Born Again Athlete:

Oh mojo, where art thou?

I lost my mojo, baby. 

Any other movie reference?

Yeah, lost my training mojo. Feeling fat and lazy. But happy. JUST LIKE TOBY!! Oh wait, I have Toby syndrome: living a life of eating, sleeping, lounging in bed, eating, napping.

 Sigh, don't know if I can even ride 50 miles these days....
 
  
  

you know, I'm getting kinda burned out from doing/training for triathlons....

Accountability

Well, 3 weeks of post-race idleness will soon be over. I need to get back into regular training next week! I'm starting with getting back into long bike ride this Saturday, but I'm going to post my tentative training schedule here for accountability.

Day: Morning Afternoon

Mon: Spin /Track

Tues:Swim/Core and Spin

Wed: OFF /ballet

Thurs: Swim / either Pose Clinic or Crit racing

Fri :Open water swim /OFF

Sat: Long bike

Sun: Long run

Wow - busy, but basically this has been my life for the past 2 years. I want to throw in some yoga but don't know when!

Too many choices!

Too many things to do! Not enough time! I still like triathlon, especially Ironman distance, but I also want to do:

1. Crit racing

2. cyclocross

3. Off-road tri? (would involve learning to mtn bike)

4. Ballet

5. Hip hop dance class?

6. More yoga

7. Cross fit?

8. Ultra-cycling (like ultra marathons, but ride forever and ever on a bike)

9. Just do fun cycling vacations.

10. Rock climbing

11. those weird races where you scale walls and crawl on your belly through the mud

I think the Jane of 5 years ago would be rather perplexed by this, but this list just gets me excited!

Funny

Waah, waah, waah. I complain too much. So I decided to act silly.

Here is me with my mouth stuffed full of gummy bears. Lovely hahaha

  
  

Happy weekend! I ain't training! I'm hanging with my Davey and Toby and seeing friends in H-town.

Post Ironman blues

I think I've had this before and I think I have it now, but it's different. At least in the past, there was a euphoria of completing the race that counteracted some of the downers. I feel all the blah, laziness, missing endorphins, etc, but without CLOSURE, with the satisfaction that I completed something. Not to mention the disappointment of not finishing.

I feel really lazy. And dumb. I feel like I've become a dumb jock with nothing to show for it. Maybe I'll go to law school. Maybe I should learn another language. I feel lazy at my job. I need to read more books.

This situation is doubly compounded by the fact that I have another Ironman race in about 4 months, so I can't completely rest on my laurels. (What are laurels? Are my laurels getting fatter?) Oh wait - I don't have laurels cuz I didn't finish :(  You know that stupid medal is a lot more meaningful than I previously thought.

I'm not heavier, surprisingly, but my body fat is way up! It got down to 15% at my lowest this May, hovered around 18-20%, now I'm at 22%. I'm getting as tubby as Toby! I ate a McDonald's this week!

I'll be fine; just need to get back on my bike in the next week or so.

Everyone needs a DNF!

I have been trying to wrap my head around this and organize my thoughts for this report. I didn't even think I'd DNF. I actually expected a PR! like 13-something...Oy. This will be long, but hopefully a good read for myself and others.

If I had to organize the reasons why I DNF'd, I'd divide into external causes, internal causes (i.e. My fault!) and how I could have dealt with either.

The major take-home lessons I learned from this are:

1. It was a Nutrition FAIL day.

2. Mechanical problems - have bike checked out maybe a few WEEKS before the race, so you have time to do a few rides on the bike. I had my bike tuned up the week right before, just did a short practice ride on it, without realizing my bike was busticated! (new word I learned this weekend).

3. I need to stop TOODLING during races. What I mean by toodling, is riding casually, as if I was "la la la - nice ride in the country side." My heart rate is low and I'm not really racing. I do this a lot.

4. This race sucked! I mean, it was highly disorganized and logistically problematic. I'm not trying to put all the blame on this, but it did contribute. Bottom line - never do an non-Ironman sanctioned race again. And I would highly recommend that people do NOT do this race. Sorry, that's how I feel and I will have more details below.

5. A DNF is not the end of the world.

Just FYI - it was a hard course. The winning male came in at 9:20ish. Really slow, considering most IM winners are bettern 8:20 and 8:40.

I will include fun pictures with this report! Stolen from David and Stacy!

Pre-Race

1. There was no tri-bike transport, so I had a get a bike box, get bike diassembled, then reassembled. Thank god David was there. It is a BIG hassle to travel with a bike. Got tired of all the jokes of how big that luggage was.

