First bike commute of the year

Posted by Rachel

I’ve been noticing that our blog lacks updating a bit during the weekdays, so I’ll make an entry here to spice things up. Monday I went for a “brick”- a swim directly followed by a spin class. Actually, here’s a side story about swimming. I grew up on the east coast, where we trained outside maybe three months out of the year. When I moved to California, it was the strangest thing to me that all pools are outside. Even though it does get cold(ish) in the “winter” months, the pools are heated and people still swim outside. In fact, one of the funny memories I have from the Boston Marathon is from right after we checked into our hotel, and on the way to our room Travers (my native- Californian husband) asked, completely dumbfounded, “They have an indoor pool?!” The reason this side story is relevant (sort of) is because Monday it was warm and sunny out and the pool was PACKED. The previous Monday it was raining and at the same time of day, Travers and I were the only two people to be seen anywhere near the pool. I really just cannot understand how a little rain deters people from a sport where you’re completely submerged in water, but I digress.

Moving on in the week, I had a fun track workout yesterday since there was a large group of us running it together. Then today Travers and I picked up an old habit that we started last summer. On Wednesdays, we bike home from work (about 29 miles, almost 2000 ft of climbing, almost always into the wind). It was our first full bike commute of the season and it went pretty well. Somehow, it was faster than all of my commutes last summer when I was in much better shape. I did try a new strategy of ducking to get “smaller” into the wind, and that seems to have gone well so maybe I’ll try that more. I guess I can see why people get those fancy triathlon bars for their bikes. I’ll leave you with a picture from our commute:

(It looks like a picture of a silver car, but I promise it’s the sunset over the San Francisco Bay)

I’d also include a picture of my dinner here, if I hadn’t scarfed it down (scarved? what is the past tense of food scarfing?) immediately after it hit my plate. Also, our next bike ride is the East Bay bagel challenge, so stay tuned for THAT (intrigued yet?).

Race Report: Napa Valley Silverado Half Marathon

Posted by Chen

Today I ran my 14th half at the Napa Valley Silverado Half Marathon.  Going into this race, I had no idea what my plan was. I had originally planned to practice marathon goal pace for Boston (optimistically, that would be ~7:50-7:55, ish), but then I decided to view the race results from last year a couple nights ago and saw that the winning time in my age group was right around my PR. So obviously I started to toy with the idea of trying to place in my age group because I've never been able to do so in a half and also because that's totally a logical decision to make when you're two weeks away from a marathon.

A few things made me skeptical that I could actually race well, though, one being that my shake-out 7 miler yesterday felt alarmingly sluggish, and two being that I knew the course and knew it wasn't nearly as "flat and fast" as the race directors were advertising. Three, in trying to do my shake-out run and also pack and also drive over to my friend's place in time to pick some people up for the ride up to wine country yesterday morning, I didn't end up eating breakfast or lunch, save for a couple oranges and some handfuls of high-fiber cereal (which is HIGHLY unusual for me. The not eating part. Not the high-fiber part. Fiber rocks my world.). Four, the highs were forecasted to reach into the 80s this weekend, and if there's anything that will bring me to my knees in a race, it's heat. And lastly, I spent most of yesterday lounging poolside with the other ladies who would be running with me, which left me mildly-to-moderately dehydrated by the end of the day. So really, all signs pointed to me bonking, quitting, hopping off the road, and hobbling into a winery instead. Still, I figured I would just start the race at race pace and wait to see what happened. Because logical decision-making!

I prefer my "flat and fast" routes to have at least 3 dozen fewer hills

Race morning was pretty uneventful, though I didn't have time to do the 3+ mile warm-up I had wanted to do to bring my long run total up to 16, which is the distance that I normally run 2 weeks out from a full 'thon.  I wasn't too concerned, though, and figured I could run it later if I really wanted to. One thing I found comical about the race site was the "Anticipated start time of 8:00am."  I prefer more commitment, please.  Otherwise, how am I supposed to properly time my rigorous porta-potty visits???  Luckily, the race only started 5 minutes late, and we were off.

I started out too fast (of course), but I also had in the back of my mind that this route was an out-and-back with a net downhill first half.  Negative splitting went out the window early on, and I figured I would just go out at tempo effort and then try to hang on once we turned around (rookie move). My legs have been feeling more tired than usual ever since we ran the Oakland marathon a couple weekends ago, and I could definitely feel some residual fatigue during the first few miles, which did not bode well for the uphill return.  I eventually settled into a more reasonable pace while still trying to take advantage of the relatively long downhill portions.

First half splits (caveat: my Garmin is getting old and has been falling behind lately, so it ended up measuring the course as being quite short today - 12.96 miles.  I get the feeling the course was actually short, but probably not by as much as my Garmin said):
1: 7:24 (dumb)
2: 7:28 (still dumb)
3: 7:46
4: 7:39
5: 7:38
6: 7:39

We hit the turnaround point, and, as expected, everything felt significantly harder on the way back. I was temporarily distracted as I ran by all of my friends who were running the race as well, but once that excitement died down (which also happened to be when it started to get hot out), I quickly realized that I had a lot of work ahead of me.  I think at some point I confirmed that a PR was well out of the question, so I let myself ease up a bit and settled into marathon goal pace, though that sadly still felt like a tempo effort given the terrain. It also didn't help that I had to go to the bathroom (in THAT way) for the last few miles - this has always been my nightmare, but luckily things stayed in place until after I finished. Have I mentioned that I talk about poop a lot? I'm happy that I didn't totally throw in the towel and only had 1 mile above 8:00 pace, but I was a little irked that I let myself go out too fast, resulting in a bit of a slogfest on the way back. The only nice part about the 2nd half was that either because of my old, dying Garmin or because the course was actually short, the finish line came out of nowhere and the pain was over sooner than expected. I crossed the finish line in 1:39:43 (just about a minute slower than my PR), relieved to be done.

2nd half splits:
7: 7:37
8: 7:43
9: 7:54
10: 7:51
11: 7:43
12: 8:03 (everything is terrible)
13: 7:38
13.1: N/A (my Garmin measured so short that this tenth didn't exist)

I joined my friends who were waiting at the finish and cheered the rest of our friends in, which is always a great time. I also learned while waiting that I had somehow placed first in my age group, with a bottle of wine being the prize (yay booze!). Last-minute-goal accomplished :). So, while I ran a pretty stupid race, I still had a great time overall and was very happy to have spent a beautiful weekend up in wine country.

My age group prize - Sharkfest Bloody Red. I've never heard of it, but I'm sure I will enjoy it thoroughly. In one sitting.

And as for that 3+ mile warm-up I didn't get to run, I managed to squeeze in an easy 4.5-miler once I got home from wine country 6 hours later, bringing my total up to 17.5 (ish) for the day. There's a strong chance I will regret adding that mileage as I'm running from Hopkinton to Boston in two weeks, but what you didn't know is that I also plan to replace running with competitive baguette eating during that time, so hopefully I will have recovered and replenished my glycogen stores by then. (Except for that 10 mile race I have next Sunday). (Yes, I am even dumber than you thought).

Quit on my run but not on my dinner

Posted by Rachel 

If any of you have read the “Meet the Team” page, you may have noticed that Chen mentions we’re all runners yet I claim to be a swimmer. Well, I swam competitively from age 9 until I quit in the middle of college. However, my love of food did not quit, and shortly after moving to California I realized I better take up another activity soon if I’m going to grad school on the beach. I was still a bit burnt out from over a decade of swimming, so that’s how I met running. The point of this story is to emphasize that I love food so much that I started running for it.

Skipping to today, I went out for a run with Sandi thinking “she’s doing 12, I’ll just do that with her”. At noon, with the sun beating on my already sunburnt face, arms, and legs, I realized quickly that this was a bit ambitious, especially since I’m not slated to race anything over 6.2 miles until October. When we passed my house at 8.5 it seemed good enough, I bailed and spent the rest of the day focusing on food (a good decision indeed).

Here’s the result:

Homemade pasta. To quote Travers, "You look like a little old Italian lady." I think what he meant to say is "thank you for this delicious dinner!". 

And the final product:

And that's all for today.

PS- Feel free to leave comments, people! One of these days, one of the eight of us will figure out how to display them at the bottom of the post without having to click.

Fairytales on Wheels

Posted by Sandi

Today Rachel and I participated in a metric century ride known as the “Cinderella Classic.” We rode with our friend and speed work (for track workouts) mentor, Jeanine. Despite Rachel’s initial hesitation in taking on the mileage after a few 20+/- mile training rides (and our 38+ mile wine tasting tour), I think we both had a blast. The cool thing about the ride is that it is hosted by men for women riders.

After parking and prepping our bikes, we headed over to the check-in area. It was COLD! Fortunately, the check-in area was inside. We picked up our bike bibs and wrist bands, and then grabbed some pre-ride fuel. They provided quartered bagels with cream cheese, peanut butter or jam and coffee.  

It took us all a while to warm up once we got on the road. The route was pretty awesome with great views of gently rolling slopes and the vineyards of Livermore.  While the wineries and vineyards we passed were inviting, there was no wine tasting today during today’s ride.  There were some decent hill climbs in the route, which really highlighted our climbing skills. The unfortunate thing about the ride is that I realized how much we need to work on the flats and down hills; although we passed several riders on the uphill efforts, we got passed by the same riders on the down hills. 

