I think a lot about whether I’m tough enough for the goals and races I want to achieve.

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Categories: Running, Training

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Categories: Race Reports, Running

It’s that time of year again. Time for the running adventure. Time for the 24 hour relay. After running Reach the Beach five times, it was time to try a new relay: Bourbon Chase. The Bourbon Chase is a 200+ mile, 12 person relay that travels from Louisville to Lexington, KY traveling along the Bourbon Trail. My previous teams for Reach the Beach expanded and created two teams: 3 Old Crows, 9 Spring Chickens and our master’s team, The Flying Anvils. With a week of rearranging people and vans, we somehow only wound up with 11 on our team and thus we set out to beat our master’s team.

The race began at Jim Bean and would basically travel from distillery to distillery, including Maker’s Mark, Heavenly Hill, Four Roses, Woodford Reserve, and Wild Turkey. Waves started early in the morning, 8:00am, with the slower teams and the last wave left at 6:30pm with the fastest teams. Both our teams started at 3:00pm. Here’s a picture of our two teams together:

I was the second person to run for our team and this may have been the last time our team was in front of our master’s team (thankyouverymuch!).

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Categories: Triathlons

For the last seven years I have spent the third weekend in April in Boston for the Boston Marathon. Of those seven years I have spent in Boston, four of them I’ve run the marathon, two others I should have run (injury and weather) and the last I went to watch my dad run the race. Despite having my fastest qualifying time, I decided not to do Boston this year to concentrate on Ironman. I know Ironman’s going to be awesome, but Boston is like the SUPERBOWL! I missed it so badly this year. I’ll be back…

To celebrate marathon monday, here is my race report from 2009:

Some marathons you run to run and others you toe the line to race. Monday I was ready to race. I have never felt as mentally prepared for a race than I was for Boston this year. I was nervous about my training as there weren’t that many miles, but I was ready to handle the course and the spectators and the challenges that lay ahead. And when the weather forecast came in saying it was going to be in the 40s, I knew the stars were going to align.

We hopped the bus to Hopkinton around 6:30am and got to the Athlete Village in good time. We port-a-johned twice (yes it’s a verb) and did a little eating and hydrating. 9:15 rolled around and it was time to drop our stuff…

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Categories: Triathlons

Next weekend is the Boston Marathon. And for the first time in eight years I’m not going or running it. That makes me a little sad. My teammate Sonja just won the Moab 100. Go watch her video, it’s awesome. But watching that video has made me sad and envious. I just want to run. I miss “just” running.

Monday I had a long run on the schedule. Although there were prescribed heart rate zones, most of this run was “just run.” I was so excited to do this workout. But as I stepped out in just the first mile I knew things were going to be rough. My HR was already flying, I couldn’t catch my breath, and I just didn’t feel normal. With only a few minutes left in my long warm up I thought about bagging it. I even turned around and started running back to my starting point, but I said to myself, “no, Meredith, you can do this.” Once I got to the “just run” portion of my workout, I did feel better, although only somewhat. My heart rate was really high and I was only doing 9 min/miles. A year ago I ran the Boston Marathon at an 8:00 pace and I couldn’t even run a 9:00 when I was allowed to get my heart rate up? How could I feel so out of shape with all of this training? I had…

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Categories: Training

Today I had a tough, hour plus hill run. I did the run at Highbanks, a local metro park with a hilly, trail terrain. It’s about the ONLY place in central Ohio to run with hills. One word to describe this run: HORRIBLE!!! I couldn’t breathe, my heart rate was sky-high, my legs just wouldn’t move. Ugh! Last year when I was training for the Boston Marathon I kicked Highbanks’ a$ and did 18 miles there. What the heck has happened in a year? I call it “The Ironman Effect.” I’ve noticed over the last couple of long runs that things have shifted in my heart rate zones. Last year when I was training for my marathons, I did a lot of work in zone 3. My goal was to increase speed. When I ran in zone 2 last year, I usually only got down around 9:30/mile. But, when I ran in zone 3, I could get the pace down to 8:20/mile. This year because I’m going long (LONG!!!) all my work has been in aerobic zones, mostly zone 2. On my long runs now in zone 2, I’ve been averaging just under 9:00/mile. IN. ZONE. 2.!!! But, push to zone 3 and I’m only dropping to 8:40/mile. While this is great for the races I’m planning, I am NOT happy with where my running is now. One of my biggest fears of doing triathlon specifically was losing my running…

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Categories: Running, Training

Coach is really good at adding variety to our workouts, especially our weight training. Right now she’s on a TRX kick or suspension training. This is not new to me. As previously mentioned on my personal blog, I spent YEARS doing gymnastics where all weight workouts were body-weight workouts. TRX systems are not that cheap and being that we’re a (mostly) single income family, we just couldn’t afford one ourself. I’ve noticed our gym has one, but I’ve also noticed it’s not always in the same spot. I didn’t want to go looking for it each time I went to the gym. Since Dave is a genius (he he he!), he came up with a plan to create one himself as a Christmas present. This is what it looked like:

Can you tell we live right next to the Home Depot? We did a few workouts with it and it worked pretty well. With time, however, the rope started to fray, but this really wasn’t a big deal. What was a big deal, to me anyway, is that we had no foot cradles. Any workouts we did requiring our feet to be in the stirrups (he he!) caused major pain in the ankles.

Friday I was fed up and marched out of the house and straight to Dick’s Sporting Goods. I had seen suspension training systems there before and I was not…

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Categories: Training
Tags: suspension training, TRX

On March 6th I did an indoor triathlon at Ohio Wesleyan University. The format worked like this: 15 minute swim, 10 minute transition, 15 minute bike, 5 minute transition, 15 minute run. How ever far you went in each of those 15 minute segments was extrapolated to a sprint triathlon (750m swim, 20K bike, 5K run) to get the final time.

The best part of this race was that you could use your own bike on trainers provided. Or, at least, this should be the best part of the race. For me this turned into a challenge. The organizers did a really good job of informing participants that their bikes needed to have slick tires and if the participant did not have this type of bike, the organizers provided a bike for the participant. So, I brought my own bike. But what the organizers didn’t specify was that the size of the tires needed to be 700s. I ride 650s. While I was preparing for the swim, the organizers completely dismantled the trainer and rebuilt it to fit my bike. Whether this changed anything for me or not, I don’t know. And I didn’t even know this had happened until after the event so it didn’t change my psyche or anything during the race. It’s just something I’ll ask in future races.

I had a great swim. Dave (my husband) and I were in lanes right next to each other…

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Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Tri