OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD

Not that I'm religious--that's just an expression I use when I feel like my life is spinning out of control, or at least that I'm trying to control it.

I will hit 15,000 yards of swimming this week. In thinking about running, I looked at the total time and thought how the hell will I hit that??? But then I looked at the workouts (prescribed my evil fucking bitch of a coach), and I am supposed to run off the bike both Saturday and Sunday (4 and 3-hour bike rides, respectively). Oh, OK. Fuck me in the ass, I'll do it. This is how Triple T is going to be anyway.

So I'm swimming this morning and I swam a bit more than I needed to (which was NOT AT ALL!) and I'm thinking I should run more than 2 hours today--2:15 would be better. Hell, 2:30 would be even better, but I don't think I have time for that, so I'll go for 2:15. I'm heading to Waterfall Glen in the middle of the day, and it is awesome running weather so that will be all good.

We had some thunderstorms last night, and I was awoken at 10PM (I was asleep I think by 8:30?), but the strong stuff passed through pretty quickly, but still the broken sleep got to me a little.

Today sort of begins the countdown to Triple T in terms of all the shit I have to get done before leaving...organize my race nutrition, final grocery shopping for the cabin, baking, cleaning (I'm a girl, eh?), etc. And then assembling my pile of crap for racing. Remember, the rule for Triple T, just like for an Ironman is find all your triathlon crap--ALL OF IT--and put it into your car. You are going to maybe need pretty much anything, especially clothes. I have heard the water temperature is in the upper 50's again, and I am happy about that, but I learned from last year that I should start off the bike ride with more clothes. I am so fucking vain about tanning, though, that I'd rather shiver my ass off while biking.

And then there is this slight inconvenience called work. You know the drill, if you are in the business world--you need to work extra hard before you go away so that all hell isn't going to break loose when you get back or else it's useless to take a vacation in the first place!

Still, as hectic as things are getting for me right now, I am enjoying it because, well, this is one of the reasons that I train, right? But I will have a spot of sadness in attending the funeral of a close friend's Mom tomorrow. I am sure that will put a lot of things in perspective. I am a little frightened that I won't be able to hold my own emotions back for my friend, because this will bring up the past 3 years of my life which have consisted of death and its aftermath, and it's still not finished. But I will try and be strong for my friend, because he's got a long road ahead of him and I only hope that I can give him some comfort.

Tomorrow morning I am going to throw on my wetsuit for a nice, long swim in the fucking hot pool. Oh well! It will be good to see how that works. I am sure it won't be tight on me, but it may still feel that way putting it on before it's been properly soaked and absorbed some water.

Bear with me as my madness continues, but I know that this is the part where those 5 people who actually read my blog start to really enjoy things. Watch her go nuts! Maybe even the Tiki Hut will make an appearance in the next few days...you never know!

Namaste!

In Other News

If you're on Facebook, you can find me by name (Google me!). Sometimes I post shit there that I don't put on the blog and vice versa. I would LOVE to have all my blog readers linked on Facebook!

I signed up for a 50-mile trail race yesterday. What the fuck was I thinking??? Oh yeah--I am trying to gear up for Ultraman. The link has been added to my races/events sidebar for 10/24/2009. FUCKING YIKES!!! I guess I will need to lean on my ultra friends to tell me what more I need to do to be ready. I would appreciate having a few friends there with me, seeing as how I will be a bit trashola afterwards. Let me know if you are interested!

I seem to have recovered well from last week, since I did no running or biking on Monday (just a 3100 yard swim), although I was pretty much shelled all day/night Monday.

Yesterday, I did an impromptu triathlon, which I have dubbed "WTFMan." It consisted of a 3600 yard swim, 24 mile bike and 4.5 mile run. I swam really easy because I was still tired from last week, but I biked like a mofo at 88% of FTP on an absolutely gorgeous day, and then the run, well, it fucking hurt, which told me that OMG I must have run a bunch of fucking miles last week!

Are you noticing I am laying on the expletives now? This is what happens right about now when I'm in my last build week before Ironman, or in this case, Triple T. My house is a fucking mess, the amount of workout clothes I'm going through is amazing, I always seem to be fixing bottles of something or other, and I have so many things I need to schedule and my training volume isn't decreasing anytime soon! And then the madness begins, first with Triple T, and well, just look on my sidebar it's jam packed with all sorts of fun!

I've been receiving packages of stuff I ordered online, and the boxes just lay around open and stuff is not put away, I have to actually try and get enough calories to keep me going because with all the training and work being very busy, my appetite gets messed up and so I find I need to start stuffing myself at dinner, which isn't optimal (I should just eat more earlier in the day), but tough shit, it's not like I'm going to gain any weight here.

I feel like I'm absolutely the right weight/body comp for racing--although I am very lean and it does impact my swimming, slap a wetsuit on me and that gets corrected...I will be sporting my neoprene on Friday's 3800 yard swim.

I am being "cabin Mama" for Triple T, and I've graciously volunteered to buy groceries for and do some cooking ahead of time and onsite for the 2 dinners for everyone in the cabin and also my bitch, Shelley and her BF. I already have the non-perishables, but Friday night I buy all the other stuff, do the baking of Triple Fudge Brownies and individual Margarita Pies this weekend, and then early next week I'll make the spaghetti sauce and spaghetti salad topping. I just hope I calculated the amount of food we will all need pretty well! I know since I've done this race twice before how much *I* need to eat, and I figure guys will eat more (although they are usually amazed at how much I can stuff into my skinny little body), and then figure some extra. I am also bringing snacks, defizzed Coke and Ultra Violence and coffee. I think my cabin mates will appreciate my effort, and I have requested they each bring an "offering" to the Pirate Zebra Queen!

