The half marathon with three finish times

Yowza, it's been a long time since I've posted anything here! I did a triathlon and trained for a half marathon since my last post. I need to get back on it because this is a big race year, and I want to track my progress and all that.

First up, the Rock and Roll Half Marathon from this past weekend. This was my third time doing the race, second time running it. I don't even really count the walking one anymore, now that I'm fit. That's probably kind of a bitchy thing to say. Anyway, I have never been so unprepared for a race as I was for this one. My long training runs through Christmas Eve (nine miles) were all decent. Some sucked, some were awesome, but I've found that tends to be the nature of the running beast, at least for me. Then I got a cold around Christmas and didn't do much of anything in an attempt to get better and not make it worse. That ended up making running a lot worse because all of a sudden it was time for a 10 mile training run, and I'd only done one short two mile run in two weeks' time. Oops. I didn't even make it the whole 10 miles. It was an awful run. Then a few days before the race I got another cold. I was popping echinacea, zinc, and vitamin C like they were candy. I was really not excited for the race at all.

Race day arrives, and I'm feeling pretty good. I made a new playlist and did the songs in a certain order instead of my usual shuffle. I started out pretty strong and was feeling good. I was running by myself because the husband wanted to finish in two hours or less, and only one of my friends was running it, but she was in a different corral/pace than me. I got to about mile two and knew I wasn't going to make it much further without a bathroom stop. Every other race I've trained for I've had some *ahem* stomach issues on longer runs, but training for this one that didn't happen. I thought maybe I'd overcome it. Apparently not. So I had to wait at a port-a-potty. It cost me about 10 minutes. I knew at that point there was no way I could make up 10 minutes, I'm just not that fast a runner. Talk about disheartening. I plugged along, though, and did okay. I hit a wall around mile 8 and just wanted to be done. Last year at the race I kept having awful calf cramps for the last half, and I had some times time, too, though not nearly as bad as last year. Finally I got to the end of the race, and the husband had finished in his goal time, so he was along the finish chute cheering for me with a big sign he'd made. I was hauling ass at that point, I just wanted to be done. I think I sprinted the last 0.1 mile just so I could be done.

I paused my Nike app while on my bathroom break, which resulted in three separate finish times. I know only one is official, but I'm still counting it as three. The distance on my app was off (by 0.3 miles! WTF?! That's significant!), so I have the time when I hit 13.1 on my app, the time on my app when I crossed the finish line, and then my official time. I was able to make up a few minutes of my bathroom stop at least, so that made me feel a little better. And had it not been for that, I would have presumably finished comparable to last year, so I guess that's good?

Nike 13.1 time: 2:28:25
Nike finish line time: 2:32:30
Official race time: 2:39:38

I think I'm retiring from just half marathon races. I'll stick with running in triathlons, but I think my days of just running races are done. I really didn't enjoy it at all.

One week to go

One week from now I'm hoping to be sporting a new triathlon PR. And I'll probably be getting ready for a friend's baby shower, but that's inconsequential as far as this blog is concerned. Next Sunday morning I'll be participating in my second ever triathlon, the Nathan Tempe Triathlon. I keep feeling like I haven't prepared enough for it, but in reality I think I have. I mentioned that to my friend Michelle who is also doing it (this will be her first tri), and she said she thinks I've been training more than she has. Time will tell I suppose. On my last tri, I really freaked out during the swim. So much so that I mostly did breast or side stroke for pretty much the whole thing. That's the big downside to not having an open water nearby for practicing. Swimming in a pool and swimming in a lake are two very different things. I keep telling myself that I know I won't be able to see anything (I could maybe see to my elbow on the last tri when my arm was extended in front of me) and I just have to swim and sight. I've even been swimming laps with my eyes closed in anticipation of not being able to see anything. The swim distance for this tri is 750m; the last one was 400m. In the pool I can do 750m in roughly 16-17 minutes. Theoretically an OWS (open water swim) should be faster than a pool swim because you aren't having to slow down every 25m to turn around, but since I freaked out so much at the last one, I'm not banking on having a much faster time than what I can do in the pool. I was feeling pretty confident about my bike skills. I've had two flat tires recently, so I'm hoping all flats are out of the way and I won't have to worry about changing a bike tube on the side of the bike course. Friday morning I set out on a ride with the intention of biking a distance comparable to the race to see how my time was. I started out and was flying and felt AWESOME. Then I turned north and found myself fighting a headwind for the entire rest of my ride. So over half of my ride was into the wind which significantly slowed me down. Lame. I was averaging 20+ MPH initially and the last half of the ride was less than 15 MPH. Ouch. I was hoping to finish the 12 mile ride in no more than 42 minutes and it ended up taking 48. Please, please don't let that be the case on race day! Running in AZ sucks ass in the summer. It's too hot to run outside, even if you go at the ass crack of dawn, so I've been treadmill running. I'm not sure which sucks more. I did manage to get in four miles on the treadmill one day last week with an average pace of 10:44, so I felt pretty pleased with myself after that. I had a fitness test done at the gym several months ago to analyze my heart rate zones, and the trainer gave me a heart rate zone workout to do, and I've found it has really helped my speed increase. So, with all that being said, I'm hoping to beat my previous finish time by at least three minutes, even with the longer swim. My time on the last one was 1:48. I'd really like to finish in at least 1:40 if not 1:35. My transition times were AWFUL last time, so I think this week I'm going to work on practicing transitions and time myself. If you see my running out of my house in tri clothes dripping wet, think nothing of it. I'm just practicing for T1. Here's how I'm hoping my splits will go next weekend: Swim: 17 minutes T1: > 2 minutes Bike: 42 minutes T2: 2 minutes (dealing with socks and getting running shoes on) Run: 33 minutes Total: 96 minutes I'm going to have to push myself on the run, I know it. If my times for everything else end up being close to accurate, I at least have a little leeway for the run to still meet my goal of 1:40, but I would really really really be happy if I could finish closer to 1:35. So keep your fingers and toes crossed for me!!

Back in the saddle again...again

I really don't know what my deal has been over the summer. I just cannot seem to get my eating in check. I've been decent about working out (a triathlon looming at the end of next month has helped that), but my food habits have been awful. I did two weeks of South Beach Phase One and managed to drop eight pounds, but they've slowly crept back up. Well, five of them. I attribute it to summer eating and drinking. We have a pool in our backyard, so we have friends over pretty often to swim, which means we end up drinking while we're in the pool. I think I'm going to have to ease back on the vino and Froot Loop vodka if I want to reach my goal weight of 155. I do have some motivation--my brother-in-law is getting married in October, so I'm hoping to get back in the 150s by then. I think it's attainable, and now that I have a goal I think I can do it. I started back using Lose It today to track my calories, and I planned out breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks for the entire week. I know a lot of my issue lately has been not eating a good breakfast or lunch, so I thought if I planned both those out I wouldn't spend my days wandering around the kitchen snacking instead of having a normal meal. Like I said, I have another triathlon coming up in 34 days. I'm pretty freaked out about it to be honest. I don't feel like I've been training as much for it as I should be, but it's freakin' hot here. That makes it awful to get out and do any running or biking. I've been making it to a spin class at least once a week, but it's not the same as actually being on the bike. In these last few weeks leading up to the tri I'm really going to make an effort to spend time on my bike, regardless of weather, and I also need to try and get in a couple runs that are longer than 5K, as well as try and do at least one (ideally two) brick workouts.

Then and Now

I was telling Boy #2 about the dog we had when he was born, and he wanted to see a picture. I was trying to find one and came across this picture of the husband and me from Easter 2006. Granted, I had an eight week old baby, but still. The husband has no excuse. I was SHOCKED when I saw this. I really don't remember him looking like this at all--and I look awful, even for just having had a baby!! To compare, this was us at Christmas this past year:

So far, so good!

