Vineman Course Preview Day 1

When I finally got home on Saturday, after the drive up and the drive down and the ride and the other ride and the wetsuit that smelled like feet and the bar quesadilla and the mud clumped in my cleats and the heavenly Cherry Coke whose mere promise had kept me going for hours, after the shower and the beer and the other beer and the misty walk home, I tweeted the only thing I could think to say:

Do you know how long it takes to bike 70 miles? I didn't. The answer is: all f'n day. (And it was a blast.)

— Kimra (@kimretta) June 23, 2013

Days after my first attempt at the swim and bike courses of Vineman, that still covers what comes to mind when I think about last Saturday. It was a long day — a longer day than I ever would have guessed when I saw the training schedule. (Vineman will be longer.) And it was a hot day, hotter than I think any of us were prepared for. (Vineman might be hotter.) But it was also a delight, and I hope Vineman can be that, too.

We started in the river, sweltering in neoprene while we got our instructions. My race-day attire remains up in the air, but I wanted to see how my regular wetsuit felt. I expected to be grossly overheated, but I felt fine once we got moving. And yes, I was grateful for the extra loft and protection as we went through the shallow parts, one maybe 200 yards after the start and one at the turnaround. I was also grateful for my short arms; I never had to alter my stroke, even when I felt sure I’d touch bottom. One thing I didn’t expect: plants in my face! In the shallower parts, the plants that grow up from the riverbed are tall enough to stick out over the top of the water, and for about 10 strokes it felt like swimming through the top of a cornfield.

My butt is one of those butts.

I’d been swimming with a friend I know is faster on the way out, but I think I was getting a bit of an assist from the current, because after the turnaround, she surged ahead and I never caught back up. Still, according to my Garmin, I finished just over 1.1 miles in just under 40 minutes, and if I could swim the full course anywhere in the low 40s on race day, I’d be thrilled.

We had a generous amount of time after the swim to prepare for our ride, and while at first I was grateful, I slowly realized it meant we were going to be riding at the hottest part of the day. It must have been 11 a.m. before we rolled out, and 80+ degrees in the shade. (It went on to hit 96.) Our coach told us to drink water generously; he’d be following us around for refills.

The ride didn’t start out well. My jitters about clipping in around a large group meant I started at the back of the line and moved slowly through Guerneville, and then the small group I was with took a wrong turn and rode a couple of steep hills until finally hitting a gravel driveway and realizing we were lost. We had directions that referenced road signs we never saw, and it wasn’t until mile 10, when we caught up to the last of the bigger group, that I was sure we weren’t riding the course backwards. In the confusion, I’d also gotten way behind on eating and drinking, and I could tell that was contributing to my crankiness, so I started doubling up on food and drinks right before the one-hour mark.

The next stretch had some nasty potholes — potholes actually understates it; it’s more like broken ground that feels like riding over a tortoise’s shell — and a few little hills but also our first water refill stop, for which I was wildly grateful. Just a few miles up the road we turned onto Dry Creek Road, and I occupied myself with picking out wineries I’d visited when Pete lived in the area and trying to remember what wines they made.

Our second water stop was right around 25 miles, and I finished my Roctane bottle and refilled — and then drank most of that and refilled again. I should have done that about three more times, because that would be the last water for 30 miles.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to be, especially not on a day that hot. It wasn’t anyone’s intention. But the heat caused problems for people who weren’t expecting to have problems — sickness, blown-out tires — and the SAG vehicle had to do its main job of picking up struggling riders. So after mile 25, it was anyone’s guess where the truck and its water would show up next — and I never caught it.

It was OK, at first. I had finally caught up with a friend, and we chatted and kept a good pace on the long, straight stretch after Geyserville. Somewhere in there I dropped my water bottle, stopped to rescue it, and decided to dump in the rest of my water from my backup bottle and add some Pineapple Skratch, which I’d bought on a whim and was, in that moment, