BLOOD, SWEAT AND bliss TEARS

last few days

2009-12-03T21:07:00.002-07:00

I should be writing down my daily blog because I'm sure in the future I will wish I would've wrote more. So here's a few things about running that are out of order and what has been running through my head.
1- every morning I think about running. Not just running, but Boston. I REALLY don't want to blow this chance because the opportity wont come around for a few more years. (Most likely.) I kinda want it to be one of those things I can cross off my 'Life list"
2-The 800's. I really like the course. The second week we did them though it was scary with ice on the road. I like 800's much better than 400's. It's also nice having the neighborhood course. This last week, on Monday, was very hard. I don't think my body has felt worse running. I never felt like I was running smoothly. But I came up with times a little over 3:40.
3-Tuesday was an awesome run! I wasn't thrilled about the fact I didn't have my MP3 player. Music really helps on these lonely runs. (Even if we were running side by side I wouldn't be able to talk!) I kept thinking about Boston. Every run I do my best for that day. (Well sometimes I slack off...) I was thrilled to see that my time was 8:30. I know I've improved, we all have. Hurrah!
4- I know I should be cross training, but I was exhausted Tues. I was ready for bed by 7:00. So I just laid in bed. Took Wednesday off. thursday did pilates.
5- I'm not excited about the weather report for tomorrow. 12 degrees.

tonight Jeremy said isn't it good enough if you just qualify for Boston? To say you qualified?! I'm glad Sandra would understand that no it isn't. If I qualify, I don't care if I have to sell my diamond ring to go. (Actually it's not that big of a sacrifice since I've never LOVED it....)

Our Fall Tri

2009-11-07T22:07:00.003-07:00

With one bike ride, and less than a handful of swim workouts I was off to the Turkey Tri with by "bestie" Sandra. (My other BFF decided to stay home and enjoy her Saturday. Although the turkey tri did turn out to be fun!) We left at 6:45. I drove Jeremy's truck. Before I arrived I remembered that I didn't grab my MP3 player. Fortunatly Melynda Miller was coming to watch and she had an awesome IPOD. (Unfortunatley I didn't know how to work it and it quit playing half way through the run.) I was a little nervous when we got there and it was quarter to 8:00. There were a lot of people. We had to wait in line for our packets and timing chips. I didn't like feeling rushed and wondering what the course was really like and what I was suppose to do. (It was easy to figure out though and they had the course well marked.) The run was good until the end you had to run up a hill. It took a lot of strength from me. I felt my strength getting sucked out of me. I got on my bike. My transition wasn't very smooth. (I've only used the cages one time before and was having a hard time getting my shoes in.) Bikers passed me as I tried to get on my bike. The bike route was HARD! Much harder than Stansbury Days. At the end of the first loop you have to bike up 4th south. It was a hill! I gave in and got off my bike and walked up it. I think overall it made me loose time because I had a hard time getting back on my bike. But I did it both times. I definately need to train on biking! On the second loop Natalie Griffith passed me. I told myself to keep her insight and I could catch up in swimming. I caught her in the 3 lap lane. When I got in the pool all my strength was gone. My swimming was horrible. My legs were tired, my arms, EVERYTHING! I did all different strokes just to make it to the end. I'm glad I did it. I am now waiting for the times to post....

No Basketball

2009-11-05T14:43:00.002-07:00

It really STINKS when you are looking forward to something and it doesn't happen. All week I was looking forward to Thursday. 1-Because I don't run on thursday's! 2- I was planning to play basketball. I ran out the door to be at the church on time to play. (I even left baby poop on the carpet. Okay, now you want to know why there was baby poop. I was hurrying to give Belle a bath, she ran away naked while I was filling up the tub, I found her. She had pooped on Tessa's bedroom carpet. But I wanted to play basketball and Amy said they were only playing from 9-10. So I bathed Belle ran to the church. No one was there. I walked over to Amy's and she felt bad they had cancelled. This was what my whole day was centered around! So I took the girls for a walk in the stroller. So that is my workout for today.

The last few weeks

2009-11-04T21:17:00.002-07:00

Well I haven't been on vacation. I HAVE been working out. I guess nothing too exciting has happened. It's go to bed, wake up, then run. The weather has been okay. I haven't broken anything. The neighbors haven't played their DRUMS! I haven't trained for the turkey tri like I would've liked too. It's been hard with sick kids, the World Series, etc... The biking will be the worst part, by far. This morning I ran with Sandra, Christina, and Coral. We just ran 3 miles. We ran it under 30 minutes. The biggest news is I bought new shoes. I could REALLY feel a difference! What was I thinking? I can't believe the difference. I was having knee problems and since the new shoes have felt great. Christina, it's worth the money.

the neighbors got drums

2009-10-16T08:55:00.003-06:00

The neighbors have enjoyed drumming away on their drums the last two nights. Unfortunately when you go to bed early this is ANNOYING! It makes me want to scream, break something, honk a horn, do something annoying, but I don't. I lay there wishing I could sleep. Thinking about my precious hours of sleep....so sometimes things like this energize me to run hard, but not this morning. I was barely able to roll out of bed. I sat on my couch and thought about how nice it would be to fall asleep. But I thought about my good friends getting up earlier to run with me and I was out the door. it was an enjoyable run with Sandra. No Christina. We didn't wait long. I was glad that I got out.

alarm clock and corn dogs

2009-10-13T15:52:00.002-06:00

Yesterday Jer and I decided for a date we would run the 5k path we are doing on Sat. He didn't tell me that he wasn't going to talk to me. If I had known I would've worn my head phones. Some people are given a lot of natural talent and they don't have to work at it. Jeremy could be a machine if he ran everyday. (Thankfully he doesn't so I can run in the mornings.) It's not going to be a PR on Sat. I also learned it is hard to run after eating a corn dog, it doesn't settle well.

Alarm clock trouble! So today the alarm clock didn't go off. (Is Jer doing this on purpose?) I woke up at 5:30. Left the house at 5:36. I missed Amy. So I ran backwards. That's the good thing about them doing the same course. So I met up with them at Stansbury Elementary. I'm hoping the alarm goes off tomorrow. I will set two alarms just in case.

Week 6: October 5 - October 10

2009-10-10T23:10:00.000-06:00

Sickness looms.

Monday

Mary Whitaker from Water Wheel joined Christina and me for our track workout. Which started out good, but then just got bad. I'm blaming the marching band. They were AWFUL. But, in better news, we ran recovery laps between 1,2,3 and 4,5,6 and only walked a lap between 3 and 4, so we're almost there. My plan is to do this same next week, and then make it 1,2,3,4 and 5,6 with a walking lap between 4,5 and then 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 with a walking lap between 5,6 and then we'll be running all our recovery laps. Our times were a little dismal: 1:57, 2:01, 2:00, 2:08, 2:04, 2:00. How does Hillary do it?

Tuesday

It was another "easy" 30 minute run. However, I forgot at the end, so I was going by distance and not time, so we ended up running the 3.03 course in 29:40, averaging 9:47/mile. But we really should've kept going until 30 minutes.

Wednesday

I mapped out a new 3 mile route, and we were going to try to see how fast we could reasonably run it (slower than race pace, but faster than what we have been doing). I felt reasonably sure that we could hit somewhere between 9:00 and 9:10/mile. We started around our neighborhood and flew up the hill toward Stansbury Parkway. It's about a half mile of uphill and probably not the wisest thing to put first, but it was the only option from where we started. Then we flew down the parkway, across the highway and through the Ivory Townhomes. Since I didn't actually mark the mileage, I was a little off and we ended up having to run around the neighborhood again, which meant we had to run the half mile uphill again. But it's good practice. I felt pretty good until we hit the neighborhood, so I had to slow down to a crawl. I was really lightheaded. I think it was a lack of oxygen. I just had to fight through it. I crawled for a quarter of a mile and then I flew the last half mile, totally leaving everyone in the dust (or so my version of the story goes), as we ran down Water Wheel. We finished in 27:41, averaging 9:13/mile. Not too shabby. We ran the first mile in 9:00, the second in 9:09 and Mile 3 in 9:32. If only I hadn't had to slow down...

Thursday

I swam again this morning, but I didn't want to. I wasn't feeling very good, but I was slated to drive and I didn't want to wake everyone's house by calling at 5 am, so I just sucked it up. I'll probably pay for it for a few days. Another uneventful swim.

Friday

I called Hillary yesterday and cancelled my long run for the week because I could feel a cold coming on. I don't want it to move into my lungs if I can help it because with the asthma, it just takes up residence for WEEKS and I can hardly do anything. So I didn't do anything, though I did hear that both Hillary and Christina got out.

Saturday

I took today off as well. I'm feeling better, but not quite up to par. I'm hoping by Monday I'll be back in pretty good shape.

A Week Behind

2009-10-10T22:54:00.000-06:00

I totally forgot to post last week's activities:

Monday, September 28

We ran our track workout this morning pretty consistently, though I had a stomach ache due to the ice cream I ate Sunday night. So I had to find a bathroom. But I felt much better afterwards. We got all six in and ran between 1,2 3,4, and 5,6. We did a recovery walk between 2,3 and 4,5. 2:00, 2:02, 2:02, 1:58, 2:00, 2:00

Tuesday, September 29

We did a 30 minute easy run this morning, which was a challenge because I was fighting a migraine. Every step I took reverberated in my head. But we did 3.03 in 30:05, averaging 9:56/mile. Didn't seem like we were moving that "fast", but I guess we were. I feel good about being down to a sub-10 minute pace for the "easy" runs. I let Hillary borrow my watch for her run with Amy and Sharayne and was pleasantly surprised to find that we weren't that far behind them.

Wednesday, September 30

It was POURING this morning. Christina opted to stay home, but Hillary and I braved the conditions. We were suppose to run 3 miles at a 9:30 pace but it was too dark and wet, so we did 3 miles around the neighborhood in 30:52, averaging about 10:17 per mile.

Thursday, October 1

I went swimming this morning with some friends from Millpond, Sara and Cassie. I ran with them in the Marathon Relay in September. It was pretty uneventful if I remember correctly.

Friday, October 2

We decided to do 8 miles this morning for a long run. I mapped out a course that started at Christina's and ran all over Stansbury. We did really good for the first five miles and then Hillary got a stomach ache. Naturally, the golf course bathroom was closed so she kept going. At about 6.50 miles, she had to stop and walk and Christina and I continued ahead to finish the 8 miles, which included a loop around Christina's neighborhood. Hillary's dignity remained intact for another day, but it was a close call. We ran 8 miles in 1:18:53, averaging 9:52/mile. Which is just plain awesome. 8 miles at a sub 10 minute pace. YAY!! I felt really good, like I could've kept that pace up for another few miles.

Saturday, October 3

Christina went to a scrapbooking thing and Hillary was spending the day with her hubby, so I decided to take the day off. It felt good to sleep in and not worry about working out.

My hardest work out

2009-10-01T22:23:00.002-06:00

I didn't think I was going to work out today. I wasn't really planning on it. I slept in. (Well I still woke up but went back to bed.) By afternoon the weather was nice and I thought it would be fun for the whole family to go over to the track. Well Jer didn't think this sounded like fun, so I went by myself. It's not fun working out by myself. I really WISH Jeremy would get on board. But honestly if I was thin and could run a 23 minute 5k without training, hey I probley wouldn't be working out either. Anyways back to the workout. It was a little chilly and the wind was blowing. But I gave it my all. It's a lot better times than running on the treadmill. It was hard to push myself but I did it. I kept thinking Boston, boston, boston!!! If I don't make it, it wont be because I didn't give it my all. Honestly I'm glad I was able to walk off the track after my workout. Tomorrow will be another story.... So here's my interval times and I did manage to jog in between except for the 3/4 I walked.
1- 1:46
2- 1:40
3-1:40
4-1:43
5-1:42
6-1:38!! I couldn't believe I could finish that strong. I called Sandra than remembered she is at her speech stuff. I couldn't have run any faster, I gave it my all!

Week 4: September 21- September 26

2009-09-26T22:31:00.000-06:00

We (and I) hit some big milestones this week.

Monday
Track intervals are back! I decided that I wanted to add intervals to our routine because I think they were instrumental in speeding us up. So, we spent the morning at the track, being serenaded by the marching band. It was a little awkward having a bunch of teenagers watch us huff and puff our way around the track, but we managed to get 5 x 400 done. We were a little late getting started and Christina had to get back early. But I managed to hit 2:00 exactly for intervals 1, 2 and 4. Interval 3 I was at 2:04 and interval 5 I kicked it in at 1:56. We even jogged for two minutes between intervals 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Eventually, we're going to do the whole thing without walking. But we'll get there.

Tuesday
Christina and I just did a 30 minute run around to the clubhouse from my place and over to the townhomes and Ivory. I dropped my jacket off at the bridge, so we ended up running to there. It came out to be exactly 3 miles and we did it in 31:42, so about a 10:30 mile. We were taking it easy. We did see Hillary coming back with Amy and Emily.

Wednesday
I was a little nervous for our run this morning. The goal was to hit a 9:30/mile pace for five miles. Hillary and Coral joined us and we started off at 5:15ish. I led the group for the first two miles and I felt really good. It was a pleasant morning. A little cold, but not too bad. I had to stop for a little bit to take my jacket off and then I was left in the dark. There were lights coming off the highway that made it really hard to see and then headlights would render us blind. I like our route though and I think with headlamps, we'll be okay. We kicked it the last mile and pulled a sub-nine minute mile. And then I looked at our pace for the entire run. My watch said 9:16, but that was taking into account the time I had to walk to get my reflective vest off and my jacket off, so after some number manipulation, it came out to be 9:11/mile!!! I was SO excited about it. I've never run that far that fast in my life!

Thursday
Ah. Blessed rest day

Friday
We met at Christina's and started off. We were going to head over to Erda Way, down to Liddel St. (one street before the highway), cut back across to Church St and then take Rabbit Lane back to Bates Canyon. Luckily, Christina found her headlamp, so we had some light because it was dark. I was fiddling around with my watch at one point, and Christina grabbed my shoulder and pointed. I had almost stepped on skunk. We talked about what we would've done if it would've sprayed us--I would've had to walk home and leave my car at Christina's. Man, I'm glad I was running with someone who was paying attention. That would've been the start of a very bad morning.

The run to Erda Way was a lot harder than I remember it being during the summer. It's definitely one we need to do more often. It's a gradual uphill that just presses on your legs. We got almost to Liddel road off of Erda and I suggested we walk for a minute. Then we got to Rabbit Lane, which is not paved. And it was like off-road running. In the dark. So we opted to walk most of that too. We were running late, so we cut our 6 mile run to 5.30, but we were still able to average 10:40/mile even with all the walking.

Saturday
I had signed up to do a 5k with my brother, but then he couldn't make it, but I had already paid, so I went by myself. I really wanted to see how much faster I was getting. The course was two loops around Liberty Park, which is pretty flat. There are no obvious uphills or downhills. So, it's as fair as it gets. Though any effort is yours alone because there's no downhills to help you.

It was a gorgeous morning and we set off. I kept a pretty fast pace the first mile, passing people left and right and finished the first mile in 8:39. I slowed down the second mile and finished in 9:15 and brought up the third mile and tenth in 9:35 for a finish time of 27:33!!! I was so happy. It was an 8:53/mile average. I finally ran a 5k under 28 minutes.

I didn't like how the race course was two loops because it's hard to run by the finish line and have to keep going around again. But, overall, it was a good race. I came home and had to call Christina to brag. I would've called Hillary too, but she was gone. :( I like that I have friends I can call and brag about a nearly 28 minute 5k time and they're happy for me. My Tooele 4th of July 5k was 28:11 and that was with all that downhill at the beginning. So, I'm confident that I will hit my goal of 25 minutes sometime within the next year. I would like to get down even faster than that, but 25 minutes would make me happy.

I'm glad I went, even if I had to go alone. I forget how much I love running those things.

Treadmill 6 x 400

2009-09-21T15:28:00.002-06:00

I didn't come up with a great name for this workout. I thought it would be easy to find when I compare how I am improving. Jer has always thought our treadmill was not correct when you run on it and then it shows the time. Anyways it's hard to compare to what I do outside because outside I'm much faster, except I feel like I'm running faster on the treadmill. Who knows?! Anyways here's my splits

1-2:30
2-2:17
3-2:11
4-2:12
5-2:17
6-2:28

I did run my hardest and wanted to quit. I decided I'm going to post a sign that says, "The only thing stopping you from Boston, is YOU!"

Week 3: September 14-September 19

2009-09-20T16:15:00.000-06:00

Another week. More fun than we can handle.

Monday
It was really...hot...muggy, oppressive, something...this morning. We ran over to Lakepoint, but we had to keep stopping and jumping into the weeds when people would drive by. And it was unusually busy this morning, so there was a lot of stopping and jumping into the weeds. We ran 4 miles and averaged about 10:30, so about the same effort as Friday. Not too shabby.

Tuesday
Christina and I decided to go out again on Tuesday and maybe do 3 miles. But it was hard to get going running, so we ended up walking to Rose Springs Elementary (about 1/2 way) and then ran the last half. Definitely not our best effort, but at least we were out.

We also met together for dinner and finalized our plans to do the St. George Marathon next year. It's a go! I'm excited, but I'm scared too. We've set some lofty goals, but I feel like we can reach them if we don't let winter and the holidays derail us. Also, I've run a marathon before and I know the amount of work it takes. And it's hard to convey that the minute you cross that finish line, it's totally worth it and you forget, because when it's right at the crest of training time and you're running 20 milers, you can't possibly imagine anything being worth it. But it is...even if it's just to cross it off your "life" list. When nonrunners hear that you ran a marathon, they will think that you're the most amazing person in the world. It's like constantly being buoyed up. Even if it's a 5 hour effort.

Wednesday
Today was the run I was dreading all week: 4 miles at a 9:30 pace. I was nervous because that's nearly a 30 second drop in what I had been running the tempo miles at this summer and I wasn't sure I was up for the task. We mapped out a new route that didn't take us to Bates Canyon Rd, because it was so crowded with the high school crowd. Instead we wound around all of SP; I was surprised that it was a nice neat number of 4 miles from Christina's all the way around to the clubhouse and back to her house.

I was even more impressed when we averaged 9:22/mile. We even clocked a sub-9 minute mile the last mile. :) That made me feel GREAT! I can't believe how far I've come in the last four months.

Thursday
Our day off

Friday
Hillary joined us for our long run this week. She picked me up and looked more than a little bleary-eyed. I'm not sure how she keeps up. She's amazing. :)

We cut our lofty 7 miles down to 5 miles since neither Hillary or I felt like we could manage the whole thing. Hillary didn't get a lot of sleep and I had such an emotional draining day on Thursday (with the speech contest and then I didn't eat--a pbj sandwich--until nearly 10:30). Christina was kind enough to indulge us our shortcomings.

We ran the same route as Wednesday and then tacked on an extra mile at the end. I led the pack down the frontage road, and then it was Hillary the Rabbit and Christina the Machina leading me down Village Blvd. I looked at my watch at some point and saw I was clocking a 9:15 pace, so Hillary and Christina were at about a 9 minute pace. I figured we'd hit a 10:15 pace overall, about what I wanted to do for our "long" run.

When I checked my watch at the end of the run, I saw that we averaged 9:57/mile! We did a "long" run, averaging sub-10 minute miles. Man, that felt GREAT!

Saturday
Christina and I decided to bike up to Home Depot again this morning. It's a tough(?) climb up to the light by Home Depot. Unfortunately, I was such a slug that I wasn't ready to go on time and Christina had to be back by 7:30, so we didn't make it all the way there. But we got almost there. We turned back and rode really fast down to Christina's house. I continued on home. It was about 10 miles roundtrip, so not too bad.

This next week, we're adding back in our track intervals on Monday. I think they helped us best with speed, along with the tempo runs.

Pictures at Last

2009-09-17T20:35:00.002-06:00

Of course I didn't post the pictures Hunter took of me in my swim suit. (Like it makes any difference thanks to the photographer who posted a backside picture of me!) Well next year it will be Sandra with the medal around her neck. Unless of course I take the easy way out and do a team!

Thursday Run With Coral

2009-09-17T20:32:00.002-06:00

Today was the first day that I ran with Coral, Amy, and Sharayne. It was nice to have Coral there so I had someone to talk too. Those early morning TORTURE runs can be pretty miserable to do all by yourself. I think I could've kept up okay. I was running to the throw up point. I was running my hardest and definately a race pace! Please pray for me Tuesday and Thursday mornings!

