Weekly Recap – Competitive Week #10

Competitive Week # 10 went well.  I skipped one running session, a swim session, and a strength training session.  I skipped running because I could feel my knees starting to get a little tweaked from all the running from the previous week.  I skipped a swim because you know how much I love to swim.  I just wanted the extra sleep .  And, I skipped the strength training because I knew I would be doing a lot of crawling and pulling myself up and over things during the Highlander III Adventure Mud Run. 

But, here’s the recap with the Garmin links:

Tuesday: swim, bike

Wednesday: tempo run, long swim

Thursday: Davis Island bike

Friday: off

Saturday: Highlander III – recap in yesterday’s post and can also be found on the Recap page

Sunday (65% of full distance trial run): swim, bike, brick run

Sunday was a planned trial run of doing close to 3/4 of the full distance triathlon.  For the swim, I put on my wetsuit and swam around the little pool that I have at my place.  It’s really important to get used to wearing a wetsuit before the race.  When I get into the water, I want to make sure that I’m focusing on my breathing because I want to be steady as opposed to I can’t breathe at all.  I’m swimming tomorrow at LA Fitness and will be doing about 20 minutes in my suit.  I don’t want to ruin it with the chlorine…  I made sure to plan out my nutrition as if it were race day as well.  I’ll summarize that below.  The bike was 70 miles (well, 67 and change), and the run was exactly 16 miles.  I stopped 5 times.  The second stop was a about 5 minutes longer than it should have been because I got stopped and was chit-chatting with someone.  The very last stop I didn’t even stop my watch because I wanted it to be a quick stop-and-go.  All I did was re-fill my water bottle with cold water and went.  I was very happy with my overall finish on this trial run.  So, on to nutrition:

Breakfast (about an hour before swimming):

• 1 cup of peanut butter cheerios and 8 oz of So Delicious Unsweetened Almond Milk with Protein – 170 calories
• After swimming – 2 Powerbar Oatmeal Raisin Energy bites, 1/2 bonk breaker – 205 calories
• On the bike – 2 scoops of infinit (200 calories) with 3 squirts of MiO Energy, 1 Clif bar toffee crunch (240 calories), 1/2 Honey Stinger (80 calories) – total calories – 520
• Execution: Sip Infinit mix every 10 minutes.  Every hour on the hour eat instead of drinking Infinit.  Wait 20 minutes after eating before continuing to drink Infinit.  Hour 1 – 1/2 Clif bar, Hour 2 – 1/2 Clif bar, Hour 3 – 1/2 Honey Stinger.  Sip water along the way.
• Transition from bike to run – 1 Clif Shot Espresso – 100 calories, 100 mg of caffeine
• On the run – 4 gels and water 
• Execution:  I was going to have a gel every 3 to 3.5 miles.  But, I was still full from the 1/2 Honey Stinger and Clif Shot.  So, I took the first gel, a Clif shot Strawberry flavor, at mile 5.  This was also my first stop. 
• Stop 2, mile 9.5, Roctane Blueberry Pomegranate
• Stop 4, mile 12.5, 2nd Surge Double Espresso – 100 mg of caffeine + 3 g of protein

Amazingly I only had to pee once and that was during my transition from the bike to the run.  I spent 7 minutes dropping my bike off, using the bathroom and getting my run gear on. 

On an even better note.  I didn’t have any stomach issues after the run.  Normally I have to run to the bathroom immediately after I eat something.  But, felt fine the whole day.  After the run, I took a bath and kept my legs up for a little while to let the blood flow back the other way.  When I got out, I put on my compression pants and calf compression sleeves.  I rewarded myself with a turkey burger from Green Iguana and two Guinness’  .  I felt pretty good today and I am ready to get this week over with to get to the real stuff on Sunday (Augusta HIM) and then focus all my attention on one last century ride and then the highly anticipated tapering period.

Good night!   

Making good impressions

This is my first official post on this blog. For now, there is no rhyme or reason to how blog postings from me will be.  Hopefully this first blog will interest you enough to come back.   

I'm currently training for my first Ironman distance triathlon, Beach to Battleship in North Carolina on 10/20/2012. I'm about 10 weeks out from the Ironman triathlon, but do have a few races before then. Back-tracking, I had a triathlon last weekened.

Results:

Siesta Key Olypmpic Distance -  www.multirace.com

Final time 2:30:54; place - 2nd overall women

Swim - 29:36

T1 - 1:38

Bike - 1:07:17

T2 - 1:25

Run - 50:52

Race evaluation:

Swim was good because the water was pretty calm. Usually sighting is what kills my time, but I managed to stay more on course than any other race. Still working on swimming. This is definitely my weakest point. Any thoughts/ideas/suggestions on how to improve? I try to concentrate on keeping my head down to keep my butt up, rotate my upper body, and to stretch my arm out just after it's entered the water before I begin pulling.

This was my fastest bike to date. The group training rides have really helped my speed. I've gotten in a lot more hill and speed work as opposed to long and steady that I usually do when I'm by myself. There are two loops on an open road for this bike course. It's usually early enough for the first loop that there's not that much traffic. But, as you come around for the second loop, all the riders on the road makes the car traffic back up as well. It can get a little hairy and makes it difficult to pass sometimes.

I've done this course 3 other times. The entire run is on the beach. It is definitely the hardest 6.2 mile run for a triathlon I've ever had to do. I was a little angry at the end of the bike leg because of some of the other riders being all over the place on the road. Every time I would try to pass them, they would speed up so I couldn't. And, when I slowed down and got back behind them, they would slow down too so that I was right behind them and had to go to the far right or far left of the lane so that I wouldn't draft. The last 2 miles I just gave up and decided to let my legs relax a little and figured I would catch them on the run. Sure enough, I passed them before the first mile.

Overall, I like this race. As I said earlier, I've done this course 3 other times, and 2 of them were with through Multirace. They didn't execute this race as well as all the other races, but I still enjoyed it. They are really good at getting the results out super fast. They will print out your results as soon as your done and post them on flat screens with your ranking. I even had an email with my results before I got home.

Nutrition:

Pre-race -

1.5 cups of cheerios and non-fat milk at 3:30. Race started at 7:15. About 30 minutes before my wave, I had 3 Powerbar energy bites - Oatmeal Raisin... these are soooo yummy. They had samples of the Powerbar energy gels, so I had one about 15 minutes before wave start.

During race -

Drank water and gatorade in T1. About 15 minutes into the bike ride, I had a Gu energy gel. At mile 21 of the bike (3 miles left) I had another Gu energy gel. On sprint and olympic distance triathlons, I only have my Profile water bottle on the bike. I always drink all of the water by the time I hit T2. At mile 3 of the run I had my final Gu energy gel. There was an water station at mile 1.5, 3, 4.5, and 6. I took water at every station and some extra to pour on my arms, legs and head to try to cool down some.

Post race -

About 5 bottles of water and a strawberry MuscleMilk. I tried to eat, but I felt awful from the heat.