IM Canada: Week 24 – Chen’s version (i.e., we’re doing an f-ing IRONMAN, and pre-race thoughts)

Posted by Chen

I lied in my last post when I said that the next time I blogged, it would be an exciting race report. I forgot that I’d have to recap week 24 also, with the exception of the race itself, since that will obviously warrant its own post (or three). I’ll just warn you right now that this post may be slightly to moderately incoherent, as my brain has been all over the place this week/weekend.

Week 24 has mostly been busy, busy, busy – between getting everything in order at work to doing laundry and packing to double checking that I packed correctly (even now, as we’ve already dropped off our T1 and T2 bags, I’m still not convinced that I have everything) to driving over a 1000 miles to get from the Bay Area to Whistler – it’s been a whirlwind week.

Passed by Mt. Shasta on our drive north

Then there’s the stress level. I feel like nerves keep coming at me in waves all week – from itty bitty waves during work and during all of the packing and traveling, to massive tidal waves thanks to a couple unsettling things we’ve experienced since arriving, starting with our practice swim in Alta Lake yesterday.

I am SO GLAD we did this practice swim, because we learned that there will likely be some pretty rough chop anytime we’re swimming southward. I’d never swum straight into chop before, so imagine my surprise when I went to sight, and instead of seeing a nice yellow buoy, I instead got a wave TO THE FACE. The chop was also making it hard to breathe, as the waves would often crash over my head and straight into my mouth, so I of course started to tell myself that there was no way I could swim 2.4 miles in this nonsense and OMG I’m not a swimmer and WHY THE HELL AM I DOING AN IRONMAN???

After freaking out internally for a minute, I just told myself to keep going and try to find a method of breathing and sighting that would work. I learned that if I just looked backwards as I breathed, I would mostly get air and not water, and that if I sighted by popping my head waaaaaaay out of the water, I would avoid waves to the face (we in our group like to refer to this as whale breaching). Both of these methods result in a swimming form that isn’t ideal, but my only goal in the swim is continuous forward motion, so it will do.

Alta Lake. Not quite the 95 degrees and sun we were prepping for over the last two months. Instead, the forecast has an 80% chance of rain and a high in the low-to-mid 60s. Different.

This buoy size will do.

The other unsettling thing that has happened since our arrival was witnessing a cyclist get hit by a car yesterday. We had just finished our short shake out ride, and Katie and I were walking back to the house after dropping her bike off for minor repairs. As we approached a busy intersection in the village, we heard some crashing and yelling and looked up to see a cyclist lying in the middle of the road. She tried to get up but couldn’t and was moaning in pain. She was immediately swarmed by concerned passers-by, and since there was nothing we could do to help, we continued on our way as we heard the sirens of an ambulance arriving at the scene.

I felt absolutely awful for the cyclist (who was likely a racer), and I couldn’t shake the incident from my mind all day. I’ve said time and time again that cycling scares the shit out of me, and witnessing incidents like this doesn’t help matters. I was already planning on riding VERY conservatively and cautiously during the race, especially given the forecasted rain, and this certainly drove that point home. I just hope the cyclist will be OK, and I need to keep reminding myself how lucky I am to be on the course tomorrow.

So, you can probably imagine the number of extreme emotions I’ve been going through over the past 7 days or so, but I don’t want to make it all sound terrible. Interspersed between bouts of stress are also bouts of genuine excitement.

I mean – we’re here! We started training for this beast 29 weeks ago (including 5 weeks of basebuilding), and we’re actually f-ing here! I couldn’t sleep last night for a couple hours, so I spent my time reading through some of my earlier blog posts, and I couldn’t help but get just a teensy bit emotional as I thought back to my first days of swimming when I couldn’t swim more than 100 yards at a time, and to my first ride of training when I thought I would actually have to bail at mile 4.

It sounds so cheesy, but this whole thing really has been quite a journey. Lots of ups; lots of downs; and lots of learning what I’m capable of.

Athlete's village

Olympians were here!

Bike course prepping at its finest. There's a good chance this info will all have been washed away by the rain overnight, but at least I'm vaguely aware of aid station and climb locations.

Everyone keeps asking what my time goal for the race is, and I keep saying that I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, and that I just want to finish within the 17-hour cutoff. This isn’t me sandbagging – it’s the honest truth. I mean, this is a flipping Ironman, for crying out loud – anything could happen. There will be a number of things out of my control, including weather, flats, digestive issues – you name it.

