Cartersville Century

Well, it wasn't exactly a century. It was short, about 95.5 miles 17.8 avg mph, over 6000 calories burned! (bonus to weighing so much!). Some peeps rode a little at the end to make it the even 100. Me? I am not really an overachiever much these days. I went into the ride determined that it was going to be great, and that nothing was going to be bad about it. I refused to allow any negative thoughts to even begin to surface in my mind.

My positive thinking paid off because this ride was really more enjoyable than I imagined it would have been. I tried out some new nutrition, potato's, and they didn't work as well as I had hoped. The salt that I added made me really thirsty, and the potato's didn't fill me up at all. Odd. Or maybe they just weren't calorie dense enough? KP did say that they are an excellent on the bike food because of the potassium and sodium. True, but they did get all mushy. Might try them again in addition to something like a Clif Bar.

Sarah and Keith made really excellent riding partners today. They were just perfect. Not too fast, not too slow, and both of them had the perfect positive attitude. I love it when no one complains during a ride! Sarah got honorary hill troll honors because she was seriously kicking it up the hills. Great job girl! Look forward to riding with you guys again soon! Marc dropped up 'cuz he's wicked fast! Suob's did their own thing but heard they were pretty fast as well.

Lot's of animal sightings on the ride including live snakes, dogs, kittens, horses, horses, cows, and zebras. It was pretty cool.

Nat, it was wonderful seeing you out there today and I cannot tell you how impressive it is that you went from 63 to 100 miles! Glad that you were able to put the chamois creme to good use. My girly bits could have used some nicer bike shorts.

After the ride I felt really good. I wanted to go play a game of tennis but Keith said nope. I wanted to run a marathon too Nat forgot her running shoes and so did I. Right. Marc had a belly ache and didn't look so good. I think he was just missing Reger. We all did. Maybe next time.

100 Miles is gonna rock!

I love my bike.

I love to ride my bike.

I love riding my bike for long periods of time.

I am excited to ride my bike for 100 miles.

Tomorrow is going to be a lot of fun.

I am going to learn whether or not my body likes potatoes instead of Clif Bars for fuel.

You can jump a high fence when a bull is chasing you!

There have been two times in my life when I have run faster than I ever thought was possible. The first was when I was being chased by a rottweiler, and the second was when I was trying to beat my mom who was riding next to me on her bike. Both times I looked down at Garmin and thought "Why can't I run these intervals on the treadmill?" Well, it's because of a little thing called motivation. I was pretty motivated to not get eaten by that dog and I was also motivated to try and chase my mom down too. I gathered up all the motivation that I could for my 1-minute VO2- Max intervals this week. I went to the gym and realized that it's been a good month since I have had to workout there. I am not sure how I will ever manage to swim in the murky La Fitness waters again after training all summer outdoors! Back to my motivation: the plan was to put the treadmill so high that I thought I would fall off if I didn't run. It worked! I was so scared of falling off the treadmill that I lost sight of the fact that it was so friggin' hard! I am not sure if I can apply this motivation to my swim training!!

In other not-so-related news the Luna Chix Beginner Triathlon Clinic was a success! I recognized Dogwood Girl, and it was great to meet you! It was so much fun to put it on and I hope that it was helpful information!

Let me know who all is going to be in Cartersville this Saturday for the ride....I am doing 100-fantastic miles, my first ever century! Never mind the fact that my longest ride this season has been 80 miles in January.....that's not relevant right?

I listened to you!

Well, I actually listened for once! All of my favorite healthcare professionals (Tat, Sarah, Dr. Hamid, and Tom) told me the same thing: don't train and go to bed early. After my ART/Gratson session yesterday I was feeling a little bit better. But I had a mild fever and knew that a bike ride may be a bit too much. I came home and vacuumed instead. I wanted to go to bed early but for some reason my exhausted body wasn't telling my mind to stop and sleep. I did manage to get to bed around 10 and slept for a solid 9 hours. And VOILA! I woke up feeling a million times better. I got in a 1.5 hour ride and a 2400 meter swim. Have I told you how much I don't mind swimming these days? It's because I am swimming at Venetian Pools. 50 meters! Outside! Lanes always open! Plus they have a snack bar with ice cream!!!

