Group ride

Oh wow, I havent done a ride with a group since last year March/April when I was in Arizona for training camp. I did a few group rides in winter but it was in my boss' basement on trainers so that hardly counts.

When I first came to this little town in southern Illinois I looked for people to train with but no such luck. I found a group of people that rode bikes but I was always training and doing soecific workouts or they were riding too slowly or they were riding like roadies with random attacks and I just did not enjoy it. So I did most of my training alone. 

Until last year when a few people from work dcided to do Hawaii 70.3 and then we had some new people at work come from overseas and they do triathlons so now there is a group of people to train with! Plus a bike shop opened in town and they organize rides. 

Last Saturday I was finally able to join the ride organized by the shop. There was 9 of us, 6 non-Americans (all from work!) and 3 Americans:) I LOVED it. It was awesome to be outside riding. We took a route I never took before and we were rolling at decent but comfortable pace for 1h15m (although once I get fitter it will be too slow).

Then a colleague asked me whether I want to join him and his wife for a ride on Sunday and as soon as we started I realized I might be in trouble because it was little too fast for me right now. I did not do any pulling, just sucking their wheels and trying not to get dropped for 32 miles. I almost managed...but I did get dropped the last 3 miles but they were nice enough to slow down and not leave me behind. I dont ever want to get dropped! Structured training started today and there is indeed a lot of work that needs to be done!

My baby is 2 months old today!!!!!!

Running progress

after finishing my easy 1h ride at midnight, I dragged myself out of bed at 7 this morning to do my running intervals. I had to get it done before A woke up because we were going to St Louis in the afternoon to get the marriage licence. Woot woot!
I didnt feel stellar during the warm up and A was kind of fussing (I could hear her via baby monitor) and I was nervous she would wake up before I am done. But she slept right through it, and I even had time to make me a recovery drink and shower.
Anyway, the workout. I have been seeing improvements and after 400/800/1200/800/400 ladder last week I decided I need to try to run a mile at 8' pace And then I changed that to 2xmile. With 400 before and after. And I did it! I did 400 at 7:30 pace (felt great to open up my stride and run fast....it makes me sad to call 7:30 pace fast but it is what it is. My old coach told me not to worry about paces. Just run consistently and speed will come) and then a mile at 8' pace. I was struggling! But it was all mental. I wanted to quit, I wanted to cut it short but I knew it was all in my head. It was not too hard, my body was handling that pace well, there was no reason to quit!
The second mile went better, I used some tough love on me to help me stay strong.
And then I finished with 7:30 pace 400.

Overall, I am happy. Just 4-5 weeks ago I was struggling holding 8' pace for 4x400. Now I can do mile repeats at that pace. It is true, I just need to run consistently and speed will come. Plus these extra 45 pounds are not helping me be fast either:(
And the mental struggle? I havent done anything that pushed me for 9 months! It is normal that I lost the ability/willingmess to push through uncomfortable workouts. But i know that as I continue doing challenging workouts, the mental toughtness will come back.

Baby update

A is 8 weeks old and growing like a weed. I finally pulled the plug and bagged and put away A's newborn diapers. My baby is growing up. I could hardly fasten them anymore so it was time. I use cloth diapers and love them. Everyone that knows me would not be surprised that I am going cloth route. Disposable diapers create so much waste! I hate disposable things! I hardly ever use paper towels in the kitchen, just use a cloth towel and wash it! We had fight party on Saturday and Nathan's mom asked for a paper plate....just use a regular plate and wash it. I also got cloth wipes and not only I feel better about not creating waste but they work better. And to take cloth diapering/less waste way of doing things I am using diaper inserts that my mom used on me and my sister. And then my aunt on my two cousins. And there are even two inserts that my grandma used for my dad. (Things made in communist countries sure last longer than chinese crap we get now....) Yay for my family for not making diaper waste for over 30 years!

A smiles a lot. She sees me, she smiles. She sees Nathan, she smiles. I make a funny face, she smiles. We love it!

She is also trying very very hard to talk back to me but poor baby doesnt know how to use her vocal organs properly yet. She is going to be a talker.

She loves outdoors. And I mean loves it. She cries, you take her outside and all new sounds and smells and light contrasts make her stop and just look around completely mermetized. I love observing her.