The only thing I can do is to focus on the things that I can control, and the things that will give me my best chances of making it to that finish line. I can keep reminding myself that I’ve swum over 150 miles in training and that I CAN complete the swim comfortably, chop or not.

I can keep my effort “stupid easy” early on in the bike ride to ensure I have enough juice left for that final climb between miles 90-104. I can also make sure I eat around 300 calories per hour during the bike to keep my energy up and to avoid any bonking.

At the start of the run, I can make sure I don’t take it out too fast, as I am often (unwillingly) inclined to do at the start of every brick workout because I can’t control what my legs are doing. And when things get really tough, I can focus on the positives, remind myself that I’ve done the run portion 27 times before, and think about the fact that I’m on my favorite sport ever.

Mainly, I just want to make sure that I have fun out there tomorrow. I’m not doing this to place in the top X% of my age group. I’m not doing this to prove that I can come in under a certain time. I will likely only do one Ironman in my lifetime, so I want to make sure that I soak in every moment and appreciate my ability to be DOING AN IRONMAN (maybe I freak out a little every time I type or think that).

Man, this post really was a cluster. Sorry I don’t have an eloquent pre-race-thoughts soliloquy for you – this is all I got. In summary, I am all of the emotions right now, but mostly, I am ready to do this thing. Catch y'all on the flip side! 

IM Canada Week 24 Recap:

Monday: 

• PM: Running slow progression run in Golden Gate Park: 6.1 miles 50:51 (~8:20 pace)

Tuesday: 

• AM: Swimming 1600 yards, including 2 x (250 swim, 250 pull, 250 paddles) (average pace of 1:45/100yd)
• Immediately followed by stationary biking with hill intervals: 8.5 miles 30:16 (16.9mph)

Wednesday: 

• Rest (driving all day)

Thursday: 

• PM: Running part of the run course with Rachel and Travers: 4 miles (my Garmin was all wacky, so I don’t have an accurate time/pace)

Friday: 

• PM: Biking part of the bike course with the entire group: 12 miles (I disabled auto-pause in anticipation of race day, so again no accurate time/speed)

Saturday: 

• Rest (unless you count the 1.5-2 mile bike ride to T1 to drop off our gear)

Sunday: 

• Stay tuned!

A race day "plan" for Folsom International Tri/AquaBike

Posted by Katie

Friday night Matt and I decided to do the Folsom Lake International Triathalon (Aqua-Bike division for me). So Saturday morning (today) at 4am we piled our gear in the car and dove up to Folsom, CA. In the car (with very little caffeine consumed) I read an article about how to plan your race morning and I found it hilarrrrious because we were so comically unplanned and botching it at every turn.

Here is the sample race morning outline given in the article:

Sample race morning plan
Read more at http://triathlon.competitor.com/2015/05/training/why-a-pre-race-plan-is-a-must_115992#QV8TfCiJTrdDZQ20.99

4:45–5:00 a.m. Wake up and have breakfast 

5:00–5:30 a.m. Travel to race site

5:30–5:45 a.m. Foam rolling/stretching

5:45–6:00 a.m. Set up transition area

6:15–6:30 a.m. Visit Porta-Potty, put on wetsuit

6:30 a.m. Get in water and begin warm-up

6:45–6:50 a.m. Finish warm-up, stand by beach, stretching

7:00 a.m. Race start!

Sounds easy enough right? Here is Matt and I's actual race morning/night before:

Fri night plan: decide if we are doing the tri, sign up if yes and go to bed at 830pm
Fri night actual: Try to sign up online for race but get rejected, spend time trying to figure out if race-day reg is possible, figure out that it is, actually get to bed at 10pm.

4am. Wake up
4:15am Matt takes dog for a walk/jog, Katie makes bagels/coffee
4:35am Feed dog (who is confused that the humans are up so early but rolls with it)
4:40am Scramble to get all of our bike gear downstairs in less than 25 trips
4:45am Matt puts bikes on top of car, Katie continues to work on bagel shmearing
4:50am Run back upstairs for wallet
4:55am Leave the house!
4:55am-6:55am long drive to race
5:30am Realize how F-ing early it is and we have already been up for 1.5hrs.. drown sorrows in premade iced coffee

At 5:17am it seemed like a really great idea to take
this photo to prove to you how early and dark it was.

5:45am Realize we are about to run out of gas, find gas station which requires minimal stop time
5:50am Stop at gas station and accidentally activate fraud alert on our credit card (maybe their algorithm knows we don't get up this early on weekends....)
6:15am Browse facebook for entertainment (passenger, not the driver!) and find this hilarious article about having a race morning plan... ha! plan! what is that?
6:20am Realize that a cash parking fee is required at the start location and we have no cash... and I lost my debit card... luckily Matt has his
6:40am Stop at ATM where the door nearly does not work and get said cash
6:55am Arrive at race location, LET'S DO THIS!