Tomorrow is a long brick and I know that it will be better because I didn't train on Thursday. It's amazing how taking one day off can curtail a potential disaster

I just talked to Steve Brown who is racing IM Couer D'Alene on Sunday. Water temp is 55 degrees, colder than it's been since 1875 due to the melting of snow on a nearby mountain that feeds the lake. They have hot tubs set up next to the swim exit for people to sit in a warm up! Steve said he hasn't done an IM since 2000 so don't expect anything special from him. Whatever, he's going to ROCK! I am also tracking Bree Wee in her pursuit of an IM Hawaii Pro slot at Japan on Sunday too! Go get 'um!

Pulling out of Irongirls.....

Today marks the 4th day in a row of me being totally and completely exhausted. I went to bed at 10pm last night, woke up at 6am, ran 6.2 miles, showered, went to see train two clients and now I am home at 1:30 p.m. and ready for bed. Ugh. I still have to swim and study for an exam tomorrow before I can go to bed! I switched to 1/2 caffeine coffee five days ago in an effort to slowly wean myself off the juice before Ironman. But I am having a hard time thinking that is the cause of my exhaustion. I am getting adequate sleep. Around 7.5-8 hours a night. But I am still tired. I also feel like I am getting sick, but I am not. I wake up with chest congestion and a sore throat, but no fever. The rest of my body feels great! My legs are getting used to all the training and aren't complaining much. The ART that I am getting twice a week has done wonders for me but it doesn't make me have any more energy.

Although I am tired, I am still completing all my workouts as prescribed. I am just even more tired after I get done. I called the expert, Kevin Patton today to discuss this plus my freaking out that I am not riding long enough. Kevin told me that it was stupid that I "raced" three weekends in a row. Although I wouldn't call the relay portion of a bike a race, KP noted that I was still holding a much higher pace and HR than I would have during any regular workout. This places stress on your body. I am afraid that I am stressing my body too much right now and it's catching up to me.

Kevin has his clients that are racing IM Louisville riding the Cartersville Century in two weeks. I was planning on riding 85 miles then racing Irongirls the next day. KP basically tells me that I am an idiot for doing that. Get up early one day and ride, rush home and put race wheels on your bike, drive to Gainesville to check it in, then come home and race the next day? That's just begging for illness to come on. I agree. I don't know what I was thinking. Plus how much fun is Irongirls really going to be if I can't taper and blow it out? Not fun at all.

So I am not racing Irongirls. I really didn't want to in the first place but Luna Chix are supposed to be racing. Guess I am a volunteer at this point! I am more than happy with that. Sorry to Dave for wasting the free entry!

Westpoint Lake Triathlon

Yummy, yummy, Bruster's ice cream in my tummy!

Team Slaughter Scootsie was victorious! I was concerned that my legs weren't going to hold up too well on the bike. They were TRASHED going into the race! Have you ever just willed your legs to not feel sore? That's what I did race morning. I forced them to just work for me! My two biggest mistakes were not warming up at all and not taking any allergy meds. It took me until mile 14 before I actually felt like I was getting going! My Garmin time was 1:08:44 for 24.99 miles, so a 21.8 avg MPH, official time lists me at 1:09:20 because it included the time into transition. I was really hoping to go faster, especially after Sarah told me that the course was mostly flat. But there were actually a couple of good climbs and some rollers in there and I wasn't nearly as fresh as I would have liked. BUT, I did have the second fastest female bike split (after the overall winner's) and I am very interested in knowing what it would be like to taper and prepare for a real time trial!

Getting back to the race.....Olga had a blazing fast 27:02 swim and Tat burned up the run in 46:38. Our overall time was 2:23:59, 13 minutes faster than Keith's and if we could ever pull that time off individually, it would have been good enough for 3rd place overall!!!

The "us against you" format was really good for Keith. He stayed up all night driving from FL, arrived Atlanta and slept for 1 hour before racing. Then he placed third in his age group and took off 4 seconds from last years time!

Congrats to Sarah, Hunter, Jenny, and Steph who were all out there looking strong! My hero of the day was Dr. John Taylor, 87 year old who raced the sprint triathlon! He rocks! Check out Flickr for the rest of the pics!