P.S. I'm not looking forward to a long run tomorrow. I hope Sandra can cheer me up by making me laugh and I always cheer up when Christina finds money on the road!

Treadmill 30 minute run #1

2009-09-17T20:29:00.002-06:00

I decided that I'm going to record my half an hour treadmill run so I can see if I'm improving. For some reason running on the treadmill is a lot harder for me than running outside. I only had half an hour so I wanted to see how far I could run.

Half an hour=2.75 miles.

Monday Swim

2009-09-14T19:43:00.002-06:00

Today I went to Gold's to swim. It's probley one of the worst pools to have to train in. They only have 3 lap lanes. Water aerobics shows up at 10:00 a.m. So they only leave one lane open. There were 3 ladies and we had to circle swim. I did skips today as best I could. (Since I didn't have a kick board I had to kick on my back.) I think I'm going to time a swim every monday to see how I'm improving or not improving.

Week Two: September 7-September 12

2009-09-14T14:48:00.000-06:00

We didn't do as well this week. Those Monday holidays really throw us off.

Monday
Christina went to Lagoon with her family and I stayed up with Wade until 6 am (!) working on the basement. I should've just gone outside and ran and then gone to bed, but the thought didn't occur to me until after I climbed into bed. We had to get up at 8 am anyways, so it's probably a good thing I didn't go.

Tuesday
Christina called last night and cancelled our bike ride for the morning, which was a blessing. I didn't want to go spinning, but I packed my clothes to my mom's house anyways. Then I forced myself to change and head to the gym on my way home. I'm glad I went. It was a good workout.

Wednesday
Finally, Christina and I met up. Our goal was to do 3 miles in under 9:30/mile. My watch wasn't charged, so we only had the finish time of 28:30 to aim for. The run itself was pretty uneventful. It felt like we were really pushing it. Just before we turned into Ponderosa, Christina's phone went off. One of her kids was calling. She stopped and walked to answer the phone. I kept running. We usually run to the street behind and then walk back to Christina's but instead we just ran into the cul-de-sac by her house. 28:08!!! That's a 9:22/mile average. YAY!

Thursday
We were going to attempt our bike ride again, but Christina called at 6 am to say she was too lazy to go. Sounded good to me, so I climbed back into bed. Neither one of us did go back to sleep. We should've just gone out. We decided that Thursdays we're going to take off for a while and that it's too dark to bike in the mornings anymore. :(

Friday
The three of us met each other outside at 6 am and headed over to Lake Point. We kept it short because of the race on Saturday, but it was still a good run. Hillary told us about her trip to Hawaii. I resented my 10 pm dinner. Thursday nights are always really busy for me and I don't get around to eating until really late. Then I usually pay for it on Friday's run. We did 4 miles, averaging 10:28/mile. Not too bad considering we did the same run in February at an 11:17 pace.

Saturday
Christina and I were both doing the Utah Marathon Relay with different teams. I had the last spot on the team and she had the fourth spot on her team. The race was a lot of fun, though it was SO hot by the time we got around to running. I thought I was going to die. I'm not use to running in the heat like that anymore. The course was good though and it's a race I wouldn't mind doing again.

First Week Back

2009-09-06T23:09:00.004-06:00

There were some highs and lows to our first week back after the half.

MONDAY

Christina and I did just our normal 3 mile run over to Rose Springs. It was pretty good. Not great. I thought we were flying, and we finished in 28:53, so I guess we're getting faster. Later on, in the evening, I did a very wussy resistance workout. Going to have to change that up.

TUESDAY

Christina called Monday night to say she couldn't swim today and I had every intention of going, but I have little self motivation, and so I didn't. Instead, I hit the gym after my mom's house and was going to take the spinning class. Of course, the teacher didn't show, so I just did the recumbant bike for 30 minutes. It was a pretty good workout. Christina hit the treadmill, so we both got at least some workout.

WEDNESDAY

We were trying to hit a goal of 9:20 for our tempo run this morning of 3 miles, but it wasn't going to happen. We ran the Rose Springs again and we did slightly better than Monday, finishing at 28:41 and averaging 9:33/mile. I guess not that bad considering just 3 months ago, we were huffing a 9:57/mile tempo run. Yay for us!

THURSDAY

We took the day off. We don't want to overdo it too much. :)

FRIDAY

We ran to the gas stations--almost. At 2.75 miles, Christina's stomach went beserk and we turned around. We ended up walking until we got to the Lake Point church and remembered the park behind and a porta potty which may have saved Christina from public humilation. That was mile 3.88. We ran the rest of the way home, which turned out to be really hard after walking for so long. My stomach was giving me fits too. We made it six miles in 1:10:09, averaging 11:41/mile. Not bad considering our plight.

SATURDAY

We biked to Home Depot. It was the hardest hill for whatever reason. Probably had something to do with the three hours of sleep I got thanks to the basement. Can't wait for that stupid thing to be done. My legs were really sore all day, but the ride back from Home Depot made it all worth it.

Addendum to Post Half Marathon Plans

2009-08-27T13:18:00.002-06:00

Okay--here's some changes. Basically my days are going to stay the same, but I'm going to be a little bit more hardcore to see if I can get my speed down.

Mondays: Easy run (3-4 miles). No fancy watch. Just going and not worrying about mile splits. I'll probably do the Lake Point run (if the weather is clear) or the Stansbury Tri run. Weight training afterwards (just using dumbbells right now until the basement is finished. Then I'll bring out the big guns.)

Tuesdays: hard swimming in the morning and spinning in the evening.

Wednesdays: Tempo runs
September: 9:30 pace (week 1: 3 miles, week 2: 3 miles, week 3: 4 miles, week 4: 5 miles, week 5: 3 miles)
October: 9:00 pace (week 1: 3 miles, week 2: 4 miles, week 3: 5 miles, week 4: 3 miles)
November: (start training for Painter's Half Marathon goal: 2:00-2:10)

Thursdays: lite swimming and weight training unless too tired and need a rest day.

Fridays: Long runs
September: 10:15 pace (week 1: 6 miles, week 2: 7 miles, week 3: 8 miles, week 4: 6 miles)
October: 10:00 pace (week 1:6 miles, week 2: 7 miles, week 3: 8 miles, week 4: 6 miles)
November: (start training for Painter's Half Marathon goal 2:00-2:10)

Saturdays: Long bike ride or Stansbury Tri bike/run course or races.

I'd also like to lose 20 pounds before we start training for the marathon. And I'd also like to take a ride on a unicorn. Both have about the same likelihood of happening.

I'm going to update the blog once a week, maybe Sundays, during the "off" training time so I hold myself responsible for these grandeur plans. I'll send you a link like I did before when it's updated. Of course, feel free to update it yourself too. :)

All Done...Not!

2009-08-25T17:00:00.004-06:00

So on only four hours of sleep I headed to the race. I was glad that Christina was driving. I couldn't kick that feeling of being exhausted. I love to watch the dynamics of everything going together for a race. (I can only IMAGINE the stress. I'm sure I felt it when I had to do the ward road show in Cali....little did I know that LOTS of people worked for movie productions, drama companies, etc... Anyways I'm going off on a tangent.)

Of course I was glad to get on our way after standing around. We started off and I heard Sandra say, "We are at a 9:15 pace.) I knew I couldn't start the race off behind. So off I went. I had wrote mile 3, 5, 8, 10 , & 12 on my wrist. It was a good idea. My 3 I hit and was under. My 5 I was pumped up realizing I could actually be able to succeed at my best time. It made me feel like I couldn't give up. Mile 7 I realized that my sleeve from my shirt was rubbing my skin raw! Oh how it hurt! I couldn't figure out how to fix the problem. (Next time I will be wearing a tank top.) It was a beautiful run and I kept having to remind myself to enjoy the beauty. By no means was I having a leisurely run. It was work. I remember thinking too that there was no way I'd be able to run a marathon at this pace, but it's a year away, I could get faster. Mile 10 was the hill. It wasn't by any means as big as I thought it would be. It did pull a lot of my strength out though. I was still under after I hit mile 12. I couldn't believe my goal was within reach. I think at this point I started getting emotional. I had to stop myself from crying. Even now my eyes are getting teary. It's tears of joy. Of hard work. That for months we worked so hard. All those miserable work outs weren't for nothing. Some were enjoyable. But most I would've rather stayed in bed. Especially the ones I had to do by myself. I was glad that I was healthy. That I had bounced back from being sick. I felt emotional too because I knew my friends had invested a lot of time with me. I believed they would be proud of me. I thought of the tri and the joy it brought me to see them cheering me on! This is what it is all about. So I did get a little emotional.

The last mile was the hardest. Especially when I hit 13 and started wondering how come the finish line wasn't there. Then I remembered oh ya .1. I ran across the grass to the finish! I made it!

I about passed out waiting for food. My sugar level was really low. I will have to figure out what to do in the marathon and the next half. It was a lot of fun....and yes I will do it again.

I kinda have that after Christmas feeling. Taking down the calandar, it's over. It's a weird kinda let down feeling. I guess the good thing is I will be getting my next "fix" soon enough. Yes I'm becoming addicted to races. I enjoy watching the people, being with friends, doing my best, improving, and sometimes the rare shock of getting a ribbon.

THE Race Report

2009-08-23T09:05:00.003-06:00

Can you believe it's over?

So, Friday we set off for Education Week, where we caught two sessions. Hillary and I slept a little bit through the first one--on communication--and I don't remember much about it because the rest of the time was spent trying NOT to fall asleep.

Our second session was about giving more praise to our husbands and was taught by John Bytheway. I thought it was a good lecture, but my legs were terribly uncomfortable in the chair.

After the sessions, we left to go pick up our race packets. And then we went to dinner at The Brick Oven. I had a great dinner of salad, garlic bread, and pizza, but I totally overate. I usually eat late, and it was 5:30, so I wasn't concerned about the next day's race. We were going to go see a movie, but there wasn't one playing that we were interested in seeing, so we just went to the hotel.

We went to check into our hotel which was a complete mess. They didn't have our reservation. The check-in lady was an idiot. Yada, yada, yada. But, we finally got our room. After we checked in, we went to find where we needed to be at 5:15 the next morning and then stopped at Wal-mart for some last minute supplies.

We got back to the hotel, got a few things ready and then it was off to bed. Hillary and Christina shared a King size bed while I got the sofa pull out--all part of our "suite" deal. The bed was soooo uncomfortable. And I was awake every hour to see if it was time to get up. Finally, it was time. We all got ready and then headed to the buses.

The bus ride up the canyon took FOREVER. I thought, on more than one occassion, surely we've gone too far. But, finally, the bus pulled over and we all filed out. Then we had to walk 3/4ths of a mile to the starting line. That was weird. Couldn't they have found 3/4ths of a mile somewhere else to add to the run? But, whatever.

So we waited in line for the porta potties and then sat on the road. Hillary and Christina had to use the bathroom again, and so we all trooped over to the campsite bathrooms. Against their posted signs saying not to use the bathrooms, Hillary and Christina used them anyways. I would've too, but I didn't have to go. Grace and Trevis were behind us in line so we gave them some of our food that we weren't eating. Then it was back to the starting line and waiting some more.

Somewhere around 8 am, 45ish minutes after we were suppose to start, we were off.

Christina and I ran together for the first 3 miles. Maybe a little longer. I remember we hit the water station together, but then my mind got a little fuzzy afterwards. At mile fourish, the most overwhelming need for a NAP came over me. It was really weird. All I could think was "if I just went and laid down for 10 minutes, I would feel so much better." The thing is, my rational brain was saying "you can't lay down. No one lays down in the middle of a race. Especially when they still have nine miles to go." But my irrational part kept urging me to just go off into the woods, lay down, and everything would be okay in 10 or 15 minutes. It was a really weird discussion going on in my head.

At about 5 miles, I saw Christina veer off towards some bathrooms and I thought, oh, I'll walk until she catches up. Because that's what friends are for. :) Actually, it gave me an excuse to walk and she caught up a lot faster than I thought she would. We ran together until the next water stop, I think, but then she was off again. Maybe I just thought we were together that long. Anyways, I took one of the energy packs they were handing out because I was so drained. I took the water. Drank the water and then opened the energy pack and ate that. Which was a mistake. I should've grabbed another cup of water to wash the energy pack down with. So for the next two miles all I could think about was how dry my mouth was. Finally, there was a water station and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

I'd say miles 4-9 were the hardest. I was exhausted, but I knew I had to keep going. At mile 9, all the downhills were extracting a price from my left knee (NOT the knee I've had two surgeries on!). Every step was excruiating. I briefly considered pulling out of the race, but I really wanted my t-shirt, which only went to finishers. I walked for a long time deciding what I should do and evaluating my running. Clearly, a t-shirt is not worth ruining your knee over, but when you've spent all summer training for this race, it's really hard to throw in the towel. I wiped away some tears and started back up running. The pain wasn't as bad when I was running, but it was still there. I was also aware that Hillary should be closing in on the finish and I was sad I wasn't closer to the finish as well.

Mile 10, we ran down a big hill and then up a big hill. It was the one we were all prepared for. And it didn't seem that hard. Then it was just the last 3 miles to go. It was slow trudging with a lot of walking and pain, but I FINALLY made it!

Only to find out that they were out of shirts, out of food, and basically the finish line SUCKED. But at least I was done running.

One of my friends from Provo came down and cheered me in at the finish line. That was fun to have someone there.

My official finish time was 2:26:08, averaging 11:09/mile. Not bad considering how bad my knee was hurting. I was able to stay on our Training pace until mile 8 and the Slow pace until mile 9. Then it kinda went downhill from there.

Of course, Hillary blew not only her TRAINING time out of the water but her BEST time out of the water as well. She finished in 1:55:51, averaging 8:51/mile. That is INCREDIBLE. I can't believe how good she did. I was so happy to see how excited she was at the finish line when she told me her time. Christina came in below the BEST time of 2:10 as well and finished at 2:09:22, averaging 9:53/mile. And that's with taking a bathroom break too. That's 13.1 miles below a 10 minute pace. Remember the first time we ran 3 miles under a 10 minute pace and thought we were going to die? The last half marathon Christina ran, she ran it in 2:21:30, so she shaved a full 12 minutes off. I ran the same half in 2:50:22, so I shaved 24 minutes off. YAY!

Here are my thoughts on where I went wrong:
(a) I knew I was starting out way too fast. I ran the first 5 miles anywhere from a 1:15 to 30 seconds faster than what I was "suppose" to run them in. I knew that it was going to catch up with me and that's why at 4ish miles I told Christina to go ahead because I was going to slow down a bit to try to rein myself in. In hindsight, I probably should've slowed down at least 30-45 seconds to save some of my energy for the latter part of the course.
(b) My chosen energy thingie was CRAP. I was unbelievably tired at four miles. I mean, I was fighting myself from taking a nap. While I was running. And then I remembered that the same thing happened at the 10k at four miles as well. I felt incredible the first three miles and then I just crumped. I figured it was because I didn't get enough sleep beforehand, but I think it's the energy stuff. I need to find something new. I feel good afterwards, but I don't think it's meant to help with these athletic endurance.
(c) I didn't eat enough beforehand. The oatmeal tasted like crap. Everything tasted like crap and I didn't eat hardly anything. That probably didn't help. I need to force myself to eat, even if I don't feel like it.
(d) I was sooooo hot. I wish I would've had a tank top, but probably not as much as Christina wished she had a tank top.
(e) I had to stare at jiggly thighs and butts all the way down the canyon. You should put on your chosen outfit and then run in place in front of the mirror and check out your backside to make sure that you see what the rest of us are seeing. I don't particularly like skirts so I've never been drawn to the running skirts, but now looking at a plethera of them, I realize that most of them are unflattering because they aren't long enough. Of course, I don't have a lot of room to talk because I am wearing spandex shorts. But at least I try to keep my shirts long enough to cover the jiggly parts.

24 hours later, I'm still a little tired since I didn't get a nap (because apparently Wade didn't think I needed one. Seriously, as soon as I walked into the door, Wade went downstairs and worked on the basement, and then kept asking me to come and hold things. You know, because he can't do anything when he has both kids, but it's perfectly fine for both kids to be upstairs unsupervised if I'm home? I don't get it.) And my knee is still a little sore, but I think by the end of the week, it will be good to go. I need to work on building the muscle around my knees during this "off" season and I'll be good to go for our next race. :)

I'm so happy that both of you guys did so well! You guys were awesome!

The countdown

2009-08-20T21:06:00.002-06:00

I honestly can't believe we are less than two days away! I just read an e-mail that said we are suppose to take a bus at 5:15 a.m. Are you kidding me?! The race doesn't start until 7:30! What are we going to do for that long! That pretty well means NO sleep too. Plus I'll have to pump! Oh what a nightmare!!

Today we biked. We went at a leisurely pace. I enjoyed the bike ride. I really need a new helmet. It was chilly out. I didn't wear a jacket thinking that it would be warm. I was wrong. Anyways I'll our work will show on Saturday. This will be the farthest I've ever ran. (I climbed half dome, which was farther, but by no means ran up it.)

Good Luck Sandra and Christina! I hope everyone feels good and does their best!

Quick report

2009-08-19T13:01:00.002-06:00

Quick note. Yesterday I ran for about 20 minutes. Today I did the two miles on the treadmill. Well...I was WAY over pace. It took me 26 minutes. I don't know why I struggle when I'm on the treadmill. I hope this isn't a sign of the weekend! I'm a little nervous, excited, anxious, hoping for the best. I also heard the news about Hobblecreek. If it did get canceled I think I would have to make up a race!! Oh and I'm excited the results are finally out on the race. It feels like book club. You do it, than discuss it afterwards. Mike B. said,"This is going to make up for some good conversations." Oh the joy of having a whole year to think about it!

Results Analysis

2009-08-18T23:06:00.002-06:00

So we got the results for the triathlon today:

Hillary was ONLY a minute and a half behind Jenifer. She beat her in everything but the bike. But here's the thing. Either Jenifer or my swim time is off because I KNOW that we hit the starting line at the same time on our bikes. I got a little hung up, but not 3 minutes worth. But I'm not sure it was me they messed up on, because Christina was way gone when I reached my bike. So I say Hillary came in first place. YAY!

Swim: 10:33
Bike: 46:14
Run: 26:40

Total Time: 1:23:27

Christina did awesome as well. In the hardest age group, she took 12th out of 20:

Swim: 11:47
Bike: 53:15
Run: 28:35

Total Time: 1:33:37

I placed 6th (maybe 5th. Depending on the swim) out of 11 in the age group:

Swim: 13:54 (I think I fell asleep in the pond)
Bike: 49:13
Run: 33:28 (and on the run)

Total Time: 1:36:35

Only Hillary completed our secret mission. Looks like he was training on the side or something.

Overall, I think we did really well. I would like to figure out that discrepency on the swim though. But, it won't catapult me onto the medal stand, so I'll leave it be. For this year. But I can beat Jenifer next year. I just need to speed up my bike and my run. No problem, right? :)

So what's the secret in the swim? Do you start in the front on the side and resist the urge to migrate to the middle? We definitely need to explore this further, because I don't want to get kicked in the face next year if I can help it. Once the results get posted online, I can run some more analysis.

Anyways, good job Hillary! Take some time off the bike and maybe speed up the run a little and you're in contention to win next year. If not the whole thing, then at least place in the age category.

Can't wait for the next one.

Speedy Speedy

2009-08-18T08:10:00.003-06:00

Day 52
2 miles at 9:57/mile

Why is it that 2 miles seems so much harder than, say, 10 miles?

Christina met me at my house and since I didn't have my watch juiced up, we had to run a 2 mile route around the neighborhood that I'm familiar with. The goal was to run and make sure we hit the finish before 19:54.

The first mile, we had to run up Stansbury Parkway, which seemed a lot easier today than on Saturday during the triathlon. Granted, it wasn't raining, I wasn't wearing wet socks and shoes, and I hadn't just biked 12 miles. But it was bordering on pleasant. For me anyways. Christina mentioned that she was struggling.

We crossed a mile at about 9:25, well below pace. We turned around at the top of the neighborhood on Stansbury Parkway and ran back down and around the neighborhood to the top of Harvest Drive. It's exactly two miles (I measured on Google Earth when I got home). I'm good, aren't I? :) We finished in 17:54, which means we AVERAGED 8:57/mile. Woot! But since I know we did the first mile in 9:25, we did the second mile in 8:29. Hello? I couldn't even run my fastest mile two months ago that fast. And I just did it as the SECOND mile in a two mile run? How awesome is that? The best part was that I felt like I could've run another mile.

