This is not good

I did an easy 40min run today and I found this small foresty area with some "trails". I went to check it out and it seems that it was not the brightest idea because apparently little ups and downs and tight corners are not good on my ITB.

After I was done I actually felt it. Actual pain. Not just pressure.
I felt pressure after the tri but then it was gone and it felt great again.

I do not think that it is serious. Icing and little rest is all it needs.
But what makes me worried is that one little race and one cross-country style run and it is all screwed up!
Grrr.

Did a swim afterwards. My right shoulder still kind of hurts. It was better after I warmed it up though.
I had some all-out intervals and I decided not to care about time at all. I did all of them as if each was my last one. It was pretty painful and hm...obviously I was slowly dying. But I liked it. Going as fast as I could without worrying about pace/time. Very freeing.

Got my a$$ kicked big time today

It was bound to happen.

But I called it upon myself. My plan called for 2mile w/up, 4x1 mile (200m at 42-44, 200 at 48-50), 1mile c/d.

Ok, so I thought, this is going to be so easy. 48-50, phew, piece of cake. I will do 1min rest between them.
Other than that I have not thought about this workout a lot. I made a deal with myself not to overanalyse workouts beforehand because then I freak out and I really do not need that. But I usually start thinking about it during my warm up and then I either start freaking out or calm myself down.

As I was warming up I started to calculate. 42 and 48, the average is 45. There I realized that this is not going to be as easy as I thought.
My "pretended" 10k pace is 46-47 and this was supposed to be faster. Plus, I thought that I was supposed to go "slow" 200 at 46-48, not 48-50. Which just added to the whole mess.

But I was like, you know what, let's give this 1min rest a try. Or I can take 2min after the second one and then again 1min btw 3rd and 4th.
1st: 5:58 Hm, it was not too bad but definitelly not as easy as going my usual 10k pace. Changing paces is hard. I was holding 42 and 46.
2nd: 5:56 This is not that bad. Let's forget about 2min rest and let's see what I can do. Whether I can pull this off.
3rd: 5:58 This is getting harder. Also my fast 200 were getting slower and my slow 200 faster, they were somehow converging into an even pace like 43-44 and 45-46. It was getting harder to change paces. But it was not too bad.

However, after I finished I knew there is no way I can do the 4th one with just 1min rest. So I decided to take 2. But as I was nearing 2, I decided to take 3...
4th: First 200 was not too bad, in 42 and then I died 15meter later:) Really, there was no way I was going to do it. Maybe if I could keep a stable pace, maybe I would be able to pull off something decent (like sub6:30 at that point) but there was no way I was going to be able to change paces.
So I decided to call it a day and cooled down 2miles instead of 1.

Those 3 were not too bad actually. I felt good. Maybe, just maybe if I did stable pace, maybe I would have been able to do 4. Or 3 and a half. And maybe if I kept my slow pace at 48-50 and not at 46. But there is a lot of maybes, isn't there? :)

I am pleased that I was able to do 3. But I know that this was not the best executed workout. But I had to try it with 1min rest! Now I know that I am not there yet.

I am actually little freaked out now. I have 6 weeks till my 5k race. ONLY 6 weeks! And I am little freaked out that I will not be able to go at my dream pace. Because if I cannot do 4 miles at my dream pace with 1min rest, how am I going to do 3 without rest??? I am probably little overambitious here.

Then I went swimming. But first I got a flat tire on my way there. I hit a huge pothole and was thinking wow, I am surprised I did not get flat. However, 50m later...flat. Thankfully I had my repair kit with me so changed and went to pool. I got there later than planned and thus did not have enough time to do the whole workout but it was not a problem because I could not do the workout anyway.
They had only 1 lane open!!! Drives me nuts. And there were 3 people there (2 small kids and one teenager. But they were at least somehow swimming and not playing like people usually do in lanes for lap swimming...). Still decided to get at least some yards in. So I swam easily for 35min concentrating on my technique. Some pulling, some paddle work, some swimming but all easy because it was impossible to try anything faster.
My right shoulder hurt a little and my biceps were still not recovered from 5k swim on Tuesday:(

Hard bike

This tri business is hard to manage time-wise.
And especially when one has two coaches and has to fit it all together in at least somehow reasonable order.
But I am getting better at it. Now I THINK at the beginning of a week and plan my workouts for the week. That way I do not end up having to do everything back-to-back on a weekend. Although that's what you do in tri, isn't it? Although it is still pain because of track and pool closures.

Anyway, this week is a down week, only 3 bikes, 4 swims, 4 runs. But still hard to fit because I have bike TT on Thursday and I want to do well so I do not want to trash myself on Wednesday. Although track is closed on Wed so I could not trash myself even if I wanted to.

I had a pretty hard ride today. Not long, but 20x 1min hard efforts w/ 1min easy. And it was really hard. My legs hurt. I liked it!
If only I would learn to like suffering for a longer period, not just for a few minutes. But that's what training is for!

5k swim race RR: I am alive

And it was not that bad actually. I was slow, but it was not as bad as I expected it to be.

1:42.25. Very slow but I am glad I did not have any problems going the distance. I knew I can go the distance (I can do anything, really:), plus I have zero respect for any distance,) I just was not sure how swimming 5k would be. Because that's a loooong way to go. especially for somehow who started swimming last fall and the longest continuous swim was around 50min.
It was not bad at all. It did not seem long at al. I was actually surprised when I saw the finish line. I was like, hm, we are there already?

Of course, my arms hurt and I probably won't be able to lift even a pen tomorrow but I did not find swimming 5k too long. Which is good for IM swim, right?

I started decently but then I had to stop because my googles started to leak. I adjusted it and took off again. Of course by that time I was the last female (they had waves and female were last) because everyone passed me while I was fidling with it.
But I start catching people and then was shoulder to shoulder with one lady for some time until we got to this channel that connects lakes we were swimming in. Those channels were filled with seaweed, especially as you go closer to the bank. And this lady somehow "pushed" me into those seaweeds. I was like, come on, don't you see that you are forcing me to swim right into those seaweeds? At that point I got little pissed and decided to start drafting off her. You push me into seaweeds, I draft behind you.
And I drafted behind her the whole time. She was going at decent pace, probably faster than I would have done if I went alone. Well, I was not actually drafting properly because she was not the best OW swimmer and she was kind of zig-zagging and so was I so I was very ofter not in her draft. But at least she kept my pace honest even later in the race when my arms started to feel tired. Without her I would not have swum that fast (well, fastish).
We were not swimming fast, but it felt like a decent pace.