Team Slaughter Scootsie

When Tat said that she wanted to relay a race with me and Olga (I would do the bike portion) I was game. I have NEVER had the chance to just blow it out on the bike! We decided on West Point Lake Olympic distance triathlon.

At some point Keith decided that he was going to sign up too and started talking junk about how he would beat us. Right. Team Slaughter Scootsie was born. The deal? Whoever loses has to buy the winner Bruster's Ice Cream.

Keith had this thing called "work" down in Tampa and thought he was going to miss the race (apparently people do this so-called "work" to pay bills?!?) but he's on his way to ATL now and pumped to try and beat us.

His time from last year: 35:53 swim, 20.96MPH avg on the bike and 46:57 (7:33 pace) on the run.

Looks like somebody's buying me an ice cream cone tomorrow!

Sweetwater Triathlon

I finally got a recovery/taper week prior to this race!!! It was my first recovery week since the week of Gulf Coast and my body was begging for it! Going into the race I felt pretty decent, my back is getting much better. I have had a very nagging knee pain all week in my left knee that was brought on by a 11.5 mile run on Monday. But other than that, I felt pretty good! Everyone said "You have to do this race at least once!" and I know understand why. It's a minimalist race, but the atmosphere is very relaxed and there was no pre-race tension at all.

Swim: Seriously, this was the world's shortest triathlon swim. The ladies started one-minute behind the men and I caught up to about five guys that were just treading water. The turn-around was kind-of hairy and this woman grabbed me and her hand went into my back pocket of my top and she pulled me down. I was less than thrilled because she should have just let go, but instead she kept swimming, pulling me in the process. I exited the water right next to Henry, my mailman. He wasn't happy to see me. I was the second woman out of the water and I could see Keith putting his shoes on and mounting his bike. I wanted to catch him SO badly!

Bike: I tried and tried to catch Keith but all the little twist and turns were not in my favor. I caught the first woman out of the water within the first mile and was leading the race. I caught almost all the guys and at this point, there were only about 5 people in front of me, including Keith. The bike course was changed to make it a little longer, but it wasn't long enough for me! Keith stayed about 30 seconds ahead of me the entire time. Bummer. I only averaged 21 MPH on the bike, which wasn't as fast as I would have liked, but it's hard to build up too much speed on a course this short. Although there were not any substantial climbs, the course was not flat at all either.

Run: Prior to the race I asked about the run (which was also a new course) I was told it was "a trail run" Trails?!? I have never run on a trail before!!! I am deathly afraid of anything that involves off-road running because my left ankle is so weak I am paranoid that I will roll it. The minute we went off road on the run I was totally out of my comfort zone. The gravel, rocks, and sand sucked and I almost fell going up a hill. I slowed myself down a bit but was still totally sucking for air. I thought that I was having a heart attack or asthma attack, because that's how hard I was working! I knew that there were women behind me that could probably run faster than me. It was getting so hot and very humid and I was pouring sweat. My shoes were sloshing even though I hadn't poured any water on myself! I got caught by a couple of guys by the first mile. Once we started running on grass I saw a chick that was smoking the course. She was grinning ear to ear. Not a good sign! I tucked my head down and tried to run harder, but I was giving it everything that I had. The run seemed to last forever and the chick caught me with about 3/4 of a mile to go. There was nothing I could do, I was running as fast as I could at that point and just wanted to hold onto second place. When we got back onto the pavement I rounded a corner and saw another lady digging really deep to try and catch me. I started sprinting and made it to the finish line, literally 10 seconds ahead of her. I felt sick to my stomach and curled over, almost throwing up.

I was the second place overall female and I can honestly say that I raced this race pretty hard! The run was a little bit long (3.6 miles) and my average pace was 7:46 min/mile. That's actually my fastest run pace ever and the fact that it was on a mostly trail run is great! I will post more pics soon! Congrats to Keith for winning his AG!

Holy Heat-Training!

So I got tired of hearing the dogs panting non-stop because the house was so hot. Plus it was really hard to sleep with the house being 86 degrees. I turned on the A/C. It worked for a few days. Then a couple of days ago the house got seriously hot. Yesterday it was 88 degrees! Turns out the A/C is frozen up. It's defrosting right now. In the meantime I am putting out some serious sweat. I went to Target and took a LONG time shopping for relief. Hopefully once it thaws out it will work again. Heat training sucks when you have no choice!

