When I get interested in something, I’m like a dog with a bone. I like to read about it, think about it, talk about it, do shopping for anything I can think of related to it. I was like this about my job before I had kids and it wasn’t one of my  husband’s favorite things about me. I would come home and think about work all evening. Thank goodness it was before the days of laptops, email, and smartphones so that all I could really do was think and worry at home, that is when I was able to rip myself away from my desk.

Once we had kids, they were easy to think about constantly and I would say that was a good thing. I loved being a stay-at-home mom and I still do. Being with kids all day taught me patience and the importance of napping. There is honestly nothing I disliked about raising my kids and every aspect of it was a blast. Trips to the zoo and the botanical gardens, walks to the park, and reading books are all great things to contemplate day and night.

When the kids started getting older and I started running more seriously, I found myself thinking about running all of the time. I liked to think about the logistics of the run, the weather and what I was going to wear. When I started racing, that made it even more interesting and fun to think about. But running for almost nine years is a long time. It is after all, just running. It’s pretty much the same every time and everyone does it pretty much the same way. Put on shoes, flip on some music, get sweaty, and take a shower. What’s interesting about that?

Yet here I am at the beginning of another year and I’m just as excited as ever. The Polar Dash Half Marathon is in the bag already and the Rock ‘n Roll Arizona is next weekend. I’m running the half marathon and Mike is running the full. The following weekend is the Frozen Half Marathon in St. Paul. We’ll wait and see what the weather looks like and if it’s not too bad out we’ll go and do race day registration. We are looking at a couple race possibilities for February and we’ll do one of the Lucky 7 races in March. I’ve been running a lot of slow miles to work on my aerobic base and I’ve been biking on the trainer, too.

I’m pretty excited about Arizona! I know it won’t be my fastest, but I’ve been running pretty well and I know it will be fun. Sometime this year I would like to run a half marathon in under 2 hours. I’ve only done it once before and it surprised me that I could do it. I’m hoping to run a bunch of half marathons this year, so maybe I’ll get lucky and I’ll find myself doing it again. My number one priority for the year is Ironman Florida, but I would like to do more races this year than I was able to manage last year.

I would call running a half under 2 hours more of a dream than a goal. One of my 2013 running goals is to run 100 miles a month. January got off to a great start with 13 miles at the Polar Dash Half Marathon. Here I am with a half frozen face at the turn around:

Next weekend I’ll be wearing shorts in Arizona instead of being covered in frost.

I ran pretty well at the Polar Dash. I finished in 2:03 but the course was a quarter mile short. I should have finished at 2:05 which was fine, so I was disappointed that the course was short. I ran the first 6 miles at a fairly easy pace and then picked it up a bit. It would be great if I could run Arizona with the same finishing time and run faster to make up for the extra distance. Right now the weather forecast looks good. My daughter is saying that she doesn’t feel well and the flu is hitting our area hard, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll all stay healthy for another week.

So next post will either be as race report or a sick report. I vote for race report!

A year that starts with a 10K PR on the first day, has a marathon in Hawaii in the first month, nears it’s finish with an Ironman and then caps off with a 5K PR can only go down as a good year. There were some challenges, some injuries, and some frustrations along the way, but those were minor compared to the successes and fun.

Not including strength training, I trained over 465 hours and went over 4,750 miles. While I ran about 200 miles less than I did last year, coming in at 1,100 miles, I biked 1,500 miles more than last year, racking up 3,500 miles. Although I didn’t track my swims for 2011,  in 2012 I swam about 120 miles. While I love numbers, I think pictures tell the story better.

Polar Dash 10K on January 1st:  Starting off the year with a PR is always good.

In late January, Mike and I went to Maui to celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary. While we were there, we ran the Maui Oceanfront Marathon. It was by far the most challenging marathon I’ve done, but I was really proud of my effort.

Spring brought The Race for the Cure and heading back outside on the bike.

By summer it was time to get ready for Ironman Florida. I practiced changing my tire.

Open water swam with friends.

Did the Tour de Cure with Mike.

Did some triathlons.

Ran the Gopher to Badger Half Marathon.

Had some setbacks.

Was able to come back and run better than ever.

Ironman Florida made all of the training worthwhile.

I PR’ed my Thanksgiving Day 5K while running with my son which made it extra special, and then celebrated with the whole family afterwards.