I'm on Day 6 of no carbs this go-round, and so far so good. I'm down to 164 which makes me happy (for now). That's what I weighed before we went to FL at the start of June, and just one pound up from my pre-CA vacation weight. It hasn't been too bad going no carb this week, although I did let myself imbibe in alcoholic beverages on the 4th of July, but foodwise I stuck to no carbs. Yesterday my BFF and her family came over to swim and ended up staying for dinner. She and the husband were having wine and cocktails, and it was REALLY hard to not join in, but I managed to not do it and stuck with water. That is HUGE for me! I'm still amazed at my willpower. Tonight we're going to dinner with some friends, and I'm not drinking there either. I may have half a glass of red wine, but I'm not sure. I'm currently eating some tomato soup because I have a cold, so I probably won't let myself have the wine since the soup is carb-laden. For next week I'm going to stick with no carbs as far as food goes, but I will allow myself the occasional glass of wine if the husband is having some. Exercise-wise I feel pretty good about my week. My youngest son has swim lessons right smack in the middle of the day Monday through Thursday last week (and next week, then both kids have them the two weeks after that), so that complicated my gym trips as we either had to be out of the house by 8:00 to make it to the gym for me to get a decent workout and be back in time for swim lessons, or we had to go after. Monday we went before and it worked out okay. I did a great upper-body workout and then did 40 minutes on the bike. I really prefer riding a real bike! Tuesday ended up being an unplanned rest day. I had planned on going to the gym in the afternoon to do a long swim, but I was meeting with someone from church to learn about some reporting I'm going to be doing. That ended up running longer than I anticipated, so by the time we were done it was really too late to drive to the gym, swim an hour, come home, and not be frantic and rushed getting dinner ready and all that. I'll admit I was pretty bummed. Wednesday morning was one of the races in the summer 5K series I'm doing, but it was a four mile race for the 4th of July. None of my friends and I were feeling it that day. There was talk about skipping it altogether and just going to breakfast instead, but we went. Jen and I ran the first mile, walked miles two and three, then I ran the last mile. My only motivation for running the last mile was that I didn't want it to take me over an hour to do just four miles. I finished in 59:06. Interestingly, I was the 1,000 finisher! Sadly there's no award for that. It was insanely muggy that morning which did not help. Thursday I made it to the gym and ended up doing a 2,000 meter swim. I felt pretty bad ass. That's roughly 1.25 miles for those of you who can't convert metric to miles (don't worry, I can't either, I had to calculate it on my phone). it was a great ladder swim, and I really enjoyed it. Friday Jen and I were finally able to work out together. I think it had been almost a month, with all the traveling I did in June, and then her kids were sick. We did a great full body circuit that we both really enjoyed. Then I did 30 minutes on the bike. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to take my running shoes and run on the treadmill. I guess I was just thinking strength, not cardio. Today the husband and I were going to go do some sort of strength and swim, but I woke up with a full blown cold and decided I didn't want to go. he opted to take a rest day as well. Now I just need to come up with a workout plan for next week, coordinate with Jen what days we can go together and then figure out what to do on days that I'll be there by myself (if any). It's so much nicer to workout with someone than doing it by myself, plus I really need to plan out what I'm going to do ahead of time so I don't wander around the machines or free weights trying to come up with exercises. Hopefully by the end of next week (another week of no carbs) I'll be back at 160 or just below.

Operation Bye-Bye-Fat-Claire commences today!

We spent the weekend with some friends at their cabin up north. I went pretty balls to the wall with food and drink, knowing that come today I would start using loseit.com again to track my calories, busting my ass at the gym again, and working on getting down to my goal weight of 155. So my official starting weight this morning after pretty much a month of eating and drinking and barely exercising? 170.8. Ouch. That's a number I haven't seen on the scale in a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time, and I did not like it one bit. I guess it was a good experiment/lesson to see what would happen if I was lax about my diet and exercise, and it just goes to show that if I want to stay fit I have to work at it, it won't come naturally for me! I was originally going to do a week of low carb diet, but I think after being shocked by the number on the scale this morning, I'll plan on two.

Backsliding

I'm pretty frustrated. Before I started training for the tri, I regularly weighed in around 157 and was trying to get down closer to 155. I slowly added a few pounds while training for the tri. It makes sense, I cut back on strength training without adding in enough extra cardio to compensate for that missing calorie burn, plus I was eating more carbs so my body could handle the cardio. Now, however, I've slowly crept up to 167, and I am NOT okay with that. I'm now 12 pounds away from my goal instead of 2! Not cool, body, not cool. I know a lot of it also is that the whole month of June has been crazy. We spent a week in Florida where the only exercise I did was running one morning the whole time we were there, then we were home for four days before heading to CA for a week. I was slightly more active there but still nothing to write home about. I haven't had a good routine which I know is a huge part of the problem. I'm planning on getting back on track Monday...start using Lose It again, have regular, PLANNED workouts at the gym (planning what I'm going to do ahead of time really helps me get a good workout in), and I think I'll plan a low carb week or two for myself. I'm not happy with how I look, with how my clothes fit, how I look in a swimsuit. I'm not doing another tri until late September, and the only other events I have over the summer are an occasional 5K, so this is the perfect time to get back into the habit of regular strength training and get rid of this extra 12 pounds I managed to find. BTW, I managed to maintain my weight on both trips which I thought was awesome. I stayed at 163 the whole time, but then somehow once we got home from CA I put on an extra four pounds that just haven't dropped off. Ugh!!