Sunday, August 30, 2009

CapTex Swim and Carolyn's Birthday

Chad, Raquel, me, and Kelli
Friday night I got to meet Chad and Raquel who belong to the same internet triathlon forum that Kelli and I met through. We had a great time and Raquel told us about her recent bike crash, yikes! and showed us the horrible bruise on her leg, really yikes!!

Del came to Austin again for the CapTex Swim. Kim was planning to come out for the swim too, but at the last minute decided she really didn't want to drive out and have to drive right back on Saturday, I can't really blame her, although I was sad I didn't get to see her.
Saturday morning Del and I went to the swim and were really surprised at how small and laid back it was. We both did the 1500 meter and 1.2 mile swims. There was also a 750 meter swim. Del got first in his age group for the 1500 and 2nd for the 1.2. I got 2nd in both the 1500 and 1.2. I had great swims and even after the 1.2 I felt like I could jump right back in the water and swim a little more. I have been working really hard on my swimming with Coach Jen this spring and summer, so it was fun to do a long swim and see some improvement! Del has always been a faster swimmer than me, so I was really excited to beat him by just a few seconds in the 1.2 mile swim!
After the swim, the organizers had a picnic and gave away tons of stuff. I ended up with 1 tech shirt, 3 other shirts, 2 swim caps, a pair of socks, and a workout bag!
Saturday evening was Carolyn's 50th birthday party. Jeff had to work and didn't get to go. I noticed there were a lot of people on the evite, so I assumed it would be a backyard cookout. I was really hungry and almost ate before I left for the party, but I didn't. I was surprised when I got to Carolyn and Tom's and saw that it was a catered dinner party, the food was awesome, so I'm really glad I didn't eat before the party! I ate with Kendra, Chris, Cindy, Rita, and Kim, while we ate Kendra, Chris and I had our backs to the TV slide show that Tom had made of lots of pictures throughout Carolyn's life. Everyone else was talking about the slide show and how cool it was so finally we went over to watch it. Tom happened to be sitting near us and narrated about some of the pictures. It really was a cool slide show.
Carolyn's cake was beautiful! It looked like something from the Ace of Cakes and it tasted really good too!Every time I saw Carolyn all night she was smiling from ear to ear or laughing, it was obvious that she was having such a great time!
We toasted Carolyn and sang Happy Birthday. she said she was really happy and excited to be turning 50- awesome!
Jeff, Pam, Laura, and Tom
I had a great time, it was so much fun to see Carolyn being so happy to turn 50! Plus I got to see and talk with some of my Tri Zones friends who I don't see all the time.
Cindy, Kendra, and Chris
Diana, Coach Tracy, Lynn and Kim
Carolyn opening presents. I had so much fun and I'm really happy I got to share Carolyn's 50th birthday with her!

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Longhorn course ride again

We rode the Longhorn bike course again today and I think everyone had a good ride. Del came to Austin for the weekend and got to ride the course for the first time. When we got started my legs felt a little tired, I thought for sure I was going to be sorry I worked so hard at Thursday's time trial and rode home from work Friday. The tired legs feeling never completely went away, but I had a very good ride anyway. The ride actually went by quickly for me. Before I knew it I was at mile 30 and saw Lynn's car up ahead complete with a big orange sign reading "Tri Zones SAG" She and Ed had water, icee pops, and tons of support and encouragement for us! If you know me, you know how happy I was about surprise icee pops! Thanks again Lynn and Ed, you guys are awesome! Next thing I know I'm making the turn onto Webberville Road, it's the last part of the course and it's flat with nice road, but the traffic is annoying. I'm riding along and a cyclist comes up beside me, turns out it's Doug Burnet! He ended up riding with me all the way back to Decker Lake which was awesome because I had company for that annoying stretch, riding with Doug made Webberville just fly by! When we got back to the lake, Doug continued on home and I ran my brick with Sandra who had finished just a few minutes before me. We ran 40 minutes, it was hot and hilly, but not too bad. I managed to ride really close to my goal race pace today even with tired legs!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Vickie's Hell Ain't This Hot Half

Photo by Tom Marek
Vickie decided to organize a small half iron race since she didn't get to do the ones she had planned on this season. She named it Vickie's Hell Ain't This Hot Half and she really took the theme to the extreme! She showed up with a trident and little devil horn barrettes!
Photo by Tom Marek
First thing all the participants did was "packet pickup".In our packets was glow sticks, Hot Tamales, a trident, lava rocks, and a water gun!
Next was body marking, we all got body marked with tridents!
Then we set up our transition areas on the limestone rocks in the parking lot.