Nutrition Class

I am taking a nutrition class. This is great because I am trying to slim down just a little tiny bit. The reasons are purely for my performance in triathlons. I am typically happy with the way I look. If I am able to reduce my body fat by just 1% I will effectively increase my body's ability to deliver oxygen to my working muscles. This is VERY important while racing! So I have this awesome software program that has a million different food brands already in it. You enter in your information, age, height, weight, and activity level and it tells you not only how many calories that you need, but also how much nutrients that you need. You can enter in the exact physical activity that you did each day it will will refigure your requirements. This is what I had for today:

Calories Required: 3014 Consumed: 2297 (76%)
Protein Required: 30.24 Consumed: 130.61 (217%)
Carbs Required: 330-490 Consumed: 307.81
Fat Required: 67-117 Consumed: 61.59

In terms of my vitamins and minerals the only ones that I didn't meet requirements for were Omega 6 and Omega 3 (but I ate a kids chewy Omega vitamin so I actually did get everything!)
I didn't get all the Vitamin D required or Potassium. Everything else was 100% or more, sometimes WAY more, like Niacin which shows me at 275% and Vitamin A which has me at 1975% But I ate a whopping 47.31 grams of fiber! So that is great, but I really need to focus on the other areas. I am surprised that I got in so much protein, since I only ate meat once today. I did have a protein shake for breakfast though so that probably helped!

I am going to try REALLY hard to even this all out, and actually eat more to lose weight! Does the need to eat more fat mean I get ice cream?!??

Nerve Entrapment

Doesn't this sound so sinister? Well it's not. Thankfully this is something that will be quite managable and will not require that I backdown from any training or racing. WHEW! Big sigh of relief! I was really worried that I had a pinched sacral nerve. The symptoms are similar but what I have is an "entrapment" of a nerve that is most likely caused by my major muscle imbalance. I learned that some of the exercises that I was doing that I thought would help were actually making it worse.

I really had three appointments today. One with Dr. Hamid and two with the PT. I really like them both. They get me, what I am doing, and how hard-headed that I am. I am going to be going to PT twice a week. I promise not to crap out on it. I have no choice, if I don't correct the imbalance this will only get worse. Today they gave me some exercises that I have to do three times a day. I can already tell a difference. I also had my first Active Release Therapy treatment. I was rather skeptical at first but have heard wonderful things about this from peeps who were at their wits end. I have tons of scar tissue so there is a lot for them to work out. It sort of hurts. When I left and went to work I had no numbness at all during my 45-minute car ride. Odd. Than I rode and my back felt fine. Is it possible that one PT session and ART treatment can cause this much relief? They were amazed with how much imbalance I have. It all goes back to that stupid leg-breaking. Whatever. I am alive and they believe that once I get "balanced" I will be stronger than ever. Yeah baby!!!

Big News!!!

Oh my gosh! Georgia is getting it's very own 70.3 race! Won't be until September 27, 2009 but that is still really awesome! Wonder if they'll have Kona slots? The article doesn't mention it. But that bike portion is in South Carolina? How cool is that? Here's the link!

Because the little birdie said so!

My encounters with animals have been less than normal recently. First I saved two turtles two weeks ago while riding. Then last week I was scared by both a dog and a snake while racing in Macon. Yesterday I was at Target and found this little bird sitting inside the doorway. Poor little thing was breathing really hard and no one seemed willing to help him. I picked him up and gave him some water. Then I put him in some pine straw by a tree and told myself that I would bring him home if he was still there when I left. He was gone when I left. Weird.

On another note I am going to have a X-Ray done of my lower back. My pain and numbing issues have intensified. I can now only sit down for about 5 minutes without my lower back going numb. If I don't stand up them I will get pain in my left sit bone, hip and butt area. If I stay seated eventually the pain will travel down the back of my leg and cause my foot to fall asleep. Very disturbing. The minute I stand up the feeling starts to return. I don't know what to make of it. I ran for almost 12 miles with no problem on Monday, but I can't sit through one class lecture without squirming around like I have hemorrhoids. I am praying that it's nothing serious. I will keep you posted.

Wow!

