Hi. I'm officially crazy.

Sorry for the delay people. I know I had been promising updates and finally, I'm committed again. Largely because I just committed myself to Barb's. No, I'm not announcing my commitment to someone named Barb. Barb's. Barb's is an all-women half-Ironman race put on by a woman named Barb who's battled cancer twice and won. Both times. The race raises money for charity, which is a beautiful thing.

My triathlon journey started with me just wanting to complete the Tinsel Tri, a reverse triathlon in Hemet. My first ever race report, went something like this. The distances were something like: 3 mile run, 12 mile bike, and 150 yard swim. In a pool!! I did it, although it wasn't too pretty since it was before I met my TriLaVie buddies. I was just learning who Coach Martha was, who was to become my inspiration, and who would have guessed that I would be on the road to be a long course endurance athlete??

My plan with this blog will be to post updates on my training and to give myself a place to write down my thoughts and wade through the mental monkeys that will no doubt take up residence in my mind.

So back to Barb's. After our group training today, Martha did the Barb's Talk. THE Barb's Talk. This is where she tells you the nitty gritty about what this commitment means. The jist? Basically you must find another 20 or so hours in your week for YOU time where you will train and follow the plan. In fact, it's all about the plan and it MUST be followed. There will also be loads of laundry, lots of meal planning (no late night runs to Taco Bell) and apologies to friends who don't understand why you would want to go on a 42 mile bike ride instead of watch their kid's tee-ball game.

Will I finish? Who knows. It will be a journey for sure.

Spin Class = Pure Awesomeness

Last night was the first TriLaVie Wednesday training night..... and we had spin class!

I've never been in a spin class, but it's always been a secret desire of mine. I was envious of the people cycling to music, sweating away tons of calories, and not having to worry about having enough energy to ride back to their cars.

First off, the venue for spin class was freaking amazing. This gym is the Taj Mahal of gyms. It's the Renaissance Club Sport in Aliso Viejo. It has a valet. It also has a bar. And a whirlpool with fluffy white towels.

I wasn't super sure what to expect from this experience, except that I knew it would be boundary pushing and there might be cries for mercy since Martha's reputation precedes her. We started by learning that a cadence of 85 rpm was to be our base. Our "flat road with no hills," if you will. This is what we would return to after intervals of more strenuous spinning. We were also told to never stop pedaling. Ever. Unless it was like a life or death situation.

The good thing is that you and you alone have control over the resistance on your bike. (Unless Martha stops by and cranks it up on you since you're suspiciously not sweating enough.) The real takeaway here is that while you do have control over how hard you work, if you make it too easy, you're only cheating yourself out of a better workout.

Things were going pretty well for me until about 40 minutes in when I forgot how to tell time.

We were just finishing a grueling interval of jumps where you stand up and sit down over and over again while maintaining a consistent high cadence. I think I started to become delirious because I had convinced myself that 1 hour equaled 100 minutes and therefore we weren't even halfway through the workout. Ladybits were burning. Panic ensued.

Eventually, I realized my error and warmth and happiness spread over my body. Or maybe it was just perspiration.

Will I go back to spin class? Aw heck yeah.

New life foci. Not to be confused with fungi. Or feces.

I've been feeling pretty stressed lately (read: crying at work. Yeah.) mainly due to an unseemingly endless pile of assignments at work that never seem to end. I've mentioned this before, so I don't need to continue to complain (no one likes complainers, right?), but it just does not seem to be getting any better.

Late last week while lunching with a friend, I had a sort of epiphany. My growing stress level was akin to an endless circle:

Work would pile up, in which case I would spend additional effort (hours outside of work) trying to complete tasks to bring the stress level down.

However, in doing so, my stress level would never actually decrease. In fact, I think it was actually increasing. Imagine that. Plus, it's not like once I finished my tasks that I would have any free time because magically some other tasks would pop up and take their place.

