Day 1, Week 2

Ok so last week was pretty crazy/cool. Started the new job, survived, then FINALLY made it to Chicago. Though getting to Chicago didn't get me around as many team members as I wanted, it's a start, I suppose. I guess a number of people are still inside because it's too cold, so I didn't meet them on the ride I went on. The cold wasn't that bad, I mean c'mon! I rode all through the winter! I did get beat up good though. It's good for me, a good time for it, but wow boys can be hard to bike with sometimes. They were nice and didn't let me get lost a.k.a. dropped and miss a turn, so that was good. But I was hurting for the entire ride just trying to keep up. AND we got passed by huge groups of REAL cyclists. If you ever want to feel slow on a bike...

AND I'm finally running again. I musta picked, twisted, rubbed, iced, stretched, you name it most of the problems out of my left IT band enough that I could run for an hour yesterday (and 45 on Friday otherwise I probably wouldn't have tried an hour). I'll probably keep stepping it back up slowly and decide soon if I can run the 1/2 marathon at the end of April here. Otherwise I'm back in business. And I have time off of work during the week so that I can train. Double bonus!

Out with the old, in with the new...

I'm in transition today between jobs. Well, I finished the chem lab job on Friday. Tomorrow I start at the bike shop. So today I'm using my easy day as a cleaning and organizing day to kinda get ready for not knowing my schedule for this week. I am going to push for a couple days off in a row (it's a part-time gig anyways) for this week so that I can try to get up to Chicago finally. I was going to go up before I got sick, then I had to go to ABQ, then I had to put in my two weeks so I kinda needed to stick around and get stuff done. Now I'm hoping that it's going to settle down a bit and I can make it up to Chicago and really meet and make friends with my team. So I feel REALLY behind in what I've been meaning to do.

I did a Tri Time Trial with the FIT team this weekend. It was crazy because I wasn't expecting almost thirty people to come out to do an impromptu triathlon, but they were there. Some people did sprint distance, some did olympic, some did a bit of each, and some did two of three. I did two of the three. I'm still laying off the running for now. I'm betting it's doing better, but to be honest I can't tell until I run. It just doesn't hurt until I run on it. And I haven't run since last Tuesday, accept for in the water. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with my swim/bike splits. My swim (for this early in the season) was low 21 minutes, which is pretty up there for me. I also wasn't far behind the real swimmer on the team - a UIUC collegiate swimmer. So that's a good start for me. Then there was the bike. It was SO FRIGGIN WINDY!!! I still did ok, my average wattage was close to my FTP wattage (which is over a 30 minute test, so for almost 1.5 hours at that high of wattage is pretty good!), however it also included stoplights and stopsigns and everything so that dropped both the average wattage and the average speed. Of course, I wasn't saving anything for the run because I wasn't doing it. But I put over ten minutes over the fastest girl on the team, and she's nothing to shake a stick at. To be fair, though I've been biking a pretty good amount all winter and she's just been just swimming, so it's not a truly fair assessment. But it feels like commuting 45 minutes one way on a heavy-as-all-getout mountain bike is doing me good. I have a stronger bike base. I haven't done anything for real power yet, but base is always good.

I'm slowly developing my own philosophy for training in endurance sports. Part of my ideas come from what I did as a swimmer for years. Swim training, from what I've experienced, is a lot - and I really mean a LOT - of intervals. Fast, hard, dying in the water intervals. I remember as a 13 year old swimming my butt off. I would get to a point, though that I would just have to back off. So I would, and would basically just keep moving. At a pace that I now realize was base. Coaches hated it when I did that. I wouldn't listen though because I know my body and I will listen to it before I'd listen to anyone else (and that's still the case). Training that way didn't hurt me at all, though. I still placed among the top swimmers in the state doing much less fast training than my high-placing counterparts. Swimming just wasn't for me, though. Too monotonous. I love it, but not 10X a week. I think that for most people having a lot of base is essential, and having too much speed is detrimental. And that breakdown is pretty similar between most people. In a number of tri-training books (and coaches I've talked to) I'm finding that there's a lack of emphasis on base, with more emphasis on speed/tempo. I don't understand, though, how XC skiers will train 25 hours a week, but triathletes will train only around 16. When the XC races are generally shorter than triathlons. Why the discrepancy? The difference between the two, it seems, is mostly base-pace hours. But I find that I do best when I have a LOT of base hours under my belt. When it comes down to it though, it's hard to train a whole ton and work and sleep and recover from it all. Maybe when I'm a full time pro, right? :P

Lots of changes

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Being sick for a week sucked, and then I got news that my grandfather passed away so I had to start planning a trip back home to say goodbye. It made me glad that I made the trip for his 80th birthday in January, but I'm still really going to miss him. When I saw him he was very sick but still full of the attitude I'll always remember him for. It was not a trip I wanted to make, but it was nice, even under the circumstances, to get to see my family again. My baby niece is getting bigger, stronger and is still the cutest baby ever. She was standing (with help) while I was there! She's only 8 weeks old! She's an athlete in the making!