What you don’t see in the pictures are all of the people that gave me support and encouragement towards my Ironman goal all through the year. There were friends that trained with me, listened and gave me great advice when I needed it. There were family members who listened to endless stories about training and injuries and plans. Most of all, there was Mike who believed that I could do it long before I thought it was possible. When I was injured and thought I would have to give up, he gave me hope that I could work through it and make it to the start line. It would have never occurred to me to attempt to do an Ironman if he hadn’t told me that he knew I could do it, and I’m so glad that I believed him. Everyone should have someone in their life that believes they can do amazing things and supports them every step of the way. I’m lucky enough to have more than one someone, and I’m thankful to all of them for a great 2012!

After working towards Ironman Florida for a year, it’s over. I couldn’t eat or sleep for several days, and then I couldn’t stop eating or sleeping. My legs never felt sore after the race, so I followed the advice of my training plan and eased back into running five days later. My legs felt a little flat, but otherwise everything was fine. I swam a couple of times, put the bike on the trainer for some indoor rides, and started lifting weights again. Other than being hungry all the time, I felt like I came through the race just fine.

We ran our traditional Turkey Trot 5K and when I lined up I had intended to take it easy. The course is kind of hilly and the race was packed with people, although it was a gorgeous day and perfect for running. The first mile went by at a reasonable pace, around 8:50. As my legs started to warm up, I started passing a lot of people. The next mile was 7:50 and I realized I had a chance of beating my PR. My legs felt great so I continued to move up and finished in 24:20, 59 seconds faster than my PR which was from 2007. I was 2nd in my age group (45-49) out of 100, and 7th out of 299 women aged 40-49. I’ve never finished that high in a race before. Here is the whole family after the race:

My teen-aged son who runs cross country decided to run with me which was really nice. I was breathing hard the whole way and he was just jogging along like a puppy dog. Here we are after, flashing #1 since I PR’ed by so much:

With running a PR and my legs feeling great, I started re-thinking my plans for Rock ‘n Roll Arizona. Months ago, Mike signed up for the full marathon and I signed up for the half figuring I would be pretty trashed from the Ironman. My marathon PR is relatively slow compared to my usual half marathon and 10K times. The thought that I could PR at the R&R Arizona marathon is pretty enticing. I won’t have a chance to run another marathon for at least a year, and I would only need to train for 10 more weeks. I decided to sign up for the full, giving myself the option of running either one.

Of course, as soon as I signed up for the full, things started to fall apart. I’m guessing that, even though I wasn’t sore after the race, over the following few weeks I tightened up as I have a tendency to do. That with the increased mileage that came with marathon training was a recipe for pain. My left hamstring and right glute started to hurt. Not a lot, but this is supposed to be the off season when I’m trying to heal up, Aggravating existing problems or coming up with new ones isn’t on my list of things I want to do. All last season it felt like I was riding with a knife in my backside. Although it was fine on race day, it was not fun to ride a few thousand miles like that. I can’t tolerate going into next season without trying to get it to heal up.

Besides the annoyance of the pain, the injured glute last season prevented me from riding hard all season. I couldn’t do intervals or hill work, and as a result I rode all season 1.5 mph slower than I had the season before. I know I can do better on the bike and still be able to run well, but that is going to depend on riding the bike trainer through the winter. Although Ironman training doesn’t officially start until April, the time to get faster and stronger is February and March.

I’m pumped up to give the marathon a go but I need to balance that with getting healed up to do the biking that’s needed to set me up for an improved triathlon season. What to do? I got some treatment for the glute and hamstring last week and now I’m really sore. I’ve decided to take a week off from biking and running and see if I can get them to settle down quickly. I’ve started hitting the weights pretty hard at the gym so I’ll keep doing that and I’ll swim more consistently. Hopefully I’ll know better after the break if I can stick with the marathon or if I should just run the half. I really don’t want to do the marathon unless I think I have a reasonable chance of running a PR. It’s not worth it to me to risk an injury and also take the recovery time after to just run for fun. Running the half with a good finishing time and being ready to train hard on the bike would mean more to me. Either way, I’m excited to go to Arizona and then see what I can do during the following months on the bike.

Coming off the bike, I knew I was in good shape to run. Finishing the first two legs with time to spare took the pressure off about finishing the race before the midnight cut off. As long as I could keep moving forward, I would be able to finish before the time cut off. I was pretty excited to run and my plan was to keep my heart rate in zone 1 and stick with my nutrition plan. I knew I would be good for an hour and I was curious to see how long I could last after that. Here I am seeing my family for the first time on the run course, around mile 4.

After the first hour I felt fine but my heart rate was about 5 beats higher than it was during training due to the heat. It was still well within zone 1, but I slowed down just a little bit and it dropped to where it was supposed to be. The half marathon point came and I was still running fine and I was excited to see my half marathon split at 2:10. At that point, I felt like I had accomplished everything I had set out to do when I signed up for the race. I was really proud of myself. I told myself that if I didn’t feel good that I could walk and I would be happy with my result as long as I crossed the line. I still felt totally fine so I just kept chugging along and sticking with my nutrition plan, walking through the water stops and then getting going again.

The course is 6.5 mile out and back that is done twice, so there is great  people watching the whole way. You get to see the same spectators over and over again and they are fantastic. It’s also great for spectators because they can stay in one spot and see their racer several times. I got to see Mike and my friend who was racing 3 or 4 times. It was fun to see them on the course and that they were both doing well. Mike had broken his lower leg bone just 7 weeks before the race, but he was running fine and would go on to PR all three legs of the race, finishing right at 12 hours.

Here I am in the dark:

At mile 18 I got a side stitch, so I took some walk breaks to see if it would go away. Miles 18 and 19 were my slowest and when I saw my family for the last time on the course, I told them not to worry about me if they didn’t see me for a while. I figured if it kept up that I might have to walk the rest of the race. After those two miles, though, it went away. I ran all of mile 20 and ran for the rest of the race. Once my side stitch went away, I felt fine and I was shocked at how many people I passed. Here are my splits. It got dark shortly after the half and I had no idea how fast I was running after that. I know I was taking longer to walk through the water stops as the miles added up, but my heart rate stayed down and I just kept going. I really didn’t have an excuse to walk because I felt totally fine.

The run was incredibly satisfying. I stuck with my nutrition plan even though it meant that I had to eat and drink when I didn’t want to. I stayed in the right heart rate zone which enabled me to run the entire marathon. My marathon time was 4:39:29, just 7 minutes slower than my Marine Corps Marathon time from 2011. For the past year, I had spent countless hours in training working on my aerobic base. I had spent a lot of money and time trying to heal from injuries and build strength. I had eaten a lot of foods that I didn’t want to eat to change my metabolism to burn fat for long periods of time. Now on race day, there I was running the entire marathon completely pain free and I wasn’t even out of breath. Crazy.

Coming down the last stretch, the feeling of accomplishment was overwhelming. How did this happen?  Just eight years ago, I could only run 30 minutes without stopping. I struggled to finish my first marathon in just under five hours only five years ago. Three years ago, I finished last in my age group in my first Olympic distance triathlon. Two years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and had to physically and mentally recover from surgery. And somehow, in the marathon after biking 112 miles, I was passing people that had intimidated me for the previous two days. I passed about 200 of the fittest people I have ever seen. Me- the lady that gets asked on a regular basis if she is limping. Not only was I doing it, but I felt fantastic. I loved it. I had trained hard and, more importantly, I had made smart decisions during training and racing. I’m not saying I did everything perfectly, but I tried hard and worked consistently throughout the whole year.

Crossing the finish line at Ironman is like finishing no other race I’ve done. The crowd at the finish is loud and the lights are so bright. Coming down the stretch, I had no idea what my time was because it was too dark to see my watch for the last two hours. I had thought the clock would say something around 13:30 which made me very happy. I couldn’t see the clock until I was right up on it, and when it said 12:54 I couldn’t believe it. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine crossing the line with a time that started with 12 hours. I’m guessing they snapped this picture right as I realized my time:

And that is how I remember finishing. I’ve already posted the picture of me crying, but I only cried for a few seconds from joy. My official time was 12:54:05 and I finished 34th in my division which put me just in the top third, and I finished right in the middle of all finishers.

Here I am showing of the hardware:

And now I am and will always be an Ironman!

