Thanksgiving Weekend

We are finally back from our Thanksgiving mini-vacation. We had a lovely dinner at Grammie's house, then ditched the kids with her and headed up to Breckenridge. Jeremy and I went skiing on Friday. The snow wasn't great and there were some pretty long lift lines. And 3 trails that didn't have vegetation and/or rocks sprouting on them. Still, a bad day skiing is better than a good day at the office. And we did have a warm sunny day:



I went for a run Saturday morning. I knew when I chose my direction on the bike path that I would be running downhill first, which was perfect for my workout. I was doing a heart rate workout in which every 20 minutes my heart rate went up a zone. I was feeling pretty darn strong for about half an hour... until I turned around. The altitude (Breckenridge is at 9,600 ft) really got me running uphill and I felt like I got my workout's worth. Though I couldn't actually get my heart rate as high I can at 5,00 feet.

J and I spent the rest of the day doing Tin Cup chores. For Jeremy, that meant installing blinds on windows that were not perfectly square (which involved a lot of sawing) and for me that meant shortening 10 blinds to be flush with the windows. I must admit I've never shortened blind before but after a couple became somewhat of an expert. Even so, I could not get my time per blind much under 25 minutes. At the end of the project, we concluding the blinds were designed to be installed on a single (square) window on a single day. Any more would lead to madness.

And so, we went to Breckenridge Brewery for happy hour and then Mi Casa for dinner and one tiny margarita. And soon the blinds were forgotten.

I did another run Sunday morning. This run was supposed to be an easy 45 minute one. I could do easy, but my pace was about 45 seconds per mile slower than usual. Though I did decide to run uphill first to get that out of the way. It was a brisk 15 degrees at 9:00 in the morning and I decided I was pretty happy that I'm not a full time Breckenridge resident, though I did see 5 other runners.

After cleaning up the house, Jeremy and I went skiing again. Just for kicks, we went to Peak 9. We hardly ever ski Peak 9, but having done the 3 open runs on Peak 8 on Friday, we were ready for a change. It was much less crowded and we didn't have any lift lines. Some of the trails still seemed a bit crowded though. But it's better not to have to wait for sub-par snow.

Most of the snow up there is man-made right now anyway. There were busy making some right under the chair. The whole process looks very inefficient, I wonder how many hours it takes to make an inch.



Looking back over town you can see how green/brown everything is until about 11,000 ft. Hopefully we'll have a nice snowy December so our Christmas week will be awesome:



And here's how Tin Cup is looking this weekend:



A shot of some of the blinds (though Jeremy didn't install these, but I did shorten them). The 4 Jeremy put up were downstairs in the rental apartment. But the windows look pretty similar.



So despite the holiday week, my training was pretty consistent (hey, I even got up at 5:30 on Thanksgiving to get a run and a master's class in before 9:00). I only missed my weekend strength workout.

Weekly Total:

Swim: 5,000 yards
Run: 21 miles

Total: 7:30

At the bottom of my bag of tricks

I have not tried for much originality this week. Today was the Butterfly Pavilion - aka the place that is warm in winter and opens at 9:00. We timed it well, there weren't many people there when we started. We began in the bug room. Alex and Adam held Rosie. Ariel did not, but she also did not run out of the room shrieking. Hannah thought she wanted to but only let Rosie touch her before she yelled "no" and hopped off the chair.



Everyone liked looking at the starfish:



And again, the butterfly room was not Ariel's favorite place to be and she told me several time that she was ready to go inside, but she did not freak out. She did tell me the butterflies were out to get her and would sting her, but again, she did not freak out. Not even when one landed on me and stayed a while.



Here's a pretty one on the ground:



We managed to stay there almost two hours, then picked up some Taco Bell for lunch. Laura once again watched the kids at lunch so I could go to my class at the velodrome (which was uneventful).

Laura was very kind and let the kids nap when I got home, so I was able to do some cleaning. There's something about leaving for a couple of days that makes me want to get all my chore done. All that's left is packnig now, which needs to happen tonight so I can do my 2 hour workout tomorrow morning. Gah!

When in doubt - swim

Today's get-the-kids-out-of-the-house Adventure - swimming! Little Miss Ariel is a good enough swimmer and taller enough that she's now fine in the kiddie pool at North Boulder Rec center. I kept an eye on her, while tailing Hannah (and occasionally pulling her out of the drink).