I decided that I needed something else in my life (preferably something positive) to become the focus of my energies. That way, I would have a justification to convince myself that I need to distribute my time and energy more efficiently among work as well as whatever these new focuses (foci?) would be.

Initially, my thought was "I'm going to buy a dog!!" I spent a lot of time researching and feel that yes, I likely will buy a dog. Probably this summer. That will be a positive way to destress and will also introduce me to new activities like agility & obedience classes and patience, since pets require a lot of that.

This weekend I also rejoined my running club. I was part of the program last fall, but after "The Incident," I had to drop out. The coach gracefully welcomed me back with open arms. Saturday was my first run in a number of months and it actually wasn't that bad. It wasn't good, but it wasn't too pathetic.

The running club is part of a larger triathlon club that I had yet to join. I was thinking of perhaps joining later this summer after I had had time to get back into shape somewhat (round is a shape, right?) However, after feeling so good during run club and enjoying the comraderie, I decided to sign up for the triathlon program that started today. As in TODAY. Mind you that by the time I tried to get out of bed this morning, I didn't have full control of my thigh muscles. Turns out that the run yesterday left more lasting effects than first thought. And guess what we did for training today. More running!

As I sit here tonight, I'm reveling in the fact that I did make such a commitment (and if you know Coach Martha, you know what kind of commitment I'm talking about) because I would have not thought this was possible at this time last year. I'm in a much better place in terms of accepting personal challenges. This won't be easy. It will require quite a change to my schedule. I'll be missing Zumba on Wednesdays (but still able to attend most on Mondays). I'll not have a day to sleep in on weekends until mid-year, as running club is early Saturday and TriLaVie is early Sunday. Volunteerism is a mandatory requirement, as is training activities on your own time.

But, in the end, I'm hopeful that this is a step in the right direction.

Also, I may or may not need a wheelchair tomorrow.

My first race report

The race day begins with a wake up call at 4:30am. Wow that's early. Really early to get up and go race people.

I was really undecided about what to wear. You see, I picked a December race hoping it would be cool weather because Lord knows I sweat a lot and definitely didn’t want to swelter in 80 degree weather. That’s for crazy-folk.

Guess what. We had a record-breaking heat wave. The temperature rose from a low of 41 to a high in the 80s. FAN-tastic.

Anyway, back to the morning. I decided to pack up several outfits. I was set on wearing my running tights because as I’ve said before, Spandex feels awesome. I also opted for an Under Armor shirt that together with the tights would magically transform to a swimsuit. On top of that I had a moisture wicking green shirt and a jacket for the cool morning. Little did I know that that air was going to be so dry that there would be no moisture to be wicked.

Lori and Jane rang my doorbell at 5:30am and I opened my door to a video camera and a big balloon. These girls know how to party at the crack of dawn on a Sunday! We all loaded in my car and set off for a one and a half hour commute through the mountains to a town called Hemet. Not many people go to Hemet and now I know why. It's hot in the summer and apparently in the winter too. Hot and mostly flat.

The race is held at a high school. There were people milling about in all sorts of different holiday costumes. It actually was quite festive. Having never done this before, I wasn’t sure what a strategic spot would be to rack my gear in the transition area, so I picked a place I could remember: in the back near an end. By the time everyone’s gear was there, it would be like a game of Where’s Waldo to find your stuff in the middle. One astute competitor brought a helium balloon and tied it to his spot. I thought that was ingenious, but the race volunteers did not. They made him take it away. Dang straight buddy! No cheating!

It was about 30 minutes before the race when my good friend Tammy joined us after making that long drive to come cheer me on. It was also about this time that I got nervous. Like really nervous. I realized that I hadn’t been nervous all these long months that I was training and now I was thinking:

“What exactly am I doing here again?”

“Why do my legs feel like they are full of lead mixed with jelly?”

It became painfully obvious that I was about to embark on probably one of the most physically challenging endeavors of my adult life and now that three people had devoted their Sundays to cheering me on, there is no way I could back out now and disappoint them.