After swimming and swallowing a lot of salt water, I was handed my transition bag and headed into the host hotel to change for the bike. The transitions for this race were some of my favorite parts of the day. I had my own volunteer who helped me empty my bag and get everything where it was supposed to go. Being able to take the time to connect with others is one of the best parts of doing an iron distance event as opposed to a shorter race. Not every second is critical and it’s okay to take a minute to say thank you, to encourage others, and to say hi to your family. In the changing room, I saw my friend who had gotten out of the water just a minute before me and was able to wish her luck on the bike. I talked to the gal sitting next to me and we realized that we both were cancer survivors. I asked my volunteer how her day was going. When I left the changing room, I felt energized and excited to get on the bike.

For the last half of the season, I had been riding with a heart rate in high zone 1 to low zone 2 which was letting me put out enough power to ride about 17 mph depending on conditions. I also had a lot of success running off the bike all season when I stayed in that heart rate zone and in that power range. My plan was to ride as I had trained as long as I looked down and saw that I was going the minimum speed to finish the bike in the max allotted time. I only needed to bike 14 mph to accomplish this barring mechanical or other serious problems, so once I saw that I was biking faster than that, I tried to ignore my speed and concentrated on heart rate and power.

Coming out of the swim with a time in the top third of swimmers meant that there were a whole lot of people behind me. I would see about 450 people pass me on the bike as I stayed within my target heart rate and power zones. This is when it’s important to have left the ego at home and just concentrate on yourself. I was actually impressed with the caliber of athletes that I was in front of in the swim. It made me really proud of myself and all of those hours I spent in the pool. Other racers were very friendly on the bike. I often had little bits of conversation as I passed or was passed. Everyone was encouraging and it made the hours on the bike pass quickly. I stopped once on the front half of the course and once on the back half for a potty break. I didn’t have to wait in line and everyone seemed to be happy and having a good day. At special needs, I changed out my bike bottles and quickly got under way again only because I was feeling fine and ready to ride, not because I felt any pressure to hurry.

By mile 70, I was feeling fantastic. It just didn’t seem like there was that much farther to ride and my legs felt great. By this time we had been biking into the wind, which we would have for about 40 miles coming straight at us, but it wasn’t bad at all. It was maybe 8-10 mph wind which is pretty calm for this race. It was a relief to turn into the wind and realize that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Once I hit mile 80, I started passing people. I guess everyone who was going to pass me already did and now I was passing people who were fading on the bike. It was getting hot and after 5-6 hours on the bike people were wearing out. I was charged up. It wasn’t because I was passing people, but because I never imagined biking that far and being so happy the entire time. I knew that I was going to have a lot of spring in my step to start the run and I was thrilled. I probably passed 30-40 riders and finished the bike in 6:33:45/17.07 mph.

Here are a couple pictures:

I could have easily titled this post “Race Nutrition” because eating and drinking on the bike is a huge part of the entire race. I had practiced and fine tuned my race nutrition and stuck with my plan religiously. Even if I didn’t feel like eating or drinking, I did anyway. I brought my own nutrition and only used a half bottle of water and a few sips of sports drink from the course. This let me ride past the aid stations without having to slow down or get caught up in the crowds. I was also happy to be sticking with what I knew from experience works for me. I used EFS sports drink, which has the highest electrolyte content of any sports drink which is enough for me to forgo taking salt pills even when riding in the heat. I used the EFS Liquid Shot as my gel product and Bonk Breaker bars for some solid food. With my bento box for the Liquid Shot and Bonk Breaker bars, my aero bottle on the front, two bottle holders off the seat and another on the upright, I was able to carry enough nutrition for half the race and I just changed everything out at the special needs stop.

So what will I do differently for IMFL 2013? I won’t approach the race any differently, but I am going to change up my training. For the whole season, I had a nagging upper hamstring/glute ingury that felt like a knife in my butt when I rode. This limited how hard I was able to pedal and ruled out any interval training. While I was able to do the high cadence spins on my schedule, I couldn’t do any of the intervals and hill work that would have let me improve my power output. My power numbers are pretty anemic. If it had been a really windy day, I would have been able to finish in time but it would have really slowed me down. For my size and condition, I should be able to sustain a lot more power. Miraculously, my hamstring and glute did not hurt at all on race day. During the two weeks leading up to the race, I got some treatment for it which in combination with the taper was enough to keep it quiet for the day. I’ll need to address the root cause of the injury in the off season, get it healed up and then start training to gain strength and speed.

With the bike and swim done, all that was left was the marathon. Just a little run to round out the day. Next post, I’ll write about the run and what it was like to cross the finish line.

