A Sure Sign of Serious Training

So I decided this morning to sign up for the Twin Lakes Triathlon in June. Even though registration isn't open until Monday (and it's just a form you download and mail in, so sadly, there will be no SUBMIT button), just thinking about signing up is exciting. You can draft on the bike in this race, so if you plan your swim accordingly with your biking buds, you can have a great time on the bike and do well on the run.

I'm getting ready to go swim, and I'm brushing my teeth and I barely get the toothbrush in my mouth and I'm gagging. Nice! Usually this doesn't start happening until about mid-May or something (not like I keep track of it in my training spreadsheet but maybe I will now ;) so it was making me laugh, and gagging and laughing at the same time is not a good thing. I know of only one other person who has admitted to having this "issue," and you know me--I have zero qualms about discussing bodily functions, but in this case it was kind of good to know I'm not alone in this.

My belief is that it's the sweetness in the toothpaste coupled with the increase in training which means I am taking in sugars fairly regularly, and well, my usual toothpaste (Crest) is quite sweet. Huh--maybe I should try an experiment with just baking soda? Like that wouldn't make me gag! Or maybe some unflavored toothpaste. I should have known yesterday when I went downstairs to my Gatorade tower to select enough 32-oz. bottles to get me through today through Sunday, and my arms were overflowing, that I am "in it" now. It feels good, and this is what I was preparing for, and while there are no races until Triple T, I've already put in some good intensity work and now it's time for the big volume jump.

So in a weird, perverted way, I *HEART* gagging. All part of going harder, faster and longer!

Indulging my Inner Pirate (some links NSFW)

For some reason, since sometime last fall, I have been lusting after all things pirate. I made my girls, Shelley and Cindy, some pink shirts with pirates (Shelley needs to post pics of it!), made myself a black shirt with a pirate on it, made the duvet cover with pirates and zebras, got some unmentionables with pirates (and trust me--the supply of that stuff is limitless--I've located some additional sources here and here that spark my interest), and most recently, enhanced my swim gear to include some new pirate stuff.

I got this cap (which I wore to race in on Sunday):


these goggles (broke the first pair changing the nose bridge; got a replacement last night; will try them out tomorrow):

and I designed this suit at Splish.com, which should arrive in another week or so:
I receive a surprise in the mail last week, a gift from my friend, Susan, who had hinted that she had found something "with my name all over it." Yep, she was dead on, I mean pirates and zebra stripes? It's this purse/carry thingie:

How cool is that? Susan found it at some craft fair, and told me that when she spotted it, her first thought was that it was screaming my name! Thanks, Susan--I love it!

You'd think I'd be all over the Avia stuff, but sadly, no pirates on the shoes that I can see. I'm going to start tracking down some sort of pirate shoes, and no, it won't be knee-high "pirate" boots or these. Although, wouldn't it be funny to show up in transition wearing those? Who knows---maybe the Jolly Roger will be flying at TTT and IMLP!

Weekly Workout Totals 03/02/2009-03/08/2009 and Thinking About 2010

So it was a good week of training. REALLY good. Actually, from last Saturday through last Friday, I put in like 19 hours, and then I raced pretty well on Sunday, so this tells me I'm right where I need to be to get ready for the big volume coming up, and I'm excited about it!

Also, just serendipitously (see previous post), I was chatting with one of my BFF's, Shelley, and talked about Goofy Challenge, and then I thought, OMG what if it's already sold out for 2010, and I found out it wasn't, and we are IN IN IN and we're getting other friends to sign up, too!

Goofy Challenge (my 3rd time there) will be the start of the year of no more conventional Ironman races. So far, what I'm thinking about for 2010 is:

• Goofy Challenge in January
• Triple T in May
• Total Man (Day 1: swim as much as possible, Day 2: bike as much as possible, Day 3: run as much as possible) in June
• RAINSTORM in July (100+ miles of biking every day for 7 days)
• Something else pretty extreme in August; need to find something
• SOS (Survival of the Shawangunks) in September

That would be one helluva normal-Ironman-free year, wouldn't it? I'm excited about concocting a training plan for it, and the real mission behind it is to get ready to be invited to Ultraman Kona in 2011.

Shelley is asking me when I'm going to post pics of myself. I'm thinking at the end of this week when I'm officially 2 weeks into my little fat trimming/buffing out exercise. I can tell you my upper body is looking good from all the extra pushups and pullups, and my abs are starting to return to normal by changing things up. But I've still got a few more pounds of fat to shave off, I guess I'm just picky that way.

Anyway, here's what I did last week and this week promises to be even better!

Weekly Workout Totals	03/02/2009-03/08/2009 This week's totals are sponsored by torrential rain
Swim:	7800 yards (4.43 miles) in 2.7 hours; 19% of weekly workout time; approx. 946 calories burned Canadian: 7132.32 meters
Bike:	Approx. 109.79 miles in 6.23 hours; 43% of weekly workout time; approx. 3123 calories burned; Total TSS=365 Canadian: 176.69 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 27.17 miles in 4.14 hours; 29% of weekly workout time; approx. 1873 calories burned Canadian: 43.73 kilometers
Strength:	1.27 hours; 9% of weekly workout time; approx. 318 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 141.39 miles in 14.34 hours; approx. 6260 calories burned Canadian: 7.43 kilometers
Sleep:	7.43 hours avg./night
Stretching:	2.22 hours. Massage: 1 hours

And the Planning for 2010 Begins....

Confirmation #:	197098-030909085711
Date & Time:	01/09/10 - 01/10/10
Location:	Walt Disney World?? Resort (Map)
Purchased at:	03/09/09
Category:	2010 Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge
:

Midwest Indoor Triathlon Series--Series Winner, and Won all 4 Races

Today was the last of the 4 indoor triathlons in the series. Every time I've done these, there is squirrelly weather--either torrential rains, ice storms or heavy snow. Today we are getting the torrential rains. My downstairs was dry until about 4:30AM this morning, and I knew it was just a matter of time before I got seepage. It's not as bad as it could be, but still I hate when that happens, but if it rains 4+" it's going to happen.

Even last night when I went to bed, my stomach did just not feel good. I think it's stress because I started up the tax process for my Dad's 2008 estate filing yesterday, and there are, as usual, glitches, and well, it's been awhile since I've had to process anything like this and it just brings up sad feelings, and couple that with an impending race and water in my house, and let's just say I had some moments of feeling really sorry for myself this morning.

My stomach continued to feel lousy when I woke up this morning, and so given I wasn't racing until 3:05PM, I didn't want to eat any "real" food, so I had a Powerbar for breakfast, a banana (which I thought would help but it didn't), then a can of Coke, some Endurox R4 and finally some Red Bomb (half Ultra Violence and half Gatorade ice) to race with.

I did absolutely nothing yesterday except for a few pushups, pullups and abs. I skipped the jump rope yesterday because I wanted a completely cardio-less day. On Friday, I worked out about 4:45 (1 hour swim, 2:20 bike, 1 hour run plus my extra crap including jump rope) so that I wouldn't need to do anything after today's race, and that meant I could do nothing yesterday. So I did!

This morning, I was on flood duty, did some dinner prep, and had planned on watching a friend race who was starting about an hour before me, and it finally dawned on me that if I wanted to get in a race warmup that I needed to be there earlier than I had planned. Thank God it turned to DST today, because I've been in that time zone for like 6 months now, which means I will wake up at a respectable 4:30-4:45AM instead of my usual 3:30AM! So I was all on schedule except for not doing the math to realize how early I needed to be at the club in order to warm up.

I got there with enough time to do 5' of jump rope and 5' of running, and I didn't get my bike warmup in until I was actually racing. I watched my friend kick ass in his wave, and then it was my turn. Considering how my stomach felt, I didn't have any high aspirations, and since I had already won the 3 previous races, I was guaranteed to win the series title (best 3 out of 4) no matter what, and I didn't think I was too motivated.

But when I got into the pool, it was pretty damn cold, and it felt great, and I just swam strong and easy and met my goal of 550 yards (yeah I'm slow but I can swim that pace FOREVER), and then it was onto the bike. It looked like there might be some contenders in my wave, but when I hit the first mile first, I knew it was game on! One of the volunteers kept asking who would be first to hit the next mile and every time she said that I said to my volunteer, "ME!" I had my second best bike of the 4 races, and when I got off there, I wasn't too thrilled about running (I easily won my wave on the bike).

It looked to me like there were a few women in my wave who would wax me on the run, but we took off and I was in the lead the entire time, how messed up is that? I mean, I am NOT a runner, and here I was lapping everyone and generally not pushing myself too hard because I had nobody to pace off of, and yet I kept thinking SOMEBODY must be a player, but it never happened. I just cruised until there was a minute to go, and then I tried to actually deploy a kick, which I don't usually have, but I must have had one today because I gunned it a little extra, and when it was over I puked in one of the Home Depot buckets! It's been awhile since I've puked after a race, and it made me laugh. The other cool thing is that after maybe 2 laps, I couldn't feel my legs at all! I mean I could tell my feet were making impact with the track, but other than that I had zero feeling in my quads and calves, and that was a really, really great feeling.

We went to check the final results, as I was in the last wave, and my friend won his age group, and when they posted my results, they miscalculated the distances for sure, and I got a little upset about it and went into the office where they were calculating and showed them the mistake. Cuz the next best woman to me in my age group was slower on all three legs, yet how could her total distance be more than mine??? I was like fuck, please fix this, although I didn't swear at the volunteers, but they could tell I was a little excited. So they fixed me up and then I put my results back up on the board and felt pretty good about the whole thing since I felt like crap.

I am now home and have a good deal of water downstairs, but I can take care of it--it's just rain water--and hopefully the rains have stopped, and hey, I didn't have to run for 1:30 after the race so I don't even feel beat up! And I should be able to knock out a regular swim tomorrow morning, and life is pretty fucking good!

I know these are just stinky little indoor triathlons, but the cool thing is I have not gotten any slower, and I obliterated everyone in my age group and maybe even one or two lower, so that's cool, and I'm almost at my fighting weight (I was at 112.4 this morning, fuckin' A!), and now I'm getting pumped about starting the big volume buildup for Triple T.

Since I barely had any calories so far, I am drinking several painkillers (beers) to make some of them up. It was a great day of racing, and maybe I don't actually suck as bad as I sometimes think I do. Hey, a win is a win, right?