Both girls loved the slide:



Hannah loved the sprinklers on top:



And the slide didn't scare her because she figured out a way to butt scootch down without actually, well, sliding. At least she didn't dump over on the water like Ariel liked doing, Hannah would not have found that amusing.



The boys seemed to enjoy themselves. I didn't hear any screaming and I didn't really see them much.



And for the rest of the day... I woke up early so I could run before Jeremy went to work. It was 19 degrees when I left and my run was not as peppy as it was last week. Laura watched the kids so I could go to master's class. And since the girls napped early and subsequently woke up early, we went to the bookstore in the afternoon. The end.

I am out of practice

Today was day 1 of my short term nanny gig, aka babysitting Hannah and Ariel. And yeah, Adam and Alex don't have school this week. The kids are all at the right age now for either playing really rambunctiously or fighting really rambunctiously.

We did manage to make my 9:00 chiropractor appointment and left the office intact. Then we went directly to the mall, the only free place I could think of that had a place to run around.

We hit the dinosaurs first. It wasn't crowded when we got there but it got worse when the mall opened. Hannah played mostly by herself, while the other kids chased each other.



Alex's friend Keagan met us there and Keagan's dad took Alex and Keagan to the museum. That certainly helped me out.

The rest of us went to Starbucks before going home. I asked Ariel what she wanted and she was pretty insistent that she gets coffee. Just to check, I asked her what Hannah gets and she answered, "Milk." One hot chocolate for Ariel:



I got Hannah a steamed milk but she didn't drink it until it cooled off all the way. Adam sidled up to her to beg off her snacks.



Adam informed me that he likes Hannah better than Ariel now because Hannah is younger. I think Hannah just has better treats.

After Starbuck we went home for lunch. The kids polished off a box of mac & cheese and an apple, then it was nap time for the girls. Ariel went right down but Hannah was fussing and screwing around and emptied half her sippy cup over her pillow so I had to take it away. She had a much more dramatic nap than Ariel, and still woke up at 3:30.

I think we are going to go swimming tomorrow. I'm way to anal now to let the kids distroy the house every day.

So why bother with timing chips...

... if you are going to use the gun time anyway? The results of the race yesterday have both times, but the ranking is by gun time. Since we are dithering between 9th and 11th place place in my age group it's a moot point anyway, but still. My gun time was 45 seconds slower than my chip time. Darn it! It's like they are rewarding the people that were responsible enough to be at the start on time.

Anyway, a good and tough week. I'd like to go hard for the beginning of next week too, then chill a little when we go to Breckenridge next weekend. Although I'm sure I'll still bring running shoes and get in at least one run, whether it's on the indoor track at the rec center or on the bike path.

This week's totals:

Swim: 5600 yards
Run: 20.37 miles

Total: 8:30

Just once...

... I'd like to get to the start of a road race on time. I'm not sure why this is proving to be so difficult, but it is. Today at the Brighton 5k Turkey trot was a sort of convergence of many factors.

1. Brighton is far away. Really far.
2. My mapquest directions weren't quite right. I spent an extra 10 minutes driving through the rec center neighborhood.
3. There was a long line for packet pick up. And of course, the S-Z line was the longest.
4. There was another line for chip pick up.
5. I had to pee.
6. My car was parked too far from the start line.
7. I tried to put my stuff in Becky's car but we got separated and her car was locked. I then spent an extra two minutes emptying my purse into my running jacket so I could stick all my stuff under Bee-Rad.

But the good news was, it was a chipped timed race. I was about a minute off the gun time (meaning I got to run around 200 walkers too) but at least my time will be accurate. The course boasted of being flat and fast, which is was. It was also pretty darn hard. I'm very proud to announce though that I got a PR today. My fastest 5k this year (only in a triathlon) was 28:14. I ran 26:45 today, beating my all time open 5k time of 27:01 in 2000.

After the race, I rushed home (even paying $3 for the Northeast Parkway) so Jeremy could go on his team ride. I'm still feeling jittery from rushing around all morning.

My next goal is to beat this time in the Colder Boulder. I'm planning on having my training actually support this next race, and hey, with luck I'll even get to the start on time and be properly warmed up, too. Should be doable, since the starting line is 2 miles from my house. No excuses!