Doh.

About 10 minutes before race time, the announcer asked us to go down and assemble for the run. This is where I started to seriously assess my competition. There were quite a few people who looked like they took these races as serious business. There were others who looked like this was a fun recreational hobby, but they would still leave me in the dust. Then there were those who had one affliction or another where I made the mistake of thinking “Heh, yeah I could probably take him/her on.”

Case in point: the Lady on Crutches with One Leg. I pointed her out to Tammy. On one hand, I instantly felt inspired by this woman who obviously would not take her limitations to heart. She didn’t even have a prosthetic leg. She had crutches. Crutches! Like the kind that rub your underarms raw. But, apparently her forearms were made of steel because once the race started, she took off and I never saw her again. So yeah, I was beat by a woman with three limbs. I was also outraced by a grandmother who was probably in her 70s. I thought she was there showing support for a family member until the race horn went off and she took off running with an 8-minute mile pace. Also, she could have been 80.

I’m not ashamed. I was inspired by all of these people.

Within the first 5 minutes of running I got a side cramp. I haven’t had a side cramp in months of training. I couldn’t believe I would get one today of all days and it would remain for most all of the race. I was worried about all things ranging from knee pain to muscle fatigue to blisters, but no, I end up with a side stitch.

I tried to stay strong for the first mile and a half. But then it was getting so hot. I kept seeing a mirage of a water station, but that didn’t happen until we were about 75% of the way done and when I got there, they were out of water. Figures. How could that be? I started to panic just a little because my mouth was so dry and the air was getting so warm. My body that normally sweats a quart of water at the drop of a hat was clamming up. I started to get goosebumps. Not good. Not good at all. I’ve had this happen to me before and it can only end badly. I then thought about how much finishing the race meant to me and it wasn’t so much about time as it was about finishing, so I started walking more. I also hoped that it would help my side cramp (which it didn’t).

It was right around this time that a lady named Chey jogged up next to me as I walked. She was jogging very slow, as I just mentioned that I was walking. She said “I’ve been trying to catch up to you because I love the pretty green shirt you’re wearing.”

And that began our little race friendship. She jogged along side of me as I walked/jogged to the finish. We talked about why we were racing and where we liked to train. It actually made the rest of the run enjoyable and I all but forgot that I was suffering from heat stroke.

Once we got to the transition area it was time for a wardrobe change. Off with the green long sleeves and on with the short sleeve jersey... and socks… and bike shoes… and helmet… and gloves… and lip balm… and yeah I really need to work on my transitions. Chey was already on her way, so I hustled to get out on the road. It felt so nice to have liquid and a breeze! I was also able to suck down 2 Gu packets now that I had saliva again.

The bike ride was wonderful. It was fairly scenic at the base of some foothills through mostly open land. Since most everyone had passed me on the run, they were now passing me going the other way on the bike. I could have stuck out my hand for a continual high five. With my legs working better for me on wheels than on land, I was able to make up some time and pass a few people. I made sure to tell each person I passed what a great job they were doing and to keep up the great work. Basically what I would have wanted to hear as someone rode past.

The last 3 miles of the ride were the hardest. My feet were numb (this is normal for me) and I had a stomachache from the 2 blackberry Gu’s and the grape Gatorade I inhaled. I also managed to get a charlie horse in my right calf, likely due to the dehydration I endured on the run. I wasn’t about to stop, so I tried beating the back of my calf with my water bottle. This only worked in part and probably just made me look retarded.

About this time I passed this guy on a unicycle.
Thank GOD… I mean with getting beat by a grandma and a one-legged woman, I needed some sort of boost. Getting aced out by a unicycle would not have helped.

