schedule from now until race day--fuck, it's a lot of crap, but it works for me), and started organizing things. I finally had ordered the last of the gear crap (a pink Fuel Belt and rain jacket) that should hopefully arrive before I leave in a week.

I think I got all the papers together around 3PM and then decided, what the hell, I'm having a cocktail. So I poured some vodka and cranberry juice (the juice was left over from Triple T) into a mug from my very first marathon (I guess this made it a special occasion), and took everything outside to think about. I also fixed myself a foot bath, because my feet have been taking a beating while I'm doing yardwork because I'm such an idiot and always wear flip flops and so my feet are constantly getting scuffed on the heels and filthy, and even though the pool removes a lot of the dirt, I needed to work on my heels.

So I put the foot bath under the chair, sit down, and man it was hot on my feet, but I got used to it, and then I sipped a cocktail and pondered all the shit I need to get done, including doing 3 races (2 this weekend and then the big enchilada). But now that I had all the paper shit together, it didn't seem that daunting, and the foot bath felt nice, and I just tried to relax and enjoy everything.

After about 1/2 hour of that, I fed my foot water to the potted plants on my patio (I sure hope they like peppermint feet water!), scrubbed my feet and put lotion on them, checked back into work with a new attitude, and hung out and solved a few work crises before killing it for the day and then going to massage school.

I was starting to feel better, at least not sickly, and chalked it all up to the taper. The massage felt really great, but I wanted more and deeper, knowing that I really need it. I hope that my buddy Mike will come through for me with a bonus massage later in the week. I told him I really need it!

I ate another ginormous salad for dinner after the massage, and it was tasty. Of course, TV was crap, so I called it a day around 8:30.

Today I woke up at 3:30AM. Why? Because I had to take a shit. Why? Because I've been eating so many luscious fruits and veggies. Nice. I was pissed, but also glad that I had gone to bed so early so at least I got 7 hours. I looked at the weather, and there was a big blob of a storm just to the west, and I was sad because I really wanted to swim outdoors. But it was early, so I had time.

I didn't feel sickly this morning, however, my nose was running like a mofo. Once again, I hoped I wasn't catching a cold. I did some more organizing, more shitting (I still claim that lettuce is a waste of my time especially when it seems 1/2 of it just comes out the other end), a little weed pulling, and then when I checked the Doppler around 5:30AM it looked like the blob has dissipated and was going to stay south of me, meaning all clear to bike to the outdoor pool!

It was really humid, so I didn't bother putting a shirt over my swimsuit to ride. I noticed right away that my legs did not feel like ass! I was pretty happy about this, and also, once I shot Nasonex up my nose, it stopped running, so probably I don't have a cold! But I did notice that my deltoids are a bit fucked up, probably from the large (for me) amounts of swimming I've been doing. If that's my biggest problem today, fine by me!

The sky still looked a bit ominous as I rode, but then I got to thinking I've never been rained on while on Clipless Fuck, and didn't care if it did rain on me, so it was all good. The pool was relatively uncrowded, and I was just basically going in to flop around a bit. I did an 800 warmup and then 1500 pull with a 100 kick cooldown. Easy peasy. The water was a bit warm, but once again, I totally enjoyed swimming. People always ask me what I think about when I do straight swimming (1500 being pretty short, though), and so I will now let you in on my secret. I think like this:

one one one one one one one one one one one
two two two two two two two two two two two
three three three three three three three three

and so on for each length of the pool. Occasionally a stray thought will enter my head like I wish I would see some hottie swimming next to me, but that's really about it.

I enjoyed the short swim, enjoyed the shower afterwards (what is it about showering in nearly open air that is so great???), enjoyed the ride home, and started thinking about my next workout. I felt kind of bonky on the ride home, which is perfect, because that means my eating strategy is right on. I want my body to be SCREAMING for carbs by next week. Until then, I can manage a drop of a few pounds (I'm about 3 high right now...they should come off easily) and then my muscles will literally soak up the carbs next week like a sponge!

In the meantime, though, I am suffering a little with a growly stomach, angry muscles, a sense of deprivation (no more Cheetos or Twinkies for about 3 weeks when I start to ramp up for NothingMan, although I continue to take in Gatorade during workouts and following proper recovery protocol), the coming and going of various symptoms of illness and injury, but I'm nowhere near being excited about anything. Mostly I'm just happy when I am able to relax and not be too worried about anything. I've got all my handy-dandy checklists organized, and now I just need to get through every day and do what I need to do. I hope I start to feel a bit more peppy for the weekend races (2-mile swim on Saturday and sprint triathlon on Sunday), but if I don't, I'm not going to get bent out of shape.