She started sleeping 6-7h at night last week. She goes down anywhere between 10 and 11 and sleeps till 4 or 5. No complains from me. Although I would not mind if she went to sleep earlier, like at 8. That would give Nathan and I some time alone. And I could get done with my workout earlier. It is 11pm and I just started my bike workout:( (easy spin, so I spend it playing on my phone...real work starts next week)

She loves her baths. She is a happy baby sitting in the tub filled with warm water. I cannot wait to take her swimming.

My mom cannot wait to meet her. So far she only saw pictures and videos and camera calls and Oct 19 cannot come soon enough. That's when my mom comes and stays until the end of March. It is a win win. A does not need to go to daycare when she is still so small and my mom gets to spend lot of time with her first grandchild.

And that is it! She is awesome and we love her so much!

Hill repeats

My training for Madison 70.3 officially starts next week (I am not working with a coach as of now because I dont know how this whole new baby/new job/training for half-ironman thing works out snd I do not want to waste someone's time and spend money to prepare my workouts and then not be able to do them) but I have been some real running workouts the last month: some intervals (I almost died the first time I tried to hold 8' pace for 400m but it is getting better every week and I did 400,800,1200,800,400 last week and it felt pretty good! I am planning on doing a few mile repeats this week) and hills.
Today was hills day. Baby A slept from 10ish until 4am and I had to get it done before she woke up for a day since she doesnt nap long and I never know whether her nap will last 10 min (she loves her powernaps) or an hour so I cant get it really done during the day and Nathan has an evening class on Tuesdays.
I really did not want to go run outside because it was still dark and Nathan was sleeping so I did not want to leave without him knowing where I disappeared but then I remembered that I bought a treadmill for this reason. Plus he can sleep through anything so if A was to wake up she would be bawling without nobody comforting her. So off to treadmill taking baby monitor with me I went.
I decided on 6x2' with 1' rest at 10% incline and I think it was a good workout. I was naive and started to fast (10' pace) and had to lower the speed to 12' half way through the 1st interval if I wanted to finish that workout. Baby steps!
I also did little bit of weights afterwards (back, triceps and biceps) so I call it a productive morning!
By the time I was done with it (feeding the baby, pumping the rest, running, weights, recovery drink and shower) it was almost 8 and A woke up again to eat. She ate and then slept until almost 11. Crazy! She has never slept that much. But it was fine with me and I took a full advantage of it and took a nap myself:)

New start

I have not blogged for over 3 years but I have decided to give it a go again so i can look back at this time in my life in a few years.
It seems that not much has happened in those 3 years.....that's what happens when you work/live in small town in rural Illinois. But there has been some changes so let's recap the last few months.
I bought a house in 2015- I never lived in a house, my parents and I and my sister lived in an apartment but my grandparents lived in houses and I always prefered that. I live living in a house although it is a lot of work. Because I dont want to put too much money into this house be ause I know I will move eventually (3-4 years) I (yes, I me myself) sanded and refinished and stained my hardwood floors, took one wall down, repainted and rearranged the kitchen caninets (well, my sister helped when she came visit on Christmas), build a deck, build a fence (again my sis and a cousin helped me with this). I am impressed by myself:)))
I found a wonderful guy who moved in with me in summer 2016
I was supposed to go on a work assignment in India starting in 2018 so we decided to start a family before we go.
We found out I was pregnant in November, due July 2017
Everybody told me not to go to India with a tiny little baby so we decided not to go. Instead, I decided to change jobs. I have worked as a plant controller for a tire manufacturing company the last 3 years and I decided that it was time to try something different and I have been playing with the idea to move closer to production process. Everybody has been very supportive and when I go back to work after the maternity leave (November 1) I will be going into Industrial Engineering. I am super excited!
Baby girl Alexa was born on July 4. My firecracker baby! She is adorable and we cannot get enough of her!
I signed up for Madison 70.3 in 2018.

And this is where this starts. I would like to document my journey about getting back to training and racing  (I did stay active during pregnancy but not as much as I would have liked , esp first 6 months when I was puking my brains out daily, even ended up in ER one night on IV for fluids), losing weight (I gain weight very easily and I gained close to 50 pounds), while raising my sweet little girl and working a new job.