In other news, KSL is reporting that Hobble Creek is currently on fire. I don't know where the fire's at or if it's going to impact our run, but pray that we'll be able to still do it. Because I freaking trained all summer for this. And I'm not going to be very happy if some stupid fire cancels it.

Oh, and I'm now up to five pounds lost. 5 measley pounds from working out six days a week for an hour or more. The injustice.

Confessions

2009-08-17T10:02:00.002-06:00

Day 54
Uh...I guess we weren't suppose to do anything...

So, like 2 weeks after we started training, I lost my calendar. I think Josh stole it and ate it (don't ask) and so I've just been looking online and whatnot. Occassionally, I'd call you guys.

And, originally, I guess I figured we would want another day of recovery time from our stellar performances in the triathlon and so I scheduled our track work out for tomorrow.

But, naturally, I forgot that part. And so when I talked to Hillary at church yesterday and she said we weren't scheduled to do anything today, I didn't question why I would've changed the schedule like that. I figured she was mistaken.

And so I set up a track workout with Christina at 9:30 last night, and then called Hillary and set it up with her answering machine.

Showed up this morning and Christina was there and casually mentioned that we weren't scheduled to do anything today. And then I had to confess to having lost the calendar like 7 weeks ago.

So Hillary, I am SO sorry that we totally left you in the dark this morning with no warning whatsoever. That was very rude of me. I should've made a new calendar or something.

But, the intervals were not very exciting. 4 x 400's. We did them in 2:00, 2:05, 2:04, and 1:58. It was cold. A lot colder than you think it should be for mid-August.

Tomorrow, we're running 2 miles at 9:57/mile pace and then Thursday we're going to do a mild bike ride to get our legs working. Saturday is the big day!

Here's the Run Down...

2009-08-16T21:09:00.002-06:00

So race day morning I was very nervous. But not nervous for the race as much as I was thinking, "Where is my MOM?" I called my Dad at 7:00 p.m. and he said, "I thought she would be there by now." I was anxious. My mom got to my house at 7:15. I had already sent Jer over to set up our bikes. I got to the race at 7:20. It was pouring. I was hoping they wouldn't cancel the swim, since that is my best event. I was a little disappointed to not be in the second heat. So I lined up. I decided to jump in the water and test it out. I yelled out to the crowd, "Don't worry I'm just getting a head start!" It was a mistake because it then took about 8 minutes before we did get in and I was freezing. Off we went. Hands, legs, everything kicked me. It was quite annoying. I think last year went a lot smoother. This year we were all bunched. There is no doubt I could've done better had it not been for people swimming right on top of me. But I got out of the swim and didn't feel like I was going to die. (Last year I wouldn't have made it any further. But that was due to the fact I had only swam twice before doing the race....)

My hands were shaking as I put on my socks and shoes. I realized I forgot to untie my shorts and their was a knot. I took a drink of water and got on the bike. The rain was pouring. I did the first lap and wanted to quit. I kept telling myself to go on. Heading towards the second lap Amy passed me. I couldn't keep up. Lots of people passed. I was expecting Jer any time. He never passed. Craig passed me and yelled, "Don't worry you'll pass me in the run." I knew this would only be possible if I kept him in my sight. (Advice I'd given myself in my first tri that I didn't follow) So I did that. I got off the bike and wished I had dry socks. Mine were squishing everywhere. I wanted to take off my shirt too. (Don't worry I had a swim suit underneath) It seemed I had too much material hanging on me.

I started the run and off I went. I caught Craig behind the hospital and asked where Jer was. He didn't know. I headed to Stansbury elementary. A few paces before I reached the school I started to have anxiety and could hardly breathe. I told myself to calm down. I stopped and walked. (Yes I had to walk...) Finally I calmed down and started to run again. My legs felt good. I was in a good pace. I passed Jer. One of the highlights was passing my buddies and have them cheering me on. (Thanks guys!!! You're the BEST!) I passed a few runners at the end. I sprinted to the finish line!!! To the roar of my own crowd. YES!!!! I made it!

It was a great race! I was excited to finish second. (Which in this race might be near impossible for me to ever achieve again.) Thanks Sandra for the great training and Christina for being a great training partner. Now onto the half. I look back and look at the many "little accomplishments" that we've all made. We're faster. We run farther. I never thought I would run 7 miles by myself!! and most of all I have two friends that I ENJOY RUNNING with. I never thought I would ENJOY running! Wow! I said it! I enjoy running.....well sometimes.

Sandra's Post Half Marathon Plans

2009-08-16T16:44:00.002-06:00

Okay, here's what I plan on doing until our next big adventure. This is by no means a set schedule that you have to follow. I thought maybe it'd be helpful for your own exercise schedules if you knew what I was doing:

Monday: Easy run (3-4 miles) and weight training
Tuesday: (lite) swimming and Spinning (I have a pass to the magna rec center so I can hit it on the way home from my mom's while Wade's in school)
Wednesday: Tempo Run (4-5 miles)
Thursday: Swimming and weight training, or rest day. Depending on how I feel.
Friday: Long Run (alternate between 6, 7, 8, 6 miles)
Saturday: Long bike ride or races or Stansbury Days bike/run course.

Once a month I would like to do the Stansbury Days bike and run course on a Saturday and time myself. Unless it's snowing of course. Then I'll just have to settle for biking indoors. My biggest problem in the tri was the transition from biking 12 miles to running a 5k, so I definitely need to work on that.

I really liked having a pace to try to keep instead of running and then calculating the pace afterwards, so after the half, I'm going to adjust my pace, depending on my finishing time. I'm suspecting it will be (a little) faster than what I've been running this summer.

Once we settle on our next half marathon and start training for it, which will probably be the Painter's Half in January, I'm going to drop one biking and one swimming session and add in another rest day. Probably Thursdays. I'm also going to cut out the weight training during active training periods.

Hillary and I (and I hope Christina) are set to do the Turkey Tri. Since I'm not in any position to win the thing, I'm just going to use the "maintenance" program as my training. I think I'll do well, especially if I keep biking and swimming. Basically, I'm doing it to get more triathlons under my belt. And for the challenge. And to be with friends. but I think my "premier" event in the triathlon arena will be the Stansbury Days. I would really like to medal in my age group next year and to do so, I'm going to have to pick up my pace. Which means I'm going to have to do more than one triathlon a year.

If we do the marathon, I'm going to adopt a similar training plan to this summer's, but with one more rest day incorporated. I would also like to incorporate specific workouts to do in the pool and on the bike instead of just "doing the exercise" so we can say we did it. Intervals and hills and what not. The goal is to get better, right?

In September, we're going to have a "team" meeting and decide if we're doing a marathon for sure next year. Then we can go from there. I'll have some sample training plans ready to review.

Other things I'm going to work on during the "off" season: getting 8 hours of sleep a night, drinking more water, eating nutritional meals, and not losing my patience with the kids.

If at any time you want to change your hobby to needlepoint or crochet, let me know. I'm all game. :)

Kidding.

Let me know so I can talk you out of it.

Do you like how I've totally taken over your training lives and dictate what to do and when? If you EVER have a suggestion, please let me know. I'm just making this stuff (mostly) up as I go. And, if you don't ever want to train with me because I'm crazy, let me know so I can feel bad and get over it (or change to be less crazy) instead of wondering if you're making up excuses as to why you can't go out with me. :)

But I think we did really good this summer, except for those couple of weeks where we were all in burn out mode. Most everyone I've talked to that runs these longer races say that's common. I remember being in burn out mode for the marathon training, but I was doing a training program that had us running 5 days a week--PLUS training for a triathlon. I really can't say enough about the 3 day a week training program. And the fact that I'm doing it with FRIENDS, and not basically alone (though Kandiss did the marathon with me, I was trying for a much faster time than her and so we basically trained by ourselves.)

I'd like to do another triathlon or two sometime next Spring before training for the marathon begins. And of course, the monthly 5ks. With soccer season, it's hard to get out to the organized ones on Saturday mornings. So maybe we could set some up around here and invite some of the neighborhood out to them. I really want to hit 25 minutes by next year. Hopefully, BEFORE the Tooele 4th of July 5k, so I can get a pretty ribbon for my age group too.

Hobblecreek Race Plan

2009-08-15T17:30:00.003-06:00

Race
Hobblecreek Half

Date
Saturday, August 22, 2009

Time
7:30 am

Place
Springville

Note: For this race, I'm giving us each three goal times to complete; a BEST time for those races that everything is going perfect and you feel great, a TRAINING time, which is the time we trained for, and a SLOW time, to account for anything that goes wrong. Of course, there is no humilation in coming in even slower than that time. Finishing is the biggest goal.

BEST Time Goal

Hillary: 2:00:00 (9:05/mile
Christina: 2:10:00 (9:55/mile)
Sandra: 2:10:00 (9:55/mile)

BEST Mile Splits
Hillary
Mile 1: 9:09
Mile 2: 18:18
Mile 3: 27:27
Mile 4: 36:36
Mile 5: 45:46
Mile 6: 54:55
Mile 7: 1:04:04
Mile 8: 1:13:13
Mile 9: 1:22:23
Mile 10: 1:31:32
Mile 11: 1:40:41
Mile 12: 1:49:50
Mile 13: 1:58:59
Mile 13.1: 2:00:00

Christina and Sandra
Mile 1: 9:55
Mile 2: 19:49
Mile 3: 29:45
Mile 4: 39:40
Mile 5: 49:35
Mile 6: 59:30
Mile 7: 1:09:25
Mile 8: 1:19:20
Mile 9: 1:29:15
Mile 10: 1:39:10
Mile 11: 1:49:05
Mile 12: 1:59:00
Mile 13: 2:08:55
Mile 13.1: 2:10:00

TRAINING Time Goal
Hillary: 2:05 (9:30/mile)
Christina: 2:15 (10:18/mile)
Sandra: 2:15 (10:18/mile)

TRAINING Mile Splits
Hillary
Mile 1: 9:30
Mile 2: 19:00
Mile 3: 28:30
Mile 4: 38:00
Mile 5: 47:30
Mile 6: 57:00
Mile 7: 1:06:30
Mile 8: 1:16:00
Mile 9: 1:25:30
Mile 10: 1:35:00
Mile 11: 1:44:30
Mile 12: 1:54:00
Mile 13: 2:03:30
Mile 13.1: 2:05:00

Christina and Sandra
Mile 1: 10:17
Mile 2: 20:35
Mile 3: 30:53
Mile 4: 41:11
Mile 5: 51:29
Mile 6: 1:01:47
Mile 7: 1:12:05
Mile 8: 1:22:23
Mile 9: 1:32:40
Mile 10: 1:42:58
Mile 11: 1:53:16
Mile 12: 2:03:34
Mile 13: 2:13:52
Mile 13.1: 2:15:00

SLOW Time Goals
Hillary: 2:11:00 (10:00/mile)
Christina: 2:18:00 (10:30/mile)
Sandra: 2:18:00 (10:30/mile)

SLOW Mile Splits
Hillary
Mile 1: 10:00
Mile 2: 20:00
Mile 3: 30:00
Mile 4: 40:00
Mile 5: 50:00
Mile 6: 1:00:00
Mile 7: 1:10:00
Mile 8: 1:20:00
Mile 9: 1:30:00
Mile 10: 1:40:00
Mile 11: 1:50:00
Mile 12: 2:00:00
Mile 13: 2:10:00
Mile 13.1: 2:11:00

Christina and Sandra
Mile 1: 10:30
Mile 2: 21:00
Mile 3: 31:30
Mile 4: 42:00
Mile 5: 52:30
Mile 6: 1:03:00
Mile 7: 1:13:30
Mile 8: 1:24:00
Mile 9: 1:34:30
Mile 10: 1:45:00
Mile 11: 1:55:30
Mile 12: 2:06:00
Mile 13: 2:16:30
Mile 13.1: 2:18:00

Notes
Every half marathon record has been broken on this course. It's a gentle downhill course that is suppose to be gorgeous. Check out this link: http://srcevents.com/hobblecreek/phototour.php It shows a picture of each mile with a little bit of description. It looks like the first seven miles are downhill and then there's a little uphill at mile 7 and then a long uphill at 10:30. My strategy is to run a comfortable pace the first 7 miles and not worry about how under time I am as long as I'm feeling good. Then I have some time banked for those uphill sections.

My goals are to (a) Run the entire thing and (b) Come in under 2:15. I know we can do this. We've been training all summer and we're fitter than we were just two months ago.

I'm way excited. Can't wait!! Then we can talk about our next adventure.

Race Day

2009-08-15T12:16:00.003-06:00

Day Whatever
Stansbury Days Triathlon

Oh man. It was awesome. As in rain-lightning-craziness awesome. And I had a BLAST. Though, that's not what I was thinking during the second lap of the bike portion. But when it was all over and done with, overall, I had the time of my life. I LOVED it. Even if it took 15 minutes in the hot shower to finally get my teeth to stop chattering.

My parents arrived bright and early and I set off for the clubhouse at about 7 am. I think all three of us were a little harried. Christina didn't have her bike. But she did have a son sans one shoe who was a little perturbed. Hillary's parents were late getting to the house because of an accident which made her a little nervous about getting to the starting line. I didn't feel like I put as much thought into the my prerace routine as I did when I did the triathlon two years ago. If I would've been thinking, I would've put my dry clothes in my backpack to save for after the race. But I wasn't really thinking. It's been a long week with Wade being gone.

My mom informed me that there are certain activities that warrant her to ruin her hair for. She's still of the old school generation that goes and gets her hair done once a week--Thursdays--and if she stands outside in a torrential downpour on Saturday, she's hosed until the following Thursday. This, apparently, did not warrant her getting her hair ruined for, so she and my dad sat at home with the kids while I braved the elements.

I really thought they were going to call the swim judging by the thunder and lightning, but they didn't. The first heat went out and I saw Hillary get pushed to the back of the pack, but I know she pushed right back to the front. I'll be interested in seeing the results.

The second heat went out and as the siren blared, I looked over and saw the most gorgeous rainbow. Followed shortly by a bolt of lightning. It was a little scary, but we were underway.

I felt good in the water, as far as my swimming went. I wish there was a lane set up for people insistant on doing the back stroke FROM THE BEGINNING. One lady was going the same speed as me and kept pushing me under. She was literally on top of me. I finally had to move to get away from her, but then I got clobbered in the face by someone's wayward foot. It was crazy! Word is that the first heat wasn't much better. I think I needed to start in the front instead of the back.

By the time I got to the bike racks, Christina was gone. I started off and it was a downpour. The rain was dripping off my helmet. I felt A LOT better on the bike this year than 2 years ago. Though I was passed, I passed a few people and I didn't feel like I was riding in mud the entire time. The biking portion of the race wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The turns were clearly marked and as long as you didn't try to take them too fast, you were okay. I forgot to hit start on my watch until I was a mile in, so, I think I did the biking portion in 50ish minutes. It took me about 5 miles to catch up with Christina. We talked for a little bit and then I took off. I knew she'd catch me in the run anways.

The best part of the entire race was that I beat Malisa (the spinning instructor at The Difference and Gold's) on the bike. She passed me, but at the last bit down to the clubhouse, I totally blew right past her. Of course, she passed me on the run, but I still consider it a small victory.

When I got back to the transition area, my legs were really shaky. I had a hard time walking my bike to the rack and then hefting it up there. Then I had even a harder time getting going on the run. Part of the problem was that my feet were soaked! I probably had a quarter of an inch of water in my shoes. That's one advantage to having biking shoes. The other problem is that I didn't do a lot of training with the transition from biking to running. I tend to go out too fast and then have the beginnings of an asthma attack. Then I have to walk to catch my breath. I ended up walking most of the hill up Stansbury Parkway. Then, I started running again, but I was still going too fast. I had to walk some more. Christina caught up with me and we ran together for awhile, but she found someone she knew that came along and left with him. Good for her though. We were running at a sub-9 minute pace, so she was flying.

I walked again at the water stop and then again up the hill by the elementary school. I was surprised at the number of runners who were still coming the other way. Made me feel a lot better than two years ago, when we were closer to the end. I made sure to tell everyone good job that I passed by going the other way because those are the true inspirations.

I finished the last half mile really strong. I wasn't too winded. I still had some energy. I didn't feel like I was going to die, which is hard, because then it means that I could've pushed myself harder. But, I did my best. I finished the run in 33:25, which is on par with two years ago. But I sure felt a lot better. And I blew my bike time, hopefully, out of the water. I even think it was a mile shorter in 2007.

However, overall the best came when Hillary took 2nd place for the age group. She did AWESOME!! Congratulations!!

Can't wait until the results are posted and we can see where we were at so we can work on it for next year. :) I definitely need to improve on my running. Since I'll still be in the "easier" age group next year, I want to medal. So, things to work on over the winter.

Man, that was awesome.

Winding Down

2009-08-14T09:03:00.002-06:00

Day 48
3 x 800 at 4:57/2 laps

I was up late helping Wade get ready for scout camp and then I was up early trying to get him out the door. I laid down for just a minute and the kids woke me up at 9:30. I guess we all needed the sleep. But I missed our workout at the track. Hillary called to say they did really good though. So GO GIRLS.

Day 49
3 miles at 9:57/mile

Christina met me at my house and I dragged the two kids out the door and into the stroller. The very stroller that had a flat tire. Grrr...these tires are driving me CRAZY. It wasn't completely flat, but I had pumped it up before we left, so there's a hole somewhere, but I decided I'd just do the run anyways. We ran three times around the neighborhood. 60 pounds of kid coupled with a stroller with a flat tire didn't make for an easy run. We adopted a run/walk regimen for the day. We'd (read: I. Christina was just following my lead. She would've ran the whole thing) run a half mile at below a 10 minute pace and then walk a half mile. Mostly, we walked up the big hill. I know. I'm a wimp. But I did make it the whole 3 miles.

Day 50
Swimming

I was in Idaho with my mom, and I didn't get out of bed early enough to do anything. I had thought about dragging my bike up with me, but I then I figured I'd probably only bike for an hour or two the entire trip and that was a long ways to drag a bike. Originally, it was going to be my road bike and then I didn't want something to happen to it on the freeway or someone take it. So then I was going to take the mountain bike, but I figured, 300 miles one way was kinda far for an hour bike ride. So I left the bikes home.

Day 51
Biking

I was at my grandma's house in Downey, Idaho, population 613. The town is so little. But, after the morning train came by at 6 am and proceeded to blow it's horn at EVERY intersection, I was up and at 'em.

I ran 3 miles at below a 10 minute pace--no problem. YAY! This summer must've paid off, if not in age group wins, then definitely in lowering my 5k times. Which, I guess, is a start.

It was a little hard to wind my way for three miles through a town that is a mile square, but since I haven't really explored Downey since I was a kid it was interesting. The houses are all SO old. No one has really come in and built anything new. The yards are all run down. Main street holds a small grocery store, a western wear store, the library and the post office. There's a smallish park and an elementary school. Also, there's an assisted living center that was once the old elementary school. Apparently, all the Downey runners were on vacation, because I was the ONLY one out there. It was pleasant and nice to run somewhere new and have new things to look at.

When I got home, I found out that Amy was, indeed, doing the triathlon this year. I wish I was in a position where I could hum and haw my way through an entire summer and then decide in the last week to do the triathlon. Instead, I've been training for 6 days a week at bizarro hours for the entire summer. There goes my age group award. :( Oh well. The most important thing is that we have fun, don't finish last, and complete our secret mission.

Day 52
6 miles at 10:42/mile pace

We opted to take the day off because of the triathlon TOMORROW. I can't believe it's here. There's a lot I need to do today to get ready for it. But, as far as I know, we're all lining up at the starting line feeling pretty good. Which is a marked improvement for Christina from the last two years.

Good luck ladies and I'm sure we will do just fine, if not really well.

Pool

2009-08-11T22:23:00.002-06:00

I forgot to mention that I made it to the pool today. I cut my workout short. (Only did 30 laps) It was good I did because Tessa had an accident in the Day Care. Thank goodness it was only #1. Nothing exciting about the workout. Although I did have the thought that life as a mom couldn't be better. I was working out, sitting in the hot tub, it was great. (It QUICKLY changed when I went to the grocery store with 4 kids! My dream life turned into a NIGHTMARE!!!!)

