Tonight, I was one of the fast girls

The D3 training group started up two weeks ago, but what with Canyonlands and Spring Break, tonight was my first night. There were 6 girls and we did a hill workout. I surprised myself by ending up 2nd/3rd up the hill every time. Granted, the girl I ran with last fall that is really fast had raced last weekend (and still was 1st), but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case with everyone. But I do get the nagging feeling that it's not so much that I'm getting better, but that new slower people show up (the same phenomenon happens at master's too.) But what the heck, I'll take it!

This is my first week back to full training after the race. I did run 45 minutes on Sunday and found it harder that I remembered. Tonight felt back to normal and nothing hurts that shouldn't.

This week I have:

Tues: Swim/Run
Wed: Bike/Weights
Thurs: Swim
Fri: Swim/Bike/Weights
Sat: Brick
Sun: Long run

Happy Passover

It's that time again, Sedar time. This year's guests (Jeremy was in California for slightly more than 24 hours):



Hannah says, "Let's get this show on the road." I was a bit disappointed that we went with nice linen over the Dora tablecloth:



Ariel, all cleaned and primped after her park adventure:



The best. Sorry, B.



Hmmmm, which one?



Just think, 36 hours ago, these gefilta fish were swimming in the Red Sea:




I made something! I made the apple/strawberry/raisin kugel!




The obligatory B eating picture:



The three little ones were not impressed with the dinner so when they finished early and started pizazzing, I had Ariel read Mr. Frumble's Hat to Adam and Hannah.



All and all, I'd say it was a good sedar. We've certainly had louder & crazier times.

PS - I am 5'4". Laura is 5'4". But Laura is 2" taller. How is this possible???

Just another manic Monday

Yesterday I went to the track to watch my riding buddy try out her new custom track bike (believe me, orders of magnitude cooler than mine). Since Jeremy will never be able to use my nice camera to take pictures of me, here's what I would look like if I were hot and redheaded:



I like this picture because I got some decent motion blur on the background:



Erika riding a mini-pace line with her boyfriend, a professional track cyclist. See how close he is? That's the way you do it:



And Erika on the 45 degree turn:



And now for something completely random, apparently Dexter has made a new friend:



This morning Ariel come over and I pride myself on having gotten out of bed at 6:00 7:00 to greet her. We had a quiet morning waiting for Satellite Auto Glass to come by again. I had gotten a new windshield two weeks ago and within 10 days it already had an 8" crack in it. Dad said, "You should have gotten it after ski season," but really, we do do the occasional highway driving and that's where we got a tiny nick right on the side that spread. And Satellite was completely and totally AWESOME and replaced the windshield even though they (and my Dad) could see the tiny impact to show it was not a stress fracture or installation defect. Satellite - two thumbs up!!!

After the car had sat for an hour, we drove to the bookstore and I picked up a copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for bookclub. I took the kids to the rocket ship park and read. First they played on the rock and Ariel said she was stuck on top. I reminded her of the little monkey rule - you need to get down whatever you get up (the corollary being, if you can't get up, you don't belong up). She figured it out.



Next she followed the boys up the rocket ship and then got hysterical when she couldn't get down. I kept send Alex up to help her but she was to upset to even listen to him. When another dad offered to go up and help her, I realized I would have to get off my butt and do something. I talked her down but didn't touch her and everyone at the park thanked me for putting an end to her screaming.



We stayed for about 2 hours, then went to Wendy's for lunch. I guess Ariel doesn't eat there often because she kept saying, "There's no chicken nugget's at Dee-Dee's house." Everyone had nuggets and french fries and then split an M&M/cookie dough frosty. How far we've sunk.

Happy Birthday, Hannah Banana!

Little Miss Hannah Banana is now 3!





I got my cake skills from my Mom. Look at her great Dora cake:



Opening presents:



Ariel: "Hannah, that's my gift!"



A whole. lot. of. crazy.

Newest addition to the fleet

As of last night, I am now the proud owner of an authentic track bike. And why do I need another bike? Well, it is true that the track rents bikes and they are generally of good quality. But often times one or another of my favorite bikes would be out of commission (or plain broken). And every time I rode I had to change pedals around and fiddle with saddle height and position and it was turning into a giant pain. I knew I didn't want to buy new so I very patiently waited on Craig's list. My nearly perfect bike was listed last week and last night I drove all the way to South Denver in rush hour to pick it up (yes, there's a story there, no, it wasn't fun).