We had to deal with a few repeat mechanical issues including flat tires and locking breaks, which did not help the passing issues.  In addition, there were several back to back traffic lights in the route that made using higher gears and momentum difficult.

While this may not have been the best training option in preparation for the Boston Marathon, I think (and hope) I will still benefit from the aerobic effort.  There was an option for to add mileage and elevation, but I thought that would be too much to take on today. I would definitely ride this route again during our official IM training.

I am pretty sure Katie is skiing up in Tahoe this weekend, and if so I am sure she is having a blast! Finally, best of luck to Chen in her half marathon tomorrow!!

Two mileage records in two days

Posted by Rachel 

Yesterday on the way home from work I reached a mileage milestone. One that requires no physical fitness whatsoever:

(Dont' worry, I was driving and Travers took the pic. No lives were risked to obtain this image). 

This is pretty exciting/scary, since I’m due for some serious recommended maintenance as well as replacement of two recalled parts (if you follow the news at all, here’s your dead giveaway that I drive a GM car). Hopefully the car lasts a lot longer, since I’ll be really sad if my next purchase is a car instead of an upgraded bike.

So onto training, which is what this blog is supposedly about. A few weeks ago, Sandi (the crazy one, see her bio) got this great idea that we should do an all-women’s metric century. Since I hadn’t exceeded 18 miles on the bike since the half IM 6+ months ago, I thought that maybe tripling that distance wouldn’t be such a brilliant idea (runners have a 10% guideline, not a 300% guideline). Not to mention that the longest ride I had EVER done, even in the throes of half IM training last summer, was 62 miles. But it’s not like I’ve been sitting on the couch watching TV lately, and there was that marathon two weeks ago which I assumed could provide some translational fitness. So I surveyed around and got some results, and since my mom and husband didn’t think the idea was THAT ridiculous I figured what the hell. Also, the ride is called “Cinderella” and all of our ride update emails were from Prince Charming, so how could I really refuse? So this morning when my alarm went off at 5:15 am, I got up and packed enough food to feed a small village. This is my strategy when I’m out of shape for running, as well- just pack a crapload of food and hope for the best. Overall, it was very educational doing my first organized ride.
Here’s what I liked:
1.) There were 3 rest stops along the way with food and beverages, and it turns out then when you fuel and rest a lot it’s much easier to survive the bike ride. (Food theory confirmed. I will continue to consider the design of an aerodynamic baguette carrier for my bike.)
2.) I learned that contrary to my previous belief, I am actually NOT the worst cyclist! That was pretty encouraging.
3.) SAG vehicles come rescue you when you’re in despair. Like after our riding buddy got three flats and could no longer ride her bike (although it turned out that we were literally, unknowingly 0.5 miles from the finish line. We could have walked there faster than it took the SAG guy to go up to the next light and turn around. If you couldn’t tell, we’re directionally challenged).
Here’s what I didn’t like:
1.) When it’s a ride and not a race the roads aren’t closed, so basically it’s a whole ton of people in a little tiny bike lane pissing off drivers for 64 miles of road.
2.) People for the most part lack etiquette as well as just straight up common sense.

Here's your proof that I actually finished the ride!

So to summarize this way too long blog post, it was great to complete my longest ride ever even though I wasn’t winning any awards for speed in the process. Afterwards we went to Will & Sandi’s, ate some deep dish pizza and drank wine (actually remained more sober than expected after a long workout), and now I’m writing this blog post in an effort to stay up until 10 pm. I will also point out that I looked at my phone at 9:30 and had an invitation from a friend to go out and get drinks. I assumed the invitation must have been from hours ago (after all, it was almost bed time) and I felt guilty that I missed it, only to realize that the message was only 19 minutes old. Such is the life of a triathlete in training :) 

Ironman, Step 1: Taking my first bike ride in 13 years

Posted by Chen

Well hello, blogworld! I'm super excited for our new group training blog and intrigued to see if I can actually figure this "blogging" thing out. Despite my engineering background, I'm actually incredibly new-technology-averse. Case in point: I let my Garmin 405 sit idle for the first 9 months that I owned it because it just seemed so much more complicated to use than my easy-peasy Timex stopwatch. I also didn't get a smartphone until 2013, so there's that. All of that is to say that figuring out how to post here should be interesting. In spite of my technology aversion, I've actually wanted to start a running blog ever since I discovered them back in 2008 while training for my first full marathon, but I never thought I would have enough interesting content to post. Which, let's face it, probably would have been true.