I actually liked the swim. But what I did not like was not knowing how far we have gone and how far we have left. I had no idea whether we were swimming for 30min or for 1h. Really. No idea. And no idea how fast were we swimming. And I did not like that.

Also, swimming for that long without stopping is tough on legs. Because you need to keep them straight and I started to feel little uncomfortable and I had to bend my knees couple times just for the change of position. Also my hips starte to feel very tight after a while as well.
I actually got a calf cramp because one man cut me off (or maybe I cut him off...)and I had to stop abruptly and get into vertical position and then I got the cramp. But it went away.

As I mentioned before, I have no notion of pacing in water, esp OW and I think that that's one of the main reasons why I am so slow. If I had someone to pace me and me just hanging on for my dear life, I would be doing much better job in this OW swim business.
(That fast sexist guy I want to marry just went 1:03 in Louisville, which is a huge surprise to me since he did 37min in Muncie 70.3 and if he continues training for next year as hard as he had been for this year maybe he will let me draft off him and thus he can pace me next year in Mt Tremblant if I ask him nicely)

Race goals

If this is not going to teach me to run on tired legs, then nothing is. I did my track workout. I was pretty tired after that bike ride. That ride was harder than it seems.

2mile w/up, 8x600m @ 5k pace w/90sec rest, 1mile c/d. I thought that it was going to be haaaaard because 8 of them. Warm up felt little sluggish and tiring. But then I ran the first one and I realized that I am supposed to run whole 5k at that pace and therefore 600s at that pace should feel easy. And it did actually. 2:12, 2:11, 2:12, 2:09, 2:10, 2:09, 2:10, 2:09.
The last 200m of the last 2 felt harder and I definitely started to feel tiredness, especially in quadriceps.
Then I did some exercices that I started to do hoping to help me stay injury free. And now I am really tired and ready for bed.

And ITB update. It does not hurt but I have been feeling pressure and little discomfort ever since Sunday but that was expectable. I have been icing multiple times a day, but need to get better about rolling. It does not hurt when I run at all, which is good.

Ok, now onto race goals for tomorrow. 5k OW swim. Goal numero uno: do not drown:)
I really would like to swim in around 1:30 but that would require me to swim at faster pace than I did on Sunday. Which might be little over-ambitious. Just a little:) I hope to find some feet and draft. I will try to work really hard!!!!

You are not a real cyclist until you...

...kill a squirrel and wipe out (not squirrel related).

I did a 3h ride (well, ok, it was 3h40min because there is no good road to do decent workout so I had to go to the park and...well, you know the story)
I kept my HR at 145-155, I did my best to keep it at 150, with ocassional variation in high 130s or high 150s but not too often. It seems that I am getting better at this aerobic stuff because I averaged over 20mph for 2h with that HR. Not too bad for me.
And as I was cruising along in my aerobars at 21mph suddenly this little animal freaks out and decides to cross the road. Well, too bad. No time to react, so I ran over it with my front wheel. Poor thing. I am not sure whether it was a squirrel though but it looked like it. One of those huge black squirrels. Or maybe it was a bunny. I was glad it did not run into my spikes, that would have been bad. I wanted to examine it on my next loop but someone removed it from the road and threw it in the grass.

And then on my way home I have decided to try a different route. Because I usully take the same road but that one is really bad and I have to use sidewalk and I am sick of that. And they recently repaved one of the main roads and although I knew there is zero shoulder there I decided to give it a try. It was impossible to ride there before repavement works but now it is awesome. The only downside is that it is busy. But it was not too bad on Saturday late morning.
I wiped out on my way home. It was my first pedals-related wipe out. Not because I forgot, it was because I could not unclip! I was coming into intersection, light was red and cars were coming. And I could not unclip. So I was like, S%^$ I need to go down otherwise I ran into that intersection. So I went down. I uncliped, got up and pretended that it did not happen:) You know how it is when the screws on cleats get loose. It is very hard to unclip. I knew that they were loose because I had problems to unclip on Thursday as well but I forgot about it and I did not fasten them. Actually, give me a second, I am going to do it right now because then I forget again.


Done. They were really loose.

Now I am sitting on the floor with my feet up and I might watch a movie. And then track workout in the afternoon.

Bike,run, swim etc

I have been kind of slacking. It is very easy to become lazy after you have a few easy days. You know, one two easy workouts a day. I can get used to it :)
I biked yesterday. Over an hour of climbing up and down in an easy gear and keeping the HR as low as possible. I was working on becoming an efficient climber. Smooth full circle pedal strokes, relaxed shoulders, no upper body movement. I liked it. And on the way down I stayed in aerobars because I need to get used to riding in aero at high speeds for next August (I have zero fear. That will probably go away once I wipe out really badly). There are some nice rollers in Mt Tremblant and apparently one can reach over 40mph going down. But of course it will not be fun going up :)
Run and swim was on plan today. I wanted to do track workout but high school football and soccer season started last week and now my running schedule will get all messed up because the games schedule is the most chaotic thing I have ever seen. I will have to plan my workouts around it somehow every week. So today there was a football game so I did an easy run instead and will do intervals tomorrow. 35min @ 7:30 pace.
Then I had awesome swim! 100s at decent pace and then fartlek. Although my poor arms….
Then one girl asked me whether I was a competitive swimmer. Right, I wish! Ok, I guess that I am not that bad. Maybe I do not suck as much as I say I do, at least compared to most people. Maybe I am not too bad and maybe I am not too slow. It is just that I am not as fast as I WANT TO BE!!! Or better, as fast as I NEED to be! Because come on, it is impossible to be competitive if I swim 6-7min slower than other triathletes. In Oly distance.

I still hurt

So it seams that both Michelle and PPC think that I was just playing around on Sunday and did not do any serious racing because what they make me do this week is...hard.

Yesterday it was a swim workout and today a running workout.
It was one of the hardest running workout I have done this year (ok, I did not do that many but still).
My legs definitelly do not have the "spring" yet.
I did 1mile w/up, 3miles tempo at 6:40 pace and 1mile c/d.
Already warm up was just sluggish and dragging and I knew that this is going to be hard. And it was. 6:40ish pace on Sunday felt way easier than today. Really. And on Sunday I did 6 miles, whereas today only 3. But it is good, it should help me to learn to run on tired legs. Although I think that I am going to be sore tomorrow.
6:41, 6:38, 6:33.
And cool down..I thought that I would have to walk. But I did not because I was already late for a dinner I was invited to so I had to keep running:(

And you know how my swim is pretty pathetic? But it does not prevent me from trying and have signed up for a 5k OW swimming race on Sunday.
I do not like doing races for "fun" because it does not make a sense to be to spend money on something I can do for free, but a friend begged me to it with him and I just do not know how to say no to people.
So I am probably going to die on Sunday. We will see.

Back to work

So, I did not do anything yesterday. Took a day off. Just ate and watched a movie. And since I had a lot of free time on my hands I did also something pretty stupid that involved the fast guy and probably cost me a marriage. Oh well. Need to find a different victim.

My legs are still little sore but nothing like they were in May after the triathlon. This time around it is only my quads right above knees. Weird. It is probably TT bike magic.

ITB feels good, no feelable irritation. But I decided to play it super safe and did not run today. Will run tomorrow.

I biked today. Just very easy sightseeing pace 45min. At first I was little blah and did not want to do it but then went out and I am glad I did because I really liked it.

And then pool. I know that my swim on Sunday should not be considered as hard effort (because it really was not) but doing intervals today might have been little overestimation of my ability. My arms were tired. I can tell immediately whether I am tired or now by the way I enter water with my hands. When it is nice and smooth, I am ok. When it is not, my arms are too tired and I struggle to keep a good form. I worked like crazy and still missed all my 100 yard intervals by 3-5sec.
But today was more about strength and I paid a lot of attention to that. I felt I was pulling water with my whole forearm and that's very good.

I have been thinking why I suck so much at swimming. Or why I sucked so much at it on Sunday in particular. Of course, there are many many reasons for that but one reason is that I have never told myself that I was going to make it hurt. I was not preparing myself to push it and work hard. I just kind of assumed that I will swim and have a decent time without hurt. Well, it does not work that way. I was ready to push on a bike and run, but never thought about doing the same thing on my swim.
So, I am thinking that I might do one more tri in mid-Sept and if I do it, I am going to kill myself on a swim and then hang on for the rest.

Island Lake triathlon RR (2nd tri)

It went pretty well. Again not 100% well, but I am improving and that's important.
My finish time was 2:21.36. Which is awesome because it is 6 minute improvement. This race is exactly the same race as that other one I did because it is organized by the same organisation, on the same course. Therefore I can easily compare times/splits.


Today: 29:03 1:43 1:08:44 0:50 41:17 2:21:36
last time: 29:44 2:25 1:11:48 0:48 42:45 2:27:28

Swim: Again, did not go as well as planned. BUT. I have learnt a new skill.
Water temperature yesterday was 82, it rained last night and it was 77 this morning thus they made it wetsuit legal. Not many people were prepared for that, therefore there were maybe only 4 women in wetsuits in the swim.
The gun went off and I found myself in the secodn place after about 200m. It meant either that I was in trouble and was going to die soon or that we had no speedy swimmers like last time. Later is right, because I came out of water in the second place even with that very lousy time.
After the start I was shoulder to shoulder with one gal who soon decided to drop back and draft off me. But she soon realized that I was just blaffing first 100m and that I was not really that fast. Plus I was still kind of zig-zagging. So she decided to pass me, which gave me a chance to try drafting off her. I have never drafted off anyone and was not sure how I was supposed to do it. So I just followed her bubbles. It was pretty sweet because she was going straight line, perfect. I did not have to sight at all, except for when I lost bubbles (I was still kind of zig-zagging) and had to look up to locate her.
We were moving at decent clip for the first loop but then she started to fade. But I made the decision to stay with her because why waste my precious energy if I can just tag along and I would have probably not swam that much faster anyway.
Unfortunately for her, she did not run to transition, she just walked. So I beat her. Not my fault, she should have run.
So swim was not that great, but I improved by a little. And I practised drafting:)

T1: Major improvement. I located the exit correctly and I striped the wetsuit off pretty fast. Although still quite a lot of work to do.

Bike: I improved by 3 min from the last time. Which is good on 40k, right? It was kind of painful from time to time. Man, I wish I had a bike computer. I suck at going at perceived effort (just look at my swim time) because I think that I could have gone faster! Nobody passed me on a bike. Last time bunch of men passed me but not this time. But also I did not pass that many people. Probably because last time there were more than 130 people doing Oly distance whereas today only 91.
By the end of the first loop I saw a men in front of me moving at decent clip and I made it my mission to pass him in next few minutes. And I did. And then he passed me back. We were going back and forth like this for a few kilometers but then he droped back. He was from the club by the way, although I did not know him, I knew only because he was wearing a club jersey. (I do not wear club jersey because it is expensive, 80 bucks from tri shorts and top. Forget that.)
I was also checking on the girl I swam with. She was not far behind but I was getting time on her, which was my mission numero uno.
I ate only one gel and did not drink that much water because I was just working hard and you cannot eat/drink and breath at the same time....
And btw, my flying mount was PERFECT. Much better than any of my practice ones. Flawless. Which mostly means that I have not wiped out.

T2: Not too bad although I start running with my bike helmet on so had to go back a few steps to get rid of it:)

Run: Hm, hm, hm. I improved, but I did not push it at all. I just pluged along because I kind of suspected that I was the first female by that point. Good thing is that I ran 6:40 pace comfortably, with the similar effort I ran 6:55 pace in May. My running is there but it just hurts and I am not used to hurting for that long. I need to do some workouts that get me out of my comfort zone so I practise hurting (but do not be too hard PPC please:)) and then I hopefully can improve my run split on this. I am not pleased with my run. But it is all my fault, I should have pushed it and made it hurt.
I did not take a gel. Again, hard to eat when you breath.

I again won wine and running shoes. Plus a gift certificate to a bike store because I was from the furthest distance (ok, this is not grammatically correct and it does not make much sense but I do not know how to write it). When the announcer asked who came from the furthest one guy from San Diego immediatelly jumped up because he was sure he would get that one. Sorry dude, I am from Slovakia.

I am happy about the major improvement, 6min is a lot, but there is still a lot of improvement to be made. Especially on a swim. And getting mentally tougher to push the run.

My legs hurt.

Wish me luck

I did 1h easy bike ride followed by 20min run and 5 strides.
Felt good, I feel ready for tomorrow.

I had to rent a car again to get to the race tomorrow:( But at least rental car branch manager likes me. He knows I don't have a car and ride my bike everywhere. I reserved the smallest cheapest economy class car they have. But he asked me whether I was racing this weekend (last time I rented a car from them was because of a race and he remembered that) and when I told him that yes, that I was doing a triathlon on Sunday he upgraded me to minivan for the same price as economy so I can fit my bike in. Nice, isn't it? Sometimes it pays off to be the local freak...

Then I went to BBQ with bunch of tri people, where everyone expressed their expectation from me, like 22mph bike average and 40min run. Yeah, right. But I will do my best:)

Off to bed, wish me luck!!!

And it started so well

I had a swim workout tonight. And it well very well. I did 3x300 race start simulations. I did the same workout last week and it did not went that well. Whereas today I did it to the T! Great. Then I did 50s with bands and I felt strong and efficient. I could really feel that I was pulling through water nicely with my whole forearm. Sweet.
But then I did 50s swim and I got this really annoying cramp in my foot. The top part of my right foot and toe. I massaged it, stretched it, tried to walk it off but it always came back!!!! And it kind of hurt.
Grrr. I was running out of time anyway so I called it quits. Missed 3 50s and cool down will not have any influence on Sunday.

Also, it is probably just me being overly paranoid but I think that my ITB feels that I am up to something and it decided to protest. I hope it is only me imagining things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's talk race goals

It is time to talk race goals. Mostly so that it has time to sink in and that I pump myself up a bit.

Michelle suggested that I do not race with watch. But I really would like to have at least something to gauge my effort by. Last time, I had no idea what I was swimming, then I used bike computer for bike and then had no idea what I was running. It was not too bad but I think that if I had known half way through the swim that I was swimming 2min/100 pace I would have picked it up a notch. I do not think that I would have done run differently because I knew I was in 2nd with zero chance catching the 1st. But since this is the same race, I would like to know how I compare to last time.
I am not going to use bike computer this time (not that I do not want to, I am not going to use it because I lost it couple weeks ago and still do not have a new one) and I am not going to use Garmin for run (last time I wanted to but I forgot to put it on in T2 and I think that it will be the case this time around as well so why bother).
However, I am going to use a simple watch, start it when swim starts and then because all swim, bike, run are 2 loops I am going to check my half-way splits to see how I am doing compared to last time. Although I am sure that I will forget to check my watch once I get caught up in the competition.

So my goals? Very simple:
Improve on my swim from last time.
Have the fastest female bike split.
Have the fastest female run split.
And hope that that would be enough to have the fastest overall female finish time.

You see, simple, I told you. It is not that I am that fast. It is mostly that it is just a small local triathlon therefore competition is very limited. But such races are very good for building self-confidence and huge ego :)
My previous splits:
Swim T1 Bike T2 Run Total
29:44 2:25 1:11:48 0:48 42:45 2:27:28


Swim: I truly believe that I can improve on my swim. At least by 2 minutes. So my goal is somewhere around 27:30. Also depends on whether they let us have wetsuits or not. Now water is ~80 degrees and days are warm so looks like not. I really do not care.

T1: Also depends on whether they let us have wetsuits. I do not think that I can improve by much there if I wear a wetsuit, but I should be able to shave off few seconds by locating the bike-out exit properly. Not like last time. However, I will have to run in cleats, so that might add few seconds.
If wetsuits are not allowed, then it should be a very fast transition. 1-1.5min max. I hope at least.

Bike: Let’s see. I have real biking pedals and shoes, I have a new fast bike, and I know that I can push it harder than I did last time. Thus I am looking into major improvement. Maybe 1:08ish. If I mount my bike without any major embarrassment because I have been practicing flying mount in past few days and although I have not wiped out it was not very efficient or pretty. Still have few days to practice though. But I am ready to push hard on bike. 100% and see what happens.

T2: Should be easy. Will be slower than the last time because I will run with cleats and then need to change into running shoes. But last time I missed my rack by 1 rack and thus had to do small extra loop, so that added some time. This time, I need to be better at that.

Run: Hm. Should improve simply because I have been training. And my running has been going pretty well recently, which is a plus. However, I am going to push bike hard, which might trash legs way too much. Who knows. Last time I ran 6:54 pace. On Sunday I did a training 5miler at 6:55 and felt good. So I should improve. I am hoping for sub-41min, which is 6:40ish pace. It might be a huge overkill but if I pushed really hard... Well, I will not have Garmin to see what pace I am running anyway so it probably does not matter. I just need to push hard and stop being a pussy.

Ok, honestly, I have no idea. I am just putting those numbers here but I have ZERO idea whether they make sense or not. I think that triathletes’ approach (don’t care about splits, just placing) is rubbing onto me or something.

And "other" strategy?
It is probably going to be warmer than last time, thus I am going to try to drink more than I did in May (which was probably 1/4 of water bottle) and I will try to eat 2 gels on a bike. One on a first bike loop and then second one close to the end of the bike.
I will try to eat one on a run as well. I tried to eat a gel on Sunday while I was running and I had no GI problems. It was a nice distraction, plus gels are like candy. I love candy. But it will be hard to swallow it while breathing heavily. Oh man, that run is going to hurt.

I also need to think where I am going to put those gels since I have no bags or anything on a bike and no pockets on a swim suit (if it is not wetsuit legal race). I need to look up how people tape their gels to their bike frames.

Good thing about this tri is that it is one of club races and therefore there will be some people from the club to hang out with. So it should be fun.

Also, if I get a flat I might be in a huge trouble beucase I have never used CO2 cartages to pump the tire thus if I have to do it, I am not sure how that's going to work. Although my mountain bike tire is blown so I need to change that, so I will very likely waste one CO2 on that just to practise it.

If my ITB starts to act up, I am going to drop out. No bargaining. Stop.

I did not have any workout today. I was supposed to do 30min on a bike but my to/from work and to/from library commute counts for that.

Blah

How good I felt yesterday, so sluggish and tired I felt today.
Seriously, my run was one huge "slug walk".

3k w/up, 2x1mile @ 10k pace with 1min rest, 2k c/d. Warm up was slooow, I had zero spring in my legs. I still hit 6:13 and 6:13 for intervals and it was not even that hard but I did not have enough energy today.

On top of things, something happened to my commuter bike's tire yesterday, it lost air and I over-pumped it today and the tire burst when I was riding from track to the pool. So I had to walk by the bike. Which meant that I only had around 35min for my swim workout.
I did as much as I could until they kicked me out.
But I again had a pretty good swim. It better continues until Sunday!!!

Off to bed now.

I feel GOOD

I do not know whether it is taper or that I am finally getting enough sleep, but I had great workouts today.
Ok, the truth is that all of my bike and run workouts are great but today was also good day for swim workout.

I was thinking about doing bike in the morning but then I have decided that getting 1h more of sleep would do me more good than doing bike and swim back to back.
So did bike in the afternoon. Some tempo intervals, but pretty short. I love intervals. I love running intervals, and I love biking intervals. Let's not get into my love for swimming intervals though:)

And then swim. I was not able to swim last Tuesday because of totally crowded pool and now I am going to be brutally honest and say that I was kind of hoping that it will happen again today. But no such luck. I still had to share a lane with one more person but at least it was not 5 other people like last week.
Ok, I know that it is a terrible thing to admit, therefore let me explain. I just did not want to have another crappy workout to undermine my swimming confidence even further since I have a race on Sunday. But Michelle is a good coach and I think that she gave me a pretty easy workout just to boost my confidence a bit. And I think that it is working. I had a good swim and I am more confident for Sunday.
I am giving myself little bit of a credit for not bagging it all together and going to the pool. Although I know that my attitude is still pretty bad therefore I really shuold not be proud of myself.

Taper week is here

Taper week is here:
2h40min of swim,
2h40min of bike
2h run

+ race on Sunday.

Although I would still prefer something like 1h + 1h + 1h. That would be sweet:)

I was little confused today and did not know what to do because sometimes it is really hard to arrange things when you have two coaches. One said run today, the other rest.
Eventually, I have decided to make a compromise and listen to one today and then listen to another one on Saturday.
You probably have no idea what I am talking about do you?

Anyway, I did a track workout today. I was supposed to do 2k warm up, but I thought I was supposed to do 3k warm up and then when I got to the track I somehow calculated that 3k is 12.5 laps. And it hit me little after 10laps, that 7.5laps is correct. Ok, so I did 4.5k warm up instead of planned 2k. But I cut my cool down short then, 1k instead of 2k. So: 4.5k warm-up, 3k @ 10 km pace, 5 minutes rest, 5 X 400 m @ 5 km pace w/1min rest, 1k cool-down.
3k was right on spot. I started little slower because even 4.5k warm up is not enough to loosen me up. I need to start doing drills and strides again but I am still little worried about ITB. 3:56, 3:54, 3:51 for total 11:43 (because none of those those splits was x:xx.00, of course). It felt good, although I doubt I can hold that for 10k without more pain than I can bear involved.
400s were little too fast, probably because I was nicely warmed up. 1:25, 1:22, 1:23, 1:26, 1:25.

I stretched a lot afterwards because my hamstrings are super tight and sore. I wonder whether it is because of those intervals on a tri bike on Saturday. I think that the point of tri bike is that it forces you to use hamstrings instead of quads so that those are fresher for run. Or maybe I have it reversed. Do not know and am too lazy to look it up. I need to go to sleep.

Pulled over by police for the first time ever

And I was on my bike (riding to get to the pool).
Yes, for speeding.

No, just kidding. They stopped me to say hello to me. Apparently I am a well-know figure on a local crime scene. It seems that all local policemen know me because they see me biking all over the place (which is very rare occurance in this area)and I am on the top of their list called "Future victims of bike&car accidents". So they were eager to find out who I was and what I was up to.
Pretty funny:)

Then I had a mediocre swim. At first it was going well but the last fast interval did not go as planned. I was sure I was going to nail it and thus was little disappointed when I saw my time:( But as I mentioned before, my swim needs a lot of improvement.

It is very common among multi-sport athletes to concentrate on their strength(s) because then you do not have to deal with frustration and disappointed. You nail your workouts and you feel good about training and yourself.
And indeed, I love running and biking because I am decent at those two, whereas 70+% of the time I go to the pool I get frustrated and disappointed and I am dreading my next swims because I know that I will get frustrated again.
But the good thing is that it does not discourage me. I want to improve my swimming! I really really do. There is nothing I can do now to make me faster for next Sunday so I just have to make a peace with the fact that I will suck at swim portion. But I have no tris planned for the rest of the year (I wish I had though), so the game is on! I have whole fall and winter and spring to kill myself in the pool to make me consistenly fast(er) swimmer, no matter how much tears, frustration and pain it means. I just need to become more confident about my swimming before next August. If I continue being this inconsistent and slow in the late stages of my IM training, it is going to be a huge negative mental factor.

By the way, this weekend was pretty good. I caught up on sleep and the workouts were shorted than usual, which gave me some extra free time, which I loved.

Wow

I did my first real ride on my new bike and let me tell you, it is fast. Much faster than my crappy road bike. So that's exciting.

Also keeping HR at 170 is easier outside than on a trainer. At least when you are on a nice smooth uninterrupted road as I was today. And perceived effort is lower.
To wrap it up, I had a great ride today!

I followed it by a run. You see, my running plan called for a long run: 5 miles (yeah, that's the longest continuous run I have done since tri in May!!!). And Michelle instructed me that she wants to see a solid 20-30 min effort after the bike. So I figured that 5miles at 7:15ish min pace should count as solid effort. However, as I started running I was at 7:05, 1 mile later I was at 6:55 and it felt good. Solid effort. Hm, what the heck. So I just kept plugging along for 5miles at 6:55 pace.

It sounded like a great idea while I was doing it. But now coming to think of it, I realized that I just run 5 training miles at the same pace I ran 6miles in the tri in May. So maybe it was little too fast. But it is ok, I feel good and even if I did not I have 1 whole week to recover before the race.

I will do whatever it takes

Wow, I do not remember the last time I did trully speedy running workout. High school maybe:)
Ok, I did kind of speedy 200m workout in Oct (200s at 37-38sec) but today I did 200s @ 36sec.
4k w/up, 10x200m @ 36-38 w/ 2min rest, 2k c/d. 5.125 miles total.
I did them all in 36ec except for the first one (37) and 5th and 9th (35ish). It was pain, but different kind of painful. It was just hard to keep my legs turning. I have zero turnover speed in my legs! Zero. So I had to stay concentrated and keep reminding myself to turn turn turn fast.
By the way, my legs are fried. They have been fried for past two weeks with all that running and biking. I can still nail my workouts but I feel the tirendness in quadriceps on every single little uphill during my commute to and from work. I kind of like it though:)

Now let's talk swimming. My swimming is pathetic. I have been swimming since December and although I definitelly see some improvement I do not think that it is enough. I can see the improvement mostly in my strength. Today I did some intervals with bands and before I used to drag my feel at the bottow within 25yards but today I was able to stay strong and fast the whole 50 yards and my feet did not even got close to the pool floor. So that's a huge improvement.
But I want to see improvement in my times!!! Desperately! Ok, I know that I am not the most patient person out there and that sometimes I am little inreasonable but still, I want to see real improvement. I will do whatever it takes. Anything (well, except for sacrifise my biking and running:)) .
I have read that more you swim, faster you become. I know that some fast people swim even 10 days in a row and that makes them fast.
Once I am done with the Oly tri next weekend, I am willing to kill myself in a pool. I can go there every day (well, when it is open because with this messed up schedule I cannot even get my regular swims in). I can use cords. Anything!!!