While I was in New Mexico I got a call from the bike shop I applied for - I'm hired! I'm super excited to work there partly because I've wanted to work in a bike shop for awhile (for a number of reasons, one being I can work part time, another because I love bikes) but I'm also excited because I can get out of the sketchy chem lab I'm currently working in. It may be just that I'm paranoid, but I did take chem 101/102 and other lab classes and you know those safety rules they give you? Ummmmmm yeah. Those aren't exactly followed very closely. That's why I wear a lab coat, old worn out running shoes (that will get thrown out when I'm done there) and gloves, gloves, gloves! I've learned that some solvents (Toluene) are MEAN. Do not touch, smell, look sideways at, etc or else...kinda scary. Though I'm appreciative of the days when I work with Cineol a.k.a. Eucalyptol a.k.a. the main component of Eucalyptus essential oil. At least that part of it isn't toxic. Though what we mix it with might be. Again, I'm not a chemist and therefore I don't like working with it and therefore I'm super strict on the safety stuff that doesn't really get followed by anyone but me. Four days and counting. Then I start at the bike shop next Tuesday. Yippee!! I'm not sure exactly what to expect in terms of how busy it is or how busy it can be, so we'll see.

I'm currently not allowed (by my leg, not by my choice) to run. I'm having bad IT band issues probably from sitting for a week while sick. Sitting for me has always aggravated it badly, as does running as many miles as I have this winter in prep for 70.3 Kansas and the Illinois Half Marathon. I feel like I'm running strong when I'm running at all. What compounds the problem is the serious LACK of dirt to run on around here. Even when you get out of town you can't hit the dirt because then you're trespassing on farmers land and that probably won't end well either from the dogs or the shotguns they probably have. So the options are largely concrete or asphalt. Can you say IMPACT???? And I'm not even a heel-striker! So I'm sitting here on my day off and zapping the crud outta my leg, ice rolling it, zapping, rolling, zapping, rolling, etc etc etc. I'm probably going to hit the pool tomorrow for an aquajog instead of a run. Maybe I'll have to make that my recovery run on a routine basis....hmmmm....the problem is the lack of pool space in this town, though. The UIUC pool is crowded with people who don't have any concept of swim etiquette, and once the outdoor pool opens it's only going to get worse. I'll have to come up with something better for the summer, maybe a couple of memberships to different pools depending on the hours...ouch that would get expensive fast though! Here I am totally spoiled from the pools in Albuquerque that I could go to almost whenever I wanted...oh well. I'll have to bike it up all that much more then!

Sick and bored

I hate being sick. I hate being laid up, not being able to do anything. I like being able to do stuff. I really hate not being able to train. I'm usually against taking drugs, too but I am because I'm miserable. I was doing really good this year, too. I haven't been sick in several months. Last year I was sick about every two months. I think it was because of stress/gluten/trying too hard, and I've had a lot of down time compared to how hard I was working this time last year. I'm actually getting enough sleep for the first time since, well, middle school I think. I'm really not sure it's going to be worth going to Chicago tomorrow if I can hardly move. It's actually getting to the point where I want to go to a doctor and find out what I have and see if I can get something for it. I hate being sick!

I feel awful and it's mostly my own fault!

I felt something coming on yesterday. You know, the feeling you get when your throat just isn't right and it's scratchy and I totally kept blaming it on something at work. I work in what amounts to a chemistry garage. A huge rented garage that a very small ( I mean like 4 employees, total) research type company works from. Oh, and it's run by a Russian. Not dissing on Russians or anything, just saying. Most days I'm one of three people there and I'm the only American (and, well, girl) to top it off. But I kept blaming my scratchy throat on something that they were working on and kept opening the large garage door a bit to get some fresh air. Which didn't help, but I did it anyways. I'm not much a fan of working with stuff that might screw up my lungs, even if it's "diluted in the large space." Don't care. There's not much of a breeze and I'm basically paranoid.

