Everyone likes race pictures, but nobody likes paying crazy amounts for them. Thank you Bandit for taking great pictures AND making them affordable!
Bandit gave every person two free pictures AND the others were only $5 per image! If other races and photo companies would follow suit and make the pictures affordable like this, I would be MUCH more likely to ALWAYS buy my pictures!
The original plan had been to run the Sean O’Brien 50 K but once we realized we had missed the sign up we had to find a plan B. I hate to even call this race a plan B because it was a really cool race!
The first thing about this race that was great was the responsiveness of the Race Director. I had emailed him to ask if the race sells out and I heard back from him within a couple hours! Love that! The day before the race they had packet pick up at their house. It was very obvious how much they enjoyed putting the race on and how well they new the course. I usually do bigger races, so I never get any contact with the people putting on the race. Not the case here at all!
It is a local race for use which meant we didn’t have to get up too crazy early to get to the race on time, WINNING!
I got up, got dressed in my new Coeur Sports running kit (Fleet Foxes) and put on my 2015 Coeur Team tattoo (squee) and we were out the door by 6:00 AM.
Stuart was running the 50K so he started at 7:00 and my race went off at 7:30.
I saw him off and then got to see him one last time because the first loop of the race runs all the runners back through the start/finish line area so the spectators can see them before they set off. Very cool!
Once Stuart was on his way, I finished getting ready and lined up to start. I had never set foot on the course so I was a little blind to what I would be running but the race website had a LOT of good information on the course. Race directors, if you are reading this, ALWAYS include a Garmin link of the course! ALWAYS!!! Bandit had this for all the courses and it was really helpful.
Regardless of seeing the course details prior the the race, it was harder than I expected. It was quite warm which made it tough, and the downhill sections were a little technical for me so that slowed me down quite a bit. The thought that kept me going was that after this, I get to hang up my trail shoes! I really wanted to trail run all year but once I spent a lot of time doing it I realized that it isn’t for me right now. I need the variety of multi-sport.
Coming through on the first loop
As the race wore on I did my best to just keep running whenever I could and walking with a purpose when I couldn’t. The top 4 50K runners passed me and were all super polite and friendly! Very cool! I was playing cat-and-mouse with one runner. She caught me at one aid station, then I caught her at the last one. I did everything I could to keep her from catching me again and she was really close when we turned down for the last tricky descent. The descent was so tricky that I just did what I could to move as fast as possible and not fall. Once on the home stretch I ran as fast as I could. I didn’t want to get caught at the very end; and I didn’t!
Photo credit @jesseluna
Photo credit @jesseluna
I had had high hopes of placing at this race but it was much more difficult than I had anticipated. I finished 10/16 in my age group in 4:33:14 and 19/52 in my gender. I was a little disappointed but I know I did all I could out there. You can find my Garmin data here.
I would highly recommend this race to anyone looking for a challenging trail run. The scenery was beautiful, the course was challenging, the volunteers were amazing, and the organizations was great. The only minor bobble was there a section of the run where you had to run into a neighborhood before you got to the back section of the race. It wasn’t marked and a few of us were very confused until someone who knew the course told us the way. But other than that it was awesome! When I get more pictures I will post them.
Yes, my watch tells me how many beers I ran off
My focus now switches 100% to Ironman to prepare for Ironman Boulder in August! I am very excited to have my coach back to help me prepare for Boulder.
I am finally back in the pool after a 3 month break after Ironman Arizona. The break was nice because making time for the pool is always a bit tricky. The problem with taking a break is I knew I would have lost a fair amount of swim fitness.
I swam 8 X 100 at threshold pace the last week. After my 1000 yard time trial, my threshold pace came back as 1:40 per 100 yards. I know I can swim faster than that, but it will take some time to get faster over 1000 yards. After the 8 X 100 set, there is at least one aspect of my swimming that I am happy to see I have not lost. As a set goes on I tend to get faster. What I also liked to see was that as I got faster, I took less strokes! I would really like to swim 1:05 at Ironman Boulder this summer. This is promising!
I have been using Dermasport for about 3 months now and I love it! The set comes with 4 pieces to be used together. They are amazing! It leaves my skin feeling moisturized but not greasy. The scent is good for men or women (citrus-ish but not too strong). I am really hard on my skin with all the swim/bike/run that I do. Dermasport does a great job keeping my skin looking its best!
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I had an unpleasant experience on the internet yesterday. I had posted the following comment in a private group I belong to on Facebook. It is a triathlon based group that has been nothing but warm and friendly over my past year of participation.
I will admit, I wanted to hear that I am not the only one who doesn’t like circle swimming with people who aren’t doing the same workout I am. But, I did expect to hear form some people that thought what I did wasn’t the bets way to handle it.
For a day the comments were very polite and generally on my side or at least understanding of what I did. On the second day I got a comment that really got under my skin and hurt. Essentially they said that my actions were rude and lame and I should have allowed them to swim with us. Another person then brought up that for newer swimmers the pool could be a very intimidating place and not being allowed to circle swim into the lane could have been off-putting. I can tell you I wasn’t rude when I told the person I would rather not circle swim but I will concede that it was kind of lame. I tired to echo that sentiment but was then told that what I did was a “D!*K move”. Also, how would I have felt if it was my only time to swim and I wasn’t let in to circle swim. I stopped replying because I didn’t think it would serve any purpose.
