A new addition to our family

It had been a while and we decided the time was right, and so we are pleased to announce the newest member of our family.....

It's a B ike! Faked you out a little right? That was the plan. We're still planning on that 99% success rate :)

Here's the birth, I mean bike story. I've been on the same aluminum frame, 650 wheel converted road bike I started on 10 years ago in 2000.
I've come to a really competitive place I'm excited about, but get frustrated by my drop in placement on the bike leg. I make up for it on the run, but I just really believe I could gain that little edge a better fitting, bigger wheeled, lighter more aerodynamic bike could give me.
PowerTri helped me get into this sweet new ride- the Quintana Roo CD 0.1. After a little complication placing the order it got placed last week. We were told it could take weeks to clear customs, so when I walked into the shop a week after ordering to find this, I was a little giddy. Seriously, it was Christmas like excitement.


We've been busy putting a couple other bikes together and getting hoards of new 2010 stuff out on the floor, but Heath started on the setup that evening, with little convincing I might say.


The next day Jameson helped me finish it up. I think there was a wee bit of tension taken out on my seat post.


Scary feeling seeing him walk toward my carbon with a hacksaw!


This has been a learning experience for sure. I had no idea hacksaws were involved in this process, a process where we cringe if a wrench gets too close to the frame or there are too many fingerprints.
We did get it all together though and I loaded it in the back of the car more carefully than I even do the kids at times :)

We were in such a hurry to get it set up and ready because I wanted to take it down to ride the course with before and after the race. Racing on a real, fast bike will be fun too, no worries there.
I finally got a chance to ride it outside today, and oh man, I tell ya, Where has carbon been all my life!!
The ride on the saddle was SO smooth! Carbon fiber is a material that absorbs more road vibration, and oh man it's nice. I wasn't sure I'd notice, but I do.

Very excited to take it out on the course tomorrow and see how she does. I'm not expecting to see huge increases in speed, but am hoping for a lot more comfort than in previous rides which will translate to a stronger ride.

Another one bites the dust

Another week and another triathlete. No I didn't crash (everyone knock on wood, RIGHT NOW!), but I have come down hard with a good head cold since Friday. Who woulda thought riding in the rain for 4 hours could do that? :)
I'm doing pretty good today, probably thanks to Friday which I took off aside from swimming that morning. I've come to learn about and become connected with my body and no longer freak out or feel bad for taking an extra day off here and there. I can just hear my husband yelling in the background: "WHAT? Yes you do!" And it's true, if I slack off and don't get something done because I didn't play time management well or I was lazy I do get on myself, but when I'm sick or something hurts in an off way, I'll take some downtime.
So anyway, got to do a couple hours of speedwork outside on the bike Thursday which was great! I've been feeling a little sluggish on the bike lately, so it was nice to show myself I can still get the mph's up there. Saturday I got my recovery week ride done. Only put in 50 miles instead of 70 because of time -I had a hot date ;) and the fact I wasn't feeling very well, but 50 nonetheless. I'll probably do my long run from last week tomorrow.

This next weekend I'm headed down to St George for the Tuacahn Duathlon. Whohoo, a race! My body and competitive spirit have needed one lately. I plan to get a ride with 2 IMSG loops in Friday (90 miles) and hopefully an additional loop after the race Saturday. Yay for warmth!

*If anyone is headed down anytime this week and/or coming back anytime next week that has room for 1 more in their car will you please let me know? Thanks! I'll bring yummy healthy baked treats and gas money :) *

To all those pushy people out there:

Thank You!

Yes, I said thank you. This was a recovery week, but it still took some pushing to get me out a few times. Speaking of recovery weeks, I'm sure ready for a week where recovery doesn't just mean less intensity but a week where I can actually do nothing (if I can handle that). In time, right? 11 more weeks.

The weekly workouts went pretty well. But then came the weekend. I had big plans to get lots of miles in with the extra day, but then life and weather got in the way, er, uh, it was mostly me. Friday I met some friends from Blanding and we rode 40 miles out on the west side of Utah Lake. I'd never been on the west side, but really like it! Only 5 or so miles of residential streets and then lots of baren road with little traffic. Megan and Bill are doing their first half ironman race this year. Looking forward to it guys, keep up the good work!

Then Saturday was supposed to be the long ride, but rain stopped us. We decided to move it to Monday. I don't even remember what I did all day Saturday, oh yeah, took the kids to Ikea, ran some errands, and by the time we got home it was about 4:00. Still had a run to get in. I took a little 30 minute nap with my 6 year old daughter and pried myself out of the warm bed with some coaxing from my hubby to get out and get my run done. SOOOO didn't want to go out and do it, but alas I did. I do have to confess to using music the entire time which I really try hard not to do, but I needed the extra kick in the pants.
So I ran the first half out and back on one section of canal road, then the other out and back on a different section. I passed these two teenage boys about 1/2 a mile from my street where I would move to the second canal road section, and stopped to get my gel, flask of water, and Endurolyte I tossed on the ground on my way out. Consumed said energy, put the flask, bottle of Endurolytes, and gel wrapper on the side of the canal road again to pick up on my way home. Well, I get back to pick them up and wouldn't you know it, they're gone. My lovely little friends tossed the gel wrapper and flask down the road, but the small vile of white powder filled capsules were gone. Bet they thought they really scored with some mystery powder eh? Well enjoy your electrolytes boys!!! Jokes on you.
As usual, I felt much better after the run and was glad I went. Everyone really does need a good push out the door some (a lot) of days.