2. Registration was a pain in the ass. For IM sanctioned races, you have 2 or 3 days to register which spreads it out, so the lines are not unbearably long, and also you can organize your stuff. So I had to pack my T2 bag and special needs run bag (I thought) the day before, then bring them to registration to drop off at T2?? But then I find out that special needs are to be brought the morning of the race. Aaaahhhh! Also, they were registering the IM folks, 1/2 iron folks, all the relay and aquabike folks at the same time, so it was more of a mess.

3. Separate transition areas - I knew this going in. I really hated it. Doing an IM is stressful enough without worrying about this. I also feel bad for families, who have to drive to 2 different locations. There is a risk of not putting the right stuff in the right bag. I think this happened to a woman who I saw running in CROCS. The shitty thing was that if you didn't have family, you had to take a shuttle back to T1 (about 15 miles away) to get your car.

4. Parking prior to race was a messy disaster. Even in sprint races around here, there is a designated parking area, with volunteers herding you in. Everyone was parking wherever they could on the street and walking/running to the start. christ, it was a mess and I was freaking out. David pointed out that we were lucky in that we happened to come up the road where they were collecting the special needs bags, but if we have walked a different way, we would not have seen them. Then it would have been another thing to freak out about. Disorganized, disorganized.

These didn't directly contribute to my bad race, but I was really annoyed at first, then panicked which I'm sure did not contribute to a positive state of mind.

SWIM:

1.Bodymarkers? what bodymarkers? Damned if I saw them. I always carry a sharpie with me. However, marking oneself leaves much to be desired:

    The dyslexic triathlete. Yes, I'm 6 gamma P.

2. Because they were running a half-iron along with the full iron and those races did not start until later and transition area was open, people were still coming in, setting up when the swim started. It just did not feel like a race! There was a lot of chaos, people milling around and this was just another things that annoyed me.

3. Rocks to the swim start - thanks for not putting down any kind of carpet/turf. Only about 20 feet, but still yet another annoying blip.

4. Swim - What I like about Ironman races is that everyone starts the swim at once. I'm slower, so I stay in the back and once the crowd spread out, I have my own little space with no one swimming over me. This race had tons of people behind me - who were they? There were lots of aquabike and relay people (235 to be exact) and these people, especially the men were swimming over me! This made me stop a lot more than usual.

5. 1:34 - not bad. I was aiming for under 1:30, but I can't complain. I guess I had a decent swim.

6. Transition - UGH! It was a "regular" transition area, like other races. So you had to put your bag down in the morning. I grabbed my bag, ran to the change tent (which was on the other side of transition), changed in this little bitty tent, no volunteer help, then run back to get my bike. Some women were just changing out in the open, but I didn't want to get nekkid in front of everyone.

Summary: There's nothing I could have done training wise that would have made a better swim. I guess I could not have let the external logistical problems affect me so much.

 
Stacy took these really cool pics of me in Transition! It was cold. 50-something degrees. Not complaining - I know you guys were riding in 100+ weather in Austin.

  
  BIKE - 8:25!!!! WTF?!?!? The bike is usually my strongest leg. This is why I did not make the run cutoff. I was expecting about a 7 hour split because the course is difficult, 7:30 at the worst.

External/logistical things that affected my bike: Yeah, you're going to hear some bitching here.

1.  The race course was not closed! Yes, we were riding with traffic next to us. This not only made me more conservative, I almost got hit by a car! Some dumbass driver who obviously could not see the hundreds of cyclists in bright clothes, so decided to make a right turn onto the shoulder we were riding on. Luckily I was not in aeros, so was able to slam on the brakes, otherwise, I'd be writing this from a hospital bed. I was cursing like a sailor, my heartrate went through the roof and I was discombobulated for a while (this happens when I'm nearly killed). I think for this reason alone, one should not do this race - there are safety issues!

2. This was not simply an iron-distance race. They had aquabike folks (around 200), relay folks (46), and the half-iron Barb's race (about 600). I think this really messes the race pace. First Barb's race is a race with a lot of newbies who didn't know how to ride correctly. Then the relay and aquabike folks could hammer it, since they weren't running afterwards, so hard to pace with them. It just made the course way congested. I know the total racers were about 1400 and IM is usually 2000, but it felt way more crowded and disorganized.

3. In Ironman, aid stations are every 10 miles, like clockwork, and you know what to expect at every one. I think there were just 4 aid stations, the first one at mile 18. Plus, there were very limited porta-potties. I really don't want to think about the minutes I wasted WAITING IN FUCKING LINE for the porta potty! Plus, when you have more aid stations, the porta-potty breaks are further spread out by the racers.

4. There were no mile markers, I did not see race officials or SAG motorcycles. During the 2nd loop, when the racers spread out and the 1/2ers finished, it felt very lonely. I thought that if I crashed, no one would know for several hours. Also, again, because of these conditions, it did not feel like a race to me! It felt like I was doing a training ride by myself.