And why do you need a track bike at all to ride on the track? Well, track bikes have several special features, like they don't have brakes. This is really a safety issue, you ride really close together on the track and if one person suddenly brakes, chances are a lot of people will go down. You can stop though, the bike is what is called a fixed gear bike, meaning that as long as the wheel is moving, the pedals are too (you can't coast) and you could ride backwards. To slow down, you push backwards on the pedals and you can stop gradually.

Since it's a fixed gear bike, it also has just one gear, so no shifters, either. This bike came with a bit too large of a gear ratio, so today we got a new cog on the back, going from 15 to 16. This will take my gear ratio from 88" to 82".

And of course, I had to try it out today. Jeremy and I took the kids to Rally and then went to the track. The bike handled really nice and smooth. It was a near perfect track day, except when I screwed up a drill and crossed my front wheel with Jeremy's back wheel and nearly pulled a Governor Ritter. Thankfully I did not go down and all my ribs and collarbones are as they should be. And I'm mighty glad I did that to Jeremy and not one of the other 4 guys on the track because I felt like a giant ass for not paying attention.

Spring Break

The best part about racing a half marathon the first day of Spring Break was that I had a good excuse for relaxing the rest of the week. I met Jeremy in Breckenridge Sunday night and we went to Beaver Creek on Monday. I had not anticipating being quite so sore, so we had a short day. It was nearly perfect Spring skiing conditions with temperatures in the upper 40 and nice soft snow.

Alex, Adam, Grammie and Pop-Pop joined us on Monday. On Tuesday my family minus the grandparents headed over to Vail (because we had paid extra for it on our passes but hadn't gone yet). Vail has not had as good as snow as Breckenridge this year and it was a bit icy. Adam did not enjoy our first blue run down Game Creek Bowl so we had to look else where to ski. Jeremy found some less steep blues for Adam and I did a few runs with Alex. Alex found a black gully run he wanted to do so I followed along. It was steep, narrow, bumpy and full of rocks and tree stumps. Alex loved it. He shouted, "It's just like a half pipe." I hung on. After that Alex said he was all blacked out so we found Jeremy and Adam and did a couple easier runs.

Adam and Alex still don't ski well together, so half way through the last run I made Jeremy take Alex down some black off-shoot and Adam continued on:



After I took this picture, Adam wanted a video. So, here you go:


Adam just got the poles a week ago and hasn't figured out how to use them. I thought they would help him get his hands in in a better position like they did for Alex, but it's not working yet. They do come in handy when it gets flat and Adam can pole himself along.

On Wednesday we got to ski Breckenridge with 8" of new powder. It was the best conditions I've seen all year. We left Adam to ski with Grammie and Pop-Pop and Jeremy and I took Alex on some harder runs. We warmed Alex up on Ore Bucket, a black tree run. Next we took the 3 lifts to the top of Peak 8 and skied down Whale's Tale. Here's Jeremy and Alex at the top:



Whale's Tail is a double black diamond run and it finally slowed Alex down. There was a ton of powder up there and it's pretty steep. Alex was slow and fell a few times but did fine:



After a fall (see all that powder?):



It's good that Whale's Tail was hard for Alex or I don't know what he'd do next year.

Jeremy had to go back home so he could work Thursday and Friday, but the boys and I stayed up. We skied Thursday with Grammie and Pop-Pop. I let them take Alex for the morning and Adam and I did NASTAR. Adam has improved so much this year. He's taken over 15 seconds off his NASTAR time since February and nearly got a silver medal. I finally had a good day (I tried the course in Beaver Creek and it was so different I did not do well on my one and only run) and moved into 6th place in the national rankings:



After lunch, Grammie and Pop-Pop said that Alex wanted to do bumps so I needed to ski with him. Alex took me down two monster bump runs that I have to admit he did much better than I. They were so steep and high that I just heel slipped down, while Alex made a good attempt at turning. I am afraid Alex may surpass me next year and I don't feel like I'm a particularly bad snowboarder.

We were skied out after 4 days so we headed home on Friday. Now I need to jump back into my training program and get ready for Boise 70.3.

Canyonland Half Marathon

Canyonlands was an awesome race, awesome weekend and an awesome road trip. We started our mini-vacation earlier than planned and left Thursday night to beat the snow. We had a nice dry drive and made to Silt/Rifle and stayed at a very swanky Holiday Inn Express that I got a great deal on with hotwire.com (yes, I recommend it!). Since we were half way to Moab, we had lots of time to kill on Friday. A layover at the Grand Junction mall proved to be a welcome distraction. We did lots of window shopping and tried on pretty pretty princess dresses:



The only hitch was finding the Chipotle, which my GSP really did not want us to find. My sisters said I pizazzed a bit. Thankfully we did find it in the end (because, there are no Chipotles in Moab).