I hear people like blogs better when there are pictures, so I'm posting this gratuitous picture of a burger and fries and whole pickle.  Incidentally, this is what we ate after a group of us ran the Oakland marathon & half a couple weekends ago.  It was delicious and made all of the hill climbing worth it.

BUT, now that we have at least eight of us toying with the idea of a 2015 Ironman, I should have plenty of crazy stories to tell. Why? Well, I'd say of the group, I'm probably the least prepared for the triathlon world, given that I only have in-depth experience with 33% of the sports involved. While the rest of this crew has been swimming and/or cycling for years, the last time I swam consistently was between the ages of approximately 5-10 when I took swimming lessons at my local Y back in PA. And that only happened because my parents forced me to slash bribed me with the promise of a hot dog topped with ketchup and relish at the end of each class. And biking? Before this past weekend, the last bike ride I took was from my dorm to my 9am math class during my freshman year of college. I somehow managed to eat asphalt during that ride (despite my journey totaling all of 1.25 miles), and from that moment on, I swore off biking forever.

'Forever' lasted until this past Sunday. The day before, Brandon (a fellow author of this blog who has yet to post but will soon, I'm sure!) and I had gone into a bike store to purchase an extra water bottle for him, and I somehow came out of the store with a brand new Bianchi. Oh, and some clips, shoes, a helmet (safety first!), gloves, a seat bag, an extra water bottle, an extra water bottle holder, tubes, and probably some other pieces of miscellaneous gear that I'm already forgetting. I think my credit card shed actual tears. While it probably wasn't the most financially sound purchase I've ever made, it was certainly timely, as I was scheduled to go on my first real ride with the group the next day.

Meet my Bianchi.  His name is Bert.

Long story short: I survived 38.2 miles (broken up by wine tasting and lunch at the turnaround point, mind you), only fell twice, and ended up with only one somewhat nasty bruise on my shin. Learning to clip in was awkward at best, but it actually wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting, thanks to tutelage from the crew. The ride itself was beautiful (at least it was during the rare moments when I looked up from staring intensely at the ground in an effort to avoid debris) and (dare I say) enjoyable, though it helped that everyone was keeping the pace easy for newbie me. Aside from falling, the most pain I ever felt was towards the end of the ride when my bum and my hands couldn't take it anymore - that will take some getting used to. From a cardiovascular and muscular standpoint, though, I felt pretty good, which was a pleasant surprise.

I even followed the ride up later with a hilly 12.75 mile run at a surprisingly decent pace (~8:03, for those who like numbers and data as much as I do). I'm not sure where that came from, but methinks my legs were just happy to be performing a familiar motion again. While a fake brick workout wasn't exactly in my original plans that weekend, I had skipped my 20 miler the day before (too busy bike shopping, obvi!) and felt the need to run at least a medium distance run to keep up with my Boston 'thon training, which is still my primary focus at the moment. Full triathlon training will have to hold its horses and wait a few weeks.

All in all, I had a great first ride experience, and while I'm pretty sure running marathons will always be my main jam, I'm excited to see what these other sports have to offer.

Next up: Learn to swim without drowning. Coach Rachel - I will be scheduling an appointment within the next 4-6 weeks.

Goal pace running on a treadmill

Posted by Sandi

Let me share a little more background information about the group. As previously mentioned, we get to train in an amazing region with an ideal climate. However, the majority of us grew up on the east coast, so theoretically we should be accustomed to training in all types of weather. This is not the case!

I had planned on a track workout this evening, but the today's forecast was meek with a 100 percent chance of rain and a high of 51 degrees. I realize I shouldn't complain as the east coast has been hammered with a nasty winter this year, and the northern midwestern states are still covered in snow. But, sadly, California has made me soft. In addition, I have been pretty exhausted from our group training ride this weekend. I spent most of the day dreading the workout and ultimately opted for a goal pace training run inside. While I am not a huge fan of treadmill running, sometimes it's necessary.

I went straight to the gym after work with the goal of running 8 miles total; 1 warm up, 6 at goal pace, and 1 cool down. Thankfully, there was an open treadmill in my favorite area of the gym where there is a single row of treadmills with good air flow. The workout started great! It had been two days since I last ran and I could tell that I had benefited from the rest. I was nearly half way through the workout when things took a turn for the worse. Although there were at least half a dozen empty treadmills in the row, a heavyset man decided to run on the treadmill right next to me! I grew more anxious and uncomfortable as time went on. As he stomped his way through his workout I felt more and more claustrophobic. I couldn't tell how fast he was going but he seemed to be matching my cadence.  I struggled to clear my mind, determined to finish the workout. Somehow, I was able to divert my focus and successfully finish the 8 miles.

Tomorrow is a swim day!