5. There were some police support, especially as intersections, but I guess they decided the slow pokes could be hit by cars. I was well within the bike cutoff, but the last 2 intersections, there were no police. So for one intersection, it was a four way stop and I had to wait my turn, and at the next one, I had to stop at the red light! WTF?! I'm sure a few minutes were eaten up by this.

6. Mechanical problems: I dropped my chain 6 (SIX) TIMES!! The second time, I was making jokes about the peloton not waiting for me (Andy Shleck reference), but after the fourth time, it stopped being funny. The fifth and sixth time I knew something was wrong. Plus on one of the drops, I didn't clip out fast enough, fell over on my right, into HORSE POO. Great. Also cut my knee. My gears were not shifting very well, and since this was a technical course (i.e hills, flats, lots of changes between both), shifting was important. It got to the point that I stayed in little gear just to prevent shifting - not very efficient. David looked at my bike the next day - my chain was too long! I had bike shop tune up my bike the week before. They said I needed a new chain; fine. But my bike is little - really little and everything is adjusted to it. The bike shop knew this. In fact, they are the ones who suggested new smaller cranks, etc. So, they dropped the ball. Do you know how much it slows you down to stop, put chain back on, get going again, not to mention the frustration....ugh.

Me on the bike before things got rough.

Things that I screwed up on:

1. NUTRITION - yes, it's really simple and true when they say stick to your nutrition plan. Probably my hubris from doing previous races affected this. For some reason, I ate a meatloaf sandwich the night before! Then the morning of, I had a bagel, banana and peanut butter - something that many people eat, but I never do before races? WHY? why? why? This haunted me with my frequent potty visits! This coupled with less portapotties, resulted in time lost. Jess - I need to see you! :)

2. NOT PUSHING/TOODLING - at times I don't "race." One race I realized my heart rate was 119! Of course IM distance is different' it's not a sprint, but still I need to stay in a good aerobic pace. A weird thing happened: Ifelt bad about passing women, both on the bike and the run? You know how you play that I'll pass you, then you pass me game? For some reason, I didn't want to do this, so when someone would pass me, I would pull back and then just ride slowly for a little while before deciding to pass them again. ??? Not sure why I did this.

3. Letting the external conditions affect me. Yeah, the conditions were shitty, but I let it really bring me down which decreased my drive and oomph. This is probably the biggest lesson of the day.

RUN: the run itself was hard. Quite hilly. I really did not like that when it got dark, it was scary, there were very little street lights - it was the countryside. I brought my headlamp, but many people did not. Overheard was one British dude "the run was unbearable!" I had a sick thought that if someone wanted to kidnap/rape/kill a woman, this was the place to do it, as we were too tired to fight or run and unfortunately, the slow stragglers were often running alone. Honestly, this run was quite unsafe. I was pretty sure a bear was going to come out of the woods and eat me.

  
 Still ran with the boa, a skirt, and a smile.  Well, I'm walking here.

I never really thought about making cutoff times. So it was my fault for not really looking. It says plain and clear that the 3rd loop must be started at 9 pm. But again, if I had a relatively normal bike , it would not have been a problem at all. Also, I was thinking like most Iroman races, it would be a midnight cutoff , or at least 17 hours - which would have meant 11:45 for me. But for some reason, they close the course at 11 pm, which means you really only have 16:15 to finish the race. Why? I think that is peculiar. So that's why they were using the 9 pm cutoff, which really isnt' fair, since there were waves, meaning the women did start the race later than the men. I missed the cutoff but about 17 minutes. Not really, really close, but I think about the few minutes in portapotties, minute at the red light, stopping for few minutes after being nearly hit, few minutes putting the chain back on, even stopping at the special needs bags (which I never do) and cringe at how all those minutes add up.

But knowing about the logistical problems made me feel better, that it wasn't because I was undertrained. In fact, even after doing 131 miles, I felt fine the next day.

The Facebook messages were great. All of you have been so supportive and that makes me feel good. It feels nice to be cheered, but even better to be comforted. I am met so many great friends through this sport - how can I complain?

My friend Stacy whom I met through the blog world is best cheerleader ever. Crap - she is pressuring me to do Rocky Raccoon! Good peer pressure, heh. She wrote a great post about spectating that all your friends and family should read.

And my David - sherpa, bike mechanic and support. He wrote funny messages in chalk all over the course, which made me laugh. Lucky to have you there.

The second one says "TUNKS HEARTS HER MOM". Tunks is Toby, my pug.

I feel okay today. There are worse things in the world than not finishing a race. And it's cliche, but you do learn a lot more from your failures than your successes. Not that I'd call this failure.
 

The end.