Once off my bike in the transition area, I quickly realized that my legs no longer worked. Everyone around me had already completed the swim and were lollygagging near their gear talking about the race with their buddies. I was struggling like an old person with a walker to re-rack my bike. The bottoms of my feet were so cramped that they would not flatten out. I have never experienced this phenomenon in my life and I have gone on much longer bike rides than 12 miles. I managed to get off my shoes and gear and start heading to the pool. Each step was like a teeny tiny charlie horse erupting in my instep. I can’t wait to see footage of myself in Lori’s video.

The pool area was fairly crowded and all that stood between me and a finsher’s medal were 150 short yards in the pool. Oh yeah, did I mention that when I arrived at my transition area I found my goggles broken in half? Was it the work of a saboteur or just bad luck? I’m thinking the latter. So, I was going to have to do this with my own bare eyes.

The water felt niiiiiiiice. It if wasn’t so heavily chlorinated, I would have liked to drink some. I think I secretly did drink some. I started out freestyle, but realized that without goggles, backstroke was my best bet. I have no idea how long I was in the pool, but as soon as I caught a glimpse of the clock and I was still in reach of my goal of 1:59, I swam as hard as I could. I stepped onto the mat at 1:57:47.

I did it!

When we finally hobbled back to my car, and by we I mean me, Jane surprised me with a champagne toast! So, whilst dodging the roving police officers, we managed to celebrate the success of a very fun day!

The stats:
Run: 0:38:55
Bike: 1:10:53
Swim: 0:08:33
Total: 1:58:21

My goal time was 1:59, which I beat, but I'm slightly disappointed that the time shown on the website is different than the one on the card they handed to me after the race. That said 1:57:47, so I'm going with that!

My transitions are what killed me. That is reflected in the 1:10 for the bike because that included getting ready for the bike and then getting ready for the swim. The 8 minute swim was also longer due to the fact that no one in the pool area could direct us as to what we were supposed to do! Chey and I were literally yelling for a volunteer to direct us on where we were supposed to swim and who was collecting our pool tags. So, all in all, I probably could have saved 10 minutes by just being faster in transition.

Things I'm glad I did:

1. Waited in the long, long line for the porta-potty before the race started.

2. Brought several wardrobes-worth of clothes for all weather scenarios.

3. Taped Gu packets to my bike frame that I could easily grab and eat.

4. Changed socks when I changed from running to bike shoes... hot feet!

5. Wore flip flops to the swim instead of walking barefoot on the gravelly parking lot.

Things I should have done:

1. Brought a second pair of goggles!

2. Apparently carried a water bottle on the run.

3. Checked to make sure I had properly opened the packaging on my Sport Beans, before riding my bike. I hadn't and therefore couldn't get the package open while riding.

4. Not stressed so much beforehand because I did fine!

As a takeaway, this was a brilliant quote I lifted from someone's signature on BeginnerTriathlete.com

"Remember DFL>DNF>DNS>DNT"

Which says, "Dead #&@* Last is better than Did Not Finish is better than Did Not Start is better than Did Not Try"

So I joined a running club.

Clearly I'm not a runner. However, since I'd like to be a triathlete someday, I need to be sort of a runner. That's why I joined a running club. It's run by Tri La Vie and Coach Martha, the same Coach Martha who runs the swimming program I joined where I routinely feel like I'm trying so hard I might drown.

Anyway, the running club has about 100 people in it of all abilities. There are separate groups based on distance: full/half marathon and 10k/5k. We meet up on Saturday mornings where we head out on a run and all meet back at a specified time where we have a guest speaker and a catered breakfast. Don't tell anyone, but it's really pretty fun.

I started doing the couch-to-5k program earlier this year on a treadmill in the gym. Let's just say that running on a treadmill is nowhere near what it's like running for real. The first group run was at Aliso Wood Canyon, where I like to ride my mountain bike. We started in the parking lot outside of the park and followed a service road to the park entrance where the actual trails start.

Good news: It's mostly all downhill going in.

Bad news: It's mostly all uphill coming out.

