CafeChatNoir

Went and did the Summer Super Sprint out in Manassas today and had a blast.

All the gory details can be found here.

and other thoughts after a fairly craptastic week in the world.

- No more putting off training (or anything else I want to do for that matter) because I feel like I should be doing ‘more important’ things with my time – screw that – I realized I was letting other idiots define ‘important’. Today I finally got out and ran for the first time in forever.  It was ugly and painful, which I fully expected, but it also helped clear my head a little, which I very much needed.

- Don’t let anyone else define what is important in your life. If it’s truly important, you’ll know it. If it isn’t, it isn’t. If that gets someone else’s knickers in a twist, too bad.

- There are some seriously messed up people in this world. Maybe they could have been helped with very early intervention, maybe not. But, they’ve always been there in this world and they’ll always be there in the future. Personally, I’m not going to spend my entire life looking over my shoulder waiting for someone to snap. At the same time, take the time to reach out to someone who might need a shoulder to lean on or an ear to bend for a few minutes.

- Some people have way too much time on their hands and become petty jerks to justify their existence. Please, go find a real hobby.

- Some people will always confound me, no matter how hard I try to understand them. (And yet, I’ll still try to understand them.)

- AUTiger23 summed up why some folks are just jerks very well with this quote from Scrubs: People are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling.

- There is no such thing as having all home improvement projects finished. Ever.

- Earth Day can be incredibly annoying for a gun-loving, capitalist, beach-bum hippie chick. If you’re not hard core on either side of the arguments, no one wants to play with you.

- It’s 80 degrees and beautiful out today – which means it will probably be in the 50s and raining again in the space of a week.

All my IMAZ chickadees are off the bikes and on the run!!

My buddy Lane, who tried very hard to up and die on us last fall, is doing IMAZ today! (2.4 mile swim, 112 miles on the bike and a 26.2 mile run)

He did the swim (2.4 miles in Tempe Town Lake) in 1:10:17 – that’s a pace of 1:50 per 100 meters. Mine is around 3 minutes…

He’s gotten at least to the 37 mile mark on the bike – unfortunately, they don’t have another chip sensor until the end of the bike, at 112 miles.

Welshy went a little slower on the swim w/a 2:44 pace, but he made it and also has passed the 37 mile sensor on the bike. Jess is seriously rockin’ out on the bike segment, too.

I am so proud of them!!!

Registration for the Reston Tri opens on 2/15 at 8:00 PM. Last year this race filled 600 slots in approxmately 37 minutes.

Active.com has screwed something up and the registration is open now, and folks have been able to register.

So – do you jump on the early bandwagon or wait until it is actually “supposed” to open and just hope the organizers do something about the early birds and that it’s not already filled because of it.

Here are all the various and sundry details from yesterday’s race.

I am still high as a kite from the experience. If you’re going to do a marathon, MCM is a killer first one to do. One of my friends who has done it 3x said that every time he hit the 14th Street bridge, he was thinking “I will never do this again” and then ended up doing it again. For me, when I was in Hains Point wondering if I was going to make the bridge (some confusion over the cutoff time for the bridge), I was thinking, “I am going to HAVE to do this again!” and by the time I was on the bridge, I was thinking about all the little things I’ll do differently next year. :-D

Around mile 23, I was w/my friend Lane and asking, “So, you say the San Diego Rock & Roll marathon is a really good one?!”

Totally doing another one of these!

5:46:06 – absolutely loved it and will definitely do another one. What a ton of fun.

So, yes, it’s 12:44 (well, 11:44 really, the computer will set itself back) and in about 6.5 hours I’ll be hauling myself out of bed for what should be an interesting day! They’re calling for 15-25MPH winds tomorrow – yikes! Basically, the conditions sound like they’re going to be the same as Shamrock, so at least I know what I’m getting myself into and I know how to dress for it.

In keeping with the theme of “don’t change things for race day” yet again it looks like I won’t be going into it with much sleep, but I never do, so I’m used to it. Slept hard last night and got in a good nap this afternoon, so it’s all good.

Lane’s been a godsend – he’s done 3 marathons and has had lots of very good realistic advice and has done a great job of making me feel very relaxed about going out and doing this.