We got into Moab around 3 and packet pick up was easy and well organized. After a trip to City Market, there wasn't much to do so we just headed back to our not-so-swanky Super 8. We dined at the adjacent Denny's and I got my almost perfect pre-race meal of tilipia, rice and green beans, just drenched in much more butter than I would ever use. In fact, the green beans had so much butter that Becky took hers off her plate and tried wiping them off with a great deal many napkins. At one point our waitress came over and didn't say a word about the pile of napkins or the green bean car wash.

That night we watched Did You Hear About the Morgans and we all agreed it was subpar and that SJP still looks like Skelator.

Our alarm was set for 6:30 the next morning, though I think we all woke up before it. Thanks to City Market, I had a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, then we headed over to the shuttle buses. The race was not a loop, so the bus had to shuttle 4,000 people 13 miles away. Becky and Laura on the bus:



We got to the start around 8:15, meaning that we had to stand in the freezing cold for one hour and 45 minutes. And by freezing, I mean FREEZING. I'm sure the temperature was not over 30 in the canyon. The race did allow us to bring a bag to put extra sweat clothes in, but none of us brought enough. And, they made you put your bag on a truck about 20 minutes before the start. So we huddled around and I drank more coffee and we used the port-a-potties 3 times. I had bought my preferred Gatorade the night before at City Market and then had split it with Laura. I didn't get the lid on right and it all leaked out in my extra clothes bag. It was a good thing that I had already committed to the capris I was wearing and not the shorts I brought along just in case. And the race provide gatorade with the coffee, so I was set there too.

Here we are finally lined up at the start with the 10 minute mile pacers.



I will say for a race that you stand around waiting in the cold for almost 2 hours, the course is very forgiving. The first mile was very downhill and I took it very easy so that I felt almost warmed up by mile 1 where, coincidentally, the sun finally broke through. My heart rate monitor decided not to work (or suddenly I was able to perform 300% better) so I had to ignore my race advice of running at certain heart rate zones and just go by exertion and pace. I ran the first 5 miles very easy, walking the water stops that were every 2 miles. Laura stayed with me and I was a bit concerned that my miles were faster than the plan - I was aiming for 9:45 miles and we we ended up averaging 9:32. We picked up the pace for the next 5 miles, again walking the water stations and the Happy Hump between miles 9 and 10. Here's the course around 5 miles, it was very pretty and the temperature was just about perfect:



We averaged around a 9:24 pace for the second 5 miles. Laura stayed with me for the first 10 miles. We ran by several photographers and I tried to smile and look happy, but this was really the best of the best:



At mile 10, I enacted my final race strategy - all out 5k to the end. The last two miles were hard, but as you can see by the below elevation profile, they were mostly uphill.



I did not see this photographer and I was no longer happy and smiling (though I thought being happy for 11 miles was a pretty decent feat):



And here's the finish. I averaged a 9:14 for the last 5k and I felt pretty good about that, since the course was so much harder at the end. And by running negative splits, I passed a TON of people the last 5 miles.



Here's Becky with a very strong finish:



And Team Bee Rad:



See, Team Bee Rad. But only 1 person asked me and Laura about our shirts:



My final time was 2:03:36, almost 90 seconds faster than my goal time of 2:05. But sadly, this race goes by gun time and not chip time, so my official time was 2:08 (our wave was held back 3 minutes from the gun). And being the anal person I am, I counted back through the results and I beat 108 people who had faster gun times than me. And only 8 people ran faster than my gun time. But given that I came in around 130th in my age group, it really doesn't matter. The winning female runner's time was 1:20, and she averaged 6:06 miles. I am very sure that I couldn't run *one* 6:06 mile, let alone 13.1.

After the race, we went to the Moab Brewery for beer and hamburgers, as we agreed on the night before. Sadly, I could not stomach a burger, so I made do with a beer. It was the unfiltered kind with lots of B vitamins, so it was a good recovery drink. I also bought my husband a growler:



After lunch, Becky had the great idea of going to the General Store to buy swim suits so we could sit in the hot tub (because no one had the foresight to bring one). And major score, I got a suit for under $7. So worth it for the hot tub!

That night I got to enjoy Fun Day at the all you can eat pizza buffet. Luckily, they had buffalo chicken, which my expert sisters rated #2 (behind Woody's):



Mmmmm, buffalo chicken:



And our not so swanky Super 8. Becky is not a big person, why would this table be stuffed in there?



Hanging out:



That night we were going to watch Yes Man on HBO, but I'm apparently not so good at reading TV schedules and it was on the week before. Scrubs was a poor substitute.

And all good things must come to an end. The next morning we ate breakfast and packed out. I got dropped off in Frisco for the start of my snowboarding Spring Break.