That first run I didn't even make it to the park entrance. We were supposed to run/walk for 15 minutes and then turn around and come back. On the way back out, my legs were really getting tired and I had only gone about 1.75 miles round trip. Great.

Yesterday was our second run, this time being held at Peter's Canyon. This was a similar situation where you run on a trail or path until you get to the actual park entrance. One of the ladies in charge told us that if we made it to the outhouses at the entrance, then we went 1.5 miles, or 3 miles round trip.

So I take off with the group. The group quickly thins out with everyone running at a different pace. It was getting warm. It was dry. In fact, my sinuses were rebelling at just how dry the air was that day. All I could pay attention to was the incessant burning in my nostrils and the dryness in the back of my throat. The only thing that sounded like a good idea was to squirt my water bottle up my nose and, given the chance with a little privacy, I may have done just that.

I kept going and tried to focus on catching up to people walking up ahead. Once I would pass someone, I'd focus on the next. Eventually I made it to the outhouses. I checked my watch and I had only been going for 13 minutes. On one hand, I was like "It's only been 13 minutes!?!?" On the other, I was like "It's only been 13 minutes!!!!" Like the lady said, the outhouses were at the 1.5 mile mark. WOOO HOOO! That's my fastest time yet! In fact, that's so fast that it can't possibly be true! I was really happy and since I still had 2 more minutes before turnaround time, I kept going.

Then I saw a Tri La Vie mile marker.

And it said 1 mile.

Talk about a let down. I knew I couldn't have been that fast.

On the way back, however, things went a little better. My sinuses (like everywhere else on my body) must have been sweating because the burning in my nose had gone from inferno to mildly annoying. It was also sort of downhill.

This was a view of the way back:

About 3/4 of the way back to the starting point, I was having to walk a lot. I was tired. Just then, a girl who is much more overweight than I am jogged passed me. I knew she was part of our club because of the identifying green bracelet. For a split second I was dumbfounded. How was this large woman continue propelling herself forward at such a pace? It was super-inspiring to me and I thought "If she can do it, I can too!" and with that, I jogged the rest of the way to the group.

Just as we were nearing the group site, the ladies in charge were motioning for us to take a shortcut through the wooden fence in order to save time instead of going all the way down to the end of the trail around the fence and coming back.

I felt a wave of panic. Looking at the fence, it was large and wooden. It was too tall for me to climb over gracefully and there was too much dense brush at the bottom for me to crawl under. The only way was to go through the middle. It's sometimes hard to judge your body size relative to objects around you. My initial thought of panic was that I might not fit in that space to get through the fence. I thought about my options.

1. Try to get through the fence and risk getting stuck.

2. Ignore everyone and go all the way down and around the end of the fence.

3. Try to propel myself up and over the fence like a hurdle.

4. Pretend to tie my shoe while waiting for others to go through the fence first and refine my options based on whether they were successful.

I opted for number 4. My biggest fear was obviously this:

However, my personal view of my body image clearly has not changed because once everyone cleared out, I made it through the fence with no issue at all! In fact, I could go through that fence all day and not get stuck. I could probably eat a quart of ice cream and still make it through that fence. I'm not going to try that though.

"On your left" has no meaning to these people!

This weekend was pretty fun. On Saturday, I participated in the OC Gran Fondo Bike Ride through Irvine. It was a charity ride with donations going to the Catholic Neumann Center. There were four rides to choose from: 101, 63, 31, and 11 miles. I have to say that with this being the inaugral event it was an awesome time, but there are a few kinks to be worked out starting first with the road markers! I know I didn't actually stay on the correct course because I definitely didn't end up riding 31 miles.



