Ironman Wisconsin 2011 – the race that (almost) never was
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so I’ll give a quick update. I took the entire month of July off from racing to prepare for Ironman Wisconsin. I reluctantly signed up for Steelhead in the middle of August and had a good race, despite the fact that the swim was cancelled. And then it all started.
Two days after Steelhead, I was out on a very leisurely bike ride on a trail and took a hard fall when my front wheel hit a thick branch that was hidden between the shade and leaves on the trail. I first thought it was my elbow that was going to give me problems, but on the drive home from that ride, I knew my shoulder took the brunt of the fall. I went to the emergency room where they confirmed nothing was broken. I was told I needed to be in a sling for 2 weeks with no activity. I was able to ride indoors the next day and pushed my luck in the pool two days later. It was extremely painful but I figured I’d have time to work it out before Wisconsin.
That weekend, I had 100 mile ride on the schedule. My elbow was still really chewed up and I had a hard time in the aerobars between the road rash on the elbow and the pain in my shoulder with any pressure. I was able to finish the…
Categories: Events, Race Reports, Racing, Triathlons
10,000 Yards Complete
I had many people ask for a report, so here it is. Swim-A-Poolooza 2011 was a smashing success! We had 36 swimmers in total. Some did 100s, some did 75s and some did 50s, but all had fun! I think we had 8 swimmers in each of the lanes doing 100s, but because they’re all experienced team swimmers, there were no problems.
This was the 4th year I’ve organized this event and it grows each year. This is the first year we held the event at the Lemont Park District’s The CORE. What was amazing was that we only had 5 “repeat” participants from last year. This means we had 31 NEW swimmers this year! Thanks to Suzi S., we had great music playing throughout the 3.75 hours. Thanks to both Suzi and Chris S., participants were able to stay fueled and hydrated through the event without having to get out of the pool.
I’ve done this swim about 8 times since I’ve been out of college. As told by the smile on my face, this was the most fun I’ve had. Usually, there is a “dead” point somewhere around the 70-80 rep time frame. And this year, I thought I took out the first 10 way too fast! But it was fine. Aside from a little bit of pruny…
Categories: Events, Swimming, Team, Training, Triathlons
Tags: Swimming
Happy New Year!
New Year, continued madness! And as most of you, I have been looking forward to kicking off the new year right, but then I ended up sick as a dog. So the story goes as such….
Holiday madness- Ran around like chicken with head cut off trying to see everyone with very little time off work and still trying to get in the training.
Wednesday, scooted out of the office for my FTP test on the bike with the help of DM. I was not sure what to expect as I have been slacking on the bike in the offseason to focus more on running. The FTP test deserves a post of its own but in a nutshell it was a 20 min warmup, some 1 min on, 1 min recovery pickups and then 5 minutes all out, 10 min recovery, 20 minutes hard to grueling finale and then 10 minutes of catching my breath. I was happy to have a significantly better showing than last year, albeit not anywhere close to the boys in terms of wattage but a very respectable watts / kg ratio compared to them. Improvement makes me happy!
After the test I continued to cough into the night, chalking it up to a hard effort, but felt slightly cruddy on Thursday through my run intervals and subsequent swim. Ran around hitting the stores the rest of the day on Thursday enjoying the day off with…
Categories: Events
Rev 3 Costa Rica Insights
A friend, Gina, has some inside scoops on this event. Understand she helped organizers (Rev 3) with some of the logistics and course. And will be hosting many of the pros.
She may be able to “help you with details like where to stay, where to fly in, what the course is like.”
The company website is link and can contact tru that site or use teh email address form that site. Make sure you reference Rev3 Costa Rica.
Wish I could make it to this one.
Categories: Events
Is Yoga Tougher than IRONMAN?
Most of you know – I’ve been sort of out-of-commission with my running since JULY! YES, JULY! So, when a friend said to me, “Hey, I’m doing this 30 day Bikram Yoga Challenge, wanna join me?” I thought that might be exactly what I needed. For those of you that never heard of it, Bikram Yoga is a 90 minute session of the same 26 poses each session. Oh, and the room is 105 degrees (and I’m told it’s like 135 degrees with humidity).
What the heck, I can’t run, I know yoga is good for me – because as a triathlete, I’m quite inflexible – and, hey, it’s only 30 days. Right? Oh so not right… (sigh).