Normally I say that training isn't hard, and the training itself isn't so much, but at the volume I'm at now, it makes it very difficult to fit in the rest of my life! But I'm trying, and it will be interesting to see how I fare at Triple T, since I want to do more than just survive it. I'm really looking forward to it, though, because it will be bracketed by 2 "just vacation" days in the woods there, and it's so peaceful and beautiful, and I'm looking forward to the time to just sit quietly, which will give me time to ponder the depths of my mind and life and how good it really is and how fortunate I am to have the health and means to do this stuff!

Falling in Love Sucks

I am hurting. I am grateful for the joy I got to experience in the last few months, but it won't erase the pain I am feeling right now.

Love stinks. But it is a wonderful thing, too. I just need to find some.

I will train today.

Weekly Workout Totals 05/04/2009-05/10/2009

I had a good, if depressing, weekend of training. The sun never did come out too much while I was out there, and I had a pile of emotions that wanted to be dealt with, I guess brought on by it being Mother's Day weekend. I thought I could train them away, but it's not working out that way. Maybe I train better when I'm miserable now. Who knows?

Anyway, yesterday I rode 4 hours in Fermilab in the crazy winds between 9AM and 1PM, and here is the wind profile
I had thought about doing 5 hours, but the wind, clouds and cool temperatures conspired to make me stop after 4. Although I was allowed to ride on the big Ring 3 times, so that was cool. When I started, I felt pretty trashed from all the running I'd done Monday-Friday, and so I rode pretty much easy. I was playing mind games about whether I'd try and run off the bike. I just didn't think I had it in me. But I made a deal with myself that I'd just do a couple of miles, and it was still cool when I finished riding, so I only took off the wind jacket and headed out. I was totally surprised I could run at all, albeit pretty slowly. I managed about 3 miles and considered it good enough. I was so tired that I didn't even want to stop at McDonald's, instead drinking my bottle of Endurox R4 on the drive home. Here I am at the end of the festival:


I had taken in so much caffeine while riding that sleeping (after copious amounts of painkiller) was fitful, but 3 Advil PM finally did the trick and I went down for 8.5 hours. When I awoke, I felt drugged still, and it sucked, and I started playing mental games about whether I would do any training (doing nothing would have been OK), a little bit, or what I was supposed to do. What I was supposed to do was get in 7 hours of biking for the week, meaning I should ride 3 hours. It was cool and cloudy again, and my emotional state was crap, but I suited up and decided to get on Clipless Fuck and just tool around the neighborhoods. Well while doing reconnaissance in an area where I used to do intervals but that has been under construction for over a year, I discovered the roads were almost fixed and actually pretty good (one more layer of blacktop is all that's needed). So I decided to circle around my 3-mile loop I think 5 times, and when I got home from that I had about 1:30 done, and knew I had to stop drinking the caffeine-laden Infinit if I wanted any semblance of sleep.

So I loaded another bottle with Gatorade, after swigging about 8 oz., and headed back out. A neighbor stopped by to chat, which was nice, and he asked where I was going to go, and I guess I decided I'd head east and see how I felt. Well, about 10 minutes into leg 2, I finally felt like I wasn't drugged anymore and in fact, felt like pushing it a bit, so I did. And then I decided I wanted to get in 50 miles on the MTB, you know, because I was going to hit 50 miles of running for the week. That was my logic at the time.

So I did, got to see a lot of nice spring bulb displays here and there, the air smelled nice from all the flowering trees and shrubs, and I even enjoyed a hill or three. On the way home, I got a crazy idea that I should drive to Greene Valley and run up and then down the huge hill (1 mile straight up basically) to finish out my 50 miles for the week. But once I stopped riding, I decided I could do that next week and I'd rather just run from home, so I got rid of the biking tights and put on shorts and decided I'd run 2 miles. I was really surprised that it didn't feel at all bad to run! This is what happens when you run 7 days in a row, I guess. I ran out east with the slight tailwind, and on the way back I picked it up just a little bit and negative split the hell out of the second mile. I was like where the fuck did that come from? All good, though, and here I am all finished:

Below are the numbers. I actually ended up running about :45 more for the week than planned. That is not something I typically do, but I turned into a mileage junkie this week and Monday-Thursday it just seemed like a good idea to run about 8 miles each day. I biked a teeny bit more than planned, too, but that's pretty normal, and I swam a little more than planned. Well all good, I guess, right? This coming week should end up about the same volume, only less running and more swimming and biking, and a lot of getting stuff ready for Triple T.

Weekly Workout Totals	05/04/2009-05/10/2009 This week's totals are sponsored by running
Swim:	11500 yards (6.53 miles) in 4.08 hours; 20% of weekly workout time; approx. 1429 calories burned Canadian: 10515.6 meters
Bike:	Approx. 127.75 miles in 7.3 hours; 36% of weekly workout time; approx. 3645 calories burned; Total TSS=432 Canadian: 205.59 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 50.68 miles in 7.5 hours; 37% of weekly workout time; approx. 3397 calories burned Canadian: 81.56 kilometers
Strength:	1.13 hours; 6% of weekly workout time; approx. 283 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 184.96 miles in 20.01 hours; approx. 8754 calories burned Canadian: 297.66 kilometers
Sleep:	8.39 hours avg./night
Stretching:	3.17 hours. Massage: 1 hours