One of the things that I like about Ironman training is the complexity of it:  the equipment, the logistics, the extended duration of the race, the nutrition, the combination of three individual sports. Doing an Ironman is like doing a puzzle over the course of 30 weeks, and then showing up on a single day to see how well you were able to fit the pieces together. What happened on race day seems so closely tied to the training that it’s hard for me to separate them in my mind. Instead of writing a chronological race report, I’m going to address different parts of the race, how I prepared for that part of the race, what I thought about it and what I would do differently or the same in preparing for Ironman Florida 2013. I’m going to break it up into different posts, but I won’t make you wait until the last one to know the final result. I am an Ironman! Here I am crossing the line with an official time of 12:54:05.

I made the picture nice and big so that you could see that, yes, I am crying. I was smiling all day long but at the very moment they took my picture I was indeed crying because I was unbelievably happy. I’ll put some smiling pictures in later posts, but this one kind of cracks me up in an embarrassing sort of way.

The Swim

For the ten days leading up to the race, the forecast was for virtually no wind through the early morning hours. This would normally translate to a calm ocean swim. At the Athlete Meeting on Thursday night, there was no mention of jelly fish issues, whereas last year there was a problem with jelly fish. These two things put me at ease when I went to bed the night before the race. When we woke up and left the condo at 4:30 a.m. on race morning, it was too dark to see the ocean but the wind was blowing and we could hear the waves breaking on the beach. This caught me off guard and made me just a little nervous. I wasn’t worried about being able to complete the swim, I just wasn’t mentally prepared for a swim fighting the waves. I wish I had ignored the forecast and just assumed it would be a tough swim.

Heading out the the beach, I could see the waves crashing and the swell of the ocean out past the breakers. The waves weren’t terrible, but I knew it would pay to be smart about how to navigate them. The course is two laps in a rectangle shape. After a swim straight out from the beach, there is a left turn into the sun, then a shorter stretch into the next left turn before heading back to the beach. There is a natural current to the left, so it’s important to stay to the right or else end up inside the buoy line and have to swim against the current and the crowds to round the first corner. When the canon boomed at 7:00, I lined up to the far right of the pack on the beach, probably half way back. I walked out into the breakers, taking my time and turning sideways as they hit me. When they were about chest high, I started swimming. Even past the breakers, there was a swell to the ocean. On the first stretch of the first lap, I swallowed a lot of salt water and had my head up quite a bit. Since I was far to the right, I didn’t have a lot of contact with other swimmers until I got close to the first buoy. I was taking it wide but a lot of others were also. Once I rounded the corner, it was very crowded and I was having more contact with other swimmers. I was biffed in the head, people tried to swim over me, people bumped up next to me. No one was aggressive or rough about it, it was just really crowded. Having my goggles knocked off would have been terrible, so I was conscious to stay back from other swimmers’ feet and tried to keep a arm in front of me while swimming. When I got some open water and really started swimming, I was catching up to the people in front of me. When I ran into a crowd, I just sat up and tried to find some open water around them. It’s amazing how much head down swimming I actually did with 2,700 other people in the water. I didn’t care about my time as much as getting out of the water in good shape for the rest of the race. When I exited after the first lap, I checked my watch and was happy with my progress. My official first lap time was 37:16.

For the second lap, there is a diagonal swim against the current before hitting the first side of the rectangle. This makes the second lap longer than the first. Although I negotiated the waves a lot better by diving through them and there was less of a crowd for the first portion of the second lap, I was feeling a little queasy from all the salt water I swallowed on the first lap. The sea still had a lot of swell to it and when I had to put my head up to sight or navigate around others, I was catching a lot of water in the face and in my mouth. After that long in the water, the ocean is shockingly salty. With about 15 minutes left to swim, I started coughing and was feeling pretty nauseous. I decided that throwing up might not be such a bad idea. The salt water might make me dehydrated and upset my stomach making the rest of the race difficult. I sat up in the water and coughed and actually hoped it would all come up. After a minute, it was clear that it wasn’t so I put my head down and swam in, hoping that everything would stay down for the rest of the day. I completed the swim in 1:21:39. I had a little trouble getting my wet suit off because it got caught on my watch, but the peelers were patient and helped me get it over the watch and the rest of the wet suit off. Right after, I saw my daughter and my husband’s parents who were there cheering for us. I stopped to give my daughter a kiss and ran off through the showers and into the first transition.