Catching up

I have spent the whole day yesterday travelling just to have a 45min interview that seems was just a huge waste of time. Oh well....

So I did not do anything yesterday, because I left at 6am and got home at around 11pm.

But today I finally got to take my new bike on a road. It was pretty smooth! Loved it. I rode the bike for only around 1hour doing big gear intervals (w/up and c/d was on a mountain bike, don't ask) so I cannot really say whether I feel the difference. However, I can tell you that there is one difference I realized immediately as I hit breaks for the first time. I almost flew over my handelbars because this bike actually breaks not like my road bike:)
I think that this bike is bigger than my road bike. I should compare them side by side.
I think that I will like the bike once I make peace with the fact that it cost a small fortune.

Then did track workout- divided 800s. 2k warm-up, 6 X 800 (1st 400m @ 10 km pace 2nd, @ 3k pace) w/2min rest, 1.2k cool-down. 4.8miles total.
I do not like this workout because no matter how slow or fast you run the second 400m it always feels like an all-out sprint after that 1st 400. And I am not very good at executing this workout. My 1st 400 was getting progressively faster (1:33 t0 1:30) and my 2nd progressively slower (from 1:23 to 1:26).
It is not a hard workout, it is just difficult to switch gears for me.

Then I did couple core and overall balance exercises. I need to get better at doing those to stay injury free.

Ok, I feel sleep-deprived again after yesterday so I am hoping to get around 9hours tonight!

Seriously???

I was thrilled about taking my new bike for a ride outside this morning but when I heard a thunder few minutes before I was supposed to get up I knew that it was not going to happen.

Not that I care about weather. But riding a new bike in pouring rain in dark at 6am while trying to hit 165+ HR...Not a good idea. So trainer it was. But it was a good workout. When I was done I looked as if I have been swimming. Disgusting.

I have a car today because I am flying to St Loius tomorrow for job interview and I need to get to the airport somehow. Thus I decided to put it into a good use and go grocery shopping! I should be good for few weeks again.

Then I went swimming but unfortunately, I just sat there hoping a lane opens up but after 15min I knew that it was not going to happen because there were 4-5 people in each lane. They were not really swimming, most of them were kids playing. Grrrr!
So I decided not to wait any longer and continue my shopping spree. Good idea because I found my favorite frozen pizza and bought bunch of them. Not very good but they also had donuts on sale and it took some serious self-discipline not to buy any. So at least something:)

Yep, still my favorite

I have always been saying that mile repeats with 1min rest is my favorite workout. Because it is easy. 10k effort is nice and controlled.

However when I saw that I should do them at 6:11-6:16 pace today, I was not sure whether it will continue being my favorite:) I ran my fastest 5k in last 6 years last October in 6:07 pace. I was supposed to do only 4 repeats, not 5 as usual because we are still keeping my mileage in check, but at that pace it seemed like plenty.
I actually emailed PPC asking when 6:11-6:16 became my 10k pace:)

But I was eager to see how it goes. 2k w/up, 4x1600, 1.2k c/d, total 6miles!!!
And it went well. Still pretty easy and controlled and still my favorite workout.
6:16, 6:14, 6:11, 6:07. I was going for negative split as usual and as usual I freaked out that I won't split negatively in the last one and I ended up running it faster than usual. I was still apprehensive after the first one but during the second one I knew I will be ok because I felt better and better with each lap.
It was probably little bit harder than last year when I did then at 6:20+. I did this workout on Dec 5th the last time and my splits were 6:28, 6:26, 6:26, 6:21, 6:20 but that was really easy, like jogging. Today did not feel like jogging but still felt very good.
So I am pretty satisfied. If I continue like this I will have awesome 5k/10k races this fall!
Of course, I will be a real fast runner only if I can do 6 of them at sub-6min pace as PPC can. So still a lot of work to do!

I am also satisfied because my legs have been constantly tired in past week. All the biking and running is catching up with my legs. I could feel every single little uphill in my quads on my way to work every morning in last week but they usually loosened up while I was at work and I was able to nail runs and bike. The same today, although I still felt little tired in the afternoon. But I nailed it even with tired legs, which adds to my confidence!

Maybe I should have bought a car

Because this is getting little ridiculous and I am somehow loosing my motivation to ride a bike for an hour to get to the lake, do the workout and ride back.

I would consider riding 16 miles pretty hard core a year ago. Now I do it, twice, just as a commute to my swim workout destination. But I do not consider it hard core, it is pain in the a$$ (sometimes literaly:))

I think that I complained about this two weeks ago as well, did not I? Well, do not listen to me, I am tired and hungry. Very bad combination:)

Fortunately I am very dedicated, stubborn, ambitious, self-disciplined and I promised the fast guy (you know, the one I want to I would like to marry one day) that I will crush him on a swim next August. He thinks that I am a freaking joke, because I am a girl...He is really sexist in this aspect.

I know that those long OW swims are helping me. Thus I need to do them!!!
Plus I feel accountable to Michelle. I think that she likes me because she can realize all her torturing (ops, did I say torturing? I meant coaching) plans in my training and I won't complain. Well, I will complain, about OW swim for example, but I will do it and she knows that in reality I love it.

I also ran today, 3.25miles at 7:25-30 pace. My total miles this week: 19miles. Yayayaya!!!

ITB update: I do not feel it at all! It is 100%!!! The only time I feel it is when pushing very big gear on a bike, thus I need to be careful about that. But running does not irritate it anymore. Now I need to be super carefull so it stays that way! We are slowly increasing my mileage but still keeping most of it in form of a speedwork.
I have a tri in 2 weeks, hopefully running a 10k (80% is on a road) won't mess it up again. But I do not think so.

My own guide to getting used to a new bike

Take it easy to give your body (by body I mean mostly bottom parts) time to slowly get used to it? Please. You know me by now, don't you?

So, buy a new bike.
Do a loop in a bike shop parking lot.
Bring it to a friend's basement directly from there.
Set it up on a computrainer.
Choose IM Wisconsin bike course (http://www.mapmyride.com/s/routes/view/bike-ride-map/wisconsin/madison/537774#climbs).
And ride that for 3 hours (staring at HR monitor and powermeter and get depressed about your pathetic wattage).



My parents are going to be soooo pissed about this. But whatever makes me happy.
My siter suggested that I should have bought a car instead because now I am an idiot with 3 bikes but no car.
But each of us has different priorities and mine are obviously little skewed according to her.
But I got a good deal on a bike from local shop and they allow financing so I should be still able to afford some food:)

Anyway, back to my ride.
It felt pretty comfotable at first, but of course then it got less and less comfortable. As you can see from the picture, we put it into quite an agressive aeroposition (it did not get fitted for me, they just took few measurements to somehow fit it. It is size 56 by the way, 58 would have been too big for me). Thus I have spent only around 50min in aero. But sure, I was not expecting it to be an overly enjoyable ride. New bike. Tri bike! New saddle. Aggresive aero.

First 30min were good, then next 30min were miserable, but then last 2 hours were good once I was warmed up. My bottom started to hurt after around 80min. But it ok, I am a "tough guy".
I think that I need to play with seat position little bit. I will see how it feels when I out of a road.

The bad thing about being on a computrainer was that I was able to see my wattage for the first time. It was pretty pathetic I think. But I was being a good athlete. I was supposed to cap my HR at 150 and 150 for me is pretty low (and slow) since I am a) not overly aerobically fit, b) like a baby with HR 220 while napping. I can keep 165+ for hours. Wisconsin is a challenging course they say with some decent hills thus 150 meant moving at 6mph and 100 watts. So seeing my wattage and speed go down and down and down was pretty bad. I am working on keeping my ego in check and this was a good practice:) Thus 3hours with 5x3min hard efforts, average HR 150, speed 16.9mph (oh, geez), average watts 176.

I was supposed to run afterwards but since I was babysitting I could not do that.
I am off to OW swim now and I will run afterwards. You can only imagine how thrilled I am about riding for an hour to get to the lake and another hour back.

Run and swim

So after 5 hours of sleep last night I felt really tired the whole day.
Mental note to myself: do not eat brownies before going to bed:)

But training must go on.
Run was very uneventful. 1.5mile warm/up (go me!), 3x5x400 @ 1:28-1:30 w/ 1min rest, 3min btw set, 800m c/d. Total 5.75 miles! yeah, I am getting there.
400 at 5k pace are easy. Although not as easy as one would think. It is strange because running 400s at this pace does not feel any easier than running 1200s at this pace. Maybe because of only 1 min rest. Whatever, I am sure I am not making any sense anyway. Although last 2 intervals were kind of hard. I think that 4 hard days in a row (Tue- track, Wed- bike and track, Th-bike TT, today-track) have caught up with my legs on those last 2 400s.

Then went to the pool. Wow, it was a challenging workout but I felt much better than on Wednesday. Some pretty fast stuff. But I made it! I stayed strong til the end and did not back down. I still cannot feel my arms but it is all good:)

I am going to catch up on sleep now so I am ready to rock n' roll tomorrow (hopefully on my new bike)!

By the way, everyone says that TT was 13.1 miles. So I am officially fast since I did 23+ average:)

Bike Time Trial #4

Yesterday I did another bike time trial.
Bike TT #1: 34:18, average speed 35.2kph (21.88)
Bike TT #2: 34:04, average speed 35.6kph (22.11)
Bike TT #3: 34:03, average speed 36.1kph (22.56mph)
Bike TT #4: 34:06 (you see my consistency???) But this time we started from a completely new location but still did 2 usual loops. People said it was 13.1miles and when I mapped it on a map it shows right in that area.
That would give me an average of little over 23mph. Which seems little too fast.
But let’s wait till the club president sends out an email with exact route distance and our times.

I lost my bike computer last week thus was using Garmin but it is such a stupid gadget. I swear it does whatever it wants to. It was working ok for first 2 miles but then I somehow pressed bazel against something and it got all messed up. I fiddled with it for a while but then decided that it was not worth it. But I wanted to wear it because I am very bad at racing/training on a perceived effort. If I did that, all my rides would be like 15mph average. But I had no choice.

But it was hard. It hurt. I turned myself inside out (as people here would say).

It was kind of funny. When I got there the president started to strategize about the order in which we will go. We go 1min apart. He wanted to see what would be the most fun to watch as I crash some male egos. He decided that letting me chase the hockey guy would be the best. Interesting how things turn out, isn’t it? And then another slower guy before him so I had people to chase after for both laps.
As I was starting the president told me to go hard after the hockey guy because he is surely killing himself so I do not pass him. I said that that was THE plan.
As it turned out the hockey guy is no match for me and I passed him exactly after 1 lap. After that I did not have that much motivation but I kept pushing because if he passed me back that would have been a huge blow to my ego But I did not have to worry about it because apparently after I passed him he told to himself that there was no point in killing himself anymore and cruised the rest of a way. I passed the other guy as well.
Overall it was a great ride. Probably the best TT I have done. I hope that jerk comes again next time and they let me go after him. Although I should be nice because he gave me a ride home afterwards since I was in no mood for 16mile cool down. 19mile warm up is good enough
I though I will be tired after bike and run and pathetic swim the day before, but I felt good and fresh.
I would have preferred to be able to gauge my speed with computer or something but it turned out that it was not too bad to just keep my head down (literally, I was mostly staring down and not in front of me) and push and push and do not settle. I think that biking pedals help as well.

I was also wearing my HR monitor to get some data. But that thing is also a stupid garget. It is good for knowing your immediate HR and max and min but I have no idea how it calculates the average. My max was 200 (the finish was up a hill and that’s where I hit 200 mark while my quads were on fire) and average 173. However, I do not understand that. I started the HR watch at the beginning and my immediate HR shoot to over 170 within few moments but after 2miles the average was still showing 151. So I reset it (clearly, I had a lot of time on my hands since I was fiddling around with both Garmin and HR watch while TTing. Each on a different wrist). I was in 175range for the first loop and then the second loop my HR did not go below 182-3. It is not accurate because I was not staring at it all the time, but I looked sometimes and it was in 185range for most of the time. Thus I do not understand how my average can be 173.

