Monday

Swimming just got harder.

I rode my bike over to the pool this morning only to find out that the pump broke yesterday and they don't know when it'll be fixed. Parts have to be ordered from the mainland and in the past when this has happened it's been months of waiting... So this news made my heart drop. :( Of course I'll find other places to swim but logistically it'll be harder. Nalani and I are truly spoiled having that pool so close (1 mile from my house and about 1/4 mile from Nalani's work) so normally swimming rarely involves driving a car. AND that pool is longcourse which I just LOVE. I think we will start getting up super early and driving over to a pool on a military base that is longcourse yards. I know. Who makes longcourse yards pools??

Anyway, that got me thinking about consistency and about how it's so much easier to be consistent when logistically you can fit training into your life. With a free (heated!) pool located 1 mile from my house, I really have no excuses not to swim, you know? So I'm consistent. And therefore I get better at swimming. Which makes me enjoy it more. Which makes me want to keep doing it. Nice upward spiral, huh? Vs the other situation that I think a lot of people face... It's logistically a pain in the ass to get to the pool, so they skip workouts a lot, which makes swimming harder and improvement hard to come by. Then it's hard to enjoy swimming b/c the workouts aren't fun b/c they're just not seeing improvement... that's an ugly downward spiral that I hope to avoid during these next few months of logistical-pain-in-the-assness I am about to face with this sport.

So it was a no go on the swim this morning... which just meant that I got started earlier on my bike ride... and of course as soon as I started riding it started raining. Perfect. Obviously it's Monday. I felt like I was being tested. But whatever. I passed the test! :) Each time I've gone out on my bike I've seen my avg pace get a little faster while my avg HR gets a little lower. So it's all heading in the right direction and that is motivating.

As it was raining on me this morning I thought about an interview I saw with Andy Schleck (Go Andy!!) the other day. The interviewer (Frankie Andreu?) asked him if he thought rain would be a factor in the uphill finish of the stage and Andy's response was classic. He just kind of shook his head (rolled his eyes?) and dismissed the question with a quick 'no'. The gist of it being, of course, that as professional cyclists they don't let things like rain get in the way of their riding. It's a non-factor in their minds. I liked that outlook and adopted it for myself this morning. Of course I also had visions in my head of all those professional guys crashing all over the place this last week so I would be a fool to say I didn't heed some extra caution on the wet roads... yikes.

Just Me, Myself, and My Heart Rate Monitor

So I'm continuing down this road of trying to recover from CdA. I think it's going as expected. I don't feel super but I don't feel terrible and I think my head is in the right place. Coach is encouraging me to be patient which I appreciate.

I'm back on the heart-rate-monitor-as-choke-chain plan... jogging and riding and seeing those numbers and then backing off and going even easier and walking up hills and well, you know the drill. This morning I actually drove to Kailua to get my run in because it's flatter there and I didn't want to have to walk half my run (which I would have had to do to keep my HR in the right place on given the hills around my house)... so there I was jogging ever so gently on a flat road being passed by a very old man who appeared to be barely moving forward but obviously he was going faster than me and in my ears Jamie Foxx was singing You know you're looking at a winner winner winner I can't miss can't lose can't miss you know you're looking at a winner winner winner yeah cause I'm a winner... It was a rather classic ironman training moment in my world. Lol.

Anyway, whats interesting to me this time around is that I find myself much less frustrated at the slow pace I have to jog to keep my HR in the right place. In the winter when I was just doing this for the first time it was incredibly frustrating. Right now? Notsomuch. I was thinking about that this morning while I was jogging and I came to the conclusion that last time I was only like maybe 75% sure that this was the right way for me to be training- and 100% of that 75% was simply because it's what Tim told me to do and he sounded so confident in it... (I swear the only reason I stuck to it was b/c I didn't want to let him down by not following the plan.) But this time around I am 100% certain that this is what I need to be doing. I know that it's going to get better and I know that by putting my time in with this slow/easy stuff now I'll be able to really push the harder workouts that are coming in the next few months. So it's all good. I am not worried.

Interestingly, I got a note yesterday from a young gal who trains here locally... she told me that her coach was making her train at HR 140-150 and that she was very frustrated at the slow pace she had to hold and that she couldn't hang onto any group rides at that heart rate and that she felt like ending every training session in tears... but she heard that's how I trained and is that true?? I smiled with understanding and wrote back to her- yep, true. That's why I ride alone so much. Just me, myself, and my heart rate monitor.

Surviving In My House

Recovery from an Ironman is interesting. You think you feel fine, then you go swim/bike/run something short and easy and think ok I feel fine- this is great and then you go try to do a real workout and think um, ok maybe not.

I've been 'exercising' the last few days and feeling fine so this morning I tried to do what I would consider a 'real' swim workout... descending 200's. I bailed after 6 of them b/c I felt heavy and sluggish and thought Really, there is no point to doing this today. It's just not there yet. Interestingly, I was completely fine with my decision to bail on that workout... I very rarely bail on workouts because I hate feeling like I failed... but I think I'm getting smarter in my old age b/c I didn't feel like I failed at all this morning. It's like I've got this new objective perspective on myself as an athlete... and when my body is telling me NO, it's easy for me to listen and back off or stop. After years and years of this, I know that the good feeling when you're training ebbs and flows and soon enough I'll be killing it again.

But since I much prefer the killing it flow vs this heavy/sluggish ebb, I'm thinking I really need to start paying attention to details again when it comes to recovery. I'm sure I didn't do myself any favors (when it comes to physical recovery anyway) by drinking four beers within a couple hours of crossing the finish line in Idaho... or by eating all the crap that I did and not really sleeping much at all while camping in a tent at 8,000ft when it was less than 40 degrees... you know... those things probably didn't help. But whatever. It's fine. Now I'll get back to doing the things I used to do that allowed me to feel good training... because now I want to feel good training again! To that end, I went to Costco today and stocked up on avocados, broccoli, mangos, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, lemons, spinach, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, almonds, cashews, chicken, fish, shrimp, cottage cheese, and greek yogurt. When I was checking out the guy at the register looked at my cart of food and said, "I could never survive in your house!" Ha! That cracked me up. If he thought that then I pretty much guarantee that I would never survive in his house either. To each his own. I was wearing a tank top that said Ironman Coeur d'Alene and he asked, "Did you really do that Ironman??" I replied YES. And I won! (ok little white lie- should have said almost won but I could not resist). Then I told him, there's a reason why I eat all this food! So here's to good recovery going forward... :)

Pictures From Yellowstone and Glacier

Some of these pictures are Kurt's... some are mine... here's the token picture from Old Faithful. It really does go off ~every 90 minutes and though it was cool, this was probably my least favorite part because it was very crowded and touristy.

We saw lots of wildlife in the parks. Bison are huge and this looks painful!

And check these guys out.. crossing the river!

How would you like to wear these antlers all the time? I wonder how heavy those are?

Check out the bear crossing the street! I did not actually see this- Kurt and Nalani did though.

We spent several nights camping here in Yellowstone. It was really cold and there was snow right next to our camp sight. Moana was intrigued.

We hung near the fire and made it all better by toasting marshmallows.

Moana had her first s'more.

It was Moana's first time camping. She was a champ about it, though that may have had something to do with the air mattress, the princess sleeping bag, her doggie pillow pet, her stuffed elephant, and her blankies. Hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? (My hardcore camping coach is cringing right now. It's okay. We are wimps from Hawaii, remember? ;)

My favorite part of Yellowstone might actually have been this...

The drive from Yellowstone to Glacier was rather long. We stopped every few hours (every time Moana cried "I WANT OUT!") and had a bit of fun family exercise.

East Glacier was just gorgeous. Words just can't describe this.

At sunrise...

Trails here were amazing and I could not resist running.

Everywhere we turned we were warned about the bears.

Like I said before, I never saw one but apparently the threat was real.

Nalani and Kurt saw another black bear along the side of the road in Glacier. They said he was just chillin' out and eating some flowers.

We saw more benign animals. Moana and I checking out a deer right in front of our cabin...

It wasn't as cold here at it was in Yellowstone, but Moana still wanted to hang out right near the heater in our little cabin.

I went jogging along this lake on the last morning we were there... and I had this really strong urge to swim... It had been a full week since I'd swam and I was going into withdrawals and thinking that a swim here would just be totally amazing but let's be honest... This lake made the lake in Coeur d'Alene seem like a hot tub. I wouldn't even stick my little toe in there.

Moana was fascinated by the cold water. She kept asking, "Can I touch it?" Sure you can, sweetie. Go ahead. 

Hiking, in Moana's world. That's how she rolls!

Moving on... we spent the 4th of July at Silverwood Theme Park in Idaho. It was actually quite warm so on the odd occasion we could tear Moana away from riding the horses on the carrousel, we spent a good  amount of time at the water park.

We'll call that a fun family vacation!

Pictures from Coeur d'Alene

You may have seen most of these pictures already... most of them were taken by Kurt. He got a new camera a few months ago which was awesome b/c he just snapped away the whole time and now our whole trip is preserved digitally. Well, not all of it was awesome. Some of the pictures were (very much) less than flattering but luckily Nalani has a good eye for those and she spent much of our return flight last night hitting the delete button on Kurt's computer.

This first pic was from the first day we were there. It was 80ish degrees and sunny and my breath was taken away by the beauty of the place. I was ready to sell our place here and move to Idaho. But that only lasted about a day and then the cold rain came and I changed my mind. 

We swam in that icy lake every day trying to acclimate ourselves. One of the days (can't remember which one- it's all a very cold blur) it was rather windy in the morning which made for choppy conditions in the water. I like this picture- those are two of my athletes out front of me.

See how warm we look? Sometimes, when I get really nervous, I stick my fingers in my armpits and then I smell them like this... Maybe Nalani should have deleted this one.