Sandra- M.I.A. & Running a race Pace

2009-08-11T22:09:00.002-06:00

So Monday, Yesterday, I rolled out of bed after a very short night. 11:30 p.m. went to bed and fed Belle. 12:00 Tessa wanted toothpaste. 3:30 Fed Belle. 5:00 Hunter had a nightmare and got in bed with us. 6:00 Jeremy woke me up because he couldn't find his comb. (I'd finally fallen asleep and was in the dream state!) So I wasn't too excited to be running at 7:30 a.m. I dragged Belle out of bed. Found the stroller. Was late to the track. Sandra was missing! Christina was patiently waiting. So we started. I figured Sandra had to help Wade with scout camp and overslept. Christina and I accomplished the run in well under the time. We blew it out of the water.

Tuesday
I had to run early so I joined Amy and Sharayne. I hardly spoke a word while running. I decided I'd rather keep my energy for running. It was really dark outside. I think if Jer knew how dark he would buy me a glow in the dark outfit. WE WERE RUNNING FAST! I'm not sure how fast, but I know it was faster than I run practice runs. I might as well of been doing a race! I think I might have to borrow Sandra's watch sometime to see what pace they are running at. Of course Amy wasn't running her fastest!

P.S. Since I wont be seeing you for a few days, I wanted to tell you this tid bit of info. It's crazy I've been married to Jer for 10 years and didn't know this until tonight. I actually didn't believe him when he told me, so I looked it up. I know he is fast. But I didn't know that in High School he ran a 4:50ish mile. (The high school record now is 4:20ish!) THAT IS CRAZY FAST!!!! It's good he isn't near that pace for Saturday's triathlon.

Stansbury Triathlon Race Plan

2009-08-08T22:31:00.002-06:00

Date
August 15, 2009

Time
7:30 am

Place
Stansbury Clubhouse

Goals
(a) Complete secret mission
(b) Don't come in last

Notes:
We've been training all summer long for this, so I don't think we have anything to worry about. Try to not freak out in the water (Sandra) or on the bike (Hillary) or during the run (all of us) and we'll do fine.

I found it useful to bring a bottle of gatorade for the bike ride in addition to water, but you may want to try an energy shot or what not. That bike ride is tough and especially with running the three miles afterwards. Also, you're running a lot faster at the beginning than you think you are, so don't try to go too fast at the start of the run. You'll get winded (especially up that hill) and then you'll struggle the rest of the run. It will feel slow, but I promise you're going a good pace.

I can't believe the day is almost here. Big prizes will be in store if we complete both of the goals. :) Especially goal #1.

Scaredy Cats

2009-08-08T22:24:00.003-06:00

Day 47
Biking

Christina called this morning as I was lamenting the alarm. She said it was freezing cold and looking like it was going to rain. So we bagged our ride this morning and I climbed back in bed for another few hours.

Of course, a half hour later, people on facebook were talking about what a perfect morning it was to be out running and Christina called back at 9:30ish to say that she felt like a wuss for not just going out.

But, it's SO close to the races and we don't want to get sick or hurt if we can help it. Of course, we haven't really been on the new bike course and I'm starting to get a little nervous. But I think we'll do fine.

T-7 days until the triathlon. Oh man...I get nervous just thinking about it.

The Nitty Gritty

2009-08-07T08:26:00.002-06:00

Day 46
12 mile run at 10:42/pace

First off, before we go further--we did AWESOME. Beyond AWESOME. So good that even Wade went wow. And it takes a lot to make Wade go wow.

So, Hillary joined us for this week's long run. I don't think the three of us have done a long run together the entire training plan. It was nice to have her along. :) It was decided that we'd do 11 miles instead of the 12, because Hillary had to get a babysitter and though Wade had graciously agreed to go into work later, he didn't have a chance to get any work done last night because the freeway was closed until 6:30, and he had left work at 3:00 to make it up to see the house in Draper. But that meant that I had to be home as close to 8 am as possible because he had a lot of work he had to make up.

We got kind of a late start--10 minutes--so we loped off another mile down to 10. The run was getting better by the minute. We started off towards Erda, and I felt a lot like I did last Friday. I started off nice, it was pleasant, not too taxing. Sooooo much better than Tuesday's run. The weather was a little chilly to begin with, but it was perfect about 2 minutes into the run, and stayed that way.

We ran to Cimmaron Way so we wouldn't have to loop around Christina's neighborhood for the last mile. It's a little more uphill after that big uphill, but we were keeping a pretty good pace. I felt great. All the way down to the highway and to the first water stop. And then, not so good after. I was fine running-wise, but after swigging some of the propel that Hillary had left out, I got a stomachache.

When we hit Bates Canyon, I was prepared to tell everyone that we'd gone halfway, when I realized that we had, in fact, gone six miles. Wahoo. One less mile than I thought. But my stomach was not feeling any better. We looped around Rose Springs and on to the frontage road. I was hoping I'd start feeling better or that I'd be able to finish the run, but it was getting worse every step I took. I figured I'd have to stop at the bathrooms at the clubhouse, but, ew...and so at the corner of Country Club and the frontage road, I decided I'd just head home from there. Good thing too, because I BARELY made it. In fact, I almost lost it at McMullen's house (so close to home...that would've sucked) but by sheer determination and a resistance of the urge to sprint (that's where you get in trouble) I was able to make it home.

I had 10 minutes before Wade had to leave, so I decided to run one more mile. I ran around the neighborhood, so I actually made it 9.50 miles, which isn't bad for the circumstances.

Now, for the time. We averaged 10:16/mile. I'm going to assume we would've averaged about the same for the last two miles, because I'm sure you guys did and the last mile I did in 10:11. So, for all intents and purposes, I'll say 10:16/mile. Which, as you know, is almost 30 seconds FASTER than our pace. In fact, it's 2 seconds faster than our target pace for the race for a 2:15 finish. I know for sure, barring no unforeseen incidents, that given the downhill course, all of us will come in under 2:15. In June did you think it was possible? At the time, I thought I was up in the night. But, look at what a difference 2 months makes.

To put our time in perspective, last week we averaged 10:34/mile on basically the same course. Tuesday, we averaged 11:01.

Here are our splits:

Mile 1: 10:12
Mile 2: 10:19
Mile 3: 10:29
Mile 4: 10:26
Mile 5: 9:50
Mile 6: 9:59
Mile 7: 10:30
Mile 8: 10:21
Mile 8.5 (Sandra): 10:30
Mile 9.5 (Sandra): 10:11

So, I ate dinner at like 11:00 last night. And it consisted of a "jam" sandwich--two pieces of bread jammed together. I ate Taco Time for lunch and a muffin at about 6 pm. I'm sure that's what contributed to my problem this morning. I also ate a peanut butter sandwich this morning, but I usually don't have problems with that. So, maybe it was the 44 ounce Orange Bang I drank, and the pink lemonade and the two icees on Wednesday. Ahhh...I'm seeing the problem. :)

Anyways, good job girls. Have a great day and in a week, we'll be gearing up for the triathlon.

Sleeping In and Lightning Strikes

2009-08-06T10:43:00.002-06:00

Day 44
Swimming

After yesterday's trudge through the Sahara desert we decided to take today off. It was nice to sleep in--until 7 am. Because I was wide awake at 7 am. Grrr...

Day 45
Biking

Got my tire fixed. And it's flat again. I swear, these people are idiots. Don't go there. Taylor's Bike Shop. I'm going to make them fix it. For free. Because this is what happened last time, and I told them that. But did they listen? No.

So Christina and I were going to do the course on our mountain bikes. I got all ready to go and went outside and the lightning was coming down. I figured my greatest chance of making it alive to the triathlon and half marathon would be to not put myself on a big metal object in the middle of a lightning storm. So I drove over to the clubhouse to tell Christina this plan. She was there, riding in the middle of the parking lot.

She headed home. I headed home. Everything was great until I got a message from Becky (across the street) on Facebook (dang that facebook) saying that she ran into Chrisitina riding her bike and that I had scrapped the ride because of...thunder. Thunder?!? It makes me sound like a wuss. Which I'm so not. Usually. It was the LIGHTNING.

So, I called Christina and gave her a hard time. But, secretly, I wish I would've just bucked it up and gone. Because that's two days without exercise and I can definitely feel it. In my body and my mood.

The moral of the story: There are no secrets in Stansbury Park. Just like when I tried to sneak out for that ride on Monday...

Give me a B.I.K.E.

2009-08-06T08:12:00.002-06:00

Bike bike I'd rather hike. Well I'd rather leisurely ride. I'm not trained on the bike. I'm out of shape when it comes to riding. I rode 7 miles today and thought I was going to die. I don't think I got above 17 miles per hour. I was usually riding around 10. My gears had a problem towards the end. No flat tire though. I was kinda expecting one. It's okay if I get one though during the race, I'll just take the spare tire I have around my waste and put it on.

The most eventful part was getting honked at. A car was driving towards me and I pulled into the turning lane. He honked. I couldn't figure out quite why, except he might have thought I was going to turn in front of him. He looked really angry. You know it makes you wish you could say something to them, but you just have to drop it.

This is one of the things that bugs me most about Stansbury Park. There are no good riding, jogging, walking, skating, etc...paths!!! I got home and ran .5 miles on the treadmill. Almost a week away! Oh one more note, I was ready to throw up the end of the bike ride. I was feeling motion sickness.

yesterday's post

2009-08-05T22:47:00.001-06:00

bytheway I accidently posted yesterday's post on traveling down luke lane blog. I'm too tired to fix it. So this is a reminder to myself that it is on there.

The dreadful treadmill

2009-08-05T22:37:00.002-06:00

I don't know what was worse- looking at the scale and realizing I weigh 123 pounds or thinking about running 8 miles on a treadmill. Well Jer had to go to work very early so I didn't have a choice. I was going to run on the treadmill. I decided to split the run. run 4 miles in the morning 4 at night. I have a T.v. in the treadmill room that doesn't work. so I listened to country music as I ran. It's annoying that their are so many commercials! It took me 52 minutes to run 4 miles. (A lot slower pace on the treadmill) I was pretty impressed with myself. I usually can't make it past 30 minutes because of boredom. My mom trained for a marathon on the treadmill. She would run for a few hours. I've never figured out how she did it. (She did a 4 hour and something marathon too) Well today I had a primary meeting with everyone in primary. It was at the church. I was planning to come home and run. Well it didn't happen. I came home and fed Belle for about an hour!!! It will make life a lot easier when I quit nursing. Tonight I was looking at the pictures of Sandra and me at the 10k and I was getting excited to do another race. (Maybe not too excited about a half, but the 10k was fun.) The sad part is that summer is almost over!

Burn Out Too

2009-08-04T10:35:00.003-06:00

Day 43
8 miles at 9:57/mile pace

So funny that when I checked the blog, there was Hillary's entry with the same title I was going to use.

Yeah, I've reached burned out point as well. I'm not eating very well (as in, hardly at all because my appetite is gone) and I'm tired. Yesterday, I took like three catnaps. I couldn't keep my eyes open. It's like I look at some people and they exercise an hour or more a day and don't seem to have a problem. And others of us can hardly keep it up for two months. Isn't the recommendation to get an hour of exercise a day? I wonder if Christina feels the same way because it could be the age of Hillary and my babies that are keeping us down. Especially since Hillary is still breastfeeding. Christina, how are you feeling?

So, yeah, with that being said, today's run kinda sucked. Like big time. We left at 6 am and I had a new route all mapped out from my house. It took a lot of effort to find 8 miles, but with some creativity, I did it. But, I forgot all about water. I figured we'd be okay and left two bottles where we looped around at the top of the street at about 6.5 miles.

Within the first quarter of mile, I knew I was in trouble. My mouth was SO dry I could hardly muster the energy to keep going. Every step it was like "need water. Need water." I ran through some sprinklers hoping that by cooling down, I could make it. I don't know what I was thinking, though. We were only at mile 2 and 6.5 miles was a ways off. The weather was also really humid too. How do those Texans and southerners do it?

We started at the top of Water Wheel and then ran down to Village. Then took Village to Bayshore. It was finally at Bayshore that I gave in and tried to drink the water from the church sprinklers. I couldn't catch the water and the spray was too powerful to sip from, so I barely got any, but at least it was something.

Then my mouth dried up again. Christina reminded me there were drinking fountains at the clubhouse, to which we were headed, and so that gave me a little spring in my step. We made it there, but the drinking fountain wasn't working. There were sinks on the other side of the bathroom that we scooped water from. It was nasty tasting, but, at least it was wet.

We headed over to Delgado and then down by the townhomes, needing even more water every step I took. We continued down through the Ivory development. We had hit 5 miles by then, and I could hardly take another step. It was so hard, so I slowed down. We came up to the highway and then down to our neighborhood. We ran around, but I had to have more water, so I tried to scoop more water again at the church sprinklers. It was about as successful as the first time. I cut through the parking lot to meet Christina at the street and then I was done. I couldn't run another step. I told Christina I had to walk the rest of the mile (about .15). So we walked. And then we ran to the top of Water Wheel where I had set out our measly bottles of water. We ended up walking all the way over to the street where you turn to get to the clubhouse. Then Christina convinced me to at least run to the bridge. We ran to the bridge and, though I was no longer thirsty, I was wasted. We ended up walking through the parking lot. We started running down the parkway and into the neighborhood. We circled the small block on Water Wheel, and FINALLY hit 8 miles.

It was such a miserable run because I was SO aware of where we were every step of the way. Though I check my watch all the time, I'm usually not paying attention to how far we've gone, or how much longer we have, until the last two miles. But today, I knew every step of the way. And that made the run feel like three hours.

Also, I totally overdid it yesterday. I swam, did an incredibly hard track workout, and then biked. I wasn't going to bike but I had to get out of the house. I figured I'd just do one loop of the triathlon course so I could get a feel for it and let you guys know any potential pitfalls. As I was coming up by the school, I noticed my tire was flat. I don't know if it had happened just then or if I had been riding on a flat tire for a while (I'm hoping that latter so I can blame my dismal time on that), but I ended up having to walk my bike the mile home. I ate very little for breakfast and hardly any lunch or dinner. Certainly not enough to sustain energy for all three activities, plus running after a four year old and an 8 month old, plus clean the house. And I didn't drink nearly enough water, which probably added to my problem this morning.

And to make myself feel better, I treated myself to an icee and chocolate Hostess cupcakes at 10 pm. I'm sure that helped too. I usually weigh myself before I head out and then again when I get home so I know how much "water" weight I lost so I can make sure to drink up. Today, I lost 2 POUNDS. That is A LOT of water weight to lose. And then drink back up.

So yeah, today sucked. But only the last three miles. Here were our splits:

Mile 1: 9:52
Mile 2: 9:48
Mile 3: 9:45
Mile 4: 9:53
Mile 5: 9:54
Mile 6: 12:20
Mile 7: 15:14
Mile 8: 11:23

We did AWESOME the first 5 miles. And then I crashed. I was even thinking during mile 4 or 5 that I could do the half in under 10 minute miles. Yeah. I think I was verging on very dehydrated and delusional.

The point of this blog was to track where we were having problems, and so next time--because there will be one, right girls? :)--we know what to do differently. Definitely, we need another rest day in there. It was a man who came up with the training schedule and I'm sure he didn't take into account having children. Or being at-home moms.

It's a learning process, but I'm so glad we're almost done.

Burn out

2009-08-03T21:26:00.002-06:00

Honestly I'm feeling very burned out. It's not just because of the workouts, it's trying to juggle everything. It's hard to keep up with Jeremy always gone. Christina makes the 4 kid thing look so easy!!! Tonight he is enjoying running. (As much as you can enjoy running) The thing is He doesn't have to worry about having a 14 month old with him. I should've said, "Sure you can go running, but you have to take Belle!" Good Luck!!!! I rolled out of bed this morning thinking for sure I would be the latest to the track. I got there and Sandra and Christina hadn't arrived. I decided to start without them wondering if they were going to make it, or if Belle would make it in her too little car seat. Twice around and Belle was ready to go. I realized too that thinking I could run 10 miles in 9 to 9:30 was a little crazy! Why shoot for something that is impossible. I thought I was going to die when Christina and I ran over a 10 minute pace. Anyways, here's to swimming at Gold's tomorrow. Hip hip hurrah! I really should just take a book and read. I'd enjoy that a whole lot more.

Thwap, Thwap, Thwap

2009-08-03T09:41:00.002-06:00

Day 42
Swimming
4 x 1600's

I met Christina at 5:15 and we headed to the pool. So excited that I only have to swim one more time before the triathlon because Wade will be at Scout camp all next week.

The laps were pretty uneventful. I think I might have even dozed off somewhere in the middle.

We picked up our kids and met back at the track at 7:15ish to run our intervals.

Thwap, thwap, thwap is the sound of my thighs hitting each other. I swear they didn't do this just two years ago. I could wear running shorts and they didn't ride all the way up and cause major chafing. But, today, that's exactly what they did.

Hillary had beat us to the track and had already done her first interval by the time we started up.

We ran the first interval and it sucked. And then Belle was done playing so Hillary left.

Christina and I pressed on with our workout. After the second interval I told Christina that I could not go another step. We walked around the track and I felt a little better. So we did the third one. Then we did the fourth one because I wanted to say I actually finished this stupid workout. But I was only about a quarter of the way in to the first lap when I was done. I had no desire to finish, but I pulled it out of somewhere and finished.

Our splits were dismal. We actually got slower as we progressed. This was definitely not a good workout for me and I'm glad that I don't have to run mile repeats anymore. I've been completely knocked out by this workout. In fact, it's taken me 2 hours to write this because I keep drifting off to sleep.

Mile 1: 8:57
Mile 2: 9:22
Mile 3: 9:29
Mile 4: 9:38

Pathetic. Anything has to be easier than this workout. 12 miles? Bring it on. * miles tomorrow at a below 10 minute pace? Yeah, baby. More mile intervals? NEVER.

The Bird

2009-08-02T00:40:00.002-06:00

Day 41
Biking

I haven't flipped anyone the bird in a long time. I've thought about doing it on occassion, but actually doing it, for all the world to see, I haven't done in a while.

Until today.

Today, we were coming back from our leisurely ride over to Erda. We turned on to Village and I was waiting for this red car to pass so I could cross the street, so I was riding on the wrong side of the street. I might have been riding next to Christina, talking to her. But still. The street is plenty big for all of us to fit on it and be happy. But no.

Mr. Crappy Red Car was not going to move over and instead, laid on his horn as he was approaching me. Like he was going to be late for work because of me.

So I gave him the bird. Because he deserved it. And I'm only human. And I've been working out for an hour six days a week for two months and I've only lost four pounds and I'm in constant sleep deprivation. So Mr. Crappy Red Car, don't mess with me.

And that's it. That's the most excitement that today's ride brought us.

If you read my email earlier, I sent a link to the NEW bike course. I drove it today and it looks to be a ton easier than the original course. But I'm a little mad I've spent all summer riding the other course. Oh well. Made me stronger, right? I hate how we're going to have to ride it twice.

Have a good day off.

Running at Joes Valley

2009-08-01T22:18:00.000-06:00

Again the scenery was beautiful to be running. Friday I got up and ran with Natalie Griffith. (She hasn't been running lately so it wasn't super fast.) We did 5 miles. Saturday Natalie and Jeremy stayed in bed. (Jer keeps saying I am the reason he isn't working out. Ha! His parents would've babysat! He just wants to blame it on ME!) So I ran about 7 miles. I would've ran more but I didn't have the time. My biggest concern is my knees. I've been having pain in my knees. I'll have to ask Sandra what it felt like when she ended up having to have surgery. I'm a little worried. It would be just my luck to do all this work and in the end not be able to do it. I felt good after about the third mile. It takes me a bit to warm up. I'm glad to hear Sandra is excited for this run! Hopefully we'll all be able to taper well.

10 Miles and an Ice Bath

2009-07-31T19:02:00.003-06:00

Day 40
10 miles at 10:42/mile pace

If there ever was a day I wanted Christina to sleep in today was the day. I was not in the mood to run 10 miles (like, anyone wakes up and says "Geez, I can't wait to run 10 miles), but alas, Christina was waiting for me at 5:30 this morning. I had dropped off water at Virg's and at the clubhouse on my way over, so I was a little late. Apparently, not late enough. :) I was feeling nauseous (again. I think it's the anticipation of running 10 miles) and so I only took a few bites of a granola bar.

However, we started off strong and the run was--dare, I say it--quite pleasant. For me, up until mile 8. Then it got hard. Really hard. But the first 8 miles went by fairly quickly.