I was really tired afterwards but when I got home I could not fall asleep. I was awake until past midnight and then finally fell asleep and then woke up at 3am and could not fall asleep back. So I read a book for an hour. Then fell asleep. Woke up again at 5am and read a book until 6am and then managed to fell asleep. When my alarm went off at 7am I wanted to throw it out the window. So I am functioning on 5 hours of sleep. Not good. It is probably 2 brownies I ate after the TT…

I am going to babysit again this weekend, Sat morning till Sun morning. I have nothing better to do anyway, plus I am sure that that’s how all 26 year old spend their Saturday nights so why would not I help friends out? Plus as my “payment” the friend is going to take me to the bike shop tomorrow to hopefully get a new bike (I am hoping to get Cervelo P2. They offer financing so I should be able to swing that). I cannot get there on my own without a car and he knows I am looking for a bike. He also wants to set me up on his computrainer for my Sat ride so I can knock myself out … I do not fully understand the logic behind this. I am doing something very nice for him so he and his wife can have a date night and he wants me to use a torture machine. Does that make any sense to you?!? Well, no good deed goes unpunished, right? 

Miss Inconsistency

But I guess that it is better than being Miss Consistently Slow, right? I am talking about my swimming.

But let's start from the beginning. Since I am doing bike TT tomorrow I had to move my run to today, which led to bike, run and swim today.

Fortunately bike was pretty easy. Just 75 min easy with few sprints thrown in. However, since I did it early in the morning I was still half asleep and thus forgot about those sprints and remembered only when I was on my way home. So I did them all in last 4 min. Oh well, better than nothing I suppose:)

Then work.

Then track workout. I think that today was my best workout of this year so far. And the longest as well. 2 km warm-up, 5 X 1200 @ 3:40-3:45/1k pace (5:52-6:00/mile pace, 4:24-4:30/1200m), 2:30 complete recovery, 1200 m cool-down. 5.75 miles total. WOO-HOO!!!
I did it with a very fast friend who is doing her first Ironman at the end of the month. She does not have 5k speed but she has an incredible endurance. Thus although she fell back a bit on each of them she hang on tight andnd she pushed warm up and cool down:)
4:26, 4:27, 4:26, 4:24, 4:23.
I really felt great on all of them. Strong. Fast.
Although my arms hurt.
I thought that it would be very tought but no. Seems that I am becoming a stronger runner. Also 2.5min rest is pretty long. And since my mileage is pretty low my legs are fresh.

Then swim workout that I failed miserably. I went there little bit earlier hoping some lanes will be open because I had longer swim than usual. But nope. I had to sit there for over 20min and then had only 50min for a workout.
BUT I knew from the first stroke of the warm up that it was not going to work. My form was totally off. I rotated the whole body as I enterd the water with my hands and could not keep high elbow on my left arm. My left arm is weaker than the right one. Eventually I loosened up a bit so I worked only with arms without using the whole body but it was still very bad. My arms were just too tired.
My legs are strong enough from running thus I can do back-to-back runs/rides. But my arms, although it is much better than before, are not strong enough for that. Although sometimes it works. but yesterday probably took a lot out of me and left my arms completely trashed.
I tried to push through the workout but I was off my paces by 5-10sec/100 and my form was getting worse and worse.
So I did half the workout and called it quits. Rest would do me better I think.
So yeah, Miss Inconsistency. Frustrating. Why cannot I have strong swim workouts consistently instead of constantly being up and down???

I thought that this was going to be a down week...

Today did not look like a down week and tomorrow will be even worse...
Michelle said that she could not wait to start kicking my a$$ and it seems that she has officially started.

Although my run today was very easy. 2.5miles w/up, 10x300 @ 62sec w/1min fast walk bak to start, 800m c/d. (I messed up warm up and cool down a bit, but it is ok, got the mileage in) for a total of 4.875 miles. NICE!
All aerobic effort, nothing fast.
It has been raining a bit so I was soaked by the time I was done and then had to go to the pool:(

Huge thunderstorm was supposed to hit us later in the evening so I was expecting the pool to be closed or to be kicked out half-way through.
Fortunately that did not happen and today was one of few days when swimming was not a nightmare!
I started sharing the lane but after a few minutes I had the whole lane for myself. Rain has probably detered people from coming.
And I had a good swim. 18x100 at decent clip. Pretty challenging but I was surprisingly not dreading it but was excited to see what I can do instead. That's the right attitude! But that's probably because I knew I could do it if I put my mind and body into it. And I did it.
It is still very intimidating to know that I want to swim faster that this with no rest for more than twice the distance next August. Oh well, I have little over 12 months to keep improving!

My sister is coming back to the US tomorrow. Although she will be in Oklahoma it is kind of exciting because I will have someone to talk to at least on a phone! Yay!

Day offfffff

Days off are fun.
Although I have had a day off almost every week in past month or two, they were not planned days off. It was mostly because of pool mayhem or something else coming up. And those are not real just chilling days off since I am usually little guilty and nervous.

But today was a true day off.
Finally I had time to sort out few things, like go to Trader's Joe to get rice, go to bank to deposit a check that has sat on a kitchen counter for over a month, cook real food, buy (order) a watch and new swim suit.

Yes, I continue with my resolution to be a laser-like focused athlete from now on (until...who knows when, but at least for next 13 months) and I did not "pig out" on muffins. I still ate a lot but it was all healthy.

I have my running watch that I got on my 15th birthday. It is Timex Ironman watch and it was freaking expensive at the time when my parents bought it for me. I have had it for almost 12 years now and it still functions flawlessly. Although I must say that it looks little shabby:) But it is not about looks, is it?
The problem is that the battery was already changed twice thus I am sure it is not water-resistant anymore. And I want a watch I can take swimming with me. At first I was thinking about buying one of those 10 dollar watches from Target because I was told that they will survive swims. But then I decided that I should probably spend more money and get another good watch that will last at least 10 years. Thus I ordered another Timex Ironman and I am pretty excited to have it for my OW swims.

And since I have decided to race my Oly tri in 3 weeks (yeah, three weeks! I am little nervous. For my first tri I was just pumped, not nervous, confident that I was going to kill it. But it was my first, so no real pressure. Now there is a pressure that I need to go faster in my second one. Especially on a swim and run. I know in the back of my head that I am prepared but still...). Anyhow (I have never used that word before. They taught us use "anyway" but here people use "anyhow" so I have decided to try it:)). Anyhow, since I have decided to race my Oly tri in 3 weeks in a swim suit and just deal with stares I need a new swim suit in case my current one falls apart before that. I have ordered a little funky one, which would just add to stares:) That way I will be both cool and fast. So much for being modest:)

Other than that, nothing new.

I felt the legs to be little "heavy" from the weekend on my ride to work this morning but now they feel fine. Also my shoulders were tired. I did a lot of swimming in past 3 days thus it is normal I suppose.

I think that I am going to bed now since I can. I am usually still in the pool at this time thus I should profit from being able to go to bed early today!