I don't deal with natural disasters well

My friend Casi started an #Irene #pro and #con trend on twitter. I love lists, so let's look at some pros and cons of this week.

Pro - All sorts of stuff is hung up in my classroom and I have some lessons planned for the childrens' arrival next week.

Con - Doing all that crap prevented me from blogging all week. Jobs are so lame.

Con - Tuesday's run was hill repeats. 

Pro - My average pace was MUCH faster then I expected (9:03).

Pro - Wednesday's bike sprints took place around this lake while viewing this gorgeous sunrise.

Con - Flags at every quarter mile let you know when to start sprinting. I was apparently so slow that my last time around had no flags because they'd already been removed.

Pro - I ran 3 miles with a superfast girl after the sprints and she pushed me to be speedy like Kari.

Con - She's not available to run with me all the time, so I'll be back to my slow(er) self.

Pro - Running 9 miles Thursday morning with Mike.

Con - We ran on some path and it was pitch black and I thought I was going to die.

Here's where we get into some serious cons. 

Con - Irene is coming.

Pro - We already had an emergency kit and restocked it yesterday before the complete craziness hit the stores today. We have plenty of water, nonperishable food, batteries, and chocolate now.

Con - My ten mile race Sunday was canceled.

Pro - Kara is a genius and told me to do the ten miles today.

Con - I was too dumb to think of that idea myself. Also, now my legs are tired. And I have 14 miles scheduled for tomorrow morning.

Pro - Sunday is my new rest day, so best case scenario, I lay on the couch and watch the hurricane and play board games with Eric.

Con - It's a lot more likely I'll be panicking about flooding with no power and water and accidentally eat all my chocolate right away instead of rationing it.

Pro - I've spent so much time freaking out about the hurricane that it totally took the place of my normal first day of school panic that usually lasts the entire teacher preparation week.

Irongirl photos are up! Let's take a little look at those to get everyone's mind off that super bitch Irene.

Pro - I finished the race.

 Con - I run like a weirdo, wobbling to the side or something.

 Pro - I stopped my Garmin right at the finish line.

 Con again - There's that freaky wobbling again.

 Pro - We got a cute finish line picture!

 Pro - Sometimes I saw the cameras.

 Con - Sometimes I didn't.

 Pro - I totally look hardcore on the bike.

 Pro - They obviously couldn't see individual numbers during the swim, so they included a picture of everyone.

Con - Pretty sure that's not my wave. Also they took a picture of me coming out of the water and that's the one I actually wanted to see and it wasn't there.

Con - We don't own a home.

Pro - We don't own a home for Irene to damage. Any damage to our apartment - totally not our (financial) problem.

#firstworldpain

I have suffered some really serious first world pain this week. Let's complain about it.

1. I had to go back to working FULL TIME yesterday. Unacceptable.

2. The floors at my school were being waxed, so we met at a park for team building activities. We were told it would be catered. I'm a psycho about bringing my own lunch anyway to things like that, because I've suffered before. But, I've had some good vegetarian meals at catered things recently, so I thought maybe the tide was turning. Plus, I was assured on Friday that there would be a meal for me. Plus, I HATE making lunches, and after my triathlon on Sunday, I wanted to put that horrible task off for one more day.

I never got super hungry after my triathlon on Sunday (if you follow me on Twitter, you may recall I ate a bowl of cereal at 3:45 and that was dinner), so naturally, the bottomless pit hunger hit me on Monday, and I was ready to gnaw my arm off about an hour after breakfast. Because I was also too lazy to pack snacks, I grabbed random stuff before I left, so I had a bag of a few pieces of raw red pepper around 10am. In the lunch line, I was starving, and couldn't wait to grab the specially labeled "vegetarian" wrap.

It was freakin lettuce. In a wrap. Like literally, a handful of bagged lettuce, on a wrap. No cheese, condiment of any kind, nothing. To add to my first world pain, "lockerz" keeps putting an ad over the picture when I try to screengrab it from Twitter, and I already deleted it from my phone, so I can't even show you. Also, we were in the middle of nowhere, I hadn't even driven, and the only other snack I had was a nectarine. Luckily, my friend got a second sandwich and was nice enough to give me his cheese, and they had a few packets of mustard out.

The afternoon of team building activities was a blur of standing in the sun trying to untie knots by putting your entire body through them and lining up planks to get across a field, but my main goal was not passing out from hunger.