It was pretty uneventful, though we did comment that rarely have we felt this good running. If only all runs felt like this.

We averaged 10:34(!) for the entire run, finishing in 1:45:35, which I felt was great. We stopped to drink our water, but those were our only walking breaks and they were .02 miles at the most. So, we ran 10 miles without stopping. Yay! Another first for me. Our target pace for a 2:15 half-marathon is 10:12/mile, which I think is totally doable, especially since the course is mostly downhill.

Our splits were:
Mile 1: 10:23
Mile 2: 10:32
Mile 3: 10:40
Mile 4: 10:36
Mile 5: 10:28
Mile 6: 10:43
Mile 7: 10:11
Mile 8: 10:40
Mile 9: 10:37
Mile 10: 10:45

During mile 6, I got a sideache and had to slow down. But I ran through it. It was one of the only two miles I didn't hit the pace--off by a second. (Christina hit the pace on all 10 miles because she was just a step or two--or 10, in the case of the last mile--ahead of me in both cases). Mile 9 and 10 were really hard. Especially the last half mile of the entire run. I was talking out loud to myself telling myself to keep going. That I couldn't stop yet because I'd never run 10 miles without walking. Today was going to be the day. Yada, yada, yada. Mostly it was trying to quiet the little negative voice telling me I couldn't do it and to just stop. Ha. I showed it. I did do it and I almost pulled it out of bag at a 10:42 pace. What happened was that my watch showed 10 miles, but the distance alarm (it beeps every mile) hadn't beeped and so it would only calculate 9.99 miles. I slowed waaaaaay down until it crossed over to the 10 miles and beeped, but it was 3 seconds slower than I thought it would be. Oh well. 3 seconds and 1 second shy on two miles out of ten is still awesome.

What was even more awesome was that I finally figured out how to get my watch to show me the pace of each mile in a scrolling fashion as we run it, so I always know if we're on target. What I had been doing was adding 10:42 as each mile passed so I knew what time we had to cross the next mile at. For example, I'd say "okay, mile 1 is at 10:42, mile 2 is at 21:24, mile 3 is at 32:06, ect." Then, I could check the overall time each mile and see if we were under. If you can imagine, the more miles we ran, the harder it was to calculate them in my head and remember. And adding 10:42 isn't exactly the easiest math to do while you're oxygen deprieved and tired. Also, I never knew if we needed to speed up until it was too late to do so. So anyways, Hillary, you aren't the only watch dummy out there. I've had this watch 2 years and I just figured out you could do that.

The feature came in handy when we stopped for our water, because I knew how much longer we had until we were back on pace. And so we'd run a little faster to catch back up to our pace.

I stopped at Maverik on the way home from Christina's and grabbed a bag of ice. All my runner friends have been telling me that you have to try an ice bath after these long runs. And so, today, I decided to do it. I poured coldish bath water, dumped the bag of ice in and sat in it for 10 minutes. The water was too warm because all the ice melted pretty fast, but it was still cold. And it did help quite a bit. I was surprised. I'm going to be adding that to my regimen from now on out. I took a 30 minute catnap and then spent the day at Deseret Peak. After we got home, I took like a 2 hour nap but I think it was more because of the sun than anything. It's hard work sitting in the sun.

One last thing--sorry, this post is really long, but I want to remember this for "next" time--when Kandiss and I were training for the marathon, we'd put water out every mile or mile and a half. Wade swore it was slowing us down. He would only take it every three or four miles. I thought he was nuts. But, I never felt like this on our runs. We were running a lot slower--averaging 12 minute miles. Maybe he does know what he's talking about.

Two weeks until the triathlon and three weeks until the half. I'm getting excited. I really think I'm going to be able to run the entire thing. Crazy. I never would've thought this body could run 13 miles without walking.

We're almost there!

Quads of Steel

2009-07-30T08:45:00.002-06:00

Day 39
Biking

Wade called yesterday from work to inform me that he had to be to work by 7 am this morning. I toyed around with the idea of leaving at 5:30 to bike, but I just couldn't bring myself to even suggest such a thing to Christina. So, instead, I agreed to hook up the bike trailer to my mountain bike and take the kids with me.

Granted, it's the first time I've ever done such a thing. But, really, how hard could it be.

Apparently, really hard.

I cycled over to the clubhouse to meet Christina at 6:30. Then we started down the triathlon course.

We made it down Lake View or whatever that street is all the way to the end of Stansbury Park. Then I suggested maybe we cut down Ponderosa so I wouldn't have to haul my 60 pounds of precious cargo down to Brienne and back up Bates Canyon. We got to the top of Cochrane Lane and turned around. Good thing because Christina's tire (the very one she just fixed) went flat right there and we ended up walking all the way back to her house. It's nice that (a) we weren't all the way over to Erda and (b) she doesn't still live on Water Wheel because that would've been a LONG walk home.

I can tell that it was a really hard workout because I've been unusally short with Josh this morning. A lot of it is that I had to drag him out of bed and he's whiney and crabby when I do that. But, a lot of is me too. It was tough pulling those kids. I hope it doesn't ruin me for my run tomorrow. And I hope I get a nap today.

Sleepy Heads

2009-07-29T23:10:00.002-06:00

Day 38
Swimming

Just when I was toting myself for being such a good training buddy, I slept in this morning and totally stood Christina up for our swim.

I was all ready to go and thought "oh, I have like 10 minutes before I have to leave." So I laid down and the next thing I knew, it was like 2 hours later. So then I slept for a little longer while Aunika sat in her bouncy chair and chatted. It's a good thing she's a good baby. :)

I called Christina. Bless her soul, she waited until 6:3o and then went back to sleep. She didn't wake up until 9:00 either. I guess we both needed the sleep.

At least it was *just* swimming and not our long run. 10 miles on Friday.

The run down

2009-07-29T14:38:00.002-06:00

So yesterday I ran with my double stroller. (Which needs to get fixed but Jer hasn't got around to it. Just add that to his to do list that he doesn't have time for. Really it's not his fault. I guess I could be the kind of wife that figures it out herself, but if I started doing all that stuff I wouldn't need a husband.) So I ran and made it. 5 something miles. I have to admit I was pretty impressed with myself. It's one of those things you think you can't do, and you do it. But now I don't have an excuse to not get out and run. It's doable. So that was yesterday and today I went to Gold's and swam. I lifted a few weights before hand. My arms were a little sore. It was pretty uneventful.

Pushing A Baby in a Baby Carriage

2009-07-29T00:12:00.002-06:00

Day 37
6 miles at a 9:57/mile pace

Hillary joined us for our jaunt through the neighborhoods this morning. It was nice to have her along. She brought Belle and Tessa with her in the jogging stroller, which helped keep her at our pace. :)

We started off nice, but pushing two kids is a lot of work. Christina and I slowed down to match Hillary's pace. We went around Rose Springs, over to the clubhouse and than back to Christina's.

The run itself was pretty uneventful. We didn't hit our pace, though I felt really good and felt like I could've easily done it. But it was more important to stay with Hillary and Christina. So, I slowed myself down. It's nice when running doesn't feel so much like a chore. I was commenting to Hillary on the way home that I can't believe I've been getting up at such bizarre times the entire summer because I'm not a morning person. But now, it just seems like second nature. I rarely have to fight myself to not go back to bed and pull a no show. It's still hard to get up (note the time: 12:17 a.m.) because I'm definitely a night person, but I have great kids that will let me take a little snooze after I get back if I need it.

We got to 5.63 miles and Belle was climbing out of her seat, so we stopped the run there.

I think we have this race in the bag girls. I'm not as nervous about the half as I am about the tri. Once the tri is over with, I'll be a little nervous about the half. I have some lofty goals. But I'm confident I'll reach them because you guys are such great training partners. :)

I'd give our splits, but I'm too lazy to get out of bed and find the watch. I know we averaged 10:28/mile and had our fastest mile at 10:01. Not too bad considering the extra weight Hillary was pushing.

Later on, at the movie, I said to Christina, "we should just take tomorrow off from swimming." And she replied "Okay. Sounds good. Maybe I'll get my bike fixed and go out on that." Grrr...Okay. We'll swim. It's good I have Christina the Machina to keep me on track with all this exercise.

Oh, and Bonus. When I stepped on the scale this morning, I had lost 4 pounds. It was probably all water weight, but I'll take it. :)

Getting Going

2009-07-29T00:00:00.002-06:00

Day 36
Swimming
6 x 400 at 2:15 pace

Christina and I met at 5:15 this morning to head to the swimming pool. So glad we're back in the pool instead of the lake. The water was cold and the early swimmers were looking at us like we had just landed there on our little spaceships. Seriously, maybe we're infringing on some secret meeting or something. And then the old lady bobbing in the deep end...

I calculated how far 400 m (the distance of the triathlon) was in laps and we decided to "mimic" the race. The rules were that we had to swim without touching the sides. This was a little bit trickier than I anticipated since you have to go in a circle AND avoid the old lady bobber. But we somehow figured it out and swam 18 lengths of the pool that way. It took us about 10:30 to do it. I set a goal of being out of the water in 11 minutes. This gives us a little leeway because (a) we're not swimming in circles, so we're not losing momentum (b) all those people that kick you in the face and (c) the lake itself. I plan to be on my bike by 12:00, though according to the results last year, that was pretty fast. I do think the swim turned out to be longer than the year before, though. So maybe they'll go back to the first year's course.

After we swam, we headed over to the track. I can't say that I particularly like doing these workouts back to back, though I am glad to have them done. I was trying to dry myself off the best I could before putting on my clothes (over my swimsuit). It was a little bit colder than most mornings too. We waited for a few minutes for Hillary, and then started. We were soaking wet from the swimsuits, but only in the places that matter. Like the boobs, the butt and the crotch. You know, for the entire football team to see.

The first lap was hard and then we had to pee. So we went in search of a bathroom. We finally found an open door to the school and then ran into someone from Christina's ward. After we used the bathroom, Tonya Haddon was there and we talked to the two ladies for a while before I steered us back outside to finish our workout.

We had to quit at four laps because of time, but...oh well. We tried.

Here's our splits:

Lap 1: 2:04
Lap 2: 2:01
Lap 3: 1:55
Lap 4: 1:51

I think we're getting faster because they didn't seem *that* hard.

Not my last 10K

2009-07-27T13:38:00.002-06:00

So I wrote this LONG report on the 10k and the computer popped up that it couldn't blog my blog because someone else was posting....I don't know but it never showed up, I lost all the work, so here I go again. (Probley a whole LOT boringer then the first.) I've been addicted to a lot of things mainly soap operas and junk food (The first one I gave up.) Now I think I'm getting addicted to racing. (Not the training part, the fun EVENT part.) So this wont be my last 10K.

I went to my parents house the night before and finally went to bed at 10:30. Tessa woke me up at 11:00. Then Belle woke up at 12:30. I then was off and on through the night wondering if I was going to oversleep. I looked at my watch at 4:20 and woke Belle up to eat before I headed off to the race. I was up and going. I ate a banana. Sandra showed up and like she reported I had a pillow and blanket in the car. We got to the race and I was excited to do my first 10k. Looking around it made me feel a little nervous. People seem to really take this serious. Runners were actually warming up? I didn't want to warm-up and get worn out before I started! We were off and the first mile I had a really bad side ache. I was praying (which I tend to do a lot while I run except with my eyes open) that it would go away. Finally it did. I was running wondering where the water stop was and my pace. Finally the water! Unfortunately it wasn't manned very well and a runner graciously poured me some water. (I'm sure it lost her time! So thank you, whoever you are!) Then I realized I was going too slow. So I think my last 3 miles were faster than my first 3. It's hard to tell your pace going down hill. Mile 4 my shoelace came undone. I ran with it untied for a mile until drink stop at mile 5. Then it was off to the finish which helped knowing my Dad was there to watch. I was glad they had oranges. The bagels were blah! Sandra finished hard. If we are in town next year I definately will repeat this run. I would even like to stay for the parade.

That night I had a weird neck problem which lasted into Sunday morning. So I missed Saturday to train. (Honestly I was really sore.) Monday morning I was planning on meeting Sandra and Christina at the track, well it didn't happen. I overslept. I woke up with good intentions, decided to sleep a few more minutes and didn't open my eyes until 8:00. I think the lack of sleep since Thursday really caught up with me. I wont know what to do with myself when Belle is sleeping through the night. Maybe I'll be training at 3:30 in the morning instead. J/K Tonight I am going to Gold's Gym to swim. Jeremy is out of town until Wednesday night. (Which might be longer because he doesn't have a seat on the plane....but he's scheduled for the flight.)

P.S. I'm glad Sandra is my friend and can help me figure out problems. (Such as how we were going to get back to our car after Hobblecreek)

Ride, Baby, Ride

2009-07-25T08:33:00.002-06:00

Day 35
Biking

I met Christina at the clubhouse at 6:30 this morning. Unfortunately, her bike had a flat tire and her mountain bike has no pedals. So she was in her van. That was nice of her to show up. I would've just called from bed and then gone back to sleep.

We sat and talked for about an hour. I really wanted to turn around and go home, but since I was already out, I decided to do the course anyways.

My goal was to finish in under 50 minutes. There was a slight drizzle of rain and the wind was pretty stiff. The ride was uneventful for the most part. The hardest part is the stretch from the turnoff of Bates Canyon to Erda Way. It's a long uphill. The flip side is that it's all downhill coming back.

At one point I was going faster than the speed limit--25 mph. I hit 26.4 mph on the way back from Erda Way. It was awesome! But then I almost biffed it turning a corner. I need to work on that strategy since I had to slam on my brakes and I lost all momentum. It happened again at the next corner as well.

When I was almost to the end of Bates Canyon on my way back, there was a car following behind me. It would not pass me and was pissing me off. So I crossed the street and turned down the side street. The car followed and it was going so slow. So I just left it in the dust. I think it was a someone looking for yard sales, but who knows.

I continued back on the path to the clubhouse and finished in 47:31. averaging 15.4 mph. Yay! I'm finally blowing time goals out of the water like Hillary. Of course, she'll probably read this, get on her bike and finish in 35 minutes. :)

Too Old To Be Doing This

2009-07-24T23:14:00.003-06:00

DAY 34
Deseret News July 24th 10k

If you will recall, I was at the Kenny Chesney concert last night. It was AWESOME! However, I was under the impression we were going to eat dinner beforehand, and so I didn't eat a lot for breakfast or lunch. But then we didn't go to dinner and there weren't a lot of options at the concert. I wasn't going to pay $5.50 for a small, gross, stadium hamburger, so I ended up with a tub of stale popcorn of which I didn't eat a lot of.

Then, we sat in the sun for 2 hours. I was drenched about 30 minutes into the concert. It was crazy. I had one bottle of water, but I definitely did not bring my hydration levels back up to where they needed to be.

We got to my mom's house at about 11:30. I was too hyped up from the concert to go to bed right away and so I got all my stuff ready for the morning and it was about 1 am before I fell asleep. At 4:30 am, the alarm went off and I didn't have an option to hit the snooze button. I drove to Hillary's parent's place and her dad drove us to the start line. I took an energy shot at about 5 am as I pulled up to the mortuary.

Hillary curled up and went back to sleep in the car, but I was too pysched to go to sleep. I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on my way to the starting line. Hillary's dad took the most bizarre way to the starting line, but we got there with about 30 minutes to spare. We stretched a little bit and stood in line for a last minute potty break. This time, I took the break so I wouldn't have a repeat of July 4th.

At about 6:10, we started. I felt incredible. It was a little hard to seperate from the crowd and get going at a good pace. To meet my goal, I had to average a 9:39/mile pace. However, the first 3.5 miles were the best I have EVER felt running. I was cruising, having a good time. My only complaint is that I started off with a dry mouth and the first water station wasn't until 3 miles in. It wasn't manned very well either and utter chaos ensued that pulled me off my mark.

At 3.5 miles, I caught up to a friend from my Toastmaster's group I go to on Thursday nights. I ran with her for a few minutes and then I took off. She said later that she lost sight of me at about 4.20 miles. It was shortly after I took off from her that I bonked. I was having a hard time keeping pace and my energy was shot. I struggled down the parade route and knew it was going to be tight at the end to hit my target. I was a little disappointed because at the half way point, I was up 2 minutes.

When I turned the corner to run the last .20 miles, I knew I wasn't going to come in under my goal, but I gave it my best in that last quarter mile. It was a slight upgrade and I was breathing HARD. I crossed at 1:00:24. =( So close.

It was really hot on the course and I could've used another water station, but really what it came down to was that I'm too old to be pulling almost all-nighters at concerts and then running PR's at races seven hours later, especially without eating anything all day the day before. I need to do better with my nutrition and water intake the day before these big races. And sleep. I probably need to do better with these things overall.

I felt really nauseous and shaky afterwards, so I had to lay on the grass before I could walk back to the car.

My splits were:
Mile 1: 9:11
Mile 2: 8:59!!
Mile 3: 10:05 (thanks bad water stop)
Mile 4: 9:27
Mile 5: 10:03
Mile 6: 10:34
Mile 6.20: 9:41

I found the results and Hillary blew her time out of the water by crossing at 52:14, averaging 8:25/mile. That's where I want to be next year. I averaged 9:44/mile, which is pretty good, considering it's 2 minutes faster than 2007, when I ran it with Christina and training for a marathon. Plus, I didn't walk at all except for at the water stations. I have to keep telling myself that I did just have a baby 8 months ago. The speed will come--hopefully.

I have been wondering if I'm a slave to my watch and if I would run faster if I didn't have it. But, then I remember how surprised I am when I look down and I'm going so much slower than I thought I was. I have a hard time gauging how fast or slow I'm going. I just have to take baby steps and make reasonable goals and do the things I need to to get there. Patience...

We both missed Christina. =( She would've done awesome.

I want to know Hillary's version of the race, so I hope she posts something. Good job!

FYI on Fill the Ark run

2009-07-24T21:45:00.002-06:00

It's been awhile but while I was searching for the Deseret News results, (which I didn't find) I decided to look at the Fill the Ark results. There were actually 174 girl participants. Here was the breakdown

Hillary- Overall-38, 11 in age group out of 49
Christina- Overall-62, 10 in age group out of 30
Sandra- Overall-87, 29 in age group out of 49

I thought it was kinda interesting. I look forward to doing this one again next year. (For the chance of winning a good prize.)

The Wheels Go Round and Round

2009-07-23T11:31:00.002-06:00

Day 33
Road Biking

We decided to do the triathlon course this morning on our bikes. It was a pretty uneventful ride to Erda Way. However, when we turned around I was all excited to pop my bike from the easiest gear to the hardest gear so I could fly down the road. Then my chain popped off and got stuck and we had to pull over so I could fix it. Then I couldn't fix it, but Christina the Machina did. She's my hero.

We stopped at my house and ran up Stansbury Parkway. I actually had my watch on this time and was pleasantly surprised to find us running at a 9:30 pace. It sure didn't feel like it. It felt like we were crawling at a 13:00 pace. I had toyed around with the idea of not wearing my watch during the triathlon, but I think what happened last time was that I thought I was going so slow so I tried to speed up, but then crashed because my body hadn't ever gone that fast, especially after swimming and biking 12 miles. So, I think I'm going to wear my watch so I can gauge my speed.

So, yeah. Another early morning. Another workout. Same old, same old. I'm excited for the 10k tomorrow though.

15 cents and good friends

2009-07-22T22:00:00.002-06:00

I forgot to write that today after swimming I was walking back to the car when I found 15 cents. I teased Christina that she isn't doing her job anymore! Thanks Sandra for the comment on my post. I don't mean to sound so discouraged. But I hope to look back and think, oh ya I was thinking that and I made it. The best part is that I have two great friends. They listen to me talk, they talk, we laugh... it's been good. They are low maintanence. But I know that we would be their for each other. We even get up at crazy hours to work out for each other, watch each other kids, share equipment. The best part is Sandra helping Hillary figure out that her handle bars are backwards and helmet....oh I'm going to enjoy reading back on this. P.S. we need to teach Christina how to post. Enjoy your biking. I'm taking the day off!

Always Tired

2009-07-22T15:13:00.002-06:00

I'm starting to remember the days of training in High school. During swim season I was always exhausted. The good thing in high school though was that I only had to take care of myself. I find myself becoming miserable. I thought exercise was suppose to make you feel better and look better. I've been working out non stop, haven't lost a pound, don't fit into a size 4, is this really worth it? I do like the feeling of accomplishing something that is hard. But I've started stressing myself out. What if I DO come in last? Things like that CAN happen. I could fall off my bike. Who really knows what kind of biker I am anyways... So now I just feel tired and stressed out. I know my family is feeling it too...

