just sayin'

i do realize that i still need to write about my ironman run.......it's officially one month past race day now. i just got really caught up in being sick, working, and now the holidays. i hope that once i put the story in writing you all can feel the drama/agony that was race day. :) right now i'm enjoying the holidays, and feeling thankful for having a wonderful life (that may be the wine talking, fyi/tmi?). :) i'm still not running, and by that, i mean not working out at all. agh! even saying that makes me feel like i need a xanax (my anti-anxiety while flying medication). i had all of these exciting post-ironman workout plans........but for some reason nobody made me do them...and they didn't make it on the color-coordinated giant calendar. oh well. there's always 2009 right? i'm totally jealous of my friends who are training for, or signed up for another ironman. i think i JUST LOVE IT!! there is something about taking yourself to the limit. i did get a kettlebell for christmas, and after using one of those in physical therapy i could barely walk my booty was so sore. i'm kinda looking forward to that. he he. i think in january i'm going to let myself run again. just nice and slow. my ankle still hurts, and my right hip/sciatic nerve/hamstring/pubic bone still don't feel right, i'm going to be smart about it though and make sure that this year i only train when i'm 100%. i started feeling tempted by the wildflower long course demons the other day. i need to hang out with abby so she can remind me how much i despised that race. i just feel like, if i don't get to do an ironman in 2009, can't i just do the hardest half in town?? we'll see. after i run my first mile in months, i may change my mind!! :) well one of these days i will write about my run......i promise! :)

vegan

so, ya ya. i will write about the ironman run. that just takes a little more time and focus than just an everyday update.....and i feel like my new vegan stint deserves an update. :) so, because i always have to try to do hard things (ie: ironman), and like to learn new things and challenge myself. last year (after making a serious bet) i tried the whole vegan thing for a week which bled casually into the next couple months. it was TOUGH (the first week especially), and at the same time fun. it made me really look outside the box at things to eat, and forced me to eat lots of veggies and fruits. veganism also DIDN'T allow me to eat some of my favorite things that are not so good for me, read: cheese, ice cream, cookies at work, breakfast burritos at work, cookie dough, almost anything processed, etc....:( so sad.

generally with my ironman training, i just LIVE IT UP in regards to eating because, basically i love eating and i can eat what ever i want. my body actually requires large amounts of foods/midnight snacks!. lucky for me i LIKE to eat healthy things and typically EAT healthy-ish things (hey, i said healthy-ish....the above list is not frequent, okay except the breakfast burritos and the cookies at work, those are completely necessary!). leading up to the end of this year's ironman training, i was thinking of new challenges to keep my brain and body occupied while recovering. things like weight training, yoga, pilates, hmmm....maybe i'll go vegan again? after discussing it with brett, he was also up for the challenge. nice. it's way more fun to challenge yourself when you have a challenge-buddy.

so we decided december 9th would be the official start-day, because i had to eat all the cheese, milk, ice-cream, and cookie dough (yes, i savored each bite) in my refrigerator before we could start. everyone was telling us we should start in january because december would be the toughest month to start with all the christmas shenanigans etc. that just made us want to do it more in december. (we are kinda competitive) why wouldn't we do the TOUGHEST VEGAN MONTH EVA?! :) so here we are day two......there is almost nothing in my frige. i put all the non-vegan pantry supplies on the top shelf so there wouldn't be any accidental buttery-delicious-popcorn eating...or my favorite middle of the night cereal bar....eating....so sad.

on a positive note, i'm excited to bust out my vegan cookbook again and discover some fabulous new recipes. i've also been learning a lot about food production (thanks to brett's friends/supporters who keep sending him fun facts/vegan links). all i have to say is yuck! did you know sugar isn't vegan? (i'm not THAT vegan, nor will i ever be. what i'm saying is i will eat sugar), and skittles! gah! gelatin is disgusting, and vegan or not, i want no part of that! :)

ok, well here i am an excited day two vegan. yay for not getting fat post-ironman!

the beautiful bike

out of transition there was a narrow shoot-like section from transition to the road for about 1/4 mile or so. this section was a "no passing zone". when i entered the shoot it was chaos, there were people passing, people almost falling, people swerving. the girl in front of me, was trying to clip into her pedals and almost crashed about 4 times. i was just trying to keep my distance from her, and stay out of the way of the men who were rushing by me unsafely (on there way to 500th place, dummies). i was only clipped into one pedal and was just pushing myself along with the other foot, just trying to stay upright, when the guy behind me started yelling, GO KATY! GO KATY! (my number had my name on it) DON'T SLOW DOWN KATY! i felt like stopping to get off my bike to let him know how i felt about him screaming at me. i just yelled back that there was no where else for me to go. like those 30 seconds really mattered. what is with these people?





finally out in the open with no one to yell at me i settled in to my bike ride. i have watched this race a couple of times and always said i wouldn't do it, because i always thought it was such an ugly and boring course. once i was out of town i was REALLY enjoying the beautiful scenery, the cacti and the red rocks, the weather was perfect, the aid stations were fun and boisterous. what a wonderful day to do what i love!? the bike course was an out and back course that we completed three times, each segment was 18.5ish miles. the first "out", i was just having fun enjoying everything finding my rhythm the turn-around felt like it came too fast even! nice. the way back into town was even MORE fun as it's a gradual down-hill with a little tailwind to blow you home. i felt like i didn't do any work at all. back in town the crowds were going WILD! it was about 3 miles of fan-lined streets clapping, cheering, celebrating the athletes! i pretended they were all there just for me and was living it up! just before the turn-around i saw my friend nicole, who's husband was racing. she was literally jumping up and down cheering GO KATY, KATY!! GOOO!! it was so fun and exciting. :) after the turn-around i saw my family. they looked so excited and probably were. ironman spectating can be challenging and they were probably happy to finally see me for that instant. although it is an instant, it means the WORLD to an athlete i can tell you that. smile on my face, i headed out for round two of this course i was suddenly excited about.



hmmm... round two presented with some challenges, mainly the fact that i had to pee urgently and that darn 5 miles (which typically seems like nothing) to the next porto felt like an eternity! when i got to the aid station i spotted lea and michael helping the aid station volunteers pick-up water bottles. they gave me and exuberant cheer. i wanted to tell them i was stopping at the other side of the aid station to pee, if they wanted to chat, but didn't really feel like yelling that out. it would have been nice to chat it up with lea a bit while getting prepped to pee though. as it turns out the prepping to pee takes much longer than the peeing itself. it's one of those funny things, that i started getting better at with each pit stop. it goes: take the right glove off, keep the left glove on. place the right glove in any "safe" spot (i used my sports bra) so as not to drop it in the porto. move race number and fanny pack to the front of the body and up over the chest (so as not to sit on/urinate on race number). sun glasses, placed along side glove in sports bra. remember to blow your nose while you are in the porto. pull shorts back up, step out of porto to rearrange rest of stuff, so as not to drop ANYTHING in and or around dirty porto. yuck.

the next problem that presented itself was the head-wind/uphill. the uphill is gradual so it just felt like i sucked more than anything. 11-13mph! gah! i tried to tell myself to relax as that meant i'd go REALLY fast on the way back right? NOPE. somehow the wind changed and there was NO tailwind what-so-eva! oh well. i grabbed my "special needs bag" on the way back which had a delicious pb&j bagel, homemade lea cookies, and a red-bull. wow! those were incredible. again i waved and smiled at all MY fans while riding through the turn around and onto the last LOOP!! how could i already be almost (2.5 hours away) done with my bike!?! this is so exciting, and even more exciting, was the fact that the wind was GONE! nothin'!

i flew out up the hill, no more 13 mph....how weird are the winds here? the last loop i was of course getting tired of being aero, i was having weird pain in my ankle, i was kinda getting grouchy. who me? i decided some singing was in order. i sang songs about anything that popped into my head. about the guy with the funny, bike, about the girl in ALL hot pink. about how i love triathlons. about gatorade, ya know, like everyone does. it definitely kept me entertained. i peed a bunch. finally i was on my way back to transition, the streets were already not lined with my fans anymore. everyone was moving on to the run course for some excellent spectating. oh! getting off that bike was going to feel SO good. hmmm. i wonder how i'm going to feel this time?

i felt like it had been so long since i'd run a marathon! i couldn't really fathom the distance. i tried to remind myself that all my long runs were excellent and i felt so great and strong on all of them. didn't i? did i? i don't remember? it was so long ago? was it too long ago? panic. it didn't really help my confidence. back to transition, i handed my bike to a volunteer. tried to stay upright while running on my wobbly bike-legs, in my cycling shoes, down a grassy knoll while waving at MY fans. phew! that was tough! i did end up finding my bag. i was SOOO excited to wear my dress! this was going to be FUN! i love running.

to be continued....

and i will be posting pictures, one of these days.

race report part 1 of 3. :)

Ironman morning started out nice and early. The alarm sounded at 4:00 am. I had slept for about 4 hours, after going to bed at 9 p.m. I think the tossing, turning, and bathroom-going ended around midnight. I woke up feeling good though, as good as anyone ever feels at 4 am I suppose. I headed downstairs to eat my oatmeal and banana, and start drinking my Gatorade for the morning. Does everyone know they make lemon-strawberry Gatorade!?!? It’s AMAZING! J One great thing about Ironman is race morning, you really don’t have a lot of gear to worry about. You have already prepped your bike and all of your transition gear, and it is all at the race site waiting for you. That means race morning only involves wetsuit/swim gear, special needs bags (which really have extra, just in-case stuff in them), and dropping any last minute stuff in your transition bags. It really makes leaving the house in the morning WAY less stressful.
We headed out the door around 4:55am, and arrived at the race site at 5:10am. I went first to drop off my special needs bags, which I would have access to the bike bag at mile 68 and my run bad at mile 13 of the run. In my bike bag, I had extra tubes and CO2, home made cookies from Lea, a peanut butter and jelly bagel, and a redbull. My run bag had, a long sleeve shirt, arm warmers, extra shoes, socks, gels, and a redbull. In training I had been drinking redbulls on my long rides and really enjoying the effects of the sugar, sodium, and caffeine. I never used it while running, but thought it couldn't hurt to throw it in there just in case it sounded good.
Back in transition I double checked everything on my bike, and chatted with Lea and Brett for a while. Got my body marked and got my wetsuit on, and swim stuff ready. Of course I then had to pee. Looking at my watch and the porto lines, I decided it was probably better to just wait until I got in the water. I heard Mike Riley announce that the pros were to get in the water and started heading towards the water entrance. This race is a mass water start. Unlike Ironman Coeur d’Alene (CDA) which was a shore start. At Coeur d’Alene I was so stressed and disoriented at the race start, I positioned myself poorly in the middle of the pack and NEVER found clear water the whole hour and fifteen minutes. I was determined to not let this happen this year even if it meant swimming hard off the front for the first few hundred yards. I jumped in the water which was a little warmer than the air at that point, so it felt good to be able to move (and pee! I REALLY had to go by that time). The start line was about 200 yards from the water entrance, so it was a nice little warm-up. I had to swim past and around a lot of bodies to get up to the start. I was about 5 people deep from the start line, which seemed appropriate. I only had to tread for about 3 minutes before the start, but I started to get really COLD. The guy next to me saw me shivering, and kept telling me to relax. I just smiled, but wanted to tell him to shut-up, and that I was just cold. I kept trying to tell myself again, to enjoy the moment, that this was what all the early morning and after works swims were for. Before I knew it the cannon fired and we were off. The start was rough, but not any more terrible than any other race start. I just swam hard, and tried to protect my face from flailing elbows and hands. After about 500 yards the water was surprisingly clear, and I was able to swim and didn’t even feel the need to do a lot of spotting. I do remember feeling frustrated with peoples inability to swim straight. I typically had about 3 feet of open water surrounding me , and still out of nowhere someone would come directly at me at full speed!? Where did they think they were going?? At least it gave me something to think about. The turn-around seemed to come way too quickly. I checked my watch and I was at about 30 minutes, about what I had expected. The swim was going so well compared to CDA, I couldn’t believe it. On the way back, I remember suddenly feeling in the moment and being SO EXCITED that I was actually racing in the Ironman I had been training for all year. I was smiling so much I got tons of water in my mouth and choked a little, making me laugh, and swallow more disgusting water. It’s a tough thing throughout the day to stay in the moment and remember to enjoy the time out there. I mean, you work soooo hard and make so many sacrifices for THIS day. It is so important to take that in on race day and appreciate that all your hard work has brought you to this level of fitness that is allowing you to be out doing what you love. Before I knew it, I was swimming under the bridges that we had started under and I was heading for T1. It was so exciting to have the first section of a long day done, and to have it go so well, I knew right then it was going to be a good day.
I climbed the stairs out of the water with the assistance of the lovely volunteers, and headed for the wetsuit strippers. My favorite part of the Ironman experience! J I had my top pulled down and just ran up to two guys to yelled frantically to lay down, they pulled my wetsuit off with so much force that the legs flew back and hit another volunteer in the face. Luckily she thought it was humorous I grabbed my wetsuit and headed into the changing tent with my transition bag. I had a transition helper once again, yay! She dumped everything out of my bag and sorted through it all helping me put all my gear on! It was wonderful. I ran out of the tent and got sunscreened by the sun screeners! Can you believe this?!? They have personal sun screeners!! I grabbed my bike and headed out of transition.


to be contintued..... :)