So here we are Monday, looking forward to a drier day that the weatherman forcasted. 10am when I was going to leave? Cloudy, sprinkling. 11am when I was going to leave? Cloudy, still sprinkling. 12pm crunchtime, gotta get out of here, another push from the hubby, STILL cloudy and STILL sprinkling. Alright Mr Weatherman, you say after noon the SUN will creep out and chance of precip is only 10%. I believe you. And so I head out.
"Don't worry babe, the rain will stop and the sun will come out" I hear my sweet spouse say. Sweet man, very supportive, very helpful with this IM journey, also very wrong! It rained on me the entire time, some times a lot harder than others, and was probably 40-42 the whole time. Had some wind, but nothing horrible. I got completely dirty though! I have a habit of that lately. This is me from a 7 mile trail run with Jonathan from Wednesday.
I have a big problem with staying warm on the bike in anything under 50 degrees. Today was great though! I wore my Columbia jacket that kept me totally dry and warm with only a short sleeve jersey and arm warmers underneath. Any roadie would've probably made fun of me in my non bike specific jacket with the hood tucked inside, but I was so grateful to be warm, that that'd be A-OK! Had a cheapie pair of dollar gloves underneath a new pair of Pearl Izumi gloves we won last month. Sweet! Again, warm and dry. Had very thin socks on under the tri shoes, Pearl Izumi ankle zip booties on, then neoprene toe covers on top of that. Feet did pretty good, but were definately the coldest part of me. And for the legs I wore tights over some tri shorts. And thank goodness for the tri shorts! Cause they got wet! Let me just say it was an interesting feeling riding through puddles and on very wet road with a split saddle (meaning it has a hole in the middle), very interesting cold wet feeling. And that's enough detail for that :)


Sorry this is so long. The ride was short what I needed, but I still got 60 miles in and you know what? Despite the weather it was actually a pretty good ride! I stayed warm so wasn't angry at the conditions the whole time, rode pretty strong, and was just with it mentally. St George would've been super great this weekend, but money has to go to other things right now (stay tuned.....). And you know what? St George would've been great, but I can get warm training in the next couple months. Today was a really good mind and confidence strengthening ride. I have no control over what the weather will be come May 1, nor any race day. This was a good lesson that I can go out and ride hard and have fun despite the conditions out there. I still give HUGE props to my Ironman Canada (or was it Placid?) friends that did an entire 140.6 mile Ironman in a day like today. Good on ya folks - there are some amazing people out there!

A good week

This week went well. It wasn't perfect, but much closer than the past month has seemed. Got a couple good swims in. Should have gone farther Friday, but just wasn't feeling it so much. I wish I could get some open water time in before IMSG! I'm hoping to go out to Blue Lake out near Wendover, UT in late March/early April, so that will be nice.
Bike wise, got my long ride done....all 4 hours....on the trainer. Yeah, not so much fun, but got er done. I wish my legs would have felt more toasted though. I felt like that 4 hours was more teaching me to keep going, stay on the saddle and in aero almost the whole time. I found an interesting trick to that yesterday too. Get a computer with quiet speakers, put your bike and old mag trainer near it, and be forced to use headphones that are short enough that if you come out of aero you'll pull them off :)

Side note - I watched Supersize Me, the documentary about the man who ate McDonald's for a month. Interesting choice of viewing options while trying to work out, I know. Anyway, just seeing how misinformed and uneducated people are about health, or maybe just their lack of desire to make the simple efforts to be healthy are disappointing. One overweight teen girl, after listening to Jared from Subway speak, said "well I wish I could lose weight but I can't afford 2 sandwiches a day like he did". She totally thought that was the only way to lose weight as we saw Mom smiling on in the background, overweight herself, just proud to meet Jared. It's just sad. It doesn't require hours of exercise a day, eating only organic food, etc to be healthy.
If more people would eat out less, eat more produce, buy less processed food, TEACH THEIR CHILDREN and just get out for a walk everyday we would be a much better people.

Back to training. I kind of..er..blew the 10% rule for increasing your weekly run milage this week. Ran 10 Monday, 9 Wednesday, and 13.1 today, all feeling good. That adds up to 32 miles for the week, only what, a 40% jump? Whoops. Not really though. That's where I should be, life just kept getting in the way. I took an ice bath today, and am hoping my foot will hold up. My next mission is to find a good sports massage therapist I can afford that I can see 2-3 days a month through IMSG to stay healthy.

So yes, a good workout week for me. Some stresses in other areas of life right now, but hopefully they will resolve themselves soon.
Hope everyone had a great week! Spring is on it's way, I can feel it!

My running pal Jonathan and I after today's run. He's a great running partner. We're very similarly paced for long runs and push each other well. I toasted him at the Moab Half Marathon, he got me at Ogden. We've got some fun banter between us, but he's got a lovely British accent, so it's all good. :)

Ok, I'm over it :)

Forget Superman...I want to be Ironman!