3. After I went home and devoured some real food, I got back into my habit of getting snacks and lunches ready for the week, and couldn't wait to go to yoga. It was canceled for two weeks while they cleaned the rooms they have classes in at the YMCA (I can clean a room in under an hour, but apparently it takes them two weeks, whatev). After running 18 miles and completing my first triathlon this weekend, I was ready for some serious stretching. When I got to the Y, I was informed there was no yoga. Apparently this was only the second week of the cleaning. NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

I considered going for a walk, but I'd spent enough time in the sun, so I decided to do some On Demand yoga. Apparently On Demand "Yoga" is code for "sneaky ab workouts". Not that my abs couldn't use a workout, but I really just wanted to stretch my legs. I stuck with one 15 minute workout that was pretty much abs and thigh toning, since it can't hurt, then managed to find a 20 minute routine that was actually yoga and stretched my legs.

Do you see how I suffer? Thank god my #firstworldpain was eliminated when I made myself an amazing dinner and the How I Met Your Mother with the love of my life, Katy Perry, was on. 

Wouldn't we all rather look at that, than ugly nasty bagged lettuce on a wrap anyway? Plus, I love NPH. Let's just look at Katy a little more.

 

Speaking of the love of my life, I'll probably never meet Katy, so I'll celebrate today being Eric's birthday.

We are not celebrating until this weekend, I got some great suggestions on twitter to cook him dinner to make today a little special. But, I forgot it's his trivia night. So he will get (one of) his  favorite dinner (s) - wings. Cooked by people who know how, at a restaurant. In terms of trivia, the best gift I could give anyone is to NOT be on their team. Actually, it would be to join another team, but I'll settle for just staying home and going to sleep. Wife of the year, right here.

Irongirl Columbia Triathlon

 Another LONG race recap. Get ready.

This morning I was ready to take a creepy picture and leave at 4am for the Columbia Irongirl Triathlon!

 We wanted to get there at 5am to get the good parking. Mission accomplished. Thank god for coffee.

The first thing to do was get body marked.

 

We failed to take into account that it's pitch black at 5am, making it a bit tough to see to set up your transition area. There were actually girls wearing headlamps and we wished we had brought ours. This transition area is a joke. You're supposed to organize everything a certain way to get out super quick, but I basically threw everything on the ground under my bike.

 

But, I did remember to open my camelbak (so I could drink out of the nozzle) and my Gu, and put my Gu in a non-zippered pocket!

 

Next order of business - actually put on the timing chip, aka be official participants of the race. I mean, obviously. It's not like anyone would ever forget that part.

 

We had been told it was super important to pump up your tires, even if they felt totally full already. Genius that I am, I had never used our air pump, always letting experienced bikers take care of that little detail before rides (or, um, totally skipping it). 

We ended up not being able to attach it to the tires correctly, I accidentally let all the air out of Lily's tire (I know, don't you wish you could race with me?), and running to the lines of people wisely waiting for pros to pump their tires. Crisis averted, but barely.

Even though we got there at 5am, the transition area closed at 6:30, and we didn't leave until about 6:23. Are you runners appreciating how much more work this race is than pinning on your bib number, showing up, and running?

After finally leaving transition, I got my first (but not last) barefoot port -o-potty experience. I hadn't realized that almost everyone just wore their flip flops to the lake and ditched them before the swim. The sad part is that I realized this before we left transition, knew my flip flops had cost $1, hadn't even paid that because my mom gave them to me, and STILL couldn't bear to part with them. I don't know what barefoot runners are thinking, that walk to the lake hurt.

 

In line for the port-o-potties, it started raining. As we walked to the lake, it started pouring. All these girls were trying to find cover under trees and stuff to stay dry and it was taking all my willpower not to scream "HELLO, we're about to jump in a LAKE!!!".

Naturally, I started panicking about riding my bike on wet roads. The well intentioned announcements every thirty seconds about being careful because the roads would be extremely slippery weren't helping. The other awesome part was that all our stuff would now be soaked. Biking shoes, running shoes, socks, towels, helmet, all of it was out in the rain. YAY!

It started thundering and lightening and they announced that the start would be postponed and they would reevaluate the weather in ten or fifteen minutes to see if it was safe for the race to go on. After already being cheated out of one tri this summer, you better believe I would have been pissed for this one to be canceled!

Luckily, the storm passed, and the swim began. There were 15 waves, identified by different color swim caps. We were in wave 12, so despite arriving at 5am, leaving transition at 6:30, we didn't enter the water until 8:20! After we got in, everyone walked to the first buoy, and then they counted down, and it was time to swim or drown.

You can't exactly take pictures during a swim, so here's a picture from today that was on the website of another wave starting.

 I had been warned that the lake was full of goose poop, but, I didn't encounter any - sorry Kara!