I’m thinking things will probably shake out to around 5.5 hours, which is a 12:36 pace, which I think is doable, but whatever gets me over the bridge by 1:45 works for me. I’ve got my race plan (walk 2 mins @ every mile marker) that should keep things in check and keep me from blowing up. Have my reeses pieces and gummi bears in case I get the munchies along the way. Have my Garmin, which has the average pace display, so I can make sure I’m staying under a 14 minute pace without having to try to do math and run at the same time.

Well, I’ve gotten my “good luck and go kick ass” goodnight phone call, so now I can go to bed. :)

Yes, it will encompass an entire weekend, not just the 5-7 hours I’ll be spending on the course on Sunday morning.

Tomorrow my buddy Lane gets here (he’s the one that got so sick earlier this year) and he’ll be staying here with me and doing the 10K. Chippy & Trixie are coming for dinner tomorrow night as well – nice that the baked potato soup makes a TON.

Poor Lane is going to get dragged all over town tomorrow afternoon, cause I realized once I got home, I missed a couple things for the soup when I did the marketing, plus I have to go by the wine shop and pick up a case of wine, and with 2 more for dinner than I originally thought, some bread might not be a bad idea.

Then Saturday is the traditional pre-race-day breakfast out, then packet pickup and the expo, then about 10 of us are meeting up for dinner Saturday night at some Italian place over in Arlington (thank god we were able to get reservations, otherwise there is a good chance I’d be cooking for all of them) and then Sunday morning, it’s off to the races!

Another great weekend for running – Army 10 Miler with a 10:49 pace!

Oh, and I got the “official” times from the Quantico half – ended up with a 10:48 pace in the end. Holy crap.

I couldn’t help but have a few pace numbers memorized going into it.

12:08 – pace from the Shamrock half in March
11:27 – pace for a 2:30 overall time
11:18 – what McMillan’s running calculator estimated for today based on my 15K time. (Most of the course is the same and similar weather conditions.) While it was in theory, feasible, I still laughed at it.

Not in a million years did I expect this pace number to shake out in the end: 10:53 per mile, for 13.1 miles. 2:22:38

The whole story is over here.

After a summer of long, disciplined, slow, measured training runs this summer, tomorrow is the Quantico half marathon. Technically, the mileage is part of the overall training plan for MCM, but there is just no way I can treat this as another slow training run. I want to get out there and see what I can do and see if all these LSD’s* have really done anything or not. I’ve done my traditional “day before the race” breakfast out, had my pasta for dinner, clothes & gear are laid out and ready to go, and the “pre-race” playlist is going on iTunes.

I’m pretty darn stoked for it, but there is a little part of me that wonders if I’ve forgotten how to just go kick it. Seriously – all my runs this summer, I have been SO good and done them “right”** – I hope I don’t just automatically fall back into it, LOL.

They say the course runs fast, but I know it’s not as flat as Va Beach was last spring. However, I have run 9.3 miles of tomorrow’s course with the 15K in June, so I know what to expect for the bulk of the run.

It will be very interesting to see if I can beat my time from Virginia Beach (2:39:01). I did the 15K (9.3 mi) with a pace of 11:05. If I am under 2:45, I will be quite happy (12:46 pace), but if I can somehow pull out a sub 2:30 (11:27 pace), I will be on top of the freakin’ world. Thing is, I realized today that it might not be completely out of the realm of possibility. Tomorrow’s weather conditions will meet or beat what we had in June, I know the bulk of the course already, I know where the water stations are going to be, so no having to guess on that. I will be following my same “race plan” I had for the 15K which is walk the water stations, run the rest – with the temps, there is no need for preventative run/walk to avoid heat issues. There is a double hill somewhere on the course, I think it will be around mile 8/9 – that one I ran the hill, walked the flat and then ran the second hill – I think I’ll do that again, since the walk in the middle allowed me to be able to run and get off that second hill a little faster.

Regardless, it’s gonna be a gorgeous day to get out there and have a good time and be a sexist pig and enjoy all the eye candy.

* LSD = Long, Slow, Distance
** Keeping HR strictly in the “aerobic” zone. Not as easy as it sounds, but I did my first half with only a couple weeks of HR based training under my belt, and I felt it really improved my run, so we’ll see what continued application of it gives me.

Took forever and day, and it was so hard, and SO good!!

Still flying high.

If you happen to see a slow chick biking or running around Reston on Sunday morning between around 8 and 11 AM with the #612 written in magic marker all over her, tell her to go faster. :-D

Nice swag at packet pickup today – cycling socks, hat, and a fleece blanket.

I’m also in the last swim wave to go out, which makes it very, very likely that I will be the last person to stumble out of the water. But, this is OK – easier to find my bike in T1 that way!

IronGirl pics!!!!!!

First one is the finish, the clock doesn’t take into account that my swim wave went off 58 minutes after the first wave. I think you can tell I’m ready to be done. (My final time was 2:48:53)
Second one is somewhere on the back half of the bike course – I’m surprised I’m smiling cause mainly I was cussing the hills. :)
Third is coming out of T1. (Swim to bike transition)
Fourth is after the finish, after I’d avoided getting sent to the med tent.
Last one is coming up on the finish line.

Woohoo, didn’t die on the swim!!!

OK yeah, so I’m sitting here in a hotel room hoping I’ll get tired here soon so I can get some decent sleep before tomorrow.

Got everything checked in at the estrogen-fest IronGirl registration/bike racking/et al. It’s very…strange? different? odd? Something, I just don’t know quite what. It may have something to do with the fact that they had 1800 people register for it, so it’s pretty huge. (Biggest tri I’ve been involved in topped out at 500 registrations if I recall correctly.) Supposedly 800 of the folks here are first timers – pretty cool.

Looking around at bike racking, it sure looked like a pretty hard core field to me – didn’t see any mountain bikes or hybrids like I did at Virginia Run, and everyone had that “I know what I’m doing” look about them. Ack. Got a good look at the swim course, too – my god it looks 10 miles long. It’s hard to visualize 1,000 meters of water, and this definitely doesn’t look like I imagined, LOL. But, they’re saying the water temp is 84 degrees, so that’s definitely a plus for me. Also, something I noticed is that a good chunk of the swim is relatively close to shore, so should I freak out, in theory I should be able to paddle to the shallows, put a foot down, take a breath and dive back on in. The other thing is that I am planning now to just go ahead and side/breaststroke the first leg of it (it’s an out/left turn/left turn triangle-ish route) to get past the initial HR spike that always happens in the first couple minutes when I swim, that way I can still be head-above-water & breathing and not panicking while I wait for my body to agree that yes, we are swimming today. Once I thought about those things, I felt much better about the swim, so I think I’ll be able to stay relatively calm through it given that I’ve thought it out ahead of time and have a “plan” of sorts.

I really didn’t think anything of the fact that this was going to be an all female event when I signed up – it just looked like a reasonable distance that was late in the season, so I figured I’d be able to tackle it without dying. Well, let me tell you, this being an all-female event is a Very Big Deal. This is “IronGirl“’s first season of triathlons. The first was earlier this year in Dallas, they got about 600 people I think, and this one registered 1800, so I can see how that is a big deal for an inaugural race.

Guess I’m just having troubles wrapping my head around the need for an all female event. Why couldn’t you have a kickass co-ed event and push it hard as “first timer friendly”?

Tomorrow, I may understand why an all female event *is* a big deal. Regardless, if what I have seen so far today of the setup and such is indicative of how things will be tomorrow, it should be a very good, very enjoyable race.

Looks like the common theme of BT racers tomorrow will be “this is for you Lane” – he’s still in the hospital, still no diagnosis, but his friend who visited with him today said he’s still being a smartass, so that’s definitely a good thing. I’m usually not one to race for a “reason” but tomorrow, it’s for him.

So, this weekend’s race is slightly more involved than others I’ve done. Between being “out of town” to an extent (just over 50 miles away), bike racking is today. Which is not unusual in larger races, but I’ve not run into it before. So, I have to get to the host hotel and get my packet, then over to the race site to get the bike inspected and racked, then back to the host hotel for the “Mandatory but not really, we just want you to come” meeting at 5PM, then over to my hotel to crash out for the night.

Fortunately, all these various locations are within a few miles of each other. As it stands right now, if I leave now, I will have about a 2 hour window for bike inspection and racking before needing to get back to the meeting. Of course, I’m not quite ready to go.

Bike inspection and racking shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes tops, even with lines – if the inspections are like they usually are, it’s “check brakes, bar end plugs* and helmet” and that all there is to it. In theory, I leave as late as 2 and still make it. However, I don’t think I’m going to push that, so as soon as I have the last of my stuff packed up and the bike on the car, I’m gonna hit the road.

So, yes, I should get on all that, shouldn’t I?

*Bar end plugs = the little plastic round piece at the end of the handlebars. Quite important, if you fall/crash and manage to have one of the handlebars decide to attack your body, it’s the difference between a bigassed bruise and an actual wound that will require a tetanus shot.

Update: Emailed the RD on this – first, he emailed me back at 12:35AM, and is willing to work with anyone who is truly unhappy with the last minute change. Turns out they had to shorten the bike, so they shortened the swim & run as well, but they didn’t have to – so they put those back the way they were due to several requests.

Given the incredibly fast response, and a very positive one as well, here’s to this being the start of a great annual race for DC.

I’m trying to decide if the Nation’s Tri has doomed itself before the gun even goes off.

They managed to get the permits to do the race, which is great, but they had to change the distances. It was originally going to be an Olympic distance with a 1.5K swim, a 40K bike and then a 10K run. By the final go/no-go date on Monday the 14th, they had to change it to a 1K swim, 32K bike ride and an 8K run, and they opened registration.

This morning they then announced another course change – it’s now a 1.5K swim, 32K bike and 10K run. Upside, it’s closer to the Oly distance that they originally wanted. But changing course distances after registration has opened has already gotten a few hackles up – and I don’t blame them. You throw down $175 (yes, it’s THAT expensive) based on the fact that you’re doing a race of “X” distance. To change that afterwards kinda sucks in my book.

When the 10K I did last spring had to be changed to an 8K, they offered refunds to anyone that wanted them when the change occurred, but there has been no mention of refunds or transfers for this race.

Be interesting to see how this turns out.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee! Kicked out a 20K today. :) Couldn’t have asked for more perfect weather today, and finished in under 2:30 which made me quite happy. Not particularly fast, but I stuck with my plan and didn’t blow up, bonk, or have anything else go wrong. Feeling good about MCM.

All the gory details here.

Hot damn! Margie Shapiro is going to be at the Columbia race this month! Meaningless to most I realize, but I had the opportunity to go to a tri Q&A clinic and spend a couple hours while we all picked her brain. She’s incredibly nice and super talented, and it’s pretty cool that we’ll be in the same race. (Even though she’ll likely be done in 50% of the time that it takes me, LOL.)

Today was a very, very good day. Finally broke through the 2000 meter barrier at the pool. 2050 meters in 1:05. :-D (2050 meters = 1.27 miles)

It has taken what seems like forever to get to this point, but this bodes well if I ever decide to do a half-IM, since the swim is 1.2 miles. I know I can slog through the distance. :-D

The reward was a lovely rare steak and a baked potato. MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

OK, you’re reading a race report on an open water swim race, and in the “Pre Race Routine” section, you see:

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head. Found my way to the kitchen and drank a cup, and looking up, I noticed I was late. Grabbed my wetsuit, and my swim cap.. picked up our friend in seconds flat. Found my way to the lake and had some water, and a whistle blew and I went into a swim…

Please tell me you get the reference…

So, a year ago I kicked off this tri-insanity thing. One year and I’ve run over 300 miles, biked over 350 miles and swam over 20,000 meters. Not too bad.

Yeah, time to get back to reality. Finished off vacation time with a jaunt up to Adams Morgan with the Marine on Friday night – nothing quite like charging headlong back into the DC scene. He’s probably going to be deployed here soon, so no way I would pass it up.

DC drivers didn’t improve while I was gone, either.

Tons to get done this week. Gotta get back on the training wagon in a big way, get the painting scheduled on the townhouse, and a slew of other annoying miscellany that I didn’t miss one bit down at the beach.

On a completely unrelated note, I think I’d like Grey’s Anatomy more if they threw Meredith Grey out a window.

It’s a good thing I have Columbia ahead, cause I think otherwise, I would be constantly doing the what if. Which is bad. Captantony near bit it on the swim and is now rethinking the sport. :( I feel so bad for him.

DNF on the swim!! And I’m not the slightest bit upset about it. (Perhaps a testament to how NOT hard core I am, LOL.) And I rode the bike course anyway.