Looking back at my training, my training plan prepared me well for the swim. I had been swimming 3,500 yard workouts 3 times a week for the last 14 weeks or so of training which were taking me about 1:15 to complete. Prior to that I was swimming 3,000 yards. During and after the swim, I didn’t feel like my heart rate was elevated or that I was fatigued in any way. Once on the bike, I felt fresh and ready to ride. I use the Garmin 910xt which has GPS for swimming and, looking at my swim path on the map, I stayed on course pretty well. I mostly used the other swimmers as a guide since the swells make it difficult to see the buoys. That seemed to work just fine. Training for IMFL 2013, I wouldn’t do anything differently than I did this year. While I could have made it through the swim on less swim training, I think the non-impact, aerobic swim training paid off all day long. I’m actually glad that the swim this year was on the rough side because now I’m not as worried about what the swim might be like next year. I know if I stick with my training that I will be prepared and can make it through in the allotted time.

There is still so much to write about! It’s been a week since the race and all of the details are still fresh and I’m still incredibly excited about the whole thing. Next, I’ll post about the bike portion of the race and have some less embarrassing pictures.

Since I started writing in January, 2009, things have never been busier in my athletic life, but I’ve been slow to write about it. When I was just running, I liked to write about little quirky things that I noticed about running, my training, how I felt about my progress, and the running community. Over time, as the training cycles became longer and more complicated, my posts became more about telling the chronological story of my training and racing. When so many things are happening, it’s more daunting to tell the story with enough detail to make sense but to keep it concise. Since it became more challenging, I put off posting and that just compounded the problem of having too much to write about.

With Ironman Florida just 8 days away I’m finally getting to taper a little bit and I have time to get my blog back on track. So first, the quick story catch-up. I’ve been training well the past month, staying healthy and following my schedule. Mike got out of his boot and two weeks ago was cleared to start running. While his bone is healed, his leg is stiff and sore and still healing. He’s been swimming and biking well and should be healthy enough to race. While his foot won’t be 100% and is painful, he sounds like he’s ready to get out there and see what the day brings. He has a great attitude and he’s been a good sport about his bad luck.

What’s it like to be 8 days out from a race like a first Ironman? What’s it like to spend a year training and thinking about a single race and have it just around the corner?

When I was training for my first marathon, I made a mental error. When things got tough on a training running, I would tell myself that, on race day, I would be thankful that I gutted it out. If I was tired and didn’t want to run, I motivated myself with race day. Race day would be my reward. On race day, I would cross the finish line and I would celebrate a job well done. What happened on race day? From mile four on I struggled and, although I finished, it was disappointing. If all of the training was for race day and race day was terrible, what was it all for?

This time, I know better. When I decided to sign up for IM Florida, I signed up because I wanted to challenge myself with the training. Training for an Ironman is a 3o week puzzle with nutrition, sleep, strength, patience, endurance, equipment, hydration and mental toughness all as pieces. Every day, I made it a point to focus on the training for the day,  the step in the process, and just doing my best for the sake of doing my best. That’s it. No race day as a carrot or hopes that crossing the line would be the reward. On the biggest weekend of training, I wasn’t thinking about race day. I was thinking about how many weeks I had stared at that the long brick workout on Saturday followed by the long run on Sunday and wondered if I could do it. When it was over, I was proud of myself. I didn’t think about what it meant for race day, only that I knew that each day leading up to it I had done my best to make good decisions. Finishing each workout over the course of the 30 weeks has been like crossing a little finish line, and it’s been a blast.

Now that race day is coming, I’m just excited. The training has been rewarding beyond what I could have expected. I feel better physically better than I ever have before a race. I’m at my racing weight and my heart rate training has paid off and I’m running a little faster than last fall with a heart rate about 15 beats lower. I’ve been surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed swimming almost four hours a week. While I’ve been slower on the bike this season, I did the best that I could with my injuries. Not every moment has been fun but it has been rewarding.

Just one more week until it’s time for my longest training day of all. I don’t know how it’s going to go, but that’s okay. I know I’ll be nervous standing on that beach, and that’s okay. I may not finish and feel sad or I may finish with a smile. It’s all good. As long as I finish the day healthy to go on to the next adventure, I’ll be glad I tried.