Race morning we did everything we could to keep our core body temperatures up before the start. That included putting our wetsuits on in our condo prior to walking down to the start.

Notice the super stylish shoes!?! Scott found those at a thrift shop- socks too! And what you can't see are the chemical foot warmers inside the shoes. Our feet were toasty and we wore those things until about 3 minutes before the cannon went off and then just left them there on the beach for some lucky soul who might find them. Genius.

I saved this picture as 'swim start chaos'. That pretty much sums it up. There's a slight possibility that pink cap you can barely see there on the lower right corner is me or Nalani. We started near the front line somewhere around that area...

Running back into the water for the second loop (that's me in the pink cap with the orange stripe on my wetsuit)... There was pretty much nothing more unappealing at that point than getting back into that ice water and repeating the loop but those are the times you just shut your brain off and get it done. Like a robot. But it turned our that the 2nd loop was actually less miserable than the first because by then I had some room without too many people trying to swim on top of me.

Based on the fact that I'm no longer wearing my vest, I think this was about 70ish miles into the bike.

It wasn't always all smiles. Sometimes it was just ride. And check your HR on your garmin again.

I wore my helmet through T2... you know, just in case I fell over or something while trying to find my bag.

There weren't too many pictures from me on the run. Or maybe those were the ugly ones Nalani was smart enough to delete. Anyway, this one is from mile 26.155 of the marathon. I wasn't smiling because I had just been passed and I was watching the skinny gal dressed in black with the 36 on her calf crossing the finish line and winning our age group.

I regrouped though and smiled with Nalani after she finished! 11:11 was her finish time. That should be easy for her to remember... Ironman #1 and her finish time involved a bunch of 1s... I've secretly always wanted an 11:11 Ironman finish. Glad she has one! :)

Now you feel like you were there, huh? Kudos to Kurt for his photography skilz.

Our Trip...

There's way too much to write about regarding our travel adventures... So I'm just going to note down some of my thoughts and observations.

~Moana has been a traveling champ. She's so seasoned at this point. Going through airport security she automatically takes her shoes off now before even being asked. I did think at one point that a 2 week trip that involved 4 states and tons of driving and camping in cold weather climates (37 degrees in Yellowstone!) was really too much to ask of a 2 year old... Especially since we were all sick and coughing and Moana ended up with an ear infection that had us at an urgent care room at 10PM the other night begging for anti-biotics. But even with that, she's a champ.

~Alaska Air is awesome. I'm very pleasantly surprised by the service we've gotten. And they only charge $50 for bikes. Still too much in my opinion, but better than Delta/NWA $200 charge. I've officially boycotted them. But back to Alaska... Get the credit card for $99 companion ticket and a couple of passes into their 'board room' and get free drinks on your layovers. Oh, and they paint some of their planes with Disney caracters like Tinkerbell which makes your two year old deliriously happy.

~Cold weather makes your nose run. I've been using chap stick under my nostrils bc my nose is all chapped. Same with Moana.

~I'm the only one on our group who didn't see a bear while we were camping. But Nalani took some sweet pictures of one they saw so it's pretty much like I was there.

~Speaking of Nalani, she and Kurt are probably the best travel companions we could have asked for. They are totally organized but fun and laid back at the same time. In two full weeks of spending every day with them, I am not tired of them. Impressive, because I like my alone time.

~Early morning running in rural Montana and Idaho is very peaceful. Yesterday morning Nalani and I went jogging and saw 5 deer frolicking in a meadow... Then we saw two little fawns chasing each other around. It was way cool.

~I'm feeling quite recovered from IM already. I guess that's how it goes when you're pretty fit and ready going in.

~Two weeks is plenty of time to be away. We had fun but I am ready to be home. Pictures to come once Kurt uploads them. I think he took 1000+ so it might be a few days before he sorts through them. In the meantime, race pics are up on FB so you've probably at least seen those already.

Livin' Large

Oh my. It's time to go home.

We've been traveling for pretty much forever it seems... It's been fun of course, but um, yikes... Let's just say we've been eating our fair share of food... Much of it falling into the category of "crap". And yes, the huckleberry stuffed French toast that the B&B lady made us this morning falls in the crap category, even if it might have been the tastiest damn stuff I've ever eaten.

Today we are back in Idaho at the Silverwood Theme Park. I suppose if there's one place on earth I could come to make me feel like less of a lard ass right now, it is this park. These people are huge. And the park here is doing it's part to help them (us!) all get bigger, what with the ice cream, funnel cakes, cotton candy, kettle corn, corn dogs, and french fries everywhere. I swear you cannot walk 10 feet in that park without encountering another opportunity to eat crap. (It's the perfect "All-American" way to spend the 4th of July, no?) Moana ate Dippin' Dots for the first time. She was a fan. I ate half a bag of kettle corn then just had to stop. I think tomorrow when I get home the first place I am going to go is the health food store... Ok, who am I kidding... The first place I'm going to go is the pool bc I'm dying to swim... But after that I'm going to the health food store. I miss feeling good.