So I rode to the pool to do my usual swim, figuring that in case I did have something coming on that I would take it easy and get something done, but slow and easy. You know, to help loosen up and not to make myself sicker. That's where I failed. Big time. I walked into the pool and Steve, the swimmer I met a few Tuesdays ago said hi, invited me to come swim with the Master's team there and since I clearly cannot pass up a social workout opportunity, I did. Had a great workout too. I was keeping paces that I don't remember ever keeping. Which is a stellar sign for my swim for this year. However the problem was that a lot of it was sprint sets, and that's like the exact opposite of what I shoulda done. But I was having fun (and swimming circles around a couple guys, which I love doing hehe). After I got out of the pool, I knew I really screwed up. Went home, ate, and went to bed. Woke up with a fever. Can't move today, can hardly breathe my throat hurts so bad, and I can't decide if I'm going to be better enough to go to Chicago on Friday. I barely have a voice. I really wanted to go to Chicago. I'm going to have to wait and see how I feel tomorrow, I guess. Until the fever breaks, all bets are off, right?

I applied for yet another job yesterday. Because although where I'm working isn't bad (and pays pretty well) it's technically only a 6 month gig because he works from US Government research grants. Which means that as soon as something more permanent comes along, I'm outta there. The place I applied to is a bike shop, the only real-looking shop in town, actually. They need someone for their women's section, and while I'm no bike savant, I certainly know what it's like to be a girl and a cyclist/triathlete. And I can fix a flat, tune a bike, etc. It sounded promising yesterday talking to the guy there, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one doesn't go haywire like the chiro gig did (the chiro called me in to "test run," then never returned my calls, only giving me answers when I went in and asked, saying I was 'too over qualified'). Could happen again. But I hope not. Ultimately I think I would enjoy a bike shop gig. We shall see.

It's been one of those days

I hate the days that never seem to go right. Nothing went wrong, per se, but nothing really went right. I guess it started yesterday. I had an awful long ride because I bonked. Again. And then I had to change the oil in my car. Ok, not that hard, right? Well, no, it's not. But it was the first time I'd done it on my own so there was a bit of a learning curve mostly in trying to find the stupid drain bolt from the oil pan. Found it after a few phone calls to dad and a good let's-laugh-at-aubrey session from my sister and brother-in-law. Then this morning I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I guess. Went to work and had to deal with a typically very nice turned completely obnoxious boss who felt it necessary to hover over what I was doing, demand different parameters that wouldn't work, distract me from the program that needed to be changed because of a slight interference, and thus accidentally bend a perfectly brand new nozzle. Which really pissed me off. I hate breaking things. I hate being given ambiguous projects, too, which seemed to be the idea of the day. Do you want me to do THIS or THIS??? Pretty simple answer, no? I guess not.

Then, to top it all off I called my grandpa who's in the hospital following a heart attack. He's very sick, he's had cancer for a number of years now and the latest round of chemo is taking its toll (when previous rounds had seemed to have been no problem for him). It's not sounding good.

On a more positive note, the weather is going to be warm tomorrow and I'm going to be able to bike to work without having to worry too much about ice. And there's a bike shop in town looking for a women's dept person that I'm going to go talk to to see if that might work out better than where I'm at now. That would be nice because I have wanted to do bike stuff for a long time now.

And I got some lovely flowers for Valentine's Day. That makes everything better, too :)

Back home, freezing my ass off again!

Actually when I got home the weather was only a little bit colder than NM and I managed to get a super awesome (and ambitious) ride of approximately 65 miles in a couple of Sundays ago (like not yesterday but the one before that). I say approximately because I don't have a computer on that particular bike and estimated how far I went after the fact. I did, however keep track of the time it took, and it was about 4 hours 45 minutes. Stellar. I mean, slow. Ok whatever. I don't care because it's all base miles and it's flat, which SUCKS. I don't share the opinion of most people that hills suck because I actually like them because I can go harder, then rest on the way down. It's nice. Plus, I'm a pretty good climber. On long climbs I can destroy big men that own me on the flats. Just saying.

I have been accepted onto the Well Fit Elite Team (well, technically the "Development" team because I don't live in Chicago and can't make 2-4 practices a week when I live 2 hours away so I got downgraded just a little bit but for most intents and purposes it's the same). What that means though is that I have people to train with who are just as serious (I was going to say crazy....well you know what I mean) as I am! That's awesome. And theoretically people to travel with and stay with to races/training/camps/whatever.

Yesterday was a great end to a recovery week: 20 minute bike to the gym, 45 minutes weights routine (from which I can barely walk today), 35 minute easy swim to make 2200 yards, bike 20 minutes home, spin on the trainer for 1:30, then run for 15 minutes. All without much of a break. Yay for brick days! Didn't feel all that bad. At all, actually.

Starting to really look forward to racing. This year's gonna be good!