I joined my 30 day challenge at Bikram Yoga Burr Ridge. I joined my friends at 5pm on a Friday night for our first of the 30 days. It must be very quiet in the yoga studio. I have a hard time keeping quiet for 5 minutes, forget about 90 minutes! I walked in the room, sat my mat and towel down and nervously looked around. I’m hot. What the hell did I get myself into?
The first thing you do in this class is breathe. Yes, I said it. Breathe. I’m sweating. We are 60 seconds into the class and I’m sweating. I want to cry. I want to leave. I want to douse myself with water. …
Nation’s Marathon – Wanna join the group?
It looks like I have finally decided on my next big race (aside from REV3 Costa Rica – but that one is really just for the sunshine and sea turtles : ) March 26th Mr. CoachKati and I will don our Saucony’s and run through the nation’s capital for a quick 26.2 mile jog.
As a bit of history my first stand alone marathon did. not. go. well. I swore that I would only run 26.2 consecutive miles if I had just finished a 112 mi. bike ride. And yet. I guess it’s like childbirth which I know was a bitch at the time, but 8 and 11 years later seems like magical, wonderful days! So, for some reason I got the marathon bug and started searching for a race that was not to far (um, Costa Rica trip in Feb.!) and one that has similar weather patterns (refer to first marathon hellish Jan. sweatfest). So, the search landed me at the webpage of the Nation’s Marathon in Washington D.C.
Training begins now since I’ve been out of the running game for the summer. The next four weeks are a build period focused on getting 3 runs / week with one of them being speedwork. I am also going to try a new shoe – the Saucony Kinvara’s, which have been highly recommended by my TRAKKERS teammates. I anticipate a couple of weeks to get them (really to get me)
…
Categories: Events, Running
Tags: Nations marathon, Running
Boulder 70.3 – Race Report
I’m not exactly comfortable saying this, but I’ve been having a pretty good year, so far. I’ve been very happy with my results in nearly very race. So why mess with a good thing, right? Well, coach kind a wanted to experiment a little with this years Boulder 70.3. The idea was if you’re always trying to push to your limits, sometimes you need to go over them just to be sure where they are.
In the past, I’ve felt like I’ve never been able to bike hard enough to damage my run. Well, we’ve been working on my cycling quite a bit this year and I feel like I’ve made some significant improvements. So, it was time to see if I could do some damage…
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED! If the picture above were taken about four hours later you’d see a giant mushroom cloud just left of center, ‘cause thats precisely where I blew up. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming either. I just didn’t feel real great all week and it carried over to race morning. Neither my warmup jog nor swim felt good at all. It might have been a bit of a hangover from racing in Omaha the weekend prior. Or I might have been just dreading the long HOT run course that Boulder always brings.
Regardless, things got off to a fine start. I was pretty happy with my swim. It didn’t seem
…
Categories: Athletes, Events, Race Reports, Race Results, Triathlons
Amica 19.7 Sprint Race Report
In the spirit of my first sprint triathlon in 4 years, I am going to try to make this race report as abbreviated as possible.
Amica 19.7 Triathlon: Newport, RI
.5 mile swim | 16.1 mile run | 3.1 mile run
Less than two weeks of recovery since Cedar Point and only one 2.5 mile run since then. And my quads were screaming the whole time.
Low expectations except for the fact that I was racing against Sam’s family. I know all the guys had secret aspirations to take down the newly-minted Ironman. I had no plans on letting them win.
Pre-race dinner with Sam’s family and playing with their dog. It decided it was done with play time and decided to use my hand as a chew toy, shredding my forefinger. Lots of blood and while cleaning out the wound and making guesses on the need for stitches, I passed out cold. Apparently having a low resting HR makes you more likely to pass out.
I texted pictures of the damage to my dad (an ER doctor) and he gave me the green light to race. Sam was freaking out and worried, as any good girlfriend would be, but I was psyched.
Time to finish up the 2010 triathlon season.
Race morning:
Wild wind and surf that would make for a better day of surfing than swimming. Swim: canceled.
Replaced by a .25 mile beach (quicksand) beach run.…
Categories: Athletes, Events, Family & Friends, Race Reports, Racing, Triathlons
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