7:10am Waltz over to registration table with bike and giant Ikea bag of race gear and attempt to register while balancing both
7:15am Confuse registration staff by writing 3 different checks for USAT, USAT and Reg combined

Have ikea bags... will travel. 

 7:20am Throw crap down in nearest open transition area rack, seek out bathroom
7:30am Hastily "set up" transition gear and find body markers
7:40am Matt borrows bike pump from other athlete but guy is in a rush and Matt doesn't get to pump up Katie's tires
7:42am Katie runs off to bike support tent in search of pump
7:45am In a hilariously awkward exchange... Matt picks up baby sunscreen from what looks like a support table, minutes later another athlete silently reclaims her sunscreen and puts it in her bag, leaving Katie... without sunscreen
7:47am Katie finds sunscreen at the Tshirt tent and applies (and will later get a ridiculous sunburn anyway)
7:55am Squish body parts into wetsuit and attempt to zip up fully without suffocation
7:57am Brisk walk down to start area which felt like 2 mi (actual distance 0.3mi)

I am standing ~30ft from T1, that tiny white dot
 is a lifegaurd chair by the waters edge...

7:58am Matt splashes water on his face in lieu of a warmup
7:59am Announcement of a 10 second countdown which proceeds in approximately 2 seconds
8:00am Matt's wave starts
8:02am Katie is confused why there are SO many aqua biker caps then realizes women 35+ for the tri also have orange... and their wave starts right ahead of us.... huh? not. enough. coffee.
8:05am Katie wades in deep enough to take a few strokes, feels suffiently cold, and gets out to wait for the start
8:12am aqua bike start goes off (early?)

So there you have it, an overly honest account of a real life race morning "plan". I hope you found our struggles comical. Stay tuned for Matt's race report and my return to regularly scheduled blogging.

Pre-Race Thoughts

Tomorrow, Will and I will be running in the 46^th annual Paavo Nurmi Marathon. The race was named after, the Finnish athlete/Olympian and 7x gold medalist Paavo Johannes Nurmi, aka the “Flying Finn”.

I have to say that I love small races! In a lot of ways, Hurley reminds me of Monte Rio; the small town feel is great!  The packet pick-up and expo were held in the local high school, in addition to a pasta feed for runners their families/friends. We opted not to join in the dining experience in the high school cafeteria. I should also mention that the 5k runners and the half marathoners were able to pick up their shirts at the expo, but we will not get our race shirts until we FINISH the marathon.

A picture says a thousand words...

 

Race Expo

 

Pasta Feed

While the race website promises beautiful scenery and great spectators, I am somewhat skeptical. We drove along the course and all I can say is that I hope the clouds show up in full force tomorrow. The forecast call for highs in the upper 70’s L.

I am feeling unprepared and scared. On paper, my training plan says I am good to go. In reality, the past two shake out runs and my current state say differently. Let’s hope the race gods are on my side tomorrow.

The plan is to race smart AND negative split. I would like to go out at 7:50 – 8:00 miles and see where the race takes me. I hope that Will plans to stick with me for the first 10 or so. However, if you have read about his recent training, you may not think that’s the best idea.

The ceremonial torch. We saw the lighting ceremony parade from inside the restaurant :).

Stay tuned for the race report. 

Guess what I (we) did?

Posted by Rachel

1 year... simultaneously such a long time yet barely enough time.

We signed up for Ironman Canada. Whistler, here we come!! July 26, 2015

As for training, I currently have (and plan to maintain) a decent base in all three sports. I'll run a marathon in November, take a fat drunk December (this is what I call a glorious month with no formal training), then get it going in January. I'm very tempted to make up my own training plan based on what I think I should be doing, but I clearly don't know what I'm doing compared to, say, a real coach. So the jury is out on the training plan, and we'll see how it goes. I'm sure you all will hear plenty about it when the time comes. WOOHOO!!!

Fastest post ever

Posted by Chen

I'm 16 minutes away from running the SF marathon, and I'm so completely and utterly undertrained! To my fellow co-authors - if you don't hear from me later today, please have the authorities hunt down bib 31115. I'll probably be passed out in Golden Gate Park near an ice cream truck.

At least the Bay Bridge was breathtaking to see...

Catch y'all on the flipside!

