Race and Training Updates

First of all, I feel that I should follow up to my last post and share my good bike riding news.  Last Saturday, I was determined to shoot over to the bike shop in the morning and bite the bullet- buy bike shoes and cleats, and go ahead and put my clip in pedals back on (they came with the bike).   There was even a group of girls meeting that afternoon to ride in a safe area for me to practice getting in and out of the pedals and I was really excited to get out there and try.  Unfortunately, the bike shop did not have my size in the shoes and had just sold the last pair of the type of cleats I needed.  Bummer.  They went ahead and ordered them for me, and I decided to watch the ACC basketball tournament instead of meeting for a ride.

But the weather last Saturday was so wonderful!  77 degrees, albeit a little windy.  My husband rides flatland BMX, and I could tell he wanted to go ride his bike somewhere, so I suggested we go together.  He typically rides in empty parking lots, so I figured we'd head over to a local business park where I could ride using the dreaded cages on my bike and work on getting my right foot in without panic.  And so off we went.

It took a few tries, but I was able to master getting in and out of the cages and had a hugely enjoyable ride.  With both feet properly in the cages, I could really feel a difference in speed, as well as how much easier it was on my left quad to not have my left foot being the only one in the cage doing all the work.  I zipped and zipped around the side streets and empty parking lots while the husband worked on mastering a "hang 5".  Some parts were tough when I was working against the wind, but ultimately it ended up being a good ride and I left feeling  confident instead of defeated.

^This is my happy bike face- complete with crazy helmet hair^

In other training news, I've been doing most of my bike training during the week in spin class.  I am not sure if it is an exact replacement, but it whoops my a** every single time!  I've never been so sweaty in my life!  I have also been doing the majority of my running on the treadmill due to weather and amount of daylight after I'm done working (though I'm happy that has recently changed and look forward to some outdoor runs soon).  I've stepped it up and realized that when I put my mind to it, I can run faster and for longer than I realized.  Running *really* is such a mind game.  Admittedly, I am not as great at "mind game" type sports as I am at other things.  Put a personal trainer in front of me and I will lift weights as hard and heavy as I can go.  I will kick and jump and punch with the best of them in kickboxing class.  But running is different, it's just you and your thoughts.  Your mind telling you what hurts, what you probably cannot accomplish, how out of breath you feel, etc. 

Swimming is going okay too.  I haven't exactly been using "drills" like last time, more just swimming up and down, down and back, freestyle for the most part, kickboard when I'm tired, backstroke when I'm not sharing the lane with anyone else (I'm a weaver when I swim on my back).  Last week's swim had me feeling really breathless. My allergies were acting up and you really need to have open nasal passages to feel like you can breathe when you are swimming.  If you rely on your mouth, your air gulps usually also contain a bit of water with them.  And today I woke up with a cold, so I'm even more stuffy and decided to spend most of the day parked on the couch, so I'll need to try to make up a swim this week if I feel up to it.  I started to try to time myself for the length of the swim for the first triathlon I'm doing, but got distracted when a rogue 5 year old went kamikaze and jumped into my lane, forcing his dad to go in after him.  Kind of killed my buzz, so I will try again this week.  

In race-related news, I have decided I'm not going to do the Ramblin' Rose Raleigh race.  For one, it's a mere two weeks after my first tri of the season.  Also, it falls on the same weekend that we are in Raleigh for a BMX contest that we've been helping out with for the last couple years.  My husband brings his bike and rides, and helps with setup and take down and somehow I have won myself the role of registration helper, so I generally sit in a tent all day and take money and talk to the riders (and a lot of parents, if the kids are under 18) and usually have a pretty decent spot to watch all the contests go down.  If I were to to the Raleigh tri, I'd basically be sprinting to the BMX event the minute I was done, looking like a drowned rat, with race legs, and probably starving, having gotten up at 0'dark thirty, and I just don't see it being an enjoyable day.  All that on a Sunday, then having to drive 3 hours to get home and work the next day.  Ugh.  It was stressing me out for weeks on end, and last week I missed the deadline to register before the price went up, so I considered it a sign and officially bowed out.  Also, the swim is outside.  While it will probably be "ok" by May 18th, it certainly won't be warm, and if it's a cold day, the thought of getting on my bike to "dry off" with it being possibly cool and windy sounds just AWFUL.  I really wish they would make this race in June.  Out of the entire series that runs from May to October, there are no races in June and two within two weeks in May.  Dumb.  Maybe I will volunteer or something, so I can scope it out for next year potentially, but still be able to bounce and show up at the BMX thing looking respectable, instead of looking like a wet version of Grumpy Cat.

So, the new race schedule includes one respectable race in May, all of June to train for the July race, then a race per month from July-October.  Then I'm going to drink a keg of beer all to myself in celebration.  Not really, I am a complete lightweight these days.  I'm talking fall asleep holding the first beer of the evening kind of lightweight.  What would my college-aged self say to this thirties version of myself?  The horror!!


I do see progress though, despite doubting myself at times.  For my very first tri, I did the bike ride in 33:25 and the run in 28:47.  On Saturday, I did a 9-mile bike ride in 29:30 and a 2 mile run (a couple walk intervals) in 26:27!  P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S!!  I really plan on using the May 5th race as a marker for what I need to work on for July, so I'm not going to sweat whatever the results are.  It's the first race of the "season" of races, and it's going to be in a very familiar place (our old neighborhood YMCA- where I do ALL my swim training), and the bike ride is through the area we used to live in, so I think it's going to be great.  I hope for great weather and a fun first time out on my new bike in a race.