This past month, I have been busy healing and getting back to training. I wore the boot for about 10 days while I wasn’t swimming or water running. Once I was released from the dreaded boot, I started riding my bike on the trainer and after several days was able to start riding outside again. Training was busier than ever while I was rehabbing my shin. At first, when my training schedule had a run, I water ran for that amount of time. Once I was able to start biking again, I biked everyday in addition to my regular swim workouts. Running is much less time consuming than getting to the pool to water run or dealing with the bike, so my recovery time was pretty hectic.

Finally, after 18 days, I was allowed to run one mile. It was on the same day that Mike and I were supposed to run a small half marathon about an hour north of here. It was a gorgeous fall morning, so Mike went to the race and I headed to a soft trail to do my run. When I got back to the car after my 10 minutes of glory, I was relieved and excited. My shin didn’t hurt at all and I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of me. I checked my phone before I started the short drive home and noticed that Mike left a message just a few minutes before. This is weird because that would mean he was calling me when he should be half way through his race. Not good. He left me a voice mail message saying that he had been having a great race but fell and hurt his ankle. I called him back and after some discussion, we decided to meet up at home and then drive to the orthopedic clinic together.

It didn’t take long for the x-ray to come back with the verdict that he had broken his fibula. In the end, it turned out that there was no ligament damage and that the bone was still aligned, but it was definitely broken. Sure enough, they brought out his own personal boot and some crutches to go along with it. Here he is all outfitted with his new medical equipment:

No sooner had I made it out of the boot and back to running and now Mike is out with a broken leg. His break occurred 7 weeks before Ironman Florida. The earliest healing time would be 6 weeks, so it’s going to be close. They will do an x-ray next week and that will give us a better idea of the rate of healing. The good thing is that when a bone is healed, it’s healed. So if it’s done healing in 6 weeks than doing the Ironman won’t hurt it, unlike a ligament which would have scar tissue and would be easily re-injured. Right now he’s being patient and waiting for the x-ray. If that goes well, then he will get to swim and start spinning on the bike. With now only 5 weeks until the race, hopefully he can still get some time in the pool and out on the bike before race day. He’s run 20 marathons and done Ironman 3 times, so he has a great base of fitness to go into the race even without any more running before race day. It isn’t ideal, but given how much training has already gone into this event, it would be great if he could at least get out there and enjoy the day.

So we have traded places. I’m back to training and after slowly adding running miles back, I’m caught up to my regular schedule and feeling pretty good. Now that it’s getting so close to the race, the training days are crazy long. Weekdays have 2-3 hours of training each day and the weekends are very long. I know what it feels like to be out with an injury while everyone else is out doing there thing, so I won’t complain about the long days. There are just 3 more crazy weekends and then 2 weekends of taper before November 3rd. Hopefully Mike will be back at it soon and we’ll be ready for the big day- it wouldn’t be the same without my guy out on the course with me!

This is me last Friday:

One minute I’m totally fine and then an hour later my shin hurts to the point that it’s hard to drive. Then next day I’m in the MRI machine and an hour later the doctor tells me that my bone is having a stress response. I’m supposed to be feeling lucky because I caught it before the bone actually fractured. I do feel lucky. If it was a stress fracture I could kiss Ironman Florida good-bye. This is basically a bone bruise which translates into wearing a boot for a couple of weeks and hoping that it calms down sooner rather than later. No biking for the next week or two. No running for another week or two after that.

Ironman Florida is less then 10 weeks away, with the peak phase of training starting this week. It looks like I won’t be able to race my half iron on September 9th. This is a problem.

A couple of years ago, my husband told me about a game in which you summed up your partner with one word. It’s a tough game. I thought about it and decided that the word that best described my husband was “curious.” I still think that is the right word for him. His word for me was “persistent.” When I asked if that was a nice way of saying I was a nag, he laughed but he was politically correct and said no. He knows that once I set my mind to something, I am not easily deterred. I am like a dog with a bone and will keep at whatever it is, even if it means that I am annoying, which I’m sure I am on a regular basis.

So here I am with an air cast, less than 1o weeks away from a race that is likely to pound my legs for 17 hours. I’ve had a lot of different feelings about the whole thing. I was disappointed. Frustrated. It hurts. I was worried. What am I going to do?

I’m going to WORK THE PROBLEM. That is my new mantra. Work the problem. I have trained for 20 weeks, changed my diet, and given up diet soda. I have squeezed workouts in around my kids’ schedules, and I have drug my bike halfway across the country to train on vacation. It’s been a year of training and planning. I may have gotten a kick in the shin but I’m not giving up.