My open water swim practice did not fully prepare me for the triathlon. I was glad I knew how to sight, and swim without being able to see, and all that, but I got a little freaked out by all the other people. At the beginning, I should have just pushed ahead, but I was nervous about bumping into people and kicking people and getting kicked, so I hung back and wasted time.

I felt really tired at first, but that always happens when I swim, and I knew once I warmed up I'd be fine. I really wished I had trained more though. I could tell my form was way off and it was slowing me down, and I felt like I could never catch my breath.

We basically made a giant rectangle, and when I was going around the corners, aka the buoys, I made the mistake of sticking way too close to them. Like in any race, the fast people want to follow the tangents, so now I was pretty much in the "fast lane". I didn't realize my mistake until the first blue capped person nearly swam over me without batting an eye. They started five minutes after us, which made this girl super fast. More and more kept coming. I tried to go diagonally to get out of the way, but that was tough to do without wasting a ton of time and energy. Even worse than the blue caps swimming over me was when the purple caps started to - they were TWO waves back and still trampling passing me! This was totally messing with me and even though I felt fine physically, the swim was tough. The distance was .62 miles, but results aren't up, so I don't know how long it took. The one consolation was the sun came out, and I really hoped it was drying the roads for the bike course.

Getting out of the water and running to transition felt so weird! My legs felt really heavy, but I got out of transition as fast as I could and headed out to the bike course. Lily came over to her bike from the water just as I was wheeling mine out, which worked out great, because she caught up to me after a few miles.

The bike was shockingly my favorite part of this race! My wish had come true and the roads were now dry. This was the first time ever that I wasn't at all frightened on the downhills - I actually looked forward to them giving my legs a break and as a chance to pick up speed - this was a race, after all! My maximum speed was 34.3 miles per hour.

The hills seemed even hilly then the times we had ridden the course before, and at mile 7, I started really regretting yesterday's 18 miler. Or my legs did, at least. But, I was really proud that I not only drank out of my camelbak, but ate a Gu while riding, AND opened my zippered pocket to hand Lily a Gu, did it again when she didn't like the first flavor, and then took her trash and put it back in the pocket! For not even being able to scratch my nose while riding because my balance was so bad, I'd say that was an improvement.

A lot of girls walked their bikes up the hills, but we forced ourselves to ride them all. I honestly expected to have people flying by me the whole time, but the wave system had everyone spread out nicely, and I even passed a few people myself.

My first time riding the course, my average speed was 12.3 mph. The second time, 13.1. Today, it was 14.7! Official results are not in, but according to my Garmin, I covered 17.53 miles in 1:11:25.

Transition 2 took 2:17 - switching shoes, grabbing my hat and water bottle, and that was about it. Wait, why did that take two minutes and 17 seconds?

 At about mile 16 on the bike, Lily and I had both said that we felt great from the waist up, but my legs felt trashed and I was pretty nervous about the run. Like, I honestly didn't feel like I could run 3.3 miles.

 If you've ever run a marathon, imagine running miles 23 - 26.2 almost entirely up huge hills. I'd been warned about the run, but it was so much worse than I could have imagined. I can't even remember a time when I was so out of breath and my heart rate was so high, all while my legs were just screaming. It seemed to go on forever - you'd get to the top of a hill, only to be looking up at yet another hill. At the beginning, they'd honored a women competing who had recently had one of her legs removed and was doing the whole triathlon with her new prosthesis.  So I just kept telling myself that if I had two legs, I couldn't complain. It seemed like almost everyone was walking.

I wouldn't have been surprised to see I was running 12 minute miles, so when I got home, I was shocked to see my average pace had been 9:02! No idea how that happened. 3.39 miles in 30:37.

At the finish line, they announce your name, and tell you that you are an irongirl, so that was pretty cool. We got our medals, immediately signed up for our post - race massages, stretched and ate bagels and bananas while we waited.

By the time we got our massages, cleaned up our transition area, got our bikes on the car, and got home, it was 1pm. For leaving the house at 4am, that was a long day! I had big plans in my head for brinner, but dinner turned out to be a bowl of cereal at 3:45. Followed by wine, which I managed to wait until nearly 5pm to start with.

 Eric found it hilarious that my post triathlon dessert was banana, peanut butter, and chocolate chips, but it's an amazing dessert.

It was tough, but we did it!

We are Irongirls!!!

Happy Tri Eve!

I really appreciate all the concern about my amazing experience on Thursday, where I claimed a truck gave out free ice cream, massages, and manicures.  Despite how much this sounds like a kidnapping waiting to happen, it was true.

 We got there about ten minutes after it started and they were about to close up shop. We were the last lucky "customers". I got the last ice cream, so I fed some to my friend Andrea while she got a massage, which actually sounds like my version of heaven.