I started running 2 weeks after giving birth and saying that it was horrible is an understatement. I did not have any physical birth-related pain (well, it was as painless as it can be after birth and episiotomy). Finally after 3 weeks I started feeling little better and i could actually use my core while running! I ran 6 miles today and it has been my longest run since....forever. I ran at 10' pace these day and my interval workouts (I did 400,800,1200,800,400) are at 8' pace. It makes me super sad and mad how slow I am but I think that after I loose more of this baby weight (I was at 215-220 pregnant and am down to 193, still loooooot of pounds to loose to get to 150ish) and am consistent with running it will come back.
Because of the episiotomy I was very cautious about biking and I started after 4 weeks and no pain at all. I have mostly been doing easy peasy pedaling. I need to start some real biking.
I have not swam yet......I swim at college that is 20' drive and their summer pool hours suck, they are only open in the morning and Nathan (my soon to be husband:)) goes to work before 6 so I have noone to watch Alexa. But now summer is over and school started so I need to find out new hours.

And on a baby front....Alexa is a happy easy going baby. She is super alert and moving all the time. She smiles a lot, especially at her dad, and she gets frustrated when I talk to her and she is not able to talk back. She tries very hard! She changes very fast. Every day we discover that she does something new!

Training in Paradise! (Arizona Training Camp)

 

I have spent 10 awesome days in Arizona. Loved every second of it. And I am going back next year!:)

Krista and Kelly (Thank you Krista and Kelly!!! You did a great job!!!) of BSC were organizing the first edition of Scottsdale Training Camp but I figured if I was going to go to Arizona I better spent more than five days there.

So I got hooked up with a lovely Christie who let me stay at her house in Tucson area for a few days (Thanks Christie!) before the official camp began.

I pretty much spent my days riding my bike on nice wide "shouldered" roads (ok, not all roads in Tucson are smooth, some are really crappy but most are nicer than here in IL), running through the deserts (sooooo beautiful! I love cacti!) and swimming in outdoor pools (outdoor pool! I have not swum in one since Hannover)!

I so loved doing nothing just training and relaxing the whole days. Dreamy. Since I cannot write about every single awesomeness here are some highlights:

I got sunburnt the very first day on my 4h ride....And then little bit more the second day.

Mt Lemmon - or rather the cookie. You know how they say that those cookies from the Cookie Cabin are huge and you cannot eat one all myself. Well, I did not believe that. Challenge??? Mt Lemmon was not really in my plan for pre-official camp because we were going to ride up as part of the camp too but you see, I was going to try to eat that damn cookie all by myself but I was slightly embarrassed to do it in front of all other campers so I had to go up alone. I shot a text to Michelle begging her to let me go up. And she did:) I took my sweet time going up because I did not know what to expect, just steady pedaling up up UP! and at around mile 20 I was ready to throw the bike off the nearest cliff and hitch the ride to the Cookie Cabin. But I eventually made it after 3h5min and got my cookie! Chocolate Chip with ice cream, caramel, nuts and whipped cream. It took me 30 minutes to eat that thing:)

Running through the desert is awesome. Sooo pretty. Dry, but pretty.

Christie has a grapefruit tree in her backyard and I love grapefruits! One of my favorite fruits. And fresh grapefuits are so yummy. I had a fresh grapefruit every day and even took some with me home. 

I spent five glorious days in Tucson and then moved to Scottsdale to continue with the fun!

It was super fun. I train alone all the time therefore I LOVED riding, running and swimming with other people.

Special surprise - Michelle came for the camp!!! I had no idea she was coming. She just showed up on one of our bike rides... Funny thing that I was not wearing my glasses so I did not really recognize her:) We would rip each other legs off on our bikes if we were training together! Sucking her bike wheel was one of the best times I had at the camp.

Mt Lemmon - the second time felt shorter/easier. I took me 10min less and I think that it was easier because I knew what was coming. The week before I only went to the Cookie Cabin but this time I decided to go all the way up to the Summit. It was all good until the Ski Valley but then the "fun" part began with the steeper hills. Descend is super fun. The week before I could not fully enjoy it because I was stopping like every 5min to take pictures and I got stuck behind this very slow car. But not this time, I stayed in aerobar 99% of the descend and it was great!

I rode with some awesome ladies. They were in 40+ age group and they could kick any 20-year old a$$. I want to be like them when I grow up!

Until next year!!!

Riding to the Mt Lemmon summit. There was snow. Brrrr!

 

Cookie:)

 

Isn't this pretty? I can get used to riding here!

 

Running in the desert. Loved it! 

 

Swimming here makes early morning wake up calls easier... 

 

Grapefruits. Yum! 

1k under 4 minutes

I am not sure what it says about how things are going if I'm excited about running one 1k repeat in 3:56. It probably means I need to put my sh*t together and do something about my running fitness (stop running intervals by feel, start using your watch!!!). But I can't help it. I am pretty stocked about that <4 min:-="" nbsp="" p="">
Actually I ran 3 of them (after an easy 5mile warm up, for 8.5miles total run). They were 4:04, then I decided that the wind was too strong so I changed the start so I ran the tailwind stretch 3 times and headwind stretch only 2 times, 4:00, 3:56. And I jogged/walked 800-1000m in between so my rest was like 7-8min.
My legs hurt already after 800 m of the 1st interval. I could still feel my right hip flexor little bit as I opened my stride, but most of the pain was just not being used to faster running and the permanent tired state my legs are in. I guess that's what 70.3 training does to you.

I don't remember the last time I ran fast intervals. I think that it was couple months ago (I tried last Friday but that didn't work out very well so I'm obviously not counting that). Let me brainstorm: I trained for BSL all last spring with long intervals at HM pace, then my training went downhill when I was working 80-90h weeks all summer and all I could master were 1h easy runs at 4am before the daily hell started, then after Vegas I had enough and spent the fall eating peanut butter out of the jar using chocolate bars as a spoon. So really I have no idea when I did something fast but it was a long time ago.

So eventough it was slow by my standards and it hurt more than I would have liked, it still felt awesome because we all know how much I love track workouts. I wish I could do only those!
Oh yeah, and it was like 70 degrees and I was in shorts and sports bra! I'm solar powered. (Unless it is 100 degrees because my 6 feet and 140 pounds body doesn't deal that well with that.)

I just got a confirmation yesterday that I can race AG ITU Olympic distance World Championship in Edmonton at the end of August, so once I'm done with my Mallorca vacation I am hopefull that I will do more of these faster efforts:-)

7 days later

and I am still sore from that spin bike ride I did as part of the indoor tri. Can you believe that?
I tried to open my stride during a 1k repeats workout on Friday but it hurt too much and I was worried that I might tear something in the psoas/grouch/hip flexors/inner thighs area.
Although I must say that today it feels much better than on Friday so hopefully my poor legs will be fully recovered by Tuesday.

On a different note. I finally bought my plane ticket to Mallorca (doing Mallorca 70.3 on May 10). My sister, mom, cousin and grandfather are coming too. We arrive Thursday, I race Saturday and then we stay exploring the island until Tuesday, and then I go to Slovakia to visit the rest of the fam until Sunday. So it is really not my "A" race, more like a vacation. And let me say that if Andreas Raelert doesn't race I would be really mad because he was the number one item on my "why do Mallorca race" list.

I checked the participant list and there is 113 women in my AG. Interesting. Could be worse, there is over 400 men in 30-34... Around 3000 athletes total. Yeah, everybody (meaning German and British speedsters) is going to be there. Highly popular race. With 1 slot to Mt Tremblant for each women's AG... Good thing I am not after any slots. But one day I will be back to win that race!!!:-)

Since I'm doing the race for fun (at least as much fun as one can have doing a HIM) I am not bringing my bike. Too much hassle. Mallorca is a very popular training spot so there are tons of bike shops offering bike rentals.  So I figured I can just rent a bike. But 5 hours and multiple emails later I found ONE tri bike for rent on the whole island....OK, I found 3 - but one is unavailable, the second one is too small, so that left me with one, which was labeled as testing bike. I reserved it but haven't received any confirmation so who knows what the deal is.
If worse come to worse I will race on a road bike. It is for fun anyway, right? ( just remind me about this when I'm super pissed about everyone kicking my butt on a bike portion after the race). And there is a 13mile climb in the middle of the bike so maybe I will be OK.

Indoor triathlon RR

You would be surprised what a supposedly short and sweet triathlon could do to you...I can't lift my legs and am likely skipping all the workouts planned for today just to recover from this 45 min long triathlon. I spent a few minutes at 2am on a foam roller today trying to limit the damage. True story.

I figured that swimming 10 min in a pool, riding 20 min on stationary bike and running 15 min on an indoor track would be a nice change from sitting on my trainer for 3-4h every weekend.