Yesterday I rode my bike with Sandra. I could enjoy riding if it was casual. I only got up to 14 miles an hour. I know my neighbor said he averaged 18. In the morning I couldn't run with Christina and Sandra because they were getting back too late. I didn't really want to get up at 5:00. Amy Berry has invited me to run with them so I took her up on it. 5:30 we ran. I would've liked to have Sandra's watch to know at what pace we were running at. I'm sure it was down around the 8 minute. I think I did okay the first two miles, but the last two were killers. I didn't really enjoy the run. I enjoy running more when I am running a 10 minute pace and talking and not thinking I'm going to throw up any minute. Today we swam in the lake. I've been late the last two days for Sandra. Sorry. Belle wouldn't get in her car seat. I usually wake up and nurse her before I go, but I woke up with ten minutes to 7:00. I was planning to feed her when I got to the lake, but she had other ideas. So I got to the lake late. On my swim I wasn't watching where I was going. I thought I'll just swim fast, well I went way off course. I know I'll have to pay attention on the day of the race. Thank goodness it's almost here.

Icky and Slimey and Smelly

2009-07-22T12:35:00.003-06:00

Day 32
Swimming

Another date with the lake this morning. And the lake was none to pleased to see us. As we weren't for him either.

We met at the lake at 7 am and it felt nice to sleep in a little bit, though I did keep waking up, wondering if it was time to get up. Grrrr...

Hillary was a little late getting there, just after I had successfully convinced Christina that we could just go home and go back to bed. But alas...

Christina and I got in first. The lake was particularly gross this morning with a putrid smell eminating from it. It wasn't so bad in the middle, but the edges were disgusting. On the way back, I started gagging and I was having a hard time keeping it in. I tried breathing through my mouth, but it didn't help. Ew...

Hillary and Christina swam the next round. I lost track of both heads at the turnaround spot, but then saw Hillary headed off to the side. It was quite impressive how fast she was going, but I was trying to figure out how to get her attention that she was going in the wrong direction--in fact she was headed right for the big lake combine that was cutting weeds. But, then she switched and headed back towards the right shore, so I figured she'd done it on purpose. Apparently, not so.

Since we got a late start and I didn't have the kids, I called Wade to see how close to ready he was. He said he was almost ready, so we had to bag our second swim. I was okay with it because I really didn't want to get back into the lake.

We decided we didn't need to swim in the lake again until our mock triathlon on August 8. Good thing because something rubbed against my foot and I about lost it out there.

When I got home, Wade was just getting out of the shower. Chump.

However, remember when I was contemplating pulling out of the triathlon because of my cousin's wedding that day? Well, turns out they're postponing it. Good thing I listened to my gut on that one. :)

Perspective

2009-07-21T23:24:00.002-06:00

Day 31
8 mile tempo run at 9:57/mile pace

Good ideas always sound better at 8:30 pm instead of 4:30 am. Christina called last night and said that she had to be home by 6:40 am from our 8 mile run. I fished around to see how much wiggle room she had--6:44--and we decided that 5:00 am would be our start time.

So I stumbled out of bed and made my way to Virg's with some water. Then over to Christina's. We started our route--a modified version of the 11 miler you guys did Friday. We hit mile 1 at 10:01. At about 1.5 miles, two dogs who weren't chained up came after us. Though I was wearing a headlamp, when I looked over all I saw was two very large dogs with glowing eyes. So I suggested that we walk since I wasn't sure what kind of dogs they were and I didn't want to appear as a threat. We ended up walking about .10 of the mile and that threw our entire time goal out the window.

From that point on, it was just run 8 miles. I've NEVER run 8 miles nonstop (minus a dog run-in). I've missed all the long runs this training plan for one thing or another. When I trained for my marathon I did a 25 minute run/5 min walk plan, which was nice until you had to start running again after the first 5 minute segment. :) So, just finishing was a new feeling.

If I would've written this post right afterwards, I would have lamented our dismal times, but after thinking about it for the day, I'm actually pretty proud of us. For starters, this is a tough course with a gradual uphill that goes on for about 2 miles at the beginning. Also, we had to do two laps around Christina's neighborhood to finish our 8 miles and we both had to use the bathroom. It's always hard to see your car and know you're so close, yet so far away. And not to mention it was 5 am. My body doesn't really know what 5 am looks like.

Also, I was thinking about the six mile run we did in April along the same course. I thought I was going to die. Everything hurt so bad and I was soooo slow. I can't find where I actually figured out the minutes/mile, but I think I was at almost 12 minutes and I had to walk. So I guess I'm getting in better shape.

We averaged 10:32/mile, which is slightly faster than our long run pace. I really think we might have been able to get on target if we wouldn't have had the run in with the dogs. It threw the timing off and, in these longer runs, you get excited for every mile that hits under that pace.

However, I felt like we did good. Yay for 8 miles.

Here's our splits:
Mile 1: 10:01
Mile 2: 10:44
Mile 3: 10:34
Mile 4: 11:01
Mile 5: 10:15
Mile 6: 10:35
Mile 7: 10:40
Mile 8: 10:29

Triathlon Strategy Change

2009-07-20T13:28:00.002-06:00

Day 30
Swimming
4 x 800 at 4:54/2 laps

We met at the track this morning at 6:30 am to run our intervals. I can handle the 400's just fine, but those 800's and mile intervals just about kill me.

It was nice to have Hillary as our pace rabbit. She kept us on our toes and we ran our intervals faster than if Christina and I would've been on our own. I guess it's good to push yourself sometimes. But still...I was pretty tired afterwards, and we still had our lake swim to do.

My interval times (and Christina's since she was right with me except for a little ahead in the first interval) were:

Interval 1: 4:32
Interval 2: 4:45
Interval 3: 4:24
Interval 4: 4:15

I'm not sure what Hillary did her first interval in but hers were:

Interval 2: 4:00
Interval 3: 3:55
Interval 4: 3:35

It was halfway through the first trip across the lake that my entire strategy for the triathlon changed. Up until now, I'd been thinking that go easy on the swim, make up the time on the bike, survive the run was the way to go. However, after floating in that lake, I altered my plan to get out of the water as fast as possible, make up extra time on the bike, attempt to run, would now be my strategy. It was nasty, yet not as nasty as Saturday. Saturday, thanks to the big gulp of water I took at the beginning of the swim, was a lot worse. And the anticipation of getting in the lake is always worse than the actual experience.

Christina's goggles (which I was borrowing because I left mine at home) kept filling up with water and on the way back across, I just took them off and had them resting on my head. I'd swim 10 strokes than wipe my eyes and look to make sure I was going in the right direction. Than 10 more strokes. Made for a long swim across.

My second lap was a little better, since I was using Hillary's goggles. I was more relaxed and that helped. But I still refuse to open my eyes under water. I don't want to know what I'm swimming with. So I close my eyes and then open them when I turn my head to breathe. I wasn't prepared for how tired I was after the two back-to-back swims though. It was taxing, especially after the intervals. But good practice for the real deal.

Wednesday, we'll switch up the order a little bit so Christina can have the benefit of swimming back-to-back.

July 24th 10k Plan

2009-07-18T12:36:00.002-06:00

Date
July 24, 2009

Time
6:00 am

Place
Research Park at the University of Utah

Time Goals
Hillary: 52:50
Sandra: 1:00:00

Splits
Hillary
Mile 1: 8:30
Mile 2: 17:00
Mile 3: 25:30
Mile 4: 34:00
Mile 5: 42:30
Mile 6: 51:00
Mile 6.2: 52:50

Sandra
Mile 1: 9:39
Mile 2: 19:18
Mile 3: 28:58
Mile 4: 38:37
Mile 5: 48:16
Mile 6: 57:56
Mile 6.2: 1:00:00

Notes:
This is a really nice course because a lot of it's downhill. You loop around by the stadium and then down the parade route. There is a little uphill at the end, but it's not as bad as the Tooele's uphill at the end of the 4th. It's also a lot cooler at this time of the day. And we're done by 7:00 am. If we want to, we can hang around for another half an hour and watch the winner of the marathon come in. It's pretty cool to see. We'll see how we feel.

There are 2 water stations on the course. It's been my experience that you get more out of the water station if you just stop and pick up your drink and drink it while you're walking. You're slowing down anyways to drink it and sometimes you slow down to a pace slower than if you just stopped and walked for 10 seconds. However, do what feels natural.

Don't go overboard with how much you eat because your body isn't use to eating this early, but do eat and drink something.

And most important. Have fun!

Fishy Saturday

2009-07-18T10:33:00.002-06:00

Day 29
Mock Triathlon

We came. We saw. We conquered. It was...educational...if not a little fun, right girls? Right??

We met at the clubhouse at 7 am and got our stuff all laid out. Then we got in the lake.

Ew. It smelled bad. And tasted worse. The anticipation of going in the lake is always a lot worse than the actual experience. I wish I could just relax, but I was tense in the lake the entire time. It was a long way across the lake and I was getting tired, but I made it. Coming back, the sun glared off my goggles and made it hard to keep an eye on Hillary (who I was using as my focal point). In the actual race itself, I need to focus on a stationary object. Eventually, my googles got so foggy, I just pulled them off. It wasn't like I was opening my eyes under water anyways. I wasn't as far back as I thought I was going to be from Hillary, but she still has the swim in the bag.

The bike portion of the "event" was, by far, my most favorite. That's definitely my strongest of the three sports. I felt good. My butt didn't hurt. The only thing I'd change is bring something to eat, drink more water, and possibly have a bottle of gatorade.

I was the first one back from the bike, but I had the same problem today as I did when I did the triathlon 2 years ago. I really needed my inhaler. Especially getting off the bike and then running up that stupid hill. I just can't seem to catch my breath. So I ended up walking a lot more of the 5k then I had wanted to. I did make it all the way up Stansbury Parkway before I stopped to walk.

Hillary caught up with me at Crystal Bay. Then we walked for a little bit at the corner of the frontage road. We ran down to the elementary school and the water stop (so glad for the water stop!) and Christina caught up with us there.

Hillary and Christina took off and I ended up walking up the hill by the school on our way back. I was probably a minute behind them finishing though, so not too shabby.

Of course, I didn't run 11 miles yesterday.

I think it was a good workout that got us a little more prepared for the actual thing. We should probably do another one (same course so we can see if we improved any) before the actual tri. Next weekend is a holiday, I have something on the 1st, so the 8th it is. We could try to do it on an evening during the week if that doesn't work.

This week we're going to try biking (most) of the triathlon course for Hillary's benefit on Tuesday night.

Good job girls.

After the race picture

2009-07-17T11:35:00.001-06:00

Due to the fact that Jeremy didn't get to the race on time, here I am holding my number. Actually I would rather see this picture than one of me running. Except those pictures are always very motivating to keep working out.

Joes Valley

2009-07-17T11:29:00.002-06:00

Jer got around to down loading pictures on the computer. This is a picture of Joes Valley. I got to enjoy the beautiful scenery each day running or biking. It was a nice change. I am glad though that we live in Stansbury and can enjoy the mountains. It's a lot better than running in Salt Lake.

Chumpy Friday

2009-07-17T08:41:00.003-06:00

Day 28
10 mile long run at 10:42/mile pace

I was so excited for our run yesterday. It was going to be the first time I hit double digits since I ran that half marathon with Christina in January of 2008.

I was probably so excited that I whipped myself into a nervous wreck and that caused me to throw up last night. And then I'm sure that the overexposure to the sun for the last two weeks hasn't helped. And then...you know, the usual excuses. But at 5:30 in the morning it's REALLY hard not to listen to your negative self telling you not to run. And I wasn't entirely sure that I would be able to make it. What if I was 5 miles away and something happened. I got dressed anyway, thinking maybe I could trick my body into cooperating, but I still felt nauseous.

So I drove down to Hillary's, and handed her my watch and gave her my best wishes, secretly happy I was going back to bed. But then, I laid in bed for 30 minutes, mad at myself for not just sucking it up and doing the run despite how I was feeling. Mostly, I felt bad that we (read: Christina and Hillary because obviously I was back in bed) were running at 5:30 in the morning on my account. Boo.

But, Hillary dropped off the watch, and after doing some fandangling, I was able to figure out how fast you ran and how far.

11.05 miles in 2 hours, averaging 10:52/mile. That's not too shabby considering you went an extra mile. Good job!

Here's the breakdown:

Mile 1: 11:23
Mile 2: 11:01
Mile 3: 11:32
Mile 4: 11:00
Mile 5: 10:41
Mile 6: 10:06
Mile 7: 10:37
Mile 8: 10:48
Mile 9: 11:28
Mile 10: 10:26
Mile 11: 10:48

In every mile, except for three, you hit a pace of under 9 minutes. You also burned 2018 calories.

I'm planning on taking it easy today and being in top form for tomorrow's mock triathlon. I'll email you the details later. I'm thinking a bike ride to Lake Point and then the 5k course of the actual triathlon. I just need to think through the logistics of where to store the bikes and what not.

The last few days & Double sideaches

2009-07-16T08:59:00.002-06:00

I have worked out this week. Due to the power problem, 4 kids, and our internet not working I have not got on to type. MOnday I ran in the parking lot. It started to get really hot. 9:00 is too late to be running in the morning. I never made it to my swim that day.
Tuesday I dragged the kids to the pool and swam. I feel very confident with my swimming. I would like to say I have no doubt that I will make it out of the lake in 9:00 minutes or less. I'm also sure I will, but we'll see. How long it takes to transition might add a bit of time. So right now that is where I'm shooting for in the swim. That night I ran to Lake Point. It was going awesome. I felt good. I was running fast. (Fast for me) When I got double side aches. A lot of times I can run through this. But I couldn't. I was in so much pain. I stopped and walked it out. It took me about 10 minutes to recover. I don't know what I was doing wrong. It was very frustrating and I was wondering what would happen if this happened in the race. So far in all the races I haven't faced side aches. Good thing. My goal for the run in the race is to go under 30 minutes. I don't know what my bike goal should be since I haven't really ridden.
Wednesday I went to the gym and did the spinning class. It kicks my butt. It was an hour and then I headed to the treadmill to run. I ran a mile right after. (Not fast by any means.) I was planning to run more, except their was a scary movie on and I had to run to the bathroom. So that was the end of my workout. Thursday. Today should be biking. I didn't get up early enough to bike. Tonight I wont be able to because we have a family get together. Honestly I feel exhausted. I think I might take it easy today and let my body rest. It's a bunch of things adding up. I'm tired. Belle hasn't slept through the night for me. I'm worn out. So if I do anything it will be only biking to go feed the ducks and a little ride after that.

Truckin' Thursday

2009-07-16T08:18:00.002-06:00

Day 27
Road Biking

Christina met me at my house at 6-freakin'early:15. It was rough getting out of bed this morning since Josh had a rough night. He went to lay down and wait for me to come read him a story and fell asleep. Then, at 1 am, he woke up and INSISTED on a story. Luckily, Wade was still awake (doing what? I don't know) so he read him a story. Then he was back up at 2:30, crying about something. Finally, he settled down.

Anyways, 6:15 came fast.

When I met Christina outside, my watch wouldn't turn on. I was bummed because I thought I had fried it somehow. But I fixed it when I got home, so all is well for tomorrow's run. (well, you know, as good as can be when you're contemplating a 10 mile run in the morning).

So we rode our bikes over to Lake Point. It was easy going and we just chatted the whole way. We went around the roundabout and headed back. Then ran about .75 of a mile. We both had noodle legs and I wished I would've had my watch to see how fast we were really going, because it sure felt slow. My legs never did ease up and now I'm kind of nervous about that transition.

Oh and the bra situation. Seems that my "assets" have changed so much that the sports bras that fit before Aunika are now digging into my skin and leaving marks. Very painful marks. I know it's not because I got any bigger. I think they're just sagging more or something. I found some new bras, but I found out this morning that they offer ZERO support. Wade thinks I should just go braless, but he's a man, so his opinion on the matter doesn't count. I have a really nice sports bra from the marathon training days, but it was $25, and I don't want to spend that kind of money on underwear. That's ludicrous. So I guess I'm back to the drawing board. So much information, isn't it?

Wet Wednesday

2009-07-15T16:02:00.003-06:00

Day 26
Swimming

Another Wednesday. More laps. Bleh.

We were at Deseret Peak. Again, so we took turns. Again. And this time wasn't nearly as eventful as Monday. No injuries. Just 25 laps. 50 lengths. However, I was wondering if it takes me an average of 30 seconds to get from one end of the pool to the other, why does everyone who wants to cross the lane wait until the half second I'm right in front of them to cross?

I spent my lap time thinking of three things:
(a) Our secret mission for the triathlon
(b) Pretending I was in the lake and trying not to swallow the water
(c) Our run on Friday

So:

(a) Our secret mission for the triathlon.
I talked with Christina about our mission and she's game, so we all know what we need to do. No need to spell it out here. Haha. I love secret missions.

(b) I tend to pull water into my mouth and then spit it out when I'm swimming. I know. Gross. So I spent a lot of my swim concentrating on not doing that. And then I started to imagine I was in the lake (which is gross too) and so I was swimming with my eyes closed and only opening them when my head was out of the water, because I hate that I'm swimming with fishies in the lake and I don't want to see them.

(c) Our run on Friday
10 miles. Bleh. But it will be my first double digit run since the half marathon I did with Christina in January of '08. So here's to a nice 10 miles.

See. Pretty uneventful.

Bad Run Tuesday

2009-07-14T07:02:00.002-06:00

Day 25
4 mile run at 9:57/mile

For whatever reason, we could not get into our groove this morning. The power outage yesterday threw a kink in the cosmos and I was late getting over to Christina's. Wade had to be to work early this morning, so we had to run even earlier and I, naturally, didn't go to bed until after midnight. And then when I went to put on my sock, I ripped the sore from yesterday on my toe. Josh has used up all the bandaids as stickers, so I couldn't find anything. Grrr....just one of those mornings.

Christina was feeling about the same way. We started off and did pretty okay the first mile, but I couldn't speed Christina up very much. I'd slow down to her pace and then try to push her back up to the 9:57 pace, but she wasn't budging. So, I gave up. At least we were out there. And even Christina the Machina deserves a bad day here and there.

By three miles, I was starting to struggle too. I'm glad it was only four miles. Our splits are not very impressive:

Mile 1: 10:02
Mile 2: 10:12
Mile 3: 10:22
Mile 4: 10:11

Our overall average was 10:12/mile, which is 15 seconds slower per mile than our target pace. Not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but we never did find that sweet spot. We both agreed that had we been on our own, we would've just given up and gone home.

Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Mondays are Bad Luck

2009-07-13T22:53:00.002-06:00

Day 24
Swimming
3 x 1600 at a 9:27/mile pace

We met this morning at the track at 9-freakin' hot:00. Again, the track was locked up. Seriously, what is the deal and who do I call to find out what the hours are?

So we had to run our mile intervals in the parking lot. Which totally sucked. To make matters worse, I hadn't charged my watch and so it died about half way through the first interval.

And then, to save $30, I let another UTI go over the weekend so I wouldn't have to go into InstaCare, but then I had a hard time not peeing and not wanting to go there again like the July 4th race, I had to keep stopping.

And it was hot.

And it was miserable.

And I was a wimp and only ran like a mile total out of the entire three mile run.

But I did have a fun time watching Hillary's kids beat each other up. And I especially liked Tessa saying Stupidhead Hunter over and over again. Ahh...it was good birth control. Kind of like last week when I drove Christina and all her kids to the pool. :) I think two's good for me.

So anyways, Christina and Hillary did great on their intervals, getting 8:31 on interval 2, and 8:15 on interval 3. I'm not sure where we were at interval one because my watch croaked, but I'm sure you guys were right around there.

At the pool, I was late getting there because of my doctor appointment. We upped our laps to 25 laps and Christina went first. Landon had to pee and I took him into the bathroom where he proceeded to pee on EVERYTHING. I've never seen pee shoot that far in my life. I had forgotten that you have to point their thingies down and by the time I remembered, it was too late. It was all over the door and the floor and me. Good thing we were at the swimming pool and not at a nice restaurant or Dillards or, well, pretty much anywhere else.

After Christina got back I headed over to the pool. I stubbed my big toe on some uneven concrete and didn't think much about it. As I went to take off my flip flops, I noticed that my toe was gushing blood. I figured I couldn't get into the pool like that, so I had to hobble (hey hobble creek...it's so fitting) back to the front desk where the world's most inept front desk person--who I've seen every day for the last week, so I know she's not new and she's the one who was there when I signed up for swimming lessons both this year and last year and I thought she was inept then--completely ignored me about getting a bandaid. By that point, I was dripping blood everywhere so I just went back outside and got some napkins to clean off and survey the damage. I managed to scrape a pretty good size chunk off the top of my toe and it hurt. Christina finally secured my some bandaids from the office and even found my goggles for me that I had left on the desk.

So I bandaged myself up and headed back over to the lanes. It was crowded and there were kids playing in the lap lanes, so I got in on the side. And then they followed me there. It was really frustrating, but eventually, I made it to a lane and proceeded on with my laps. Other than the occassional kid wanting to mow me over, it was uneventful. The bandaid was causing some kind of weird suction power that made it really painful to kick so I spent most of the time just swimming with my arms, which made my arms hurt.

I had every intention of running my intervals this evening after Wade got home from work, but the power was out and so we went into Tooele. And then the power didn't come back on and it got dark. So, I guess I'll just swallow this one as a loss.

Heavenly View and Kryptonite

2009-07-11T22:01:00.004-06:00

This week was beautiful. (I plan on posting a picture as soon as Jer or I take the time to download the pictures.) We drove to Joes Valley Sunday after church. Monday morning Jer and I ran. It was our "date." We ran 5 miles. Jeremy likes to make fun of me. (I'm praying a miracle happens and I beat him.) Maybe Sandra or Christina can trip him, that way it wont be me. The funny part is that he didn't work out the rest of the week. I was on my own. Oh except for the swim on Tues. I also biked 3 miles. I have many weaknesses, biking is a sore spot. (My kryptonite for sure) I fear my biggest defeat will be in the biking. I STINK! 3 miles and I was going to die. (It didn't help that I was wearing tight levi pants) Tuesday came and I swam in Joes Valley. I don't think this helped much in conditioning me. I felt a little motion sick from the wind. Jer kayaked next to me. I only swam for 10 minutes and felt exhausted! Jer swam on the way back. It didn't help that I didn't have swim goggles. Jer had a snorkeling mask. I hate swimming with one. It's weird to breathe with. I didn't realize until then how much I breathe through my nose while swimming. Wednesday I ran 5 miles by myself. Thursday I biked 8 miles with my Dad and then ran 3 miles afterwards. The 4th mile was extremely hard! I was in about 12 gear. (I was feeling good about my workout until I read that you biked 25 MILES!!!! Thanks a lot!!!) Friday I biked for half an hour and then ran 6 miles. (All by myself! With no music! It is pretty though.) I did freak myself out though and thought what if someone pulled over with a gun.... so I ended up running on the road instead of going down a dirt path. Saturday I didn't want to work out but road my bike seven miles. You want to know how fast I road? It took me 50 minutes. I almost run faster than I'm biking!!!! The most I've biked is 8 and I feel like I'm going to die. How am I going to make it?! I'm really nervous and stressed about finding the time to work out enough that I don't pass out and that I finish! AAAAAHHHH!

Something in the Air

2009-07-11T17:28:00.003-06:00

Day 23
Biking

I finally got my tire fixed--again--and I was anxious to ride my bike, so I talked Christina into doing a road biking expedition with me this morning. I didn't really have any place set in mind. I figured we'd go in the direction of Grantsville and turn around when we got tired. So, at 6:30 am, off we went.

It was a pleasant morning and the only downside of the ride came when we were passed by someone on their bike on Cochraine Drive in Erda towards Erda Way.

We rode and rode and before long we'd gone 12.5 miles. So we turned around and came back. We got to see a cop car race by with his lights and sirens on and he almost biffed it in the parking lot of the police department, then he took off again, racing towards Stansbury. I'm not sure what the hurry was but then we got to thinking that what if there was a real criminal out and we're just ambling by on our bikes. Then an ambulance came screaming by (wow, those sirens are loud when you're right next to them) but they stopped and turned around. Christina also spotted a credit card on the road (I don't know how she sees these things) so she picked it up to turn it in at the Credit Union. All in all, it was a pretty eventful bike ride as far as rides go.

Christina struggled on the way back because of something in the air. I could feel it too, but I didn't react as badly. Her nose was a faucet. Probably some weed or something. Also, both our butts were pretty sore and Christina's shoulder hurt. These bikes take time to get use to.

I dropped Christina off and headed home, rounding out to a nice 25 miles in 1:58. That's the longest I've ever been on a bike before and it wasn't so bad, though right now my legs are a little sore. But it could be from mowing the lawn when I got back.

Another week down, five weeks to go until the triathlon. Six weeks until the half.

Big Congratulations and a Good Run to Boot

2009-07-10T16:52:00.003-06:00

Day 22
6 miles at a 10:42/mile pace

It was a good run this morning. We decided to tackle the Lake Point run to the gas stations again. If you'll recall, last time we did it, we were surprised by the uphill portion on the way back. This time we were prepared. And I think those tempo runs have really been helping. It was especially nice to run at 45 seconds slower per mile than we did on Wednesday.

Here was our breakdown:
Mile 1: 10:41
Mile 2: 10:34
Mile 3: 10:46
Mile 4: 10:51
Mile 5: 10:52
Mile 6: 10:04

Our average time was 10:38/mile which was actually 2 seconds slower per mile than we did a month ago. However, I felt A LOT better this run and didn't feel like I was going to die. That's always an improvement. During the 4th mile, my stomach was grumbling and I remembered that I had forgotten to eat dinner last night. I think had I eaten dinner I would've done a bit better, though Christina wasn't nearly as ahead of me as usual going up that last hill. However, she probably slowed down on my account. And we both got stuck at that stupid light.

Of course the biggest news came when I finally got around to looking up the times for the 5k we did on the 4th. BOTH Christina and Hillary got third in their age groups. Congratulations girls! There were a lot of runners this year--214 girls alone. I'm sure you beat out some very good competition. I wish they'd get a website and list the finish times of everyone. Next year, we'll all be in different age categories. We should aim to place. I will have to make the biggest jump since Hillary was third with a 24:43 finish time and I came in almost 4 minutes later. Sorry, Hillary, Emily is only 30. Maybe she'll be pregnant or something next year and won't be able to run it. Hillary has about a two minute deficit to make up in the toughest age group of the women. Chrisitina just needs to improve more and beat the second place person. :)

While I'm very competive by nature, I'm happy to see my two "students" placing. It makes me feel ALMOST like I placed too. But I PRed--by almost a minute--and that's all I was aiming to do anyways. I'm happy with that.

Christina called the race organizer to see about her ribbon and she was told they were mailing them out. It would've been cool to have been standing there when they handed out the awards though. Especially since it was such a surprise.

Congrats again girls.

Burn, Baby, Burn

2009-07-09T16:01:00.002-06:00

Day 21
Road Biking

Oiy! I spent $25 to get my tire fixed at Taylor's Bike Shop in Salt Lake (now that we don't have a bike shop in Tooele Co. anymore). They were suppose to put in slime between the tire and the tubing and it was suppose to be great.

Yeah. Great.

It was flat again by the time I got back home. Mind you, the tire was in the CAR. I wasn't riding it or anything.

So, no road bike for me this morning. Christina showed up at 6:30 and we decided to ride the highway to Cimmaron Way (above Erda Way) and then ride that down to the road that the triathlon is on and then back to Christina's. I noticed, at one point, a few things:

(a) I was pedaling twice as fast as Christina. For every stroke she did, I was doing two.

(b) At one point, we were going slower than Hillary was running the 4th of July 5k. Yeah, that was not a high point in the morning.

It was rough going but we finally finished. We did about 10 miles if you count the mileage over to my house. Not too shabby considering it took us about as long as it did last week to do 12 miles. Maybe we're getting faster? Hmmmm....

Bright and Early

2009-07-08T23:22:00.002-06:00

Day 20
Swimming
6 miles at 9:57/mile pace (from yesterday)

I was a lot nervous going into this morning's run. For starters, Wade had to be at work at 7:30 this morning--leaving at 6:45--and so I called Christina to see if she would want to run with me at 5:30. I was expecting her to laugh and say something along the lines of "um...no", but being the good sport that she is, she agreed to the insane hour.

I couldn't sleep because I was so nervous I was going to miss my alarm and also, the bad sunburn on my legs kept waking me up when the sheets would brush up against it. Grrr...I was really nervous that I wasn't going to be able to run.

However, I woke up and after a bout of stiffness, I was able to move just fine. I arrived at Christina's right on time and we took off, noting that the moon was still in the sky.

I commented after we were done that it doesn't feel as bad as I'm expecting to be racking up the miles. You know, like at a 5k, 3 miles seems forever, and you wonder if 3 miles is so long, then what's six miles going to be like? But the miles just seem to go a bit faster the more you have to run.

Though it's still not any easier.

We managed to stay RIGHT on target with an overall average of 9:56/mile. The first mile we did in 9:54, the second in 10:03, the third in 9:50, the fourth in 9:59, the fifth in 9:56 and the sixth in 9:57 for an overall time of 59:38, the first time either one of us has run 6 miles in under an hour. Wahoo. For me the hardest mile was the fourth. It wasn't particularly physically hard, just mentally knowing that there were still two miles to go, I guess. Overall, it was a good run and it was nice knowing that at 6:30, we were done instead of just getting started. I'm in no hurry to move to a 5:30 am run date by any means though.

At swimming lessons today, we took turns doing our laps. It was pretty uneventful. The goal was 20 laps and I'm not sure how many I did. Either 21 or 19. I lost track somewhere in the middle. In fact, I may have even fallen asleep at one point. I don't remember a lot about it. Christina thought she had one lap left when they blew the whistle for everyone to get out of the pool at 2 pm for 10 minutes. I'm just glad we're back on track with our training.

I wonder how Hillary's doing?

Sunburn

2009-07-07T07:46:00.002-06:00

Day 19
6 miles at 9:57/mile pace

I was all gungho about running today until yesterday at about 7 pm when it became quite obvious that I wasn't going to be able to do it.

It being the first day of swimming lessons and all, and I'm not sure if I got distracted when putting on sunblock or if the wind carried it off or what the deal was, but I burnt one leg, the top of both feet and an armpit, among other patches of sunkissed skin and knew that 6 miles was going to be torture, if not entirely impossible.

I called Christina (who has completed EVERY training session save for the swimming one that we opted out of last week to bike instead--including an 8 mile run and a 10 mile run ALONE) and fessed up to my stupidity. We agreed to do the tempo run tomorrow, as well as swim, though I think we've come up with a workable solution with the swimming.

We'll take turns. Yes, that's right. We'll practice what we preach to our children by taking turns watching each other's kids in the other pool while the other one is swimming laps. I know. Genius, right? Christina came up with it.

So here's to hoping that I can run tomorrow.

Bad Luck

2009-07-06T16:07:00.002-06:00

Day 18
Swimming
6 x 400 at a 2:15/lap pace

I was all geared up to ride my bike over to the track this morning, but when I got on it, the front tire was flat. Grrr....I hate that. All the reviews online said that it was a good bike for the money but to replace the tires and tubes immediately, because those suck. I guess I should've heeded their advice. At least it was at my house and not like 10 miles away or something.

Christina and I met at the high school at 6:30 am this morning only to find the track locked. That didn't start our morning off on a very good note. There were about 5 other people who didn't think that the track should've been locked at that time in the morning. Grrr....

So we ended up doing the laps in the parking lot--again. The parking lot sucks. It's uneven and it's hard and it was early. You know...the usual complaints. But we did it.

Lap 1: 2:04
Lap 2: 2:01
Lap 3: 2:04
Lap 4: 2:01
Lap 5: 2:02
Lap 6: 2:01

If nothing else, we're consistent.

I'm totally feeling Saturday's 5k in the back of my calves. Christina reports that she's feeling it in her quads. In any case, it was a little tough going this morning, but it felt good to be done with that part of the training.

Today was the first day of swim lessons. Our plan was to sit the kids on the bench in front of the two lanes they've reserved for lap swimming during open plunge hours and do our laps at Deseret Peak. This was a good idea in theory, but in actuality, turned out to be a little disasterous.

Josh, who I had to cajole and bribe to get in the water during his swim lesson, fought me grabbing him out of the play pool where he was totally loving it during play time. Then there were people who kept popping up in our lanes. I even got ran over by someone who I didn't see until she was right on top of me. It was frustrating to say the least. Finally, Josh and Landon left the rest of the group and went back to the other pool. That ended our laps at about 10 in.

We think it's the novelty of swimming for the first time of the season and hopefully, by Wednesday, the excitement will wear off and they'll sit there patiently and wait for us. It's nice swimming laps in an outdoor pool as opposed to an indoor stuffy pool. I wish they'd open a little earlier in the morning so I could do them there instead, but they don't open until 7 am.

Good news. There's only 7 weeks left. But that means there's only 6 weeks left until the tri and I'm starting to get nervous. Especially with the biking portion. And the swimming portion. Oh, and the running.

Give Me an H. Give Me an A. Give Me a P-P-Y

2009-07-04T16:00:00.002-06:00

Day 18
Tooele Freedom Run 5k

Awesome. Except for the part where I peed my pants. In the first quarter mile. And had to run 2.85 miles with soggy shorts and pee soaked socks. Oh, the shame. And the thing is I didn't *feel* like I had to pee. Everything was going great. I was cruising at a seven minute pace down the hills and all of the sudden, the dams burst and it was trickling down my legs and it was all warm and gross and I was MORTIFIED.

MORTIFIED.

My only redeeming thought was that how happy I was that I chose to bring my spandex shorts out of retirement instead of wearing my usual running shorts. Then it wasn't *as* noticeable, but it was definitely there. For all of Tooele County to see. You know, because it's the one race where there are far more spectators than runners. Like THOUSANDS more.

So yeah, besides that, AWESOME effort girls. We totally blew our goal times out of the water. Hillary crossed at 24:20ish, which is about a 7:47/mile and Christina came in at 26:05 (8:36/mile). I finished at 28:10, which is a 9:09/mile pace. I'm confident, however, that had I not been running in pee soaked spandex shorts that were chafing parts of my body best not described here, I would've crossed under 28 minutes. However, 28:10 is my best 5k time EVER and I'm glad to have it.

This 5k, I took an energy shot and a puff on my inhaler. I probably could've used two puffs, but I was feeling a little jittery with both the one puff and the energy shot. The energy shot had some effect, but left me feeling REALLY jittery for a couple of hours afterwards. I think I need to eat more with it. I just had a few spoonfuls of oatmeal and a few sips of Gatorade. I'm still fine tuning the prerace process, but I think I'm getting closer to the perfect routine.

Eat some cookies. Take a nap. Have a great rest of the weekend. Next week, we're back on track for our training.

Offtrack

2009-07-04T15:54:00.003-06:00

Day 16
Swimming (traded with biking the day before)

Um. Yeah. Didn't do. Wade was backpacking with the scouts. And we opted to sleep in. And yeah.

Day 17
10 mile run at a 10:42/mile pace

I called Christina yesterday to tell her that I wasn't up to a long run. I have this nagging cough that's been hanging on (though I am feeling better) and Wade was still gone with the boy scouts. So I cancelled for the second week in a row.

Next week, I'll be back on track and we'll get everything done for our training. I would like to fit in more biking but I'm not sure I can find the time. Oh well. Maybe now that I have the indoor bike trainer I got for Christmas and the road bike, I can keep it up during the winter for next year.

Here's to getting back on track. Has Christina the Machina missed a workout yet? :)

Tooele 4th of July race

2009-07-04T15:51:00.002-06:00

I'm thrilled that we all had our best runs! Sure helps when you are going down hill, but for me the last part was hard! I usually have a little extra burst at the end, but I didn't. I was disappointed that I didn't see Jeremy and the kids. This is the one race that was convienent for them to come to! Oh well. It was a lot of fun. Although I really think they need to have better food at the end. I'm sure Sandra will post our results. Tomorrow is our day off. Monday I am back on target! (Maybe not the sprints, because we wont have a track, but I will do some running.) It will be nice to be running in the mountains. Just pray that it doesn't rain, or I don't know what I will do. Oh and I'm making myself a note not to eat Walmart strawberry bars before a run, it didn't settle good.

How much is too much?

2009-07-03T15:51:00.002-06:00

So I decided to swim today. This was an easy decision because Jeremy went to work so I had to go to the gym to work out. (The boys weren't excited!) I entered the pool and realized I was going during water aerobics again. I need to make a note NOT to do that. The pool is small enough. Fortunately I was the only one their swimming laps until close to the end of my workout. I decided to do 3x 20 lengths. Thinking this was a 400 but actually it is less, 340 yards. (No wonder I made such good time, plus the help of pushing off a wall, etc...) I did 3. I didn't know how it would affect me with having been sick and having a race to do tomorrow. Sometimes swimming really wears me out. So I was wondering how much I should do. Then after I got home, I started thinking I should've trained harder because I should really be training for the tri and half not worried about doing well at a 5k. This is when it would be nice to have a coach who understands all this stuff. I was thinking maybe I'll do really well tomorrow because my body will think that I tapered. Ha ha!

Not quite the come back I'd like

2009-07-01T16:36:00.003-06:00

Well I figured out the blogging puzzle. I have to be signed in under my yahoo account not gmail. So now I can post....

Today. I woke up and my throat was terrribly dry and my nose was dry. (Which it has been a faucet the last few weeks!) So I thought, "I'm getting better." I decided to run, since going to the pool would be out of the question today. Belle has had a runny nose and I didn't want to chance driving all the way to the gym and just have her be sick. (She probley has what I have.) So running it was. I decided to do the 4 mile run to Lake Point. For one thing I know the distance and thought it would be a good run to break back into. So off I ran. Unfortunately I realized I wasn't better. My lungs hurt, I felt very sluggish. I do have to admit at one point I felt really good. But as soon as I was on the return for home, that was it. I felt terrible. I now question Sat. Am I really going to be able to run a good race? Or will I just wonder what I could've done had I not been feeling crappy. I did have to stop and walk. I haven't had to do that in a long time. (Well not since Joes Valley when I was by myself and bored!) More than anything I feel frustrated! Why when I am trying so hard does this have to happen? I already have a million other obsticles in the way of training. Urrrr! But I am now on medication. Hopefully it will kick in! The good thing today is that my bike arrived, so I'll have it to train with while I'm out of town.

We Have Our Work Cut Out For Us

2009-07-01T07:54:00.002-06:00

Day 15
Road Bike (traded with swimming)

Every once in awhile you go out and think you have a kick butt workout and your times appear really good, but when you get home, you realize, that no, indeed, you were so much slower than you thought.

That was today. It was Christina's inaugural morning on her new road bike and we did the triathlon course to get a feel for it, timing ourselves from start to finish at the clubhouse.

The course winds back and forth through Stansbury and it's actually pretty difficult. For starters, it's uphill...a lot. The ride itself was pretty uneventful. There was a little rain, but not a whole lot. No dogs chased us. There were a lot of people out running and a few biking. It's nice to see people out. A few years ago, when I started running, I was usually the only one out there. Now, there's tons.

I was trying to remember what people were doing the bike portion in the last two years during the triathlon. 40 minutes seemed to be the number that stuck in my mind. When 40 minutes came and went, I thought it must have been longer than that.

When I got home, I looked it up, and sadly, our 55:22 time today was the third SLOWEST time for BOTH years.

It's hard to say where we went wrong. Do you really pedal that much faster when you're with a group of people? Are we that out of shape? Is the course longer? Upon further investigation, this year's route is actually over a mile longer than the one we did in 2007. That makes me feel a little better. I'm not sure how it compares to last year though, so who knows.

In any case, my legs are tired and I'm ready for a nap.

Pushing It

2009-06-30T10:34:00.002-06:00

Day 14
5 mile tempo run at 9:57/mile pace

Christina called last night because she let her "babysitter" go to a sleepover with the cousins and now was in tight spot. Landon was home, but no one else was and Greg was working. So, we put our heads together and decided I would bring over my stroller.

No where in our discussion was the mention "hey, let's just go later on when the husbands are home from work".

At 6:10 this morning I grumbled that I didn't want to go running, but--with images of poor Landon roused from bed at 6:20 in the morning--I made myself get out of bed and get ready.

I made my way over to Christina's and we loaded up Landon. It was very slow going. Christina was pushing an extra 30ish pounds and my legs felt like lead. About a half mile in, and well below our pace, I suggested that we cut the run to 3 miles instead of 5. Christina wholeheartedly agreed.

