three things thursday

1. I've got one more ridiculous weekend of riding before my schedule downgrades to merely insane, and I'm not sure I've ever looked forward to a taper as much as I am looking forward to this one.  But being at the top of this build, I've had a few moments of, "you know, I think this is going to be okay."  Even though my legs are stripped with fatigue, I still feel like I had a pretty solid ride on Sunday - my first crack at the SkyMass loop out in the Shenandoah with my weekend smashfest buddies.  I've ridden the first 25 miles of it multiple times but this time around we white-knuckle descended through Luray, climbed the Massanutten cursing the entire way (that was me), and then rode bumpy little rollers the whole way home.  

My legs weren't exactly pleased about the two miles I ran off the bike - and the five I ran later in the evening - but I've certainly felt worse after so much time in the saddle.  And this ride had not quite twice the amount of climbing in it that I'll see in CdA next month.  I'm certainly not going to win the race, but I have hopes that I'll do more than merely survive my way to the finish line.  


2. I'm pretty pleased with how my body feels after yesterday's long run.  However, my calves started complaining a bit earlier this week, and I'm taking the "ounce of prevention" route and heading up to get the shit Graston'd out of them this morning by my bruiser, Dr. Paul.  I've been trying to be even more diligent than usual about recovery this week, because this is the time when little niggles get really destructive.  So I dug the compression socks back out, I've been putting fabulous fuel (with a few exceptions) down the hatch despite having almost no appetite, and I'm sleeping like a rock star.  I'm hoping my body is grateful for how nice I'm treating it and doesn't throw a rod in the next couple of weeks.  


3.  I've always heard about ironman-training-brain, but it's starting to get personal over here.  This morning, as I was getting ready for my ride, I pulled my clean bike shorts out of the laundry basket and then they disappeared.  I spent ten minutes tearing the house apart before I gave up and pulled on a pair of tri shorts.  I wheeled my bike into the driveway and then got incredibly frustrated at my garmin because it wasn't picking up my HR strap...because I wasn't wearing it.  I didn't realize I wasn't wearing a helmet until I diagnosed the odd feeling on my head two blocks away from my house, I squinted into the sun on Hains Point for two laps before realizing I wasn't wearing sunglasses, and no matter how much math I did, I couldn't figure out how 4*6/6 intervals would fit into a 90 minute ride.


When I opened the fridge to make my post-ride recovery smoothie, I discovered my bike shorts neatly folded in the cheese drawer.  Someone, please, tell me this brain damage isn't permanent.  And if this post is full of typos, well, you can just bite me.


Happy Thursday!

wordless wednesday

Longest run I will do before IMCdA?

Check.  And yes, I am icing my calves with "baby bud broccoli florets."

Jim McDonnell 5K swim: race report

I decided to do this swim a few months ago because my love affair with open water swimming has always been a bit rocky.  I cover this distance in the pool all the time, but when you get into a lake, there are bugs and fish and branches and lake zombies to worry about.  However, I had no desire to race the distance.  I didn't do any specific race preparation, I didn't taper, and my ZOMG EXCITED race persona stayed home.  I had strict instructions to swim steady and easy, and that's what I did.


It's been on the warm side in DC here for the past few weeks, and when we rolled up to the lake Saturday morning, the "official" water temperature was 76º (the guy that posted the temperature commented that he had to boat around to several places in the lake before finding a wetsuit-legal-temp-spot.  Excellent.).  In a triathlon, there is no WAY I would swim in a wetsuit for 76º, but one of the big points of doing this swim was that I wanted to spend more than 35 minutes in my wetsuit.  The water temperature in CdA is usually around 65-67º on race day, and I wanted to make sure I was comfortable swimming for a long time wrapped up in neoprene.  So that was that.  Caroline made the better decision to leave her wetsuit at home.

There was a lot of standing around yawning saying, "I don't want to do this" and fussing with my goggles at the start (typical).  I was actually surprised by how many people still chose to swim in wetsuits, although most had sleeveless suits (almost none of them visible in this picture for some reason).  

And the poet was there, doing his thing.

My friends were all in different waves, so I got to watch some of them take off, but pretty soon it was time to splash down into the water.  It was WARM.  The waves were pretty small and there was lots of room in the lake.  Going along with my "taking it easy," instead of thrashing and fighting as soon as someone said, "GO," I just put my face into the water and started paddling along.  My unfortunately full-sleeved arm and bizarre delicate hand entry visible far left:

And the swim was pretty much unremarkable.  It was three one-ish mile laps of the lake - one tight hairpin turn, one two-buoy turn, and one turn around some crazy prison structure in the middle of the water.  On the first lap, I swam so wide on the two-buoy turn that I almost crashed into a boat.  The second lap wasn't much better, but the third lap I managed to swim fairly straight.

My goggles kept filling with water, and I tried the "backstroke dump" a few times, but then realized it wasn't working, so I stopped to tread water and fix them.  Twice.  I'm pretty sure that's what is going on here.