Screwy day. Water was 79 degrees, fully wetsuit legal w/a USAT amendment due to the jellyfish… Pre-race meeting scheduled for 6:40 – planned on warming up in the water from 6:30-6:40. Wrestle into my wetsuit and get ready to head for the water and they’re now saying the meeting will be at 6:30 and are telling people to get out of the water for it. And we stand around and wait, and wait and wait, then find out the delay is because there had been an accident out on the bike course and the sheriff’s dept was getting it cleaned up. Finally the first wave goes off (men 39 & under) and we watch and try to figure out what on earth is going on since they’re all inside the buoys. Can you say strong current? Next wave goes off, with a little bit more success as they angle themselves more to the left. The women head out and we’re near going straight left trying to compensate. Went out very slow, no OWS freakout but also keeping my head above water simply because I need to keep track of where I am after watching the first two waves end up all over creation. Past first bouy, getting on to the second and all forward motion pretty much ceased. (Apparently this was where the current was kicking in, or I suck even worse than I ever thought) I am expending WAY too much energy to get NOWHERE. But, absolutely no panic whatsoever. I’m looking at where I am, and where I need to be to make the turn and there is no way it’s gonna happen, not with the water seriously not cooperating with me. So, I realize I can snag a kayak now and get in a boat under my own power, or try to continue on, get in real trouble and get pulled out by the back of my wetsuit. Discretion being the better part of valor, I went for option A.

The guys on the boat were super nice, kept asking if I was OK, I was more worried they were going to ground the boat getting me to the beach. Handed off my chip to someone and they said they were so sorry, I just said “No worries, I’ll kick it next year” which I guess isn’t a normal response cause I got some very surprised looks. Got out of my wetsuit and dried off a bit and went back down to watch the rest of the swimmers come in and that confirmed I made the right call – they were hurting bad coming out of the water. Folks were so off course trying to come back in because of the current – one of the race officials said he was sure folks did a minimum of 1200-1400M with the current. One other gal came in on one of the boats, and she was in tears – I felt so awful for her, and hugged her and told her it was OK. She said she was going to bike and run anyway, which for some reason sounded like a great idea to me, too. So, off we go to the bikes. This may have been in violation of several rules, but the bike course was open to traffic with no aid stations, so it’t not like they can tell some random person on a bike they can’t be on the road.

I have mixed feelings about the bike course. Technically, loved it – the hills weren’t nearly as bad as they seemed when I drove them last night, it was a very straightforward out and back with 2 turns and the turnaround. (However, one turn was 90 degrees at the bottom of a hill.) From a safety standpoint, it sucked in my eyes. Course was totally open to traffic, just some police & volunteers at the intersections. Fortunately, the traffic wasn’t heavy. The 90 degree turn had an oil slick on it. The “shoulders” were gravel & grass, so if you had to go over the white line, good chance you would wipe out cause you only had another 6 inches of pavement. 5 cars intentionally came as close to me as they could, including one pickup truck deciding to honk as he got right by me, despite my being near on top of the white line and there being NO oncoming traffic. On the way back in I saw the last rider on the way out w/the sweep behind her. The two cars behind it decided they wanted to pass, and came over into my lane. No crash, but WAY too close. I discovered I do have nerves of steel sometimes, as on all 6 occasions I managed to ride as straight and perfectly as I have in my life.

The last left turn to get back to the race site was no longer manned as I approached it – no biggie for me, I’m not racing anymore, but there are still folks behind me! I turned left a block early and just went through the neighborhood to get back over to the site. I decided to bag running since I figured I’d already tired out my guardian angel between the swim and the bike route, and 6 more miles of being a slow moving target might not be the best idea. (Full traffic on the run route, too.)

So, what could have been a really craptastic day was actually really good and I made two goals – happy (even without the finish) and under 2 hours on the bike. No OWS panic and some really good calm, clearheaded decision making.

Don’t know if I’d attempt it again next year, obviously there is always the revenge factor, but nearly getting creamed 6 times on the bike doesn’t have a lot of appeal.

OK, so I think I am good to go for Sunday. Just a matter of getting the bags & bike in/on the car in the morning and taking off.

Thinking internet access is unlikely as the only free wifi spot I have been able to locate is the local library, so, probably no posting til Monday unless they’re voice posts.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Happy 4th Everyone!! Don’t blow off any fingers.

Kicked off my day with a 5K over in Potomac – not a bad way to start off the day.

Now it’s time for FOOD.