The swim was in Lake Pflugerville. Jody brought her kayaks and Jody and Vickie were our in water support. Thanks!! Some people did the full 1.2 mile swim (2 loops), others of us decided to just do 1 loop to try to get on the bike and run before it got too hot. I had a good swim, but I kept wondering why I couldn't catch Carolyn, she's usually just a little slower than me in the water. I assumed she'd gotten a lot faster this summer, but later she told me she wore fins for the swim! I'll have to look up the HATHH regulations to see if that's a violation, but something tells me it's perfectly legal! Photo by Tom Marek
I got started on the bike and felt good, it was even a little cloudy! We saw the zebras at the wildlife ranch near the lake! I had never seen them before. I had maps and directions with me, but I don't know the Pflugerville area at all, and about 5 miles into the ride Dustin and I missed a turn and went down a big hill, then of course had to climb back up it. Missing the turn put me in a mental funk so I was worried about missing turns and getting lost the rest of the first loop. My biggest challenges riding are mental and when I get into a negative attitude it's tough to have a good ride. I took a couple other wrong turns on the first loop and missed the water stop Jody had set up. By the time I got to Annette's water stop I was SUPER happy to see her, thanks SO much Annette! By that time I was almost finished with the first loop and Nicki, Julie, Sandra, Dustin, and I all rode the second loop mostly together. It was HOT on the second loop and the wind was pretty fierce, but Dustin did a lot of pulling for Sandra and I. He said he owed it to me for missing the turn on the first loop, but I think that was just as much my fault as his. Someone's melted gummy bears after the bike ewww! it was really hot! Photo by Tom Marek

The second loop went much better just because I had friends to pull me out of my mental funk! Jody and Emmie had 3 water stops for us, which was awesome because it really did feel hotter than hell out there! Turns out most of us made a couple of wrong turns on the first loop and we all did 60+ miles instead of the planned 56, oh well.
T2 included putting our bikes back in our cars.
People had planned on doing different run distances depending on their training. I was planning on doing the 13.2 mile option. But Kenneth and Tom both said it was too hot. Then Coach Jen (who had finished the Aquabike hours earlier!) told me I was only allowed to run the 3 mile loop around the lake. I started to whine about it, but then I decided I should shut my mouth and do what she said. It's not very often she tells me I'm not allowed to do something. Coach Jen with her "Hell uva Job" finisher's medal. Photo by Tom Marek

So Sandra and I started our 3 mile run around the lake. I actually felt good for most of the run, but it was really hot! I definitely couldn't have done 13, but I think maybe I could have done 6, although I would have been miserable the last mile or 2.Kenneth enjoying a post-race beer. Photo by Tom Marek
Vickie just after finishing. Photo by Tom Marek
Carolyn getting her finisher's medals. Photo by Tom Marek
Nicki showing off her finisher's medal
Me coming in to the finish
Jody got recycled Austin Marathon medals and turned them into Hell Ain't This Hot Half medals, how cool!
Cindy made "Hell uva Job" finisher's medals for us too! Awesome!

Coach Jen told us all to rehydrate really well tonight, and Vickie (she's a nurse) told us we all need to wear our compression socks the rest of the day after working out so hard in the heat so long today. I really feel pretty good right now. Although I did end up with helmet vent sunburn lines! 3 stripes on my forehead! That's only happened once before.

Thanks so much to Vickie for setting this up! And to Jody, Emmie, Annette, Vickie, Tom and any other volunteers I'm missing! Also thanks to Tom (and everyone who used my camera) for all the awesome pictures! It was so much fun, although some of the time, it was fun in that weird, painful kind of way. I guess that's what you get for doing something called Vickie's Hell Ain't This Hot Half!

Monday, August 10, 2009

New Bike Lane

Today was my first day to ride on Anderson Lane. They resurfaced and restriped Anderson and they put in a new bike lane! Anderson is pretty busy and traffic is fairly fast so I have never ridden on Anderson with the traffic. But I cross Anderson twice every day on my way to and from work. I had to wait and wait and wait for an opening in traffic every night (morning traffic isn't so bad), but now I can just go to the light and ride a few blocks in the bike lane on Anderson to my turn. Cool! Thank you City of Austin!

Thursday, August 6, 2009

My birthday!

I decided I wanted to go to Schlitterbahn again for my birthday. I went with my little brother in June and it was tons of fun and not that crowded. Lori and Fred came with us and traffic was pretty bad so we got there a little later than I had hoped and it was definitely more crowded than when I went with Jason. We had to wait in a few long lines, but other than that it was super fun! By the time we left we were all so tired! I wanted Homeslice for dinner, but there was an hour wait and that was just not going to work, so we went to Phil's Icehouse instead.

Jeff got me this cool new transition bag. I have been needing one for a long time.
It has compartments for all my cool tri stuff, bike shoes, run shoes, bottles, gloves, etc. even a waterproof compartment for my wetsuit.