My daily shot of adreniline

Last night Jeremy came home from the velodrome with quite the story. While he was waiting for his open track time to start, he was watching the end of an intermediate class (like what I'm taking). The instructor was having the class do a very difficult race, something Jeremy didn't try until the advanced class. And when Jeremy tried it, there were only 4 people on the track and last night there were 7. What it came down to was the race was supposed to end with a two lap sprint. There were 2 or 3 people in front sprinting it out and one of them lost their line and took down the others. Then there were still 5 people on the track that had to avoid the pileup on an 8 lane track. One guy ended up taking out the instructor. In the end, there were 3 broken bikes and one broken collar bone.

And then today, I had my track class. And luckily, I have a sane instructor - who was quite shocked at what that class was doing. And I was the only one the class (making crashing into others slightly more difficult). But I had my own "oh shit" moment today. We were doing a drill where we were riding slowly and stopping at the top of the track on the straights. Riding slowly is actually pretty hard because you need to ride about 15-18 mph to keep traction with the track. And so your natural inclination is to ride at least 18 mph. I was having trouble going slow and stopping and on one curve I overshot and forgot I was on a track. Suddenly I found myself doing a real live track stand on the corner - on the 45 deg bank, about 10 feet above the apron. My first reaction was to clip out and put my foot down but thankfully I overcame that urge. I pointed my bike down the curve and somehow managed not to slip. I still don't know how I didn't slide out and now, even 7 hours later, I'm still buzzing from the adrenaline a little. Or, that could just be a beer buzz, I did go to a Rally sponsored happy hour this afternoon. Free daycare, free tapas, and a free drink at Laudisio's. I heart my gym.

And in running news, my running group is now over. The group was mostly for some women doing Ironman Arizona, which is the weekend after Thanksgiving. I still have my running plan but I guess I'm on my own now. Yesterday I did 10 x 400 by myself and it was very lonely. And I didn't want to run on a track in the dark by myself, so I went in the morning and marked out 1/4 of a mile an a flat, straight road by myself. Tomorrow I have 10 x 30 second hill repeats and the Saturday is a 5k race.

Traditionally, Monday is Washing Day

Being the happy (but modern!) homemaker I am, I scoff at the tradition chore days and have set Monday aside for Grocery Store Shopping and Baking. As usual, Ariel accompanied me to the store and, as usual, I bought off her cooperation with a donut. When we got home, the baking and cooking part of the day began.

Even since our Semi-Annual Money Awareness Event (ie, Jeremy updating our quicken records) a few weeks ago, Jeremy has been trying to reduce his spending by not eating out for lunch. At first, he thought about going back to his old standby, the frozen burrito, but realized that if he wanted a quality burrito, it wasn't much cheaper than the Qualcomm cafeteria. So this week, we are experimenting with our own mass burrito production.

I tried to fry up some chorizo (I am actually planning on making a black bean/chorizo chile on Wednesday) but something when horribly wrong. I had intended on ending up with cute little (beef) chorizo sausages, but somehow got this mess:



Granted, the chirizo came in a big tube and not pre-defined sausage links, so I think that's the problem. Was I supposed to stuff my own sausage casings? Because I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I'm still pretty new to this meat thing. Like today, I went up to the meat counter and said, "Excuse me sir, but I'm a recovering vegetarian, could you please point me to some stew meat?" And I was directed to a package labeled - get this - Stew Meat. So Jeremy will not be getting any chirizo but I have two days to find the sausage links and try again for my chile.

Next, a big pot of black beans:



I overestimated our black bean needs and ended up putting a few tupperwares away in the freezer.

And, the easiest one, rice:



For dinner (cornflake crusted tilipia) I made a side of roasted potatoes and doubled the amount so Jeremy could use the potatoes for burritos too:



Ok, so now Jeremy has beans, rice, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes and salsa. If we can make that last a week my work today will not have been in vain.

My baking today also included our weekly bread:



And then onto our fun treat. Somehow, a few months ago I got in the habit of baking treats on Monday so Becky could take some home with her. Because while I do enjoy goodies, I don't need *that* many goodies in the house.

Today's baked good (and my first time making them) Chocolate Chip-Pecan Biscotti:



This looks like a lot of food when it's all lined up, but most of it just needed an initial set up and then it cooked itself. Still, it was easier to do when kids weren't underfoot so when Adam got home from school, he and Ariel had some quality outside time:



Apparently Boulder's official total yesterday was 10" . It's going to be a long winter.