Next up, mastering these guys.

Doubt is a Dirty Little Word

A few weeks ago, I bought a new bike.  Saturday was my first real ride.  I was so pumped.  I had a cute new jacket to wear (with THUMBHOLES- yay!)

I loaded up my new bike, and I was SO pumped.  I couldn't wait for our 10 mile, "easy" ride to see how going from a heavy hybrid bike last year to a feather-light road bike was going to feel.  I just KNEW it was going to make me tons faster.  After all, last year everyone kept telling me I was going to be unstoppable once I switched up to a road bike, and I believed them.  I was soooo hyped for this ride.  I had a new bike rack for my car, and my new girl was all loaded up (I'm still trying to come up with a name for her).

It was COLD at 7:45 that morning. 37 degrees and kind of windy- or at least windy when you're riding your bike.  I don't know.  I think I blanked out for the first few minutes.  It's hard to see in the picture, but I put pedals with "cages" on them on my bike.  When I was practicing with them in my neighborhood, it was a bit tricky at first to get my second foot in the cage while riding.  The foot you start off with is not hard, because you just shove it in there as you push off, but then you have to coordinate getting your other foot into the cage while riding.  The point of these stupid things is so that you get some movement and power from when you pull your legs up as well as when you push the pedals down, hence, making it easier to go faster.  I chose pedals with cages because I thought they would be easier to get in and out of than pedals that you clip into with your special bike shoes.  Also, I didn't really want to spend more money on special bike shoes, and, I like biking in my running shoes because that's one less thing to have to change out of during transition in the triathlon.

Anyway, I guess I just freaked out. The ride started out on a pretty busy main road by the bike shop.  I panicked and basically never got my right foot into the cage the entire time.  I was not in a good state.  Fortunately one of the awesome guys from the bike shop was sweeping (basically, he was escorting me while everyone else rode off into the sunset).  He told me it was no big deal that my foot wasn't in the cage and just to take it one pedal at a time.  He reminded me about changing my gears when I couldn't focus on anything other than the fact that my left quad was on fire- partially from spin class earlier that week, and that fire was totally stoked by the fact that my left leg was working harder since it was the one I kept in the cage.  There were hills.  I was an emotional mess.  I was mad at myself.  I was FAR more out of breath during certain points than I thought I'd be (though I think a lot of it was the result of nerves).  At one point, I considered just falling off my bike into a ditch and pretending I couldn't go on, but I'm not very good at lying, so I didn't want to make even more of a fool of myself. I finished the ride exhausted, in pain, and super annoyed with myself.  And by the way- cages SUCK.  I might as well get the stupid shoes and put the pedals back on my bike that I can clip into.  They can't be nearly as hard as squeezing my running shoe into a small wedge of plastic, and well, if I can't get unclipped in time and happen to fall off my bike- well, they say that you're not a true biker until it happens, so bring it on I guess. 

The spiral of doubt started on Saturday.  It was briefly interrupted when I attended the kick-off meeting for the new athletes on Saturday and got to meet and greet and see all the excited faces.  I got to talk and give tips and be excited for them.  Briefly, the doubt left my mind.  I did this last year.  Not all of the training that let me there was fun and fantastic- a lot of it was exhausting and challenging.  I guess I had forgotten that.  Sunday, we did the swimming assessments for the new athletes and I brought my swimming gear so I could get in a swim workout.  I felt out of breath.  My goggles were fogged up the whole time.  My new swimsuit is cut lower than my old one and there were several instances where I thought my boob might have popped out. 

I have skipped working out Mon-Wed of this week.  Why? I don't know.  I guess because of the doubt.  I started thinking, "What if I just don't do any freaking triathlons?"  Then I would feel awful and would be a failure.  So this afternoon I looked up all the courses and read about them and ran through the lists of people who had already signed up to see if I saw any familiar names.  I looked at the race results from last year, and you know what?  My time wasn't terrible.  1:14:00.  And I remembered that I did that with what was the worst case of swimmer's ear I have ever had.  Where I had a stick of cotton wedged in my ear by an urgent care doc to open up my ear canal.  I could not hear out of my right ear AT ALL.  Losing one of my senses really threw me that day, but I did the best I could.  And it wasn't terrible.   I think maybe the person who got first place did it in something like 45 minutes.  I also think she was 15.  I am cool with being 29 minutes behind a 15 year old for my very first tri.  All this made me very excited to see what I can do this year.  What if I got better at each and every race?  You know, assuming no dreaded flat tires on the bike route, this is entirely possible.

So, I am still shaky.  I still have no idea what's going to happen on that bike the next time I get out there.  I a still rattled that I had such a bad ride on Saturday.  I really am at a point where I feel like I am TOTALLY NOT READY.  I guess I didn't feel like this last year because I knew I had the whole 12 weeks to get ready, and this year I feel like I should be "born ready" since I've already done a triathlon, and the truth is, that is not the case.  Especially since I spent most of the winter only going to the gym very sporadically.  A lot of my training buddies have been on their bike trainers all winter, or running with special run training groups, or swimming every week all during the off season, and I didn't do all that.  There is nothing I can do about it now. 

All I can do is get out there and train hard until May 5th.  That's 41 days from now.  It's a lot of time, but also not much time.  I have to make the rest of my days count.   That means the rest of this week will need to be packed with workouts.  No more days off.  No more pity party.  I've got this.  No more doubt.