I got to work today and found two boxes from the Cookie Lounge on my desk! Ingrid had ordered them and had them delivered to my office, how cool!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Jack's Generic Triathlon

Photo by Tom Marek
I decided to try David's pre-race method for Jack's. I did a short ride on Saturday morning and then tried to do as little as possible and stay off my feet as much as possible. It was completely boring! I didn't think I was going to make it, but when Jeff got off work, Fred and Lori came over for awhile. Lori is planning to get a new bike and do the LiveStrong Challenge! After staying off my feet and doing nothing all day, I had a tough time sleeping Saturday night so I was a little worried that would affect my race.

Nicki and Peggy got to my house at 5:15 and after a little hassle we put my bike in her car and headed to the Ski Ranch. When they body marked me they also put a big barcode on my arm, apparently only a few people ended up with barcodes, so I had to show it off! I got a good transition spot not too far from Kristen and Shelley. After my T2 confusion at Couples, Kristen and I walked our transitions and counted racks to make sure we would remember exactly where our stuff was.
Kristen decided to try a flying mount and dismount today and she did awesome at both!
There were tons of Tri Zoners around, so I knew it would be a fun day! Kristen and Sandra

I did a swim warm up and the water actually seemed a lot cleaner than I expected. When I got out of the water I was cold! It was cloudy and almost looked like it might rain.Julie, me, Peggy, Nicki and Sandra just before the start. Photo by Tom Marek
Carolyn let me borrow her shirt while I waited for my wave to start. Thanks Carolyn! My goal for this race was to beat my paces from Skeese Greets, Jack's is at the same venue, but it's a longer race, so racing at faster paces would be a challenge. I also promised Coach Jen I would race as hard as I could at Jack's.

I started toward the front of my wave and had a good swim, not nearly as crazy and aggressive as the swim at Couples. I tried to concentrate on my technique and swimming strong. My swim time (and lots of others) didn't get recorded properly, so my swim and T1 time got combined. I'm going to assume my T1 today was about the same as at Skeese Greets- 3:43, which would make my swim time at Jack's 11:00 for a pace of 2:12/100m. At Skeese my pace was 2:41/ 100m. Even if my transition was faster than at Skeese, I still definitely beat my Skeese Greets swim pace. So goal 1 accomplished! I guess all that swimming is starting to pay off! The pavement at the Ski Ranch is really slippery so I walked most of the way to transition, I'd much rather have a slow T1 than fall and mess up my entire race.

I got out on the bike course and remembered how rough the roads are! Infinit immediately started spilling out of my aerobottle, so I drank a little just to keep it from spilling all over my bike! The first part of the ride was nice and I was really trying to keep my pace up as much as possible. Then we hit the section that had just been chip sealed- YUCK! It was really rough and we had a head wind on that section. I saw lots of Tri Zoners on the ride and Kristen and I played tag a couple of times. When we got back onto the smoother pavement I really tried to push the pace, that rough chip sealed stuff always slows me down. I could really feel the hills in my legs and I wondered if I'd be able to have a good run. I came down then up the hill to transition, and saw Tom taking pictures, thanks Tom! Photo by Tom Marek
I have no idea why I stuck my tongue out at Tom! I wasn't sure if I would beat my bike pace or not, but at Skeese it was 13.9 and at Jack's it was 14.2, goal 2 accomplished! T2 was 1:37, it was 1:33 at Skeese.

I started the run and felt good, I couldn't believe it was still cloudy and not that hot, it was humid, but not hot. I knew the first half of the run would be mostly up hill so I figured I could push myself a little harder than I thought I could handle, since it would be mostly downhill on the second half. I saw Nicole volunteering at the turn around water stop, and tried to speed up a little on the way back since it was down hill. I saw tons of Tri Zoners on the run too, it's great to see friends and hear so much encouragement! As I got close to the finish I was pretty sure I would beat my 5K PR! I saw Carolyn and Tom taking pictures again and I almost yelled to them "I'm going to get a 5K PR!", but I didn't. Photo by Carolyn Marek
Coming in to the finish looking really happy that I'm going to get a 5K PR!
I actually did beat my PR by about 3 minutes! I didn't quite beat my Skeese Greets run pace, it was 10:02 and my pace today was 10:12, but that is the fastest I've ever run in a sprint tri (or a stand alone 5K) so I'm really happy with that!

Julie W. got second place in her age group. Nicki and Peggy had great races. Sandra also got a 5K PR! I got to help Kristen accomplish a second goal today. She wanted to run 1/2 of the run course without a walk break, she planned to run the first half, but I told her the first half is uphill, second half downhill, so maybe she should go for the non stop running on the second half. She took my advice and ran the longest she's ever run without walking today!Sandra and I after the race, photo by Tom Marek

Thanks so much for all the awesome pictures Tom and Carolyn!!