One of my favorite quotes is from Eunice Shriver, “If you never fail, you’re not trying hard enough.” I may fail and not make it to the start line. I may fail and not make it to the finish. But no one is going to say that I’m not trying hard enough. If there is one thing I am, it’s persistent.

I’ve got a great doctor on my team and my family is helping me as I hobble around in my boot. All of my workouts have been transferred to the pool. Every minute that I should be running or biking is now spent aqua jogging in the pool which means I’m shriveled like a prune for a good portion of each day. I’m lifting weights every other day. I’ve been reading other’s stories about training with a stress fracture and am encouraged by what I’ve found. I’m a solid believer in positive thinking and that the mind follows action. Smile and you will be happier. If I’m feeling disappointed, I tell myself to knock it off and think about the positive, not the least of which is that I’m otherwise healthy and can still do some effective training.

Persistence. Work the problem. Don’t be afraid to fail. Smile.

Thanks to a typo in my training schedule, I had the opportunity to sneak in a half marathon on Saturday. My training plan has a summary schedule with big dates such as the start of training, the beginning dates for each phase, and then dates for practice triathlons. I scheduled my races based on that summary schedule including an Olympic distance tri and a half iron distance tri. That summary schedule put my Oly triathlon back at the end of June. The actual day to day training schedule, however, had a slight taper and Olympic distance race this past week. Whoops! I already paid for the other race and couldn’t find a good one to replace it with on the right weekend, so I just left my triathlons as I had originally planned. Since the detail schedule had a mini-taper built in, I thought it would a great opportunity to sneak in a half marathon. I’ve been itching to do a road race this season so this was the perfect chance.

Mike and I did the Gopher to Badger in 2008 when I was training for the Twin Cities Marathon. It was only my second half marathon and it was a hot and humid day. I remember crossing the finish line thinking that I would never do that race again. Funny that 4 years later I was actually excited to see that it happened to fall on the weekend that I was looking for a half marathon. I thought it would be fun to see how my perspective changed after running 13 half marathons and hopefully with some better weather.

The first time I ran this race, I was running it for time. I remember crossing the finish line and being physically ill. I was supposed to tack on another mile or two for my marathon training, but I was spent. This time, I wanted to run with a friend and keep it at a comfortable pace. If I’m able to come of the bike at Ironman Florida in condition to run, then I’m going to need to keep my heart rate under control so this would be a good time to practice in a race setting. We both tend to run around a 9:40-9:50/mile pace when we do our regular runs, so we targeted 9:40/mile and decided to see how that went for a while. Unlike 2008, Saturday was a beautiful, cool day with just a slight breeze. It couldn’t have been more perfect running weather. We slipped off our throw away shirts right before the race started and I was comfortable the whole race.

Mike and I both remembered that the race as being hilly. Where we live in Minneapolis is very flat, so when we have a race with a lot of hills it can be challenging. It’s a point to point race, with the start in Minnesota and the finish in Wisconsin. Here is the elevation from my Garmin:

So while last time it seemed like the race was uphill the whole way, this time I noticed the downhills and the hills in general seemed less demoralizing. Knowing what was coming and being mentally prepared really helped, and I’ve also just run a lot of miles in the last 4 years. Not being incredibly hot and humid also made a huge difference. Whatever the reasons, I love the course this time and I’m so glad that I didn’t pass up the chance to do it again. We ended up sticking with our 9:40 target pace and ran the race pretty consistently. Here are our splits:

Not too bad! We ran a little more than 13.1 so our official pace was 9:37 and official chip time was 2:05:58.   In 2008 I ran it in 2:03:51 but I suffered. This time I felt fantastic the whole way and had a blast. I kept my heart rate at the training pace that I need for my ironman training and felt totally fine to pick up my regular training the next day. Here is my friend, Holly, and I after the finish:

Here I am with Mike:

Now it’s back to ironman training. I’m finishing up the build phase and am going to be heading into peak phase next week. That is training code for “the workouts are about to get insanely long”. The half marathon was a confidence booster and it’s great to have something fun to break up the training. I’m doing another half marathon in September when my training plan has a 2 hour run on the schedule. Until then, I’ll be concentrating on getting ready for my half iron distance triathlon on September 9th which is only a little over 3 weeks away. The big race is getting closer!!