The course started out near my office in Irvine. There were tiny "post-it note" style arrows on the ground, with a specific color representing one of the four routes. All rides started out at the same location, but in one-hour intervals. I got there a bit late and started with the 11-mile group, which was mostly families and kids. Holy batman robin!! These kids need to be brought up to speed on bike lane and bike trail etiquette!!!! Stay to the right kids… that's all I can say! I seriously thought I might die in the first part of the ride. You’ve got novice adult riders mixed in with kids just off training wheels and then serious roadies all sharing the same path. We weren't even 2 blocks into the ride when there was a pile up in the bike lane on Alton Parkway. Riders started going into the traffic lanes to get around the carnage, causing actual cars to swerve to miss them. It was heinous.

I thought that once we were on the river trail, we'd be in better shape. Oh.my.god. People were riding 3-4-5 abreast on a two-way path. The worst was when we were going down the hills in the underpasses and people were zooming in the other direction almost having to play a game of chicken. Some of the underpasses don't have guardrails so it'd be a nasty spill to end up down the embankment and into the urban runoff. If that wasn't bad enough, then while pedaling up the hill on the other side of the underpass, people would randomly hop off their bikes to walk… not paying attention to those of us behind them who are clipped into our pedals!

One of the funny memories I have is of this mom who was obviously on her hubby's mountain bike because her feet couldn't reach the ground. She was riding with her two young boys. I kept my distance from them while waiting for an opportunity to pass, but she seemed competent enough on two wheels to not make me fear for my life. Not so much. For absolutely NO apparent reason, she lost her balance, veered hard to the left towards oncoming riders, then cut hard to the right desperately trying to touch the ground with her feet, and then wobbled back to the left before regaining balance as if nothing ever happened. It was hi-larious! Props to her for staying upright though.

Once I was on my own trying to follow the course route, things got a bit hairy. The aforementioned route markers were nowhere to be found and the peeps who had started my ride an hour earlier were also nowhere to be found. So, I just sort of did my own thing and had a good time. Hopefully some pix will be up on their website to post.

To continue my active weekend, on Sunday I was a TriLaVie volunteer at the OC Triathlon in Mission Viejo. TriLaVie is a local women's tri group. The founder and head coach is the same lady who runs my weekly swim workouts and she is awesome! My morning started with a wake up call at dark-thirty to get to my location by 6:00am. It was a major intersection that was closed as part of the course. My job was to direct traffic to other routes and cheer on the racers. It was really fun. After the bike riders came by, I walked a mile down the road to my next station, which was an intersection where the runners turn around. There we just needed to make sure that they actually made the turn. It was a fun experience and something I would definitely do again. However, next time I would volunteer at T1 where I could help hot tri dudes strip out of their wetsuits. :)

I think my even toes are getting skinnier

A couple of months ago, I thought it would be fun to run in a 5K. Turns out I was really just envious of Anne's race medals, even though she runs into vans.

I don't think running is fun, but it really burns a lot of calories. I can hit 13 cal/min during a run. Enter the Couch to 5K program, or c25k for short. I downloaded the app onto my iPod and it runs (ha ha) in the background while you're playing music. It's a 9-week program that involves running and walking intervals to gradually get your butt off the couch and able to run 3.1 miles.

I've been taking it pretty slow, which is the beauty of the program because you can repeat weeks as needed. I don't want to sideline myself with an injury, so I don't focus on speed, but rather sticking out the run intervals even though my lungs are on fire. I started the program in May (I said I was taking it slow!) and can definitely see mucho improvement! The first week has 30 second runs and today's workout included 3 minutes. When I saw that pop up, I was like "oh Lord", but I did it! Twice! And, I could have held a conversation with someone if I hadn't been alone in the gym.

So where am I taking this you ask? Well initially I was planning to sign up for a local 5K. But then I thought, why stop there? Why not go for a full triathlon? No really. I'm going to do the Tinsel Triathlon in Hemet. It's on 12/12, so I think that gives me plenty of time to finish up the c25k (at my own slow pace) and not embarrass myself. I figure I'll post updates during my training and see how much I can improve! I did 3.1 miles on the treadmill in 53 minutes. Nothing to be proud of, but I finished.