At the end of the first loop I realized I was being boiled alive by my wetsuit, so I stopped to yank the neck open for some cooler water.  It was glorious.  During the second loop I did the neck flap every few hundred yards, and by the last lap I was so hot that it became "strokestrokestrokestrokestroke breathe strokestrokestrokestrokestroke frantic wetsuit flap" and repeat.  The only benefit of the wetsuit is that it prevented me from swimming any harder than "ridiculously easy" because of how over-heated I was - that and I couldn't find any feet to draft off of.  But then suddenly it was the end of the third lap.  I know, my head is too high out of the water and my cap is about to pop off.  And my crazy recovery arm is crazy and I desperately need an eyebrow wax.

I swam until I touched ground and then started to charge up the dock and rip off my wetsuit.  

But then I realized I didn't need to go find my bike and start sucking down liquid nutrition on a stopwatch, so I stopped and instead, we ate. 

For some reason, all of the ridiculously fast women were safe at home in bed in other age groups, so this happened.  I don't often get to win, especially not in swimming, so I'm going to try really hard not to qualify it.

All in all, it bodes well for CdA next month, especially when I considered how much time I spent dicking around not making forward progress in the water.  Next up: racing 150 miles on the bike and 30 on the run, just to make sure I'm ready.


Also, in case you missed the crazy updates on Friday, shirts are now only $19 and there are two versions - a "puppies shitting rainbows" and a "faith not fear" version, so you can wear one safely to work/raise your children/clean the church pews.  I'm ordering them TOMORROW, so please let me know ASAP if you want one!  Right now the way the order stands, we're in a good place to not have a lot of extras, which means you will be a SAD SAD panda next week when you're the only blogger on the block not to have my URL dangerously close to your ass.  You've been warned.

team amazing day (take two)

Okay, so let's start over.  After I posted this originally, Jared from Kompetitive Edge reached out with the fabulous news that this was WAY too expensive for printing shirts.  Imagine him with a hero cape on.  So, everything is the same except for the two things that are not.  1. The shirts now only cost $19 (if you Paypal'd me money I am PayPal'ing you back the difference).  2. There are two versions - a "puppies shitting rainbows" version and a "faith not fear" version for those of you that don't want to/can't walk around all day with profanity on your back.  Everything else is the same!  Now you can afford to buy two (don't check my math)!  

As you were, proceed with your day.  Remainder of this post is the same, just with an extra demo screen shot.

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Aaaaaaaaaallrighty, let's get this party started.  I was going to do a "four things friday" post, but then I realized that I might be referencing this link for the rest of eternity and I don't want to be remembering how incredibly crabby I was at this point in the training cycle every time I do it.

I'm making a big pile of shirts for my mom and dad and number one fan to wear at IMCdA next month (you didn't know?  I'm doing an ironman!).  The shirt will be a purple technical tee and look like this fierce lady:

And like this for men (football not included), but also in purple:

The front will look roughly like this (I'm not good at the online design thingy):

And the back will basically look like this (ditto):

And the "safe for work" back will look like this:

And I figured that maybe some of you guys might want one for spectating at home or wearing to your own wedding or just so people will stare at you at the gym.  Sadly, I am not rich enough to give them away for free, so you're gonna have to send me some cash.  So here's what I'm going to do.  If you want one, send me an email with your size to runthisamazingday@gmail.com (please don't sign me up for any penis enlargement newsletters) or drop a comment, with your full name please so this doesn't become more difficult than it already is.  They do have men's and women's separate sizes, so please specify men/women S-M-L-XL.  Next, you are going to send me a PERSONAL GIFT (this part is important) of $19 via Paypal to runthisamazingday@gmail.com.  Once I've received your generous gift, I will order a shirt in your size and generously gift you one when they arrive.  If you're local, we'll figure it out.   If you are going to be at CdA, I can bring it there.  If you're from far far away, please drop $5 or so on top so I can mail it to you and MAKE SURE TO GIVE ME YOUR ADDRESS.  I actually have no idea how much it will cost to mail, but if $5 seems ridiculously high, let me know and I'll correct this post.  I'm doing it through Paypal so no one gets sucked in by the mean mean scamming triathlon con artist girl, but if you live across the street and want to give me cash or a check, that's cool too.  Basically, if you want one, let me know, we'll figure the rest out.  It's not like I have a JOB tying up all my time.  

They are going to take about 2 weeks to get here.  If you don't read this until later and you want one, I'm going to end up ordering a pile of extras so let me know.  If you think I'm a self-absorbed wench and can't believe I'd have to gall to expect people to pay for shirts with my URL on them just because I'm doing an ironman, WELP, you're right, but being self-absorbed and expecting people to like it is what blogging is all about, now go stroke yourself somewhere else (but feel free to flame me in the comments first!  comments are love, don't you know?).  

Also, I thought about doing them with different sayings on the back of them all (F'ing legit.  Faith not fear.  You have no idea what you can do.  Have you seen my sweet sweet ass?  Your heart is a weapon the size of your fist.  CAR blog mafia.  Ass broken?  Look no further! etc. etc. etc.) but after a long conversation with the tee-shirt-printing-lady, it sounds like that will be horribly complicated and expensive.  Maybe for the next round of printing, if there is one.