Pre-race thoughts: Vineman Monte Rio

Posted by Rachel

I like Katie's idea of posting pre-race thoughts, so here we go. The Olympic distance Vineman Monte Rio tri is this Sunday. It will be my third Olympic distance triathlon, and my goal here is to PR (current PR 2:53). My swimming and running are already somewhat close to optimized (sorry, got a little engineery there), and I can't expect huge significant drops in those legs. What I would really like to see on Sunday is a strong improvement in the bike, and I feel like I've been training hard enough to see at least something. Last year my bike split in my Olympic tri was a lot slower than I thought it could be, but my bike split in the 70.3 was pretty much faster than I thought was physically possible (for me). My point is, I have a REALLY hard time gauging what my bike split should be from my training, so whatever happens Sunday will be either a good surprise or a bad surprise!

It felt wrong to have a blog post without a picture, so here's a pic of the piping hot blueberry cobbler I just made. Don't worry- we'll be eating it with vanilla ice cream.

Another fun fact is that we have two new triathletes racing with us this weekend- fellow bloggers (sort of) Sandi and Will! In the spirit of first triathlons I'm going to make a list-style overview of my first tri (also an Olympic distance), especially highlighting all of the mistakes I made:

1.) The swim went fine. Then again, I had been racing swimming for 18 years. If you can't manage to have decent execution of a sport that you've been doing for that long, then it's a bad sign. In hindsight I may have even taken it a little too easy, but there's no shame in that in a first tri.

2.) My bike wasn't in a low enough gear for the short but steep uphill out of the parking lot. Also, I was getting passed a lot so I basically sprinted the first two miles of the bike, which of course, resulted in me feeling like my quads were going to fall off by mile 10. I'll also add that I ate and drank nothing on the bike because I couldn't take a hand off my handlebars without crashing. Luckily that situation has improved since my first race.

3.) The run wasn't a total disaster, but it was hot. I was feeling the effects of not drinking anything for the last 1:30+ (ok, closer to 1:40). And again, I pushed the first mile WAY too hard. Luckily, I had also been running for a long time so I managed to drag myself through the 10k although I'm sure there was some serious positive splitting going on.

For those of our readers who are triathletes... what mistakes did you make in your first (or subsequent) triathlon?

Pre-race thoughts: Bayshore Marathon

Posted by Katie and Matt

Tomorrow Matt and I are running the Bayshore Marathon held in Traverse City, MI. We picked this particular marathon in order to run with my cousin Emily (who flew out to meet us in Santa Barbara, CA for my 2nd marathon). This race is a flat out and back race along the East Grand Traverse Bay. Weather for tomorrow looks to be chilly at the start (47F), which to me sounds REALLY COLD but Matt assures me that is "perfect running weather".

Obligatory starting line photo

My thoughts are definitely mixed for tomorrow. This training cycle has been a bit hit or miss for me. I was finishing my PhD through most of it which in retrospect was not a great idea and definitely caused me to miss a few runs. Naively I thought that training for a marathon while writing my thesis would be great...start writing, get stuck on some wording, head out for a run, and boom, brilliant idea comes to mind. In reality I just felt guilty when I was running, and stressed that I had missed too much running when I wasn't. I did manage to complete most of the long runs, and I am hoping that all that skiing we did this winter counts for some major cross training points!

As far as my goal for the race.. I would be happy with anything under 4:41 (my current best, at Santa Barbara in 2012). Last fall I finally broke 2 hours in the half-marathon distance, something I had always been close too but never quite there. For the previous Christmas, Matt had given me the gift of a personal pacer (and mp3 player) to finally break the 2 hour barrier that I had so struggled with. Best. present. ever! So based on that time, I had set my training paces to target a time of 4:10. That time is now definitely out of reach given how hard it was to hold the right paces on my long runs. Then I had taken stock and decided 4:25 would be a great goal (1 hour faster than my first ever marathon 5:25 back in 2009). Turns out I was severely anemic at the time and did not know… spoiler alert: running WITH hemoglobin (like I do now) is MUCH easier than running without (like I did in 2009). Unfortunately I think that goal might be out of reach at this point too so I've decided I will be happy with not exploding and hopefully a PR of anything.. 1 minute... 10 seconds... I'll take it! I am also really hoping to run with my cousin and best friend of 29 years Emily. We ran together the whole time in that Santa Barbara marathon in 2012, though we were both struggling with various injuries. Hopefully we are about the same pace tomorrow!

I mean how could I resist "everything good blended together"?

Everything good = espresso and vanilla iced cream!