Our Book Project

In the fall I rescued my beloved copy of The Hobbit from my parents' house and read it (with help from Jeremy) to the boys. They loved it (it's an awesome out of print copy with colored animation from the 1979 movie). They also loved the movie (free on youtube in 8 parts) and the audio from the movie (on non-stop repeat in the car, so much so the headphones were brought back).

Sometime around Christmas, I started reading the first Harry Potter book to the boys. I'd been resistant to it, not because I don't love Harry, but because by the 7th book it does get fairly mature and a wee bit scary and it's hard to stop in the middle of the series. But on the other hand, I do want my kids to have some point of pop culture reference, I'm sure without the TV they are already pretty lost. So we read the first book, and then watched the movie together. And then we read the second book and watched the movie. At which point, Adam and I agreed it was time to take a break for a couple of years. But Alex wanted to go on. I gave him the choice of reading it himself or getting the audio CD's from the library. Alex decided he'd like the CD's, but I had to put a hold on them, and in the mean time he's read over 200 pages of The Prisoner of Azkaban. I'm really proud of him, besides Captain Underpants he usually doesn't want to read up past his bedtime. And I'm going conveniently forget to tell Alex if the CD's are ever available.

After Harry Potter, I tried to think of other books we could read and then watch the movie. Our next choice was The Tale of Despareux and I'm not sure any of us really liked it. It was dark, and not in a very good dark sort of way. Adam would like to still see the movie, but Alex was not so enthusiastic.

Our current project is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We aren't quite done (poor Alsan is about to be compromised) but they are really into Naria and Adam was looking at the whole boxed set to see what the other books might be about. I've not seen the new Narnia movies so this will be a fun family adventure for all.

Best Commerical EVAH

I could watch this again and again. In fact, I have.

Almost-Night Skiing

When I concocted the fabulous idea of going night skiing tonight, I didn't think things through quite all the way. Such as, it's a week from the first day of Spring and the day is roughly 12 hours long and that it might not actually be dark until nearly 7. But other parts of my plan worked very well. We left our house around 1:30 and didn't hit a smidge of traffic all the way up. We arrived at Keystone just after 3 which allowed us to park in a $25 lot right at the gondola - for free! We did 6 or 7 runs and even played at the snow fort again and it was relatively uncrowded. The snow was pretty skied up and icy, but that's normal for Keystone no matter what the time. Alex and Adam had fun and I found myself going full speed to keep up with Alex. Adam tried out his new poles and had some successes and some failures. Though we would have had fewer failures if Jeremy hadn't picked the first run to be a bumped out blue. Little Adam hung on but it took a while and then we still had to navigate the icy River Run of doom at the bottom.

The biggest disappointment was that it never got real dark. I was envisioning eerily lit runs so dark that you couldn't even make out the trees with picturesque stars overhead. Instead, the best we got was twilight. The last run was almost night skiing, the lights were certainly needed at that point. And then I realized, we missed our chance this year. Daylight savings time starts tonight and that means that when night skiing shuts down at 8:00 tomorrow, it will be as dark as when we left today at 7:00. So, next year we will try again earlier in the season. Maybe for my birthday :)

Giant Octopus Attack

Alternatively titled NOTFun with Chinese Medicine or I Paid for This?

Yes, I'm still doing acupuncture. And things haven't been progressing as well as I hoped, though I'm afraid to quit now since I've put so much time and money into it already. But I have to give kudos to my acupuncturist, she called in another colleague to assist her, who recommended this treatment. My last 4 sessions have progressed beyond needles to something in Chinese medicine called cupping, used to draw toxins out of the body (and there is still some needle work too). My previous 3 sessions were not very exciting but today was darn near tortuous. I have been guaranteed results in 2 days so hopefully this was not for naught.

In training news, I had my last track class of the session and I'm not signing up for another but I will probably do some open riding on occasion. My classmate was absent for the second week in a row so it was just me and the legendary Chuck Coyle. We did some hot laps, and the moved into 2 kilometer efforts. I was able to do 3 x 2:54 on these, which was at least consistent. And then we took a victory lap going clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, which was like riding on the track for the first time and adrenaline packed. My legs were tired at track because I ran first, instead of saving it for after I picked up Adam (he's ridden his bike with me the past 3 weeks), since it was supposed to snow today (which it finally did, starting around 3). I really enjoyed working out at the track this winter but I'm ready now to do some outside riding and for spring weather!

It's all part of The Plan

Yesterday I finally got my act together and registered for Boise 70.3. And while I apparently surprised some people, it's been in the year long plan all along. See, rather than focus on training for one race for an entire year, I broke my year up into quarters. First quarter - last fall - I concentrated on improving my run by working on intensity. I raced 2 5k and 2 10ks. This current quarter was all about adding some run endurance, cumulating in the Canyonland's Half Marathon in 10 days. April and May will about coming back to triathlon, concentrating mostly on getting my bike back up to speed (har-har). I will probably also race the Summer Open Sprint in May and the Danskin SheRox Sprint at end of June, in addition to the A race of the quarter - Boise. And then, I have the summer to concentrate on the mother of them all, the real down and dirty Ironman training.

And why Boise, you may wonder? Well, I didn't feel comfortable racing Boulder 70.3 only 6 weeks out from Wisconsin. I was pretty sore after last year's race and it took about 2-3 weeks to feel like I was recovered. And I wouldn't want to not race my best because I was concerned about the looming Ironman. So I looked at nearby half-Ironman races earlier in the year and my choices were pretty much Kansas or Boise (or Lubbock in July, but that was never really a choice. I wilt in heat). And it so happens that Boise is the D3 Multisport race of the year so I'll be able to go out with training friends. And that, my friends, is The Plan in a nutshell.

In other training news, our main set at master's was the dreaded 10x100's. Last time I did this set, my interval was 1:45 and I was demoted at the end of a pretty poor performance. Today, the coach set my interval at 1:50 and I consistently came in at 1:35 and got 15 seconds of rest. So either I swim a heck of a lot better when I get more than 3 seconds rest, or I have improved a bit in the last month. I'm holding out that I'm improving.

I'm going to call it

I have a goal for the half marathon. And I'm going to bite the bullet and hopefully not jinx myself by writing it down here. My goal is 2:05. From my vdot training predictions to general fitness, I think I can do it. But to put it in perspective, the pace I need for a 2:05 is the pace I needed last year for the Bolder Boulder to go under an hour, and I didn't hit it. So, have I improved that much in a year that I can hold that pace for twice as long? We shall see.

Otherwise, I had a good week. Last week I logged 30 running miles and this week it was 29. I still have 2 more harder runs this week, then it's taper time. I did all my training, and I felt that I did it well. On my 2 hour run today, my left knee gave me a bit of trouble at the beginning, but I think it was taking the ligaments a bit longer that the muscles to warm up. I ran 12 miles in 2:06 at a 10:33 pace, but except for the last 15 minutes when I was trying to get home, it was very easy, low zone 2 running.

And for you, Laura. When Jeremy got home from Europe he was telling me he heard a brand new released Lady Gaga song that was BRAND NEW and EXCITING. Telephone. Ha, it's already on my shuffle there, J-Dog.

Weekly Totals:

swim: 5300 yards
bike: 3:42, including 28 outdoor miles
run: 29 miles

Total: 11:20

Who said this training was going to be hard?

This morning's run workout was one of those workouts straddling the line between flipping-hard and maybe-over-training. I did the same workout as I did last week, 10x800 with a goal of 4:10 (8:20 mile pace). Last week it was not too bad. This week, super hard. I had to bargain with myself. I made myself to 6 800's, then I knew I could do 8. And after that, I figured I had to do all 10. But my legs were dead and it was just hard. In the last 5 days days, I've run 30 miles. For the last 800 today, I had to find a super peppy song to get me through and I scrolled though my shuffle until I found some Lady Gaga. Becky, Laura, I'm linking this for you. You need to watch it. Oh yes, you do.

Found Money Update

I bet you thought that I stopped keeping track of all the money I find. Oh nooooo, I just don't talk about it much. And if it makes you feel better, I don't go looking for it as much as I used to, but if I see a penny, even under someone's shoe, I'll still grab it. So to date, since July 6, 2006 I have found:

$183.12
1 5 Afrika Dzonga
1 100 Indonesian coin
2 Canadian dimes
1 Canadian penny
1 Australian nickel
2 RTD tokens

Although, I didn't quite find $183. It's been sitting in a savings account for a few years earning interest, I'd guess (yes, I'm too lazy to look) around $7-%10 of interest. So there you go.

And $183 is very close to $200-$300, the amount that I've been bitching about for NASTAR. But here's the deal. It's not like I don't *have* $300. It's that I can in no way justify spending $300 on snowboarding. It's not the Olympics, I'm not very good and I'm already spending hundreds (thousands???) on triathlon. I've approached Burton as a sponsor and so far our negotiating has led to a possible use of a snowboard for the event. I countered that that would be lovely, but if I don't get a comped entry fee, it's not going to help me much. So if I work something out, great. If not, I had fun racing this year and we've had a hell of a season and it's all good.