And that's how I saved $35

I've had a few races on the schedule this fall, but I haven't actually signed up for any yet, and today was a perfect example as to why. Two months ago, I planned on doing the Panicking Poultry 5k today, then coming back in 3 weeks and getting a faster time in the Colder Boulder. But the weather had other plans and decided to snow 8". Now, I'll be as hard-core as I need to be, but I'm not going to pay $35 to get timed in a sub-optimal race. And oh yeah, the race wasn't canceled either.

I also wanted to race today because one year ago was when my running officially fell apart. One year ago I had thought of training for that half marathon and I kept getting more and more sore and was doing a ton of physical therapy and nothing was helping. I backed out of the half marathon but thought I could at least run the Panicking Poultry. Not so, I posted an official time of 32:xx and limped like an old lady for a week afterwards. In hindsight, I know that the medicine (accutane) that I was taking was responsible for most of the pain, but I did also have issues with my hip flexors that didn't get really resolved until I changed my running form in April. And so my other reason for running again this year was to prove to myself that not only am I heathly, but I'm improving too.

Instead, I went to the gym and ran on the treadmill for 55 minutes. And it was not very much fun. I did a warm up at 5.3 mph and then tried to run 40 minutes at 6.5 mph. I only made it 20 minutes, then did another 10 at 6.2 and finally called it quits and cooled down for 10 minutes. The treadmill is not my friend. I think I need to reexamine my outside running stagedy - I wouldn't have paid $35 to run outside today but in hindsight it would have been fine to run for free in the slush.

I still want to keep up the periodic racing this fall and into the winter, so the Brighton Turkey Trot next weekend might be a possibility too. I'll decide on Friday - or possibly even Saturday morning - on that one. You never know when you might get the swine flu.

Week in Review:

Swimming: 7800 yards
Biking: 1 hour at the track
Running: 17.66 miles (for you, Becky)

Total: 9:12

Happy Birthday, Ariel!

Little Miss Ariel turned 4 yesterday and per family tradition, we celebrated with a pizza party.

Ariel was very excited:



VERY excited:



The cake that Grandma made:



No spazzing:



Almost... shy? during the singing:



More pizazzing:





Hannah Banana:

Hopefully this is the *before* video

At my master's class yesterday, my coach suggested I bring my camera so he could video me. See, I was complaining that it's hard to fix things when I don't even know what I'm doing wrong. And there are things I've been working on and am aware of but this video was very enlightening. I generally watch two kinds of swimmers - the kids in Alex and Adam's swim lessons and the big kids on the swim team that practice at the same time. I'm fairly certain I look better than the 8 year olds, but I had it in my head that I looked like the RACE team, but slower. Not so much.

So this video was taken during the last set of the day. I'd already run 4 miles in the morning and swam nearly an hour so I was getting tired. The first length is catch-up drill, which looks ok. The second is 3/4 catch-up, and I'm putting my hands in way too early. The next 2 laps are just 100 freestyle. The first length looks ok, then it goes downhill from there. For one thing, my stroke count is way too high. When I bother to count, I'm usually around 18-19 strokes/length and if I really focus I've gone as low as 14. By the end of this 100, I'm up to 24. Higher cadence is NOT good in swimming, it means your stroke is weak and short. Ok, so here's the video.



This morning I went to the big kids' 6:30am master's class, taught by my Tuesday coach. I was the lone swimmer in the guppy lane. If there were more people and I was forced to swim with the girls in the next lane up, I probably could have held on (it did help that the sets weren't longer than 200 yards, it usually take a couple hundred more for me to get lapped). This class is 90 minutes, though since I'm used to swimming an hour I only did 75 minutes. And I should be very proud, I swam the whole class bilateral breathing, except for a couple odd strokes here and there. This is HUGE, usually when I try to swim faster I give up after a couple hundred and revert back to breathing on the left to keep up better. When I breath on one side, it's as comfortable as walking. When I bilateral breath, it's like a very fast jog. Doable, but much more work.

