back to FOCUS

Race schedule
January 27th- National Championship Winter Triathlon. I would like to practice riding my bike on snow this year!

MuleX and GASX a success. (Except we lost the keg for a few hours, turns out it was in Curry's garage. I think it is still there.)
Raced both days. Saturday, I just jumped on the bike. Didn't get much of a warm up. Rode one lap on the course. I like not training and then racing because I don't get nervous. But, I think I hate not training and not doing as well as I think I should. 4th both days. Worst place to be. Right off the podium. I raced on Sunday too. Got a better warm up. The course this day was a Lisa Curry course. Technical, punchy, and a few times with a little pucker factor. Fun racing, but not my forte. I was 4th by a long ways. Tired too. Monday my legs are tired. So is my brain.

 Strider course only had 2 participants, but it was worth it. 

 Thanks Pascal, again, for the great photography

Jazzercise with Richard Simmons and the damn Mormon. He chased us around all day.

My hubby had lots of mechanical problems

The rest of the week has gone as planned. Not much to say about training. Thankful that MuleX is over and that Jenny's wedding is over. I feel kind of fat and have been afraid to step on the scale. I am excited to clean my house and get back to a schedule. This is terrible, but I am kind of excited for the time change because I kind of enjoy riding the trainer in the evenings. Also looking forward to some snow and some night skiing. Have a buddy for this year.  

 Had a meeting with a special sub-committee of the Recreation and Parks board today. We want to do a flagship project. After lots of discussion it sounds like we might focus on water recreation. Bogart pool is falling apart, so to alleviate some of the stress on the facility and provide Bozeman with some more water recreation we talked about bring in sand and revitalizing the East Gallatin Rec area. Make the swimming safer and the beach nicer. We are also going to build a splash pad (fountains etc.) in a different part of the city. The developer of Moonlight is on the committee. I think he has connections to lots of contractors etc. I am very excited about this project. Everybody on the committee is a lets get er done kind of personality. We might even try and develop a foundation for Recreation and Parks so that we can generate our own income based off of donations. (Not sure why I put this in here. You appreciate community development, right? Now I just need to figure out how to get paid for it. )

Monday- Good swim. Only 3 of us at Masters. 3500 total. Feels good to feel good doing 3500. Fun workout too. Main set- 100 IM on 2:15, 200 build on the 50 (4:00), 300 pull (6:00), 200 negative split (4:00), 100 IM (2:15) - Do this 2x. Second time on the pull I used paddles. That worked my arms. Was right on the intervals, so not much rest. I would stand up, take a few breaths, and go again. 

Anyway, that seems to be all I have for now. Not a lot of focus, but getting there.

o/o 

Wedding Fun

This week. I would like to race MuleX and the state championship. I need to be there both days. MuleX might be hard if we don't have enough help. Going form 8000 ft to 5000 might be beneficial. Thursday we are having a meeting at 7:30 at our house. I can go swim, but will have to cut it short. Friday might be really busy organizing for the race. I think that I should not actually get back to a good schedule until next Monday.


The wedding weekend was pretty amazing. Jenny and Aaron are one lucky and beautiful couple. I am so glad they got married. We had a great weekend. The bike ride that they all did on Friday and Erik and I hiked was really fun. We started at 10,000 ft at the ski hill and climbed up to Deception Peak at 12,000 ft. Gorgeous. Then they rode down and we ran down. Erik beat them all down on his feet. Pretty funny. They are all a different crowd of bikers than we are used to. Full suspension heavy bikes, no helmets on the way up, elbow guards on the way down. I think Erik would have schooled them on his rigid.

The wedding day was a blast, beautiful, and very precious. Had a great time and was about to fall over from being tired at 9:30. Emotionally tiring and way too much small talk. Exhausting.

Sunday was another day of socializing. I was done after that. Not into small talk anymore. Went to the pool to stick my head in the water and ended up chatting with a guy who was Able and Audrey's (Aaron's grandpa) housekeepers lady. Funny. Small world. We then went to a place called Bandalier. It is where the Pueblo lived in houses on the cliff wall. It was really cool. Erik and I ran the trail to try and get some workout it.

On Monday Erik and I drove over to Taos and climbed the tallest peak in New Mexico. I chuckled because you said to get out in the boonies and we walked right into wilderness about 100 yards into the hike. I think the hike was only about 3.5 miles one way, but we climbed from ~10,000 ft to 13,000 ft. It was gorgeous but sooo frickin cold on top. This sweatshirt thing I bought at Ironman is windproof, I learned. Way more practical than I thought. We ate dinner that this great place in Taos. Good day. Nice to spend some time with my husband.

Tuesday
Gfit and a 30 minute run. I didn't get the swim in. Just didn't work. Gfit was hard. Flew home. Exactly opposite weather in Bozeman than Santa Fe. Really like it down there.

Wednesday- Back in Bozeman. Transitioning from vacation to work is pretty hard. Especially with MuleX on Saturday. Life will be hectic for another few days.