 The massage was quick and the manicure was actually just getting our nails painted, but I still think it was a pretty good way to spend 20 minutes of my life.

This morning I was up at 5:40 to do my long run with my group, and then do all the required things to participate in my first triathlon tomorrow! Which were: pick up my packet at a hotel, drive to the park where the triathlon will be to rack my bike, and drop Lily's bike off to her at another hotel (long boring story why I had to do that part). Which left me trying to bring two bikes down three flights of stairs at 6am. I don't recommend it.

I got to the running store at 7am and knocked out 18 miles with my friends Jill and Jackie. Jackie was fighting serious calf pain, but she fought through it like a champ. We kept the pace nice and easy so she wouldn't aggravate it even more, and most of the run I felt like I could have been going a bit faster (except on the hills), which is good the day before a big race.

I had this crazy idea that by bringing a banana I could drive around doing all the bike stuff and not eat until I got home. Good thing our coach got Dunkin Donuts bagels for us, since I didn't get home until after 2pm and I was starving even WITH the bagel. DD was rather pathetic after last week's amazing bagel in Queens, but after 18 miles, it hit the spot.

Chocolate milk and bagel in the car - breakfast of champs

After getting my packet at the expo, I headed over the race start to rack my bike. Seeing everything set up for tomorrow's race got me really excited. It's a women's only race, so everything was pink, my favorite color.

Look at all those bike racks!

Even the porto-potties were pink!

Bike officially racked!

 Irongirl is all fancy with my name! The last almost triathlon you just put your bike anywhere you wanted when you got there that morning.

 I got a compliment from the volunteer on my mad skills putting my sticker on the bike. Six years of teaching has not been for nothing!

 

I'm in love with the pink race shirt.

After all that, once again, my ice bath attempts were thwarted.

 No worries though, I just went to another store, which turned out to be a dollar cheaper. Score.

 3 giant pickles, cherry juice to reduce inflammation, and water.  Completely normal ice bath requirements, right?

Packing for a tri is so complicated, but everything on the checklist they gave me is checked off. I have to be at Lily's house at 4:30 am tomorrow, so good thing I'm exhausted and ready to pass out at 8pm tonight. Hopefully.

Aren't blogs required to be random on Thursdays?

Since this blog is about running, starting off and talking about running doesn't really fit into the "random" theme that so many blogs follow on Thursdays. Oh well.

Last night I went to the track for more partner 800s. I did eight of them total, with some warming up and cooling down for a total of just over 5 miles. Most of them were an average of less than 8  minute miles so I'm calling that a win.

I got home close to 9pm last night and was up at 5:20 am today for an 8 mile run. My legs were pretty tired but the run wasn't too bad. I finished in 1:16:05, for an average 9:30 pace. Out of curiosity, I wore my heart rate monitor, and saw that my average heart rate was 174. I looked back at some old runs where I used to wear the HRM all the time to compare, and saw the average was mostly in the mid-high 160s - so maybe this morning's run was a little extra tough? Except then I noticed that all those runs were way faster than now, and then I got depressed....what's my problem? Why can't I pick up the pace these days?

Ok here's some random stuff:

1. Triathlons are harder than road races. Specifically because I had to take a forty minute drive to have my bike "inspected" for the triathlon. 

 After spending literally about 15 seconds testing my brakes, I got this sticker.

1.5 hours in the car well spent.

2. Here's a look at the less glamorous, more life threatening side of teaching that they fail to mention in college.

 I'm not saying they "made" me stand on a rickety ladder while I was soaked in sweat and hang letter cards above my head, but teachers are required to hang them, and the only place they stick is on the cork strip 2 inches from the ceiling, soo.....you do the math.

3. Trader Joes got me again. I went for staples like frozen broccoli, greek yogurt, and avocados (yes these are all "staples" in my life), and ended up with this.

 4. I brought my camera to the farmer's market to try to take fun pictures like other bloggers seem to. Apparently they attend Utopian farmer's markets where everyone stands in line and speaks politely, because the one I go to is like one of those 90% off wedding dress sales where brides trample each other to death. If I ever tried to capture an artistic image of zucchinis, I would never make it out alive. So here's three different kinds of delicious melon I got suckered into buying and can't even eat until tomorrow.

5. I love my breadmaker, but unfortunately not all pieces are uniformly sandwich size, so at the end of the loaf I end up with a Boca burger that looks like this. Still delicious though.

To celebrate the fact that I survived climbing the scary ladder over and over, I'm meeting Casi downtown for some truck that's driving around giving out free ice cream, massages, and manicures. That's all I know,  but how can that NOT be awesome?

How can I get faster like I used to be? Just suck it up and stop whining about it?