But I guess I should be somewhat excited, because this is Ironman number:

Weekly Workout Totals 06/30/2008-07/06/2008 and 4th of July Weekend

Pics are here.

I took Thursday off from work just because I wanted a 4-day weekend. I started it off with 3 miles of swimming at the outdoor pool. The 3800 meter time trial was a minute faster than the prior week, even though I was feeling pretty tired, having swum the 3 prior days as well. But I was happy with the swim, and then about noon I went and ran about 5.5 miles, stopping at the Y for a hotdog before walking the remaining 1/2 mile home. At least 5 people who were coming and going from the Y made comments about various times they've seen me running in the area. One girl who works there said she saw me running one day and another car drove really close to me and she drove up next to the guy and cursed him out! Isn't that nice that I have people looking out for me? Just before I got to the Y, there was an elderly woman going for a walk, and she asked me if I was cold! It was in the low 70's and very nice, but I was still plenty hot running. I enjoyed my one annual hotdog and headed home. Later in the day, I grilled a bunch of meat (sausage, steak, hot chicken legs and scallops), ate really well, watched the Olympic swim trials, and called it a day.

Friday morning, I'd been hoping to ride 100 miles with my friend, Matt, but his back was bugging him so I just went on my own. On the way, I saw a bunch of hot air balloons up in the sky, and it reminded me that the balloon festival was going on, and I thought how cool to see that right before riding.

I ended up riding 64 miles, mostly with this guy, Rick, that I caught up to at one point. He kept telling me to go ahead, but I told him to suck my wheel and stay on, and he pretty much did. I had the disk on the back, and it was a great day to be riding it. I was going to go out for another 40 miles, but decided I didn't want to be out there all by my lonesome with a high chance of dog sprints. There was one dog that looked ominous, but after he pestered a group of riders in front of me, he sauntered on to his backyard and I was able to pass just fine. But when I got to the rest station, they said they were running out of stuff, and even though I was just grabbing water (I had Infinit with me), I decided I didn't want to dodge dogs, and so I finished up and drove to Fermilab.

I thought I'd do 2 loops, but I wasn't feeling too great and just did the one and figured since I should be starting my bike taper, that 80 miles would be fine on the day, and besides I wanted to be able to stay awake to watch the fireworks. It was dicey--I was plenty tired--but I just decided I should go and watch because I haven't in several years. I thought I could drive, but then I thought I could walk, and a walk is a good "recovery" type activity, so that's what I did. It was about 1.5 miles down to where a lot of people were camped out, and the display was actually pretty good. Not only that, but you could see the displays of 3 other towns! Plus, there were a couple of amateur displays going on right nearby, despite the fact that we were across the street from a fire house!

Walking home, I could tell I was tired, but I was determined to see the balloon launch early Saturday morning, so I set the coffee pot, put the fan in my bedroom on high, put in earplugs (because there was a lot of explosions still going on, no worries!), and passed out blissfully.

I woke up Saturday right around 5:00AM, and so I had to hurry it up so I could have some coffee and get down to the balloon launch, which the web said was supposed to happen at 6AM, but good thing I got down there by 5:30 because they were already taking off! Even though I felt pretty much fucked up like I had a sinus infection or something, it was worth it to see this, and there was quite a crowd assembled. I mean, how many times do you get to see 10+ hot air balloons taking off in northeastern Illinois? Just this time of year...

Next on my itinerary was to go to my local Farmer's Market. How many times am I home on a Saturday morning at 7AM during the summer? Twice maybe? I was so happy to be able to get some good produce, and I loaded up with lettuce, tomatoes (Arkansas, this time--still no Illinois or Michigan tomatoes, which if you ask me are the very best), apricots, figs (!), green beans and nectarines. I was ecstatic when I spotted the fresh figs, which even though they are probably from California, still, I love fresh figs and got a basket.

I went back home and I was exhausted. So I took a nap. When I woke up around 12:30, I realized I had better get my 1:30 run in, so I chugged a can of Ultra Violence, suited up and drove to Waterfall Glen, and I was running by 1:10PM. I had taken an Advil PM to help along my nap, so I felt pretty fucked up between being groggy from that and then chugging caffeine, so let's say it was an interesting run. But I seized the opportunity to really suck up the nature around me, and it was absolutely gorgeous, so I took liberal walking breaks and since I had forgotten to wear a watch, I just didn't care. I saw Mr. Indigo Bunting again, and I also saw one of these:



















Since I had never seen one of these before, I figured it to be some rare butterfly, but when I got home and looked in my Audubon guide, it said nope, pretty common, but still, it was so beautiful, and I was happy to have seen it. I ended up running 10 miles, and counted it as a 1:35 run, because I definitely was going faster then 10:00mpm even with my walking breaks, but in the end, who cares?