A few words in my defense here. I ALWAYS share my lane happily with anyone who asks. I even intentionally swim on one side just to make my lane more inviting and open to others. If I show up to the pool and the lanes are all full with two people I wait until I can get in a lane that doesn’t require anyone to circle swim. I would rather cut my workout short, but get in as much of my quality structured workout as possible. And I don’t want to ask others to have to accommodate me circle swimming with them.
The part that really hurt was that the comments made me feel like they thought I was not an encouraging fellow triathlete. This really upset me; all the way to tears last night. I feel like this is so far from the truth about me and how I interact with others in endurance sports. I was surprised how much this hurt. I guess if I didn’t want somebody to call me out, I shouldn’t have posted it in the first place.
I guess if you want to be open in social media, you have to expect this to happen from time to time. I am not looking for validation that I was right or wrong on this. I just wanted to share this because it felt important to illustrate how much social media interactions can affect you.
I recently finished the Tour of Sufferlandria which worked in conjunction with a pretty cool application called TrainerRoad. Now that I am starting down the road to Ironman Boulder, I wanted to talk about how useful TrainerRoad can be to your indoor cycling training.
The way TrainerRoad works is it uses the Ant stick that can talk to your Ant enabled bike devices. I use it with my Garmin speed/cadence sensor and heart rate strap. It will work with a variety of other Ant enable devices like a power meter if you have one. I don’t have a power meter so that is where TrainerRoad really does its magic. TrainerRoad will use the data it gets from your devices coupled with the type of bike trainer you are using and give you virtual power. Then, you can use one of the workouts in TrainerRoad to find your FTP (functional threshold power) and use that as the basis for all your workouts. It may sound complicated but it is really quite easy.
Now one of the reasons TrainerRoad works so great for training is because power is so much easier to train to instead of HR. Specifically, you can train immediately to power whereas heart rate is a lagging indicator. If you are doing short efforts at prescribed intensity levels, you can see the power output long before you can see the effort reflected in the heart rate data.
You can see above that my HR doesn’t peak until well after I have done my 30 second interval. This was all achieved using TrainerRoad without a power meter. While you are riding TrainerRoad will display what percentage of your FTP you are riding. This way, if you coach tells you what zone to be in, you can easily use TrainerRoad to ride to the correct effort level. You can find information about training zones just about anywhere. Below is the information I found on Joe Friel’s blog regarding zones.
Zone 1 <55% (active recovery)
Zone 2 56-75% of FTP (endurance)
Zone 3 76-90% of FTP (tempo)
Zone 4 91-105% of FTP (lactate threshold)
Zone 5 106-120% of FTP (VO2max)
Zone 6 121-150% of FTP (anaerobic capacity)
Zone 7 >150% of FTP (neuromuscular power)
TrianerRoad is a very cost effective way to use power if you don’t have a power meter. It costs $10/month or $99/year. They have a variety of workouts as well as amazing integration with Sufferfest workouts. TrainerRoad will make your time spent on a bike trainer more effective then training to rate of perceived exertion alone. If you have to use a trainer, you might as well do it right!
As you may know by now I have been chosen to be a Coeur Sports ambassador this year. There really aren’t words to express how happy this makes me. I LOVE their products. Their Tri kit is second to none (and I have worn quite a few). I love their running shorts as well (review to come). But what I wanted to write about today are their t-shirts. The have the cutest line of extremely flattering and comfortable t-shirts. I am beginning to amass quite a collection!
I love a few things about them. First, the fit. They have a great neck line, perfect sleeve length , and they are long enough and cut properly that they hit your middle just right (I am wearing a medium). They are NOT the American Apparel standard t-shirt that shrinks so much that after two washes you need to give it to a 12 year old girl. They are feminine and perfect! Second, the prints and colors. They are bright, funny, and cheerful t-shirts. I am always getting compliments on them. And lastly the price. Not one of the shirts is more than $25. Pretty fair in this market.
If you have a special woman in your life you should totally surprise her with a cute Coeur Sports t-shirt! There are a couple that would make great Valentine’s Day Gifts! #justsayin
What a way to get back on my bike! I had only ridden a bike twice since Ironman Arizona in November but I wouldn’t dare think of missing the Tour of Sufferlandria. How could you possibly miss a virtual staged bike tour though a mythical country that takes pride in making you suffer? I know huh? Sounds amazing!
Honestly, this is a pretty amazing experience. Through the use of the Sufferfest videos and the amazing application TrainerRoad we rode with over 2700 others all over the world and raised over $100K for the Davis Phinney Foundation without ever leaving our homes!
The tour lasted over 9 days and you essentially had 50 hours to complete each stage. If you didn’t complete the stage during the window it was open you were dropped. Everyday we would log on to see how many people didn’t make it on. For us, the best part was there was no question we would finish the Tour which actually made it easier to get on the bike day after day; quitting wasn’t an option! The crazy part for Stuart and I was we had to fit a 50k trail run in the middle of the Tour! Luckily, due to the 50 hour window to complete each stage, we started the tour as soon as we could which allowed us to fit in the race. You can get an idea of the effort from the picture below.
As you can see the last two days were a doozy!
If you haven’t looked into The Sufferfest or TrainerRoad and you use an indoor bike trainer YOU ARE TOTALLY MISSING OUT! This is truly the best way to make good use of your time on a trainer for very little money.
See Becca Try to Tri 