How horrible is this! Please be careful out there guys!

Macon Aquabike

With 1/4 mile to go Sue was working hard to catch Keith!!


How smart was I to pick the day that was 93 degrees to do an Aquabike? It consisted of a 1.2 mile swim and 56 mile bike. This was the first race that I did last year coming off my broken leg so it was sentimental for me. It was also my first repeat race!

The Swim: Am I EVER going to learn how to swim? I mean seriously?!? I have SO much endurance and for that I am thankful, but still have zero speed! When I got into the water I just swam, pretty much the same way that I would swim a warm-up in the pool. Way too aerobic for a race. I got off course a bit, oops, and had my first ever big kick in the face. The kick really made me very unhappy. I made it out of the water and almost croaked when I saw that my time was 3 minutes slower than it was last year! Okay so I didn't taper at all for the "training race". Plus I wasn't wearing a wetsuit(left it at home, 77.5 who knew?). But 3 minutes?!? Obviously 9000 yards a week isn't cutting it! Time to kick it into high gear!


The Bike: No HR monitor, no computer checking, no goals other than to do better than what I did last year. The first 20 miles were totally brutal. There was lots of wind. Way more wind than there should have been in Macon. I felt like I wasn't going anywhere. My legs were moving but the bike seemed to go really slow. I passed Tat and Karen and realized that the duathletes were already on course. This motivated me to ride a little bit harder. My bad attitude continued on the bike too. A guy rode up next to me and started talking. I said bad words because he scared me so badly. Then I felt really bad about it, but he had dropped back. Sorry guy. Around mile 30ish Sue caught me. Right before she caught me a dog started charging after me. It scared the daylights out of me. She told me after the fact that it was one of the closest calls that she had ever seen. I wasn't prepared for it, I actually think that I was sitting up and rubbing my very numb back. Sue scared me too when she caught me and started talking to me. She's like really,really, really strong. I can only imagine the terror that she imposed on all the guys in the race. The bike was hillier than I remembered from last year. Or maybe it was the wind that made it harder than I remembered. Or maybe I was just riding harder? I did get a 4-minute penaltly because I almost ran over a snake and was screaming (again, I was scared and didn't realize it was alive, see a pattern forming?) because it was huge and slithering all over the road.A guy that works with Tat rode up next to me and started talking. I didn't realize that meant I was supposed to drop back. It's called overtaken. He got penalized too for not passing me completely. He ended up dropping back because he said he was pushing too hard and needed to save some for the run.


At mile 48 I was in tears over the numbness and pain in my back. I was so very uncomfortable and unhappy. I told myself not to quit because Tucker Bob was still behind me and we had been in a texting war all week about how he was going to "see me" out there. At mile 50 I told myself that I was doing good because Bob didn't catch me. Not even 5 minutes later he caught me. The next six miles we spent playing cat and mouse and we found Keith along the way in. At one point Bob passed me and noticed that a guy was on my wheel. He started yelling "drafter, Dani you have a drafter!!" Really loud. I dropped it a couple of rings and the guy dissapeared.

After entering T2 I was thankful that my race was over. It was about 90 degrees and scorching out there. I spent a few minutes cheering for peeps and helping random people apply sunscreen to their back, neck, and head area. One chick asked me if I was "just not doing the run" and I said "Nope! I did the Aquabike! You suckers can run!" She was jealous. It was not a pretty day for a 1/2 marathon. My official bike time was 2:48 something but my actual ride time was 2:47 something......basically about 20.2 MPH Avg.

Since I trained straight through this "training race" I am okay with my results. I placed 4th overall behind two superstar triathletes (Deanna Frank and Heidi Phillips) Results list me as 1st, but it's a mistake. I took 20 minutes off my bike split from last year, so I can't complain about that! My swim is another story.....one that I am still a little sore about and don't want to talk about until I can figure out what's gone wrong.

The real props need to go to the peeps who did the half IM (Bob) and long course duathlon: Keith, Sue, Tat, and Karen. Tat had the fastest 1/2 marathon split of all the women and Sue was the bike queen! They all took home hardware. My training partners rock!

Big thanks also needs to go to Hunter, Steven, and Dave for all their hard work out there on the race course! Thanks guys!

The rest of the pics are on my Flickr!