More Olympic swim trials, and I needed some sleep so I could ride today, but I still felt slightly sick, but whatever, you know? I slept well and got up this morning and felt sort of crappy, but it was another gorgeous day, and you never know, so I suited up, this time with the aero helmet, because I haven't worn it for more than 2 hours, so I thought I should wear it for a full 4-hour ride, assuming I could make it for that long.

Well, you put the aero helmet on, and you have to stay aero lest you look like a total poseur, and after about 1/2 hour I actually was feeling pretty good, and it was helped by seeing more balloons up in the sky as I headed west.

When I got into Fermilab, it was an awesome day, and I immediately decided I should try and do some "crap," but I decided that 80-85% of FTP would be good enough on the day. When I got to the east gate, the guard there, who has seen me many times, wanted to talk to me, and I got him to take a picture, and he took one of me with his phone. I thought I looked like a total dorkaramus, but he seemed pretty smitten with me. Whatever. Onward.

I didn't see any coyotes today, just lots and lots of riders. I passed them all, but I as all smiles and waving as I did so. What a great day! I was just so happy that I wasn't feeling at all sick, even though I know I'm on the edge right now, as expected, with the amount of training I've been knocking out.

When I was about 3 miles from leaving Fermilab, I came upon another rider, a guy, with really nice looking legs, and I caught up to him and we chatted. His name is Angel. We exchanged phone numbers and I hope to go train for a weekend with him--he has a summer house in southwest Michigan, which is a favorite area of mine. Sometime soon after IMLP I want to get there and just hang out, swim in Lake Michigan, ride a little bit and run a little bit. Angel is only doing Oly's this year (he's done 2 IM's), but I figure I can use a laid back training weekend as I get ready for NothingMan.

When I was about 4 miles from home, I came upon another rider, a roadie, and we chatted. He made some comment about being old, and I said I probably have him beat on that count. He said no way, and I told him oh yeah, and he couldn't believe me. We came up to the last "hill" on the way to where we live, and I powered up it with him on my wheel, which was fine by me. He obviously thought Bitchie was sweet looking, and then when he peeled off for his way home, I told him to have a great rest of his day, and he told me I had inspired him! How cool is that? I'm just doing my thing, after all.

When I got home, I quickly put on running shoes, chugged 1/2 bottle of ice water (it really helps), and headed out to run. OH MY GOD. Now it felt hot, even though it was only 80. I was hoping to see a mirage aid station stocked with ice for my head and sponges for my shoulders! No such luck, though, and I purposely ran into the wind and uphill just to make it harder on myself. I persevered, and ended up with a pretty good run.

For my recovery meal, I made the world's greatest salad--a pile of Romaine and red leaf lettuce, grilled steak (about 1/5 pound), 2 hard-boiled eggs sliced, 2 sliced apricots, 2 sliced figs, 1 diced tomato, doused with one squeezed lemon, olive oil, balsamic vinegar glaze and plenty of salt and pepper. I made it on a big dinner plate, but realized to mix it up I needed a huge bowl, so in it went, and it took me about an hour to eat it all, but I did and it was great.

And now I am officially in my bike taper. One more big week of swimming, and then it's all over but the race. I feel pretty good, but know I need to eat really well at this point, stretch well and get plenty of rest. I think I can do that this week! I think my head is on straight for this IM--I really don't care how I do, but know that I won't suck, and that anything can happen. Mostly I'm looking forward to swimming outdoors every day this week and acting like a kid on summer vacation!

Here's what I did on the week:

Weekly Workout Totals	06/30/2008-07/06/2008 This week's totals are sponsored by the taper, blah, blah, blah, yeah now I can just chill, work on my tan and get ready to race!
Swim:	14200 yards (8.06 miles) in 5.05 hours; 23% of weekly workout time; approx. 1768 calories burned Canadian: 12984.48 meters
Bike:	Approx. 209.74 miles in 11.72 hours; 54% of weekly workout time; approx. 5423 calories burned; Total TSS=662.3 Canadian: 337.54 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 27.65 miles in 4.24 hours; 19% of weekly workout time; approx. 1919 calories burned Canadian: 44.5 kilometers
Strength:	0.86 hours; 4% of weekly workout time; approx. 215 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 245.45 miles in 21.87 hours; approx. 9325 calories burned--some taper, huh??? Canadian: 395.01 kilometers
Sleep:	7.57 hours avg./night
Stretching:	2.92 hours. Massage: 1.25 hours Most stretching in a week this season!