 Traveling to Traverse City by way of the east coast means that I have been carb loading for about a whole week. First in Mass for a good friends wedding, then in NYC to see my sister (YAY BAGELS), then out to Michigan. Today we got to explore the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Seashore, which was really fun. The dunes are enormous, ~500ft max elevation. We did the "climbing dune" which is just like it sounds... you climb right up a giant sand dune and were rewarded with some amazing views. Matt had a great time log rolling down the dune on the way back.

View from the top of the Climbing Dune hike.

Nice form on the log roll!

Lake Michigan (or is this a tropical island?!)

Matt's pre-race thoughts:

I am excited to be running in a beautiful new location (although I may not agree completely with it's slogan "Most Beautiful Place in America"). The dunes and the Lake are picture perfect. We have fantastic weather lined up for the morning and will have a great cheering squad of my parents, Katie's mom, and Emily's mom out there on the course. We also have carb loaded very appropriately (see pictures below). I'm hoping those combine for a PR and a sub 3 hour marathon tomorrow. My training cycle was pretty good - life (and skiing) got in the way a bit so I did not hit the track as religiously as I had planned in the beginning of my training. I did manage to get four 20+ mile runs in - the last time I got that many long training runs in, I qualified for Boston for the first time back in 2009. My last 20 miler was at a reasonably brisk pace of my goal marathon pace + 15 seconds. I also successfully managed to fly near 10,000 miles in the last week and half and not get sick during the taper (which, despite rarely getting sick, I've managed to do for ~33% of the endurance races that I've done). All and all, I think I have about a 50% shot of pulling off my goal, which, for a Marathon, is about all you can ask for. Here we go!!!

A lunch fit for a marathoner

Official carb loading by chef Matt

Boston: Pre-race thoughts

Posted by Chen

I started this post yesterday from SFO, 15 minutes before boarding my redeye flight, and it still hadn’t hit me that marathon weekend had actually arrived. Even now, after having walked around Beantown all day like the sleep-deprived zombie that I am, I’m mostly in denial that I’ll be running 26.2 miles in less than 48 hours. Whether I like it or not, though, this thing is happening, and it’s probably time that I put into writing the various Boston-related thoughts that have been circulating throughout this jumbled brain of mine all week.

This is probably sacrilegious for me to say, but Boston isn’t my favorite marathon. Far from it, actually. I can easily see why people hold it in such high regard, but I've personally found it somewhat difficult to get super excited about the race in the past. To me, marathoners are generally pretty type-A people, and Boston only amplifies this by plucking the type-A+ folks from the crowd and corralling them all into the same super-hyped event. I consider myself to be type-B+ on a good day, so my one and only Boston experience so far (2011) was pretty overwhelming. That year, my friends had arrived a day or two earlier than I did, so I went to the expo alone. While I had planned on nabbing all sorts of awesome Boston gear that morning, the crowds frightened me so much that I grabbed my bib and shirt and bolted like a bat out of hell. The race itself certainly had more crowd support than any race I’d ever run before, which was great to see, but other than that, my experience left me feeling a little bit ‘meh’. Maybe I had over-hyped the event in my own mind; maybe it was that I bonked after heartbreak hill and crawled to the finish line, but after the event was over, I didn’t exactly feel the need to return anytime soon.

But then last year happened. So much has already been said about the events of 4/15/13, so I won’t go into too much detail here. What I will say, though, is that even though I didn’t personally know anyone who ran the race last year, I still found myself deeply affected by what had occurred. I was glued to the news for days and couldn’t stop myself from looking at the gruesome images that popped up all over the internet. I was horrified, saddened, and in disbelief that a day typically associated with achievement, triumph, and joy could be marred by such senseless terror.

I think every entrant this year has his or her own personal reasons for running. For me, Monday’s race will represent the next step forward in bringing the Boston Marathon back to what it had always been before 4/15/13 – a day to celebrate all of its runners’ accomplishments, whether that be training diligently to qualify or raising thousands of dollars for noteworthy charities around the greater Boston area. It will be about making sure that runners’ biggest worries revert back to whether they remembered Body Glide or whether they timed their porta-potty visits properly. And it will be about encouraging all of those dedicated spectators to come out and show their support without fear.

So while the expo was equally as overwhelming this year, and while I still feel supremely inferior compared to all of the runners here who have competed in Boston year after year, I can honestly say I’m super excited to be part of this year’s race. I have no idea how I’ll perform, but it really isn’t about that anyway. I’m eager to toe the line with the marathon community and celebrate my favorite sport in the world.

Sweet Boston swag