Fun

Wednesday
Had an awesome race. Got there early enough to do a lap and a few hard efforts. Wasn't actually feeling super hot in warm up. Amy F and Megan showed up. Damn. I had to ride hard. Started awesome. Was the first up the hill and onto the main course. Of course I immediately got passed by a few guys but not many. After lap 1 Megan did pass me. Then Alex L. rode with me for three laps. I followed his line the first, he followed me the 2nd, and the 3rd he yelled at me to pedal and told me where to look. Basically coached me the whole time.Finished the race without getting lapped by the A guys. First time this year. Must have been faster. It was really cool of Alex to do that for me. Helped with my skills a lot.

Thursday
Yoga at 11 followed by gfit at 1pm. Yoga was good but we did a lot of inversions using the shoulders, so gfit was kind of tough.

Friday
Went and did the swim you wrote up. Feeling good. Did a 30 minute run post swim. Had to distribute fliers for MuleX so sort of multitasked and got that done too.

Saturday
Amazing hike/run with Lawrence. We got to the base of the saddle of Sacajawea on the west side. Probably 4500ft of climbing. It was pretty straight up too. Hopefully I can get a few pictures posted. Hiked up and ran down. Quite the adventure with big cows with horns.

Focus

Excited about this year. The first year of Ironman I just wanted to see if I could finish one. The second year I struggled with the goal, probably because I was a little afraid of not making my goals. This year I think I already have a theme. FOCUS. I know I can do the distance, now it is about seeing how fast I can go, again, but I think I have a little more confidence this year. It may seem weird, but I can feel a change in my fitness.

I hate to do this but I feel like I have a laundry list of aches and pains that I need to take care of. Maybe if I write it down I will actually do something about them.
1- Achilles sore- lots of scar tissue on my right one
2) Arch (plantar fascia) on my left foot really, really sore. Hurts and feels good when getting out of the pool and your stand on the edge with your arch.
3) Right should acting funny. Sometimes when swimming it kind of pops and hurts. It is usually when I am trying to do drills and really work on my hand placement. Not sure if it is because I am crossing to much inside or outside, or maybe neither.
4) Right knee sore and stiff. It hurts to sit cross legged on the floor. Feels much better straightend out. Can't pinpoint a place of the pain, just the knee. Hurts to bend and unbend.

Don't think I am going to Hawaii for work, so putting Wildflower on the schedule. Hopefully I can figure out a good way to get there.

Wednesday
Race- Got a great start. It was a big start with guys and girls. Anna, Lisa, and I were probably in the top 5 people to the first turn. Then I blew up! Just kidding, a little bit. I did get passed by a bunch of guys after that. Then my chain guard started making this horrible sound so I stopped. Managed to curb the noise a little bit. John wouldn't give me the option to quit. He said I had to earn my nachos. Spent the rest of the race seeing how many girls I could pass. It was a cold day and a huge day at work. Rode directly back to work after the race to finish my experiment. Didn't get that run in. Sorry. Had nachos with the crew after that.

Thursday
Your gfit workout. Oh, that was a doozy. We had 5 people so added one extra thing to the core and arms workout. Big gfit day.
Swimming- lots of IM. 400 IM's. Wow, those hurt especially after the sledgehammer. My back was so tired and while doing fly my arms pretty much crapped out on me. Got to 2400 and called that swim a day.

Friday
Ran at lunch on hills for 45 minutes. Did a little run that I used to do on Pete's Hill. I go along the top and run up and down all the side trails. Takes 45 minutes exactly. One cool thing I noticed was that I think I have more power. I could really drive up those hills vs. a couple of years ago just trying to make it.

Saturday
Raced the MSU cross race. I felt pretty chill about the whole thing. We started with the Cat4 and Master B guys. The start pretty much sucked. Usually I get a good start, but this time didn't even try. Ended up having to get off my bike on the first hill because some guy couldn't make it. Oh, well. Rode really, really hard for the whole time. Ended up 3rd girl. The whole women's field was pretty big. Maybe 15 or 20 of us. Hurt really bad in places. I guess that is what I wanted to do. Ride as hard as I could. Passed a lot of people the first few laps in the sand pit, running!!

Sunday
Had a late evening drinking wine with book club friends on Saturday night. Missed Masters swimming and thought swimming was a was. Ended up going to MSU and doing the prescribed workout. I am starting to like the ankle band thing a bit better. I think it helps me with my rotation. I think one of my problems is that my hips and shoulders don't turn together. It makes me wiggly and lose speed. The band forces that or you sink.
Run- Went up New World Gulch. It is a lot steeper coming down that it seems going up. I wanted to take pictures of how flat it looked in one direction, but not the other. It was a nice run and has the potential to be a really good run. 5.5 miles to Mystic lake. I made it 1.5 miles or so from the lake and turned around. Run/hike time was ~2hours.

Monday
The air is really smoky today.
Legs are tired. I think I need new shoes. They were feeling a little sore in not the right places. Achilles is a little sore and so are my arches.
Warmed up for 30 minutes and did those 10x200's. They didn't feel super great. Got em done though and am glad for an evening home. I need to get on those achilles streches a little better.