It took us awhile to get into a groove but we finally did, though not at a 9:57 pace. We did manage to meet that at certain points during the run (downhill) but we averaged 11:00 miles for the entire 3 miles. Definitely not our best effort, but kudos to us for getting out at all.

After tugging at my shorts the entire run, I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to bring out my spandex shorts. I know. They're spandex. And spandex is so...unforgiving. But they don't make my legs chafe and I don't spend the entire run pulling them down. I'm going to have to get over the spandex fear. I just need to figure out what to do with my arms chaffing. I guess, bring out the balm I used for the marathon. That seemed to work wonders.

Tomorrow, we're biking instead of swimming because Wade's working from home and headed out with the scouts tomorrow evening until Friday and I want to see Christina on her new bike. But more importantly, it's been a while since I've been out on my bike and I wouldn't mind taking it for a longer spin.

Glad That's Over

2009-06-29T10:55:00.003-06:00

Day 13
Swimming
Mile intervals at a 9:26/mile pace

After taking three days off, it was really hard to get out of bed this morning. I woke up at 5:40, the time I usually leave to pick Christina up. I thought about just going back to sleep and begging forgiveness later, but I must be getting better because instead of turning off the alarm and turning my back to it, I rushed out of bed and grabbed my stuff. I was about 8 minutes late picking up Christina and I was praying she didn't give up on me. Luckily, she hadn't.

Swimming was fairly uneventful. Because we were 15 minutes later than usual, we found some open lanes. We added 5 laps to our routine and finished 20 laps in 24:22. Not too shabby considering neither one of us find swimming to be our strongest area. When we first started swimming it took us nearly a half hour to do 15 laps, so we must be improving.

At 9:00, we met at the track and preceded to do our mile intervals. They sucked! It was hot and four laps is a long ways around. We were able to keep under the 9:26 pace, but just barely.

Christina finished her three intervals in 9:15, 9:10, and 9:21. I finished mine in 9:15, 9:17, and 9:25.

We were both glad to have it done with though we're going to have to start going at an earlier time. It's getting to be too hot.

Tooele Freedom Run 5k Plan

2009-06-28T17:28:00.002-06:00

Date
July 4, 2009

Time
8:30 am

Location
777 E Skyline Dr in Tooele

Time Goals
Hillary: 27:00
Sandra and Christina: 30:00

Splits
Hillary:
Mile 1: 8:41
Mile 2: 17:22
Mile 3: 26:04
Mile 3.12: 27:00

Sandra and Christina:
Mile 1: 9:39
Mile 2: 19:18
Mile 3: 28:58
Mile 3.12: 30:00

Notes
The first 2.5 miles of this is all downhill, so definitely take advantage of that because the last half mile is uphill. It's not a steep uphill but it's gradual and it's difficult.

Because of the late start, make sure to eat breakfast beforehand and drink LOTS of water Friday and Saturday morning. One year, there was only one water station on course. Last year, there were two. I think they'll probably keep with the two because it's such a late start and it gets hot.

Good luck and have fun. The parade is a lot of fun afterwards. I'll drive in and hopefully, we'll find someone to ferry us back up to the car.

Going Backwards

2009-06-28T17:21:00.002-06:00

Day 11 (Friday, June 26)
Run 8 miles at a 10:42/pace

I carefully packed my running clothes when we went camping and then it rained. And rained. And we were off a dirt (mud) road and it never did dry out enough to run 8 miles on and so I opted out. Besides, I had a bladder infection and wasn't feeling 100%.

I heard Christina did it though, but slower than the pace. Kudos for getting out.

Hillary took Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off in hopes of feeling better. When I talked to her at church, she wasn't feeling much better so she's taking tomorrow off as well.

Day 12 (Saturday, June 27)
Mountain Biking

None of us did this. Which is okay. Saturdays in this particular training plan are just icing on the cake.

Good thing it's early in the training program. We'll still do good. I don't know of anyone who's actually made it all the way through a training program without something getting in the way.

2 weeks down, 8 weeks to go.

Wheeeee

2009-06-25T07:54:00.002-06:00

Day 10
Biking

Today, we went mountain biking instead of road biking because Christina feels bad that her bike isn't here yet. Or, at least, that's what I'm insinuating. In any case, it was a lot of fun and a lot less stressful than trying to keep up with a certain pace or having to kick old people out of swimming lanes.

We headed up to Lake Point and had a good time, though we did have to walk a few hills that we weren't in the right gears for. It was a good workout.

It's about 2.5 miles from Christina's house to my house, so now we know for future reference.

Nothing too exciting happened. It was pretty warm and I should've just left my jacket at home, but other than that, pretty ho hum. My favorite part about biking is that when I'm tired I just have to stop pedaling, yet I'm still going somewhere--unlike running or swimming.

Good luck on your eight miler tomorrow. Wish I was going to be here for it. I'm going to attempt to do it while out camping, but it may get cut short or I'll have to do it when I get home on Saturday. We'll see how it all plays out.

I'll update the blog Saturday night.

Early Bird Gets the Worm

2009-06-24T11:14:00.002-06:00

Day 9
Swimming

Wade had to leave for work this morning at 6:30, so I picked Christina up at 5:15 to make it to the pool at 5:30. We thought we'd for sure have a lane at that time. Turns out that there is a whole group of people who get there right on time at 5:30, maybe even before, because by the time we got in at 5:33, the lanes were full. And they seemed to know everybody. We felt like imposters.

Since the mean aerobic ladies don't start until 6 am, we just took an outside lane, though I was being constantly glared at by a "bobber"--an old lady bobbing in the deep end. She had plenty of room to scoot over, so I didn't let her intimidate me. Hey, I paid my $2 too!

We did 6 lengths as a warm up and then did 10 sprint laps. We realized that it is a good thing to get our legs warmed up in the current pool because both of our legs were tight.

We hit our eighth lap at 6 am, and all the mean aerobic ladies showed up and glared at us for infringing on their "space". Finally, the lifeguard came over and told us we had to leave the aerobic area. We scooted over to where the old guy with the fins was and took turns doing the last two laps to finish off.

Christina's best time was 58 seconds, by my calculations because I held the watch and she was always ahead of me. I came in at 1:02 for my best time. How do I get faster? I try to paddle faster, but I just wear out faster. It's probably because I have a lot more weight I'm pulling through the water than you two. I'll just keep going I guess and hope I'll make time up on the bike ride, since I have longer legs. :)

I'm guessing that 6 am is the sweet time to be hitting the pool. We get a 10-15 minute warm up in the current pool and then we can take over a lane. If we were to wait until 6:15 to show up, we'd probably lose our spot. Any earlier and we'd be in the current pool longer. They need a bigger pool.

I was eagerly anticipating climbing back into bed when I walked through the door. But lo and behold, there were both kids. Wide awake. Like 3 hours earlier than I expected. Luckily, all three of us fell asleep at 8 am and didn't wake up until 10:30.

Making Waves in the Pool

2009-06-23T21:21:00.002-06:00

Gold's gym is not ideal to train in. The laps are short, the pool is small, and during water aerobics their is only one lane. Worse then only having one lane is the part that the 10 water aerobic participants were jumping up and down making waves. At first I thought Oh this feels like swimming in a lake, but after awhile I started to think - I hope I don't get motion sick. (Which I was starting to feel!) I also started to think about High school. At region I was ahead of my time flowing swiftly through the water. (100 fly was my best stroke) I flew through 75 yards incredibly, (When I say incredible, I still was well below the pace of the top High school athletes, so I'm not saying I was incredible...) then turned the corner for the last 25 and ran out of gas. The question I have is how hard do you go so you don't run out of gas? Should I be swimming with only my arms to keep my leg strength? What if that makes me feel too worn out? What if I lay back and then realize I could've done more on the swim. I think that is one benefit to people that have the run as their strength, it is last. If the swim was last I would know what I had left in me. I would know how hard I had to go to catch up. They don't do it last because people would drown. They'd be too tired to swim. Where as running you CAN quit. I also thought about the swim. One word of advice is not to swim the backstroke. Swim either freestyle or breaststroke. You can keep your focus on the finishing point and not waste time getting off track. Last year I made sure to keep my eye on the bouy and then I focused on someone swimming in front of me so I could swim as straight as possible and not waste my energy swimming further out than I needed too. I guess the biggest thing is that I'll learn from this year and then hopefully improve every year after that. I did learn one thing from my mini tri is that I need a road bike! It's no longer a WANT but a NEED!

Mexican Food is a Bad Prerun Dinner

2009-06-23T17:30:00.007-06:00

Day 8
4 mile tempo run at 9:57/mile

Last night we went to Casa Del Rey's in Grantsville for Kandiss's and Grace's birthdays. It was decided this morning that Mexican food does not make a good prerun dinner. Neither Christina or I hit our marks this morning.

Christina showed up right on time and we started off. The bonus about having the GPS watch is that I can see how fast/slow we're going. I was ahead of Christina a little bit in the first half mile and so I slowed down to get even with her and then I kept pushing her pace up until we were on target. I don't even think she noticed. :) That first mile we were all over the pace and I was happy to have hit our target pace right on the nose. It's always good not to start the second mile already having to make up time.

The going was pretty rough. Four miles at a 9:57 is a tough run for someone who hasn't run that fast in like two years. And I never did feel as triumphant as I did last week for our three mile tempo run. It felt like a chore the entire run. But we finished. And finished quite spectacularly.

Mile 1: 9:56
Mile 2: 9:42
Mile 3: 10:04 (big hill)
Mile 4: 9:30

I'm proud of us for running the last mile the fastest. And also averaging a 9:48/mile pace. That's awesome. Still looking for that perfect formula where I'll look forward to getting up in the morning and running instead of dreading it. Good thing I'm in charge of the blog. I'm pretty sure I would've given up last Tuesday. :)

Yay for no more running until Friday. Double yay for a training program that has only three days of running.

One day our children will stumble upon this blog and laugh at how cool we thought we were because we were running a sub-10 minute mile. They'll remind us of this when we cross the finish line of the Boston Marathon (8 min miles to qualify).

We'll get there ladies. But right now...Hobblecreek in 2:15.

Legs of Lead

2009-06-22T20:56:00.003-06:00

My legs felt very very heavy as if they were stuck in mud. I decided to switch today's workout with tomorrows. In the morning I was still not feeling very well, so I didn't feel up to working out. But because of the pressure of having 100% (Which I'm sure to break in the near future) I decided I would try running. I never felt "Good" if their is ever a good in running but I felt like I was pulling my legs through mud and that they would barely move. The highlight was swollowing a knat and having one fly into my eye lid. I think every run has something interesting happen. I also passed Sandra's "dream house" and decided that it is now my dream house. It has a huge yard that would be great for a huge garden and lots of fruit trees. I would even let Jeremy plant a cherry tree. (They get really really big) The best part is I could wave to Sandra and Christina from the balcony as they ran past in the morning. Just a warning, watch out for the grasshoppers! I did time myself and was under the 9:57 pace, barely. P.S. I signed up today for the 4th of July race.

Round and Round We Go

2009-06-22T11:14:00.002-06:00

Day 7
Swimming
4 x 800 at 4:54/2 laps

This morning we woke up and made it to the pool at 6 am. It's getting *a little* easier to get up, but it's still hard. We had to circle the current pool while we waited for a lane to open, but right on time, at 6:15, one opened.

We did four warm up lengths of the pool and then did 15 (30 lengths) laps. Next week, we're increasing to 20. To top off our workout we did a fast lap, coming in (we think) under a minute! Nevermind the record on the wall is something like 25 seconds.

Hillary called at 8:00 to say she was too sick to come to the track for our second workout of the day. Christina and I met at the track at 9:30. The schedule said we had to do 4 x 800's at a 4:54 pace.

The first interval was the hardest, though we did do it the fastest. The track is really hard to run on because it's so boring. Christina finished in 4:15 and I crossed at 4:20. The second interval we slowed it down a little bit. Christina came in at 4:34 and I finished at 4:40. The third interval had Christina clocking in at 4:35 and me at 4:40. We tried to run the last one a little bit faster. Christina tied her best time at 4:15 and I came in at 4:25. All in all, a pretty good effort and we surpassed our target time each time, so we must be doing pretty well.

Hopefully, Hillary starts feeling better soon so she can get back on track, but a few days rest won't hurt her any, I'm sure.

The Incredible, The Very Good, and the Ugly

2009-06-20T12:57:00.002-06:00

Day 6
Fill the Ark 5k

I spent a lot of time last night studying the layout of the course and when I finally figured out how to get the elevation changes to show up, I realized that this course was going to be so much worse than I had anticipated. Beginning with a very large hill at the starting point. I think I spent TOO much time thinking about this and should've just gone into it blind.

However, I wanted to be as prepared as I could get, and the damage was already done by the time we got into Hillary's car to begin our trek to the race.

I don't know why I get so nervous since I know I'm not going to win any races or anything, but nerves tied my stomach in knots all night and the entire drive in. We arrived with 20 minutes to spare and there were a lot of people. It started raining and I ended up running with track pants on that acted like saran wrap. Christina grabbed her jacket and ended up having to tie it around her waist about 5 minutes into the run.

The starting line was packed when they blew the whistle to start and Hillary ran up ahead. It was the last time we saw her until the finish line.

Christina and I stayed together pretty well until the second mile. At the first downhill, Christina utilized the hill and was off. I plodded along and somehow got stuck in a group of people who kept running and walking. At the top of the 2nd mile, I crashed psychologically and ended up walking up the hill, with everyone else in my little bubble. It was a little demoralizing because it's been a long time since I've had to walk in a 5k. I was having a hard time catching my breath and hadn't taken a puff of my asthma inhaler before starting off. The relentless hills coupled with the inner berating I was giving myself put me into an asthma attack and I had to slow down to get it under control. The sun came out and the humidity picked up and I was sweating like a little stuffed piggy, so that didn't help matters much.

Christina and Hillary cheered me on at the finish line as I crossed at 33:__. Hillary did AWESOME at 27:40 and Christina did really well at 30:40. This was a very tough course.

Clearly, I need to work on positive thinking skills to train my brain to not give up. And I need to remember my mp3 player so the run doesn't feel so lonely. :( Some races are good and some are bad and I was just having an off day, I guess.

Good job girls. I'll be back in top form for our July 4th run, though won't be as fast as Hillary, that's for sure. Next year. :)

The Run From HECK!

2009-06-19T15:52:00.002-06:00

I'm glad to read that Sandra could fit in AWESOME in her run this morning. My run was quite the opposite. Let's see where do I start with the torture! First with Jeremy having to work. No way was I going to run 6 miles on the treadmill! So Jer got home at 12:30. I had a little lunch and then said let's go running. All dressed we started to go outside and I noticed it was 91 degrees! Jeremy would've been happy to back out. But we didn't. It was 91 degrees outside and who knows how much hotter with the heat kicking up from the pavement. We also had both girls in the jogger. (Jer pushed most of the way, and towards the end when he was walking) I don't know how far we ran, we just ran. Jeremy was ready to throw up or pass out. (Due to many things, including this being his first run in a LONG time) Then we decided to take a short cut that didn't turn into a short cut. We finally made it home an hour later. Who knows how far we ran. I don't care at this point. I was just glad to finally go to the pottie (Yes about 5 minutes in I realized I needed to go....) and get a dreamcicle, and stick my head under the bathroom sink to cool down. By the way I asked Jeremy how my form looked and he thought it looked pretty funny! Also he happily pointed out in the beginning that he could walk as fast as I run. But just to let you know I Wasn't the one who was going to throw up!!! (Atleast this time it wasn't me...)

Six Miles. 6:30 am. Uphill Both Ways

2009-06-19T07:57:00.003-06:00

Day 5
6 miles at 10:42/mile

I'm not entirely sure what got into my head, but when I thought, "six miles" I immediately thought "oh, to the gas stations and back in Lake Point. That would be perfect." And, so, that's where we were headed.

It was early, and Hillary's husband had to work, so she couldn't join us. I was sitting on the curb, wondering what the chances were that both Christina and Hillary wouldn't show so I could go back to bed, when Christina's van pulled up.

We stumbled down to the church and started off. The first mile seemed to go pretty fast and the run got better from there. The first hill was a humdinger, but we were able to keep on pace for quite a bit of it. Then we started downhill. At about mile 2.5, I remember thinking to myself "wow, this is a pretty good run. I'm not breathing hard. I don't feel like dying. We're pretty much on pace." Then we turned around at 3 miles and I realized I felt so good because it was all downhill from the top of the big hill all the way to the turnaround spot. At one point, I looked at my watch and yelped because we were running at a 12:00 pace, way below our pace, so we had to pick it up. But I felt like I was running at a 10:00 minute pace based on how hard I was breathing.

Christina ran a little bit ahead and I tried to catch up, but just couldn't muster the energy to do so. Then she made it across at the stoplight, but I had to wait. Which made it doubly hard to get going again.

However, the run was AWESOME. We averaged 10:36/mile, finishing in 1:03:38. Mile 1: 10:51. Mile 2: 10:39. Mile 3: 10:33. Mile 4: 10:29 (that was the first mile back from the turnaround where I thought we were running so slow). Mile 5: 10:54. Mile 6: 10:13. There were only two miles that we didn't hit our pace target. And they were both the huge uphill parts.

It was decided that for longer runs, we're going to stick to flatter ground, but that we should still run the Lake Point run on occassion so we get the benefit of the hills.

Tomorrow is the 5k. Good times. Good times.

It Does Make a Difference

2009-06-18T12:11:00.002-06:00

Day 4
Road Biking

This was Sandra's first day on her new road bike. She met Christina at her house at 6:30 am. On the way over, Sandra wasn't entirely sure that the problems with the biking portion of the triathlon laid in the bike itself. It still felt like a workout. However, when Christina joined up, it became apparent that a road bike is definitely worth the investment. It was night and day. Poor Christina was pedaling so hard to keep up.

We went over to Erda and rode the triathlon course back for a total of 11 miles from Christina's house and back to Sandra's. It's roughly three miles from Sandra's house to Christina's, so all in all about a 14 mile trek. Not too shabby.

Downhill was awesome on the road bike. Sandra spent a good portion of the downhill ride coasting so she didn't get too far ahead. But, if she would've pedaled, she would've been flying.

There are some minor adjustments that need to be made to the bike, but for the price, there's no complaining on this end.

Good work girls! Only two more days and we will have survived our first week of training. Only 9 more to go. :)

Swimming with Sharks

2009-06-17T21:48:00.003-06:00

Day 3
Swimming

Christina and Sandra decided to do another 5:45 am trip to the indoor pool in Tooele.

The lanes were crowded--again--and so we warmed up in the current pool. It was a little awkward walking around with the lady who was facing us the entire way.

At about 6:15, three people left, so the three of us (Christina, Sandra, and our new found friend) rushed to take the lanes. After some shifting around as other people left, Christina and Sandra finally ended up in the same lane.

We did 10 sprints of a full lap. Pretty unexciting. We had a hard time timing ourselves, so there are no times to report. Just that Christina beat Sandra every time, except for the time Christina almost drowned trying to do a flip turn at the wall and couldn't stop laughing. Good thing she didn't start drowning because the lifeguard was asleep in his chair by the side of the pool.

Day 3 down, only 64 more days to go.

Mind over Body

2009-06-16T07:33:00.004-06:00

Day 2
3 mile tempo run at 9:57/mile

Christina and Sandra met outside Sandra's house at 6:30 am for their jaunt through the neighborhoods. Last Monday, they run 3 miles at 10:10/mile and today, if they're successful, will mark the first time they've averaged below a 10 minute mile.

We ran behind the U of U clinic and over to the clubhouse, through Delgado, down by the Old Mill Townhomes, through Ivory, down the highway and ended at about Bishop Spilker's house. Mile 1: 9:42 Mile 2: 9:54 and Mile 3: 9:58, averaging 9:51/mile.

The weather was perfect! Not too hot. Not too cold. The pace was a little uncomfortable, but not so much that we didn't feel like we could hold a little bit of a conversation.

Hillary ran on the treadmill and finished in 34:18, averaging 11:26/mile, which is still awesome for the treadmill, since the treadmill SUCKS. New Rule: If you have to do your run on the treadmill, you're allowed a one and a half minute handicap for each mile. So that actually puts Hillary at an adjusted pace of 9:56/mile. See how that works?

All in all, a good run. And the bonus being that we're done for the day and don't have to run again until Friday.