So, while eye-opening, I don't know how much this will change my swimming plans right now. I may switch from Thursday morning to Friday morning class to get more yardage in the rest of this year. And then sometime around February I'll start swimming 3 days a week, and some/most of those classes will be 75-90 minutes. Then I'll be swimming about 9,000 yards a week, about double what I'm doing now. So if I can just get my stroke back to being completely comfortable, in 2010 I can work on getting faster again.

(And if you have a waterproof camera at the pool, it's fun to play around with it)

6:30 *AM* run

After last week's adventures in the dark, our coach moved our group workout to 6:30 am instead. So this morning I got to see a very lovely sunrise:



We did nearly the same workout as we did last week in the dark but increased the hill climbs from 2:00 to 2:30. Apparently that was a huge difference because I was much slower this morning. It felt like I was doing this workout at 13,000 ft. The only plus was being done with the run at 7:30 am instead of 7:30 pm.

I still went to my noon master's class. On days that I swim, my swim workout is usually first and I definitely felt more tired today. And I realize that I don't talk much about swimming much here. My Tuesday class is a beginner master's class so it's more mellow and we don't usually have to swim on certain time intervals. The last 3 weeks I've made a concerted effort to swim every 3 strokes so that I breath on both sides (instead of every two and breathing on my left as I've always done). I'm fine for 50's and 100's but tend to get out of breath after longer sets. The beginner class has lots of drill sets and kick sets so I don't get as burned out trying to bilateral breath and so I've been sticking to it more. At the end of class I did a 300 cool down and was fine. And why do I want to bilateral breath? Chances are I'll still breath on the left during races, but by training both sides I'll have a more symmetrical stroke and less chance of muscle imbalances.

And speaking of swimming, this week I've been thinking of stopping the Thursday morning stroke development class I've been doing since September. For one thing, it's at 6:30 am, which is actually NOT my favorite time to work out. But mostly it's because the instructor is really non-traditional and sometimes I feel like my time could be better spent. Last week we ran one length of the pool and swam back (4 times). And in other weeks we've had to sit on a kick board and skull across. I can, in good conscience, think of approximately ZERO times these skills will be useful in a triathlon. And then when we do work on strokes, she has me change things in such a way that I feel very choppy and awkward. On the other hand, this class was a chance to catch up with the other girls doing the Ironman. I'm still not sure which classes I'll take. I was planning on dropping this one by next February anyway when I anticipate swimming 3 days a week and Mon/Wed/Fri will make more sense.

And I forgot to do last weeks totals (we had some nice weather so I got out on my bike twice in addition to the velodrome class):

Swimming: 4600 yd
Biking: 48.9 miles
Running: 19.14 miles

Time: 11:50 (this number has also included the 90 minutes of strength)

First Night Run

As far as I can tell, there's nothing redeeming about switching back from Daylight Saving Time. The kids have still been waking up at the old time, which has made both Monday and Tuesday just like Beat Your Brother Waffle Wednesday. And then - the sun goes down at 5:30. Which, coincidentally, is when my group run started. I got to use my new spelunking running headlamp, which worked pretty well. But it was still a very surreal experience. While running, I had the same thought I've had a few times when swimming in a lake at dawn or running in the snow, "Normal people don't do this." I also thought about mountain lions, but figured that there were 4 of us running so someone would hear me scream.

Our workout tonight was 6 x 2 minute hill repeats. The first was supposed to be moderate, the second moderate-hard and the third hard, then repeat. Here's my heart rate data (for you, Becky). The red is heart rate, the green is elevation. See how my heart rate did top out slighter higher each time, then repeat? If you are also paying attention, my green mountains didn't get as high the second set, meaning that I was working harder but going slower because I was fatigued.



And for you dad - My coach is doing the Boise 70.3 race next year and I may do it too. Why Boise? Because he wants to do a triathlon in every state. Crazy, huh?

And I didn't do last week in review:

Run: 17.11 miles
Swim: 4500 yards

Total: 7:08 (light week!)

And the totals for October:

Swim: 19,700 yards (11.2 miles)
Bike: 79.6 miles
Run: 95.45 miles

I'll leave you with an Adam-funny. When I picked up Adam from school today, he told me all about the Pilgrams. He mentioned the Mayflower and the Indians and a bad king in England. He was doing really well until started explaining a hat they wore made out of goat skin. That part seemed plausible, but he lost me when he told me the Pilgrims also made hang gliders out of goat skin so they could jump off cliffs to safety. We might be having an interesting Thanksgiving this year.