Monday, June 25, 2012

Am I there yet??

The good

This morning I had an awesome long run. I got up at 5:15 and had a whole grain waffle with almond butter and 1/2 banana. Then I laced up my shoes and headed out right as the sun was starting to come up. I love early morning runs when no one is out yet and it's quiet and a perfect 55 degrees. I ran down to the bay trail so my views for most of the run were of the bay, SF, Marin, and the Golden Gate bridge at sunrise. Perfectly serene! I'm not gonna lie, my feet were hurting by the last 4 miles, but all-in-all, it was a great 15 mile run to start off the week!

The bad

I am so sick of training!!!!!!!! I am sick of swimming and I hate my bike at this point. I had a terrible workout this past weekend - 70 miles of biking into the wind. It took everything I had to not lay down in the middle of the street and hope a passer-by would take pity on me and drive me to my car. I almost cried about 6 times in the last 90 minutes of riding from a terrible mixture of exhaustion, frustration, and disappointment. I didn't even run afterwards, I was so beat. And it was so windy that I only got to use my new aero bars twice for about 30 seconds. I don't think I've blogged about them yet, so here are a couple pics for those that aren't familiar with aero bars.
Barton is eye-ballin me from his window perch in the top corner.
Aero bars 
The aero bars were really comfy for the 30 seconds I was using them. But I'm not very stable on them yet so it would have been dangerous to test them out in the wind. Hopefully next time! The course has a lot of rolling hills and flat parts that I think the aero bars will be perfect for once I get the hang of them.

The Ugly

This training has made my feet ugly. No matter what socks I wear, my pinky toe always becomes a huge blister after a long run. And today I was lucky enough to get 2 additional blisters. yay. That, and the fact that I could feel rocks thru the sole of my right foot, convinced me to buy new running shoes. They are being shipped to me tomorrow so hopefully this won't be happening any more. 

I'm not feeling so great about the race at this point. It's just under 5 weeks away (omg!!!!!) and I feel very under-prepared. Training websites that I've been going off of suggest that at this point in my training I should be doing 15-20 hours/week! I'm at about 8-11 hrs/week. Here's where I am as far as mileage:

Farthest so far Race day
Swim 2400m 2.4 miles (3860m)
Bike 100 miles 112 miles
Run 15 miles 26.2 miles


Hopefully this week I will have some good workouts that give me confidence that I can finish this thing.  But mostly I just can't wait to be done training. Am I there yet?!?!?
Workouts for this week
Today: 15 mile run
Tue: CrossFit 
Wed: 1hr swim
Thur: Short brick workout (50min bike/ 25min run)
Fri: rest (I can't wait for Friday!!)
Sat: Longest brick so far! 80 mile bike/ 8 mile run (hopefully!)
Sun: 3000m swim

Monday, June 4, 2012

America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride Recap

America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride - 100 miles around Lake Tahoe. Although the name of the race is self-proclaimed (by BiketheWest.com), it's actually pretty true. The views on this ride were spectacular!! Unfortunately, the competitive side of me came out a little and even though it was a ride and not a race, I wanted to see how fast I could do it. Alas, I did not stop that often to take pictures, but luckily, some of the ones I snapped while riding came out well. Here's an idea of how freaking beautiful this place is:
Def a top 5 favorite pic
Kelsey and I only got to ride the first 33 miles together, but here's one of her .




Mile 25 rest stop - not so pretty

I wish I had a boat


Another top 5 pic - it's crazy how blue-green the water is!
Actually, maybe this is my favorite?!


All-in-all, it was the perfect day! High of 72 with clear skies and only about 20 miles where I had to deal with the wind slowing me down. It took me 6 hours and 41 minutes to ride 100 miles.... and that is the longest ride I've ever done! Kelsey and I trained perfectly for this ride because we both finished saying "meh, it wasn't that hard". 


And to top it all off, we had great supporters! Greg and Rex didn't get to sign up for the race before it sold out, but that didn't stop them from coming to Tahoe to be there at the finish and celebrate with us afterwards!
Lunch outside after the race.
(Picture stolen from Kelsey. Thanks Kels!)
Pre-race refreshments.
The post-race refreshments looked very similar, but I was too busy celebrating to get pictures :) 
We drove back to the bay area today and then at 8:00pm I went to my 3rd CrossFit intro class. I'll post more about the CrossFit experience later, but for now I'd like to point out that after riding 100 miles yesterday, today I was the first (by more than a minute!) to finish the work-out of the day out of the whole class. I was pretty proud of myself.   

8 weeks til Vineman..... Bring it on!!