Swim was great, we were in multiple waves so each participant had her own lane. I swam exactly 700yards in 10 min. That's is around 1:25 pace and it didn't even felt hard. (I probably shouldn't admit that I didn't go as hard as I should have but just trying to be honest)
I swam around 14:45 for 1000 yards a few weeks ago and it definite was harder than yesterday's effort. It either means that my swimming is coming along nicely or it proves my theory that the pool I swim in is slow. Seriously, I went to visit my sis for the past two Xmases and I swam in pool there and both times when I got back to my pool I was like whoa, do they pour oil into this thing????

Then you had 10 min to transition. I changed to my tri shorts, drank water, chatted with a few people....

Bike is what has caused my very achy legs. You see, they had those spinning bikes and the way they function is the faster you spin the further you go. Therefore that was a torture for someone like me who usually bikes at low 80s cadence....So I spinned and spinned and spinned my brain out and my hip flexors got tighter and tighter and tighter.
You can totally tell who spends their free time in spin classes. We were all smoked by this 45years old lady. Next year I doing some spin classes with her if I'm doing this race again.
So I got off the bike and holy shi*!!!, my hip flexors! And they got only worse from there, not I can't lift either of my legs without using my arms to pull my leg up (how is that for explanation?). And those muscles behing the knees aren't thrilled with me either. I seriously think that if I try to bike today I'm going to injure myself.

Then another 10min transition that I spent...correct, stretching my hip flexors.

Run was alright. I started well, then it got harder, I was able to hold the pace for a little while but then I slowed down. I ran 3 600 m, which is 4:10 pace I believe. Hm, thinking of that, not too bad.

And that was it. 45min of SBR, 20min transitions, pure fun.

I am ready

Thank you Continental!!!!

Well, partly ready. I still need to train.

I am a fish (swim test #1)

(Is there supposed to be that 'a' in front of fish? I have no idea. I am very bad at this whole article thing in English. We do not have those in Slovak so it is too abstract and I am sure I don't use the articles correctly 40% of the time.)

So...fish. I did a swim test the other day and I swam the fastest I have ever swum! How exciting is that???????? My fastest swimming speed ever!
50: 35
200: 2:39
1000: 15:48

Both 50 and 200 were PRs, 1000 was ....hm, let's go with I didn't drown.

But that 50, I felt so fast:-)  I think I swam 1:10ish for 100 once with fins so that doesn't really count.
I can't understand how some people can knock off 100s in one minute like nothing.

2014

I am going to give this blog another shot. I really liked it but then life (or is it laziness?) got into way.

2014 is here!!!!
I made a promise to myself that my work is not going to ruin my "athletic career" (I am using that term looselly)! So if I start bitching about having to  work 80 h a week someone remind me about this promise ( if the writing on my bathroom mirror is not reminding enough)

I have nothing exciting to report training wise (let's keep our fingers crossed that it will change soon. See the paragraph above) so I will at least tell you what I want to do in 2014.
Half-ironman in Mallorca (May), ITU Chicago Olympic distance,(June) ITU Olympic distance age group world champs in Canada (August) and half-ironman in Brasil(December). How freaking awesome is 2014 going to be, right?!?

Half-iron worlds are not on the list because I don't think I can qualify and I don't have that much desire to qualify anyway. Hm, maybe I don't think I can qualify because I don't have enough desire to qualify? Or maybe I don't have the desire to qualify because I don't think I can? And it is one week after oly worlds and in the middle of one of the busiest week of the year at work...Anyway....maybe if I can start training soon and can see that I might be able to get into a necessary shape I will put it on my list.

So wish me luck and stay tuned.

Is it time to start training again?

So my two weeks of eating and doing nothing are over and I have been training for the last 2 weeks. I was surprised that starting training again was not as bad as I expected. Because those two weeks that I took off I had my bike or swimming suit in a car every single day but I never used it because when I got to the intersection and I had to make decision "pool" or "home" I always chose chocolate, uh, I mean home.

So I did some swims (and managed to injure my shoulder last Wednesday. Hopefully it is already gone and I can swim again) and those swims felt very good. I was not fast but I felt fast, and smooth and efficient.

I did a few bike rides. They were effort based, I am too scared to use my powermeter (plus it is out of batteries). Some rides were on a trainer and I was kind of treading them at first. But it turned out that I just totally forgot how much I like trainer workouts. So it is all good.

And runs. I did two track workouts this week! Awesome. I am pretty sure that the last time I did something faster than 8min pace was in early July. On Tuesday I did 8x400m with 2min rest. I started at 1:38 pace. Wow. But I did not cry:) I did 1:38s, then 1:36, 1:35, 1:30, 1:30. I do not know how I did it:)
And today...I did a workout off the bike. 3k sub-tempo (I did 4:24, 4:19, 4:15, nothing extraordinary but better than expected!!!), 5min rest and 4x800. Those were horrible. 3:05, 3:08, 3:09, 3:15 (but still better than expected). The rest was only 90sec and it was not enough. At the start of each one I was still huffing and puffing from the previous one. And I totally died on the last one.
It can get only better from here, right?

Ironman 70.3 World Champs RR

I must say that I am glad I did not bail out and went to Vegas after all. It was a good experience and I like Nevada and it gave me a chance to take some time off work. So really no complains!

I finally got off work at 11pm on Wednesday, went home and started packing….Got couple hours of sleep and off to the airport to catch an early morning flight. My cousin was coming with me and my sister was arriving later in the evening.

Michelle rented a super nice house in Henderson where me and a few other of her athletes were staying. Michelle has been helping me with my training since 2011 but I have not met her yet and I finally got to meet her when she picked me up at the airport!

Thursday, Friday and Saturday were pretty much resting, eating and some shake-out workouts (I biked, ran and swam in those three days more than I have in 2 weeks preceding this race but it did not really matter at that point).

We talked with Michelle about my race strategy and we agreed that I have two options: I go and just finish it (hopefully without crying), or I take a risk and see what happens (and hopefully it does not deter me completely from doing another half-ironman).I think that we both knew that I was going for the second option.

So the race.

I got up at around 3:45, ate a huge French chocolate brioche (yummy!), drank some water and we drove to the race side.

We were all mentally preparing for 100+ degrees so when it was raining when we woke up race morning it was quite unexpected. I did not think about it at all, it is only rain and I am not made of sugar so I won’t melt, right?

I put my two bottles on a bike, checked whether tires are ok and then we waited and waited and waited since transition was closing at 6am and my wave did not start until 7:42. It was still raining but it was not cold at all and we found a nice cozy carpeted and roofed place to sit down while waiting. Waiting was quite nerve-wracking and I was anxious to get started and get it over with and enjoy my post-race MilkDuds.

Since they did not allow us to warm up in the water I jogged a little bit, stretched to warm up little bit.

I do not know how it is supposed to work but I did not join my wave until a few minutes before they let us into water. Was I supposed to wait and stand there the whole time?

Swim. I started pretty well, I did not get kicked or hit at all and I even found feet to draft off. I had no idea where we were going since I was not able to preview the course because it was not set up in the day before when we did our practice swim and I did not wear glasses or contacts on a race day so I did not see the bouys that well. I just followed people in front of me. I think I swam pretty well but then somewhere around turnaround we kind of merged together and caught some slower swimmers from previous waves and I got hit, I almost swam over someone, lost the feet I was following, drank some lake water, and the lack of training started showing. I wanted to cry a little towards the end since I started thinking about what is still ahead of me (13.1 run, scary scary scary) but then I almost got hit by a huge guy from a wave that started after me and that “woke” me up and I forgot those negative thoughts.

I swam 37 high, which is truly horrible but thankfully I did not know it at the time because I forgot to start my watch at the start, so I thought that I did alright.

Transition was uneventful, it was little muddy with all the rain and 2000 athletes running through it before me, but I did not wipe out or take anyone out trying to put my feet into my shoes (You know how they say you should not try anything new on a race day? It is probably true but that did not stop me from using a new speedsuit, new tri top and new tri bike shoes that I clipped into the pedals, which I have never done before. I had nothing to lose, just to gain.)

Bike. One of Michelle’s super talented athlete Kimberly passed me after the first mile or two of the bike and that’s when I decided that it was a taking-risk time. Just stay with her, keep her in sights. I knew that I was riding well over my fitness level and there were moments when I was thinking that maybe I should just let her go because my legs were screaming. But as I said I had nothing to lose, only to gain. I thought we were doing pretty well because we were passing a lot of people. Some men of course passed me but not many women. We were full aero and pedaling hard even on downhills eventhough it was still raining. My legs finally gave out when we got back into town and the last 2-3 miles were very very slow. 2:48 something bike.

The ride was not ideal both because I rode too hard and because I feel it was not steady at all with lots of spikes. Should be fun run...

Volunteers took my bike, gave me my run gear bag and I ran into the changing tent (sweet, I have never done a race before when volunteers took my bike or gave me my bag. I actually never did a race when I had a gear bag!)

Run...It was slow and pathetic but so much better than Buffalo Springs Lake. I was going very slow but I was still passing people so it means that they were even more done than I was. I did not walk as much as in Texas but I started walking aid stations the last lap. I actually liked the run course a lot! It was just 2 miles dragging ass up and then cruising downhill for 2 miles. And repeat 3 times. So it was easy to break it down mentally which worked well for me. My ITB got tight around mile 11 but it was better than in Texas, which I was pretty surprised because downhills are the worst for my ITB. Speaking of downhills, I never (never!) run downhills in training (because of my ITB) so you can imagine what my quads went through after pretty much running 6 miles downhill. Major soreness. Total time 1:46.

My sister and cousin were on the run course which was kind of nice and they took some pictures and videos but I have not seen those.

I finished the swim in the 45th place, biked myself into the 18th place, and also finished the run in the 18th place in my age group, total time 5:18 something. Which I guess it alright considering everything leading to that race. But I was quite disappointed after the race because I thought that we were killing the bike with Kimberly and I was positive that almost nobody passed me on a run, so I was thinking that the placing will be better. I had no idea that my swim was that bad and that I was that far back after the swim. And we were not really killing the bike, it was just me killing myself on that bike and there is a difference between the two:) Which is maybe a good thing because since I was thinking that I was killing it I was super positive and I did not want to cry. The only crying moment was during the swim and then it was only happy thoughts afterwards:)

I felt so much better physically after this race than I felt after the Buffalo Springs Lake. I honestly did not want to do this ever again after BSL, I was that miserable. But Vegas race was not that bad and my first thoughts were not „Ï am never doing this again!“. I think that it was the heat in Texas that made the whole experience so hard. Or maybe the second half-ironman is just easier than the first one. 

Lessons learned:

70.3 is not that awful after all

My long runs must be longer than 11 miles because my legs do not have enough endurance to run 13 miles. Eventhough my ITB hurt a lot after the race  it seems ok so I will try to do longer runs in the future.

You can run and pee at the same time

I am never ever doing a full Ironman

I said that I will decide what’s next after Vegas. So I signed up for Mallorca 70.3 next year. I would like to go visit my family so I will do that at the same time.

And what have I been doing for the last two weeks? Nothing. The last two weeks were my doing nothing getting fat weeks! And it was awesome. That's also why it took me two weeks to write this race report. I had zero motivation to do anything (I did Tough Mudder last weekend  and I ran a couple timesbut that was only fun, no stress). I had my swim gear in my car every single day but every single day I decided that I prefer going home, sit on my butt and eat peanut butter out of the jar using Hershey’s chocolate as a spoon.

I needed a break. Mostly mental break. It feels so good to not have anything looming over my head (race, training) and causing a lot of stress.

I woke up yesterday, went coaching a youth soccer game (do not ask), ran 8 miles because I felt like it and then came home and watched stupid comedy TV series eating chocolate and watermelon until 1am. It was wonderful!

Race week is here

Ok, it is 11pm, I just came home from work and I should be sleeping but I cannot fall asleep yet because there is so much on my mind. Maybe putting it down on "paper" will help.

I do not have much positive to say. I have been working 73hours/week on average in the last ~6 week culminating with 85-hour week two weeks ago that included being at work from 6:30am Thursday to 9:30pm Friday....
So I did not train much and most of my training was happening at 4am after 6hours of sleep. I really tried to make peace with not being able to train like I want to, and some days I was successful, some not so much.
Last week and this week so far have been the worst and a lot of tears were shed.
I am super stressed from race and work and I am not even packed yet and my car broke down today and now I do not know how I am going to get to airport since the only friend I have here cannot give me a ride.
Deep breaths, deep breaths......I can do this.

I am a realist but I guess that each of us has that unrealistic part, and that small part of me was still hoping that I can pull it off, that I can have a good race. But then something happened today (I am not going into details here but someone told me something) and that little hope was crushed. So now I am going into the race without any hope and totally scared.I am 99% certain that I will cry at the start line.

I know it is horrible attitude and therefore my goal for this weekend is to behave in such a way that my negativity wont affect anyone. And another goal is not to cry at the start line...crying into goggles sucks, I have done that twice in the last week.

I really want it to be over and then I will start thinking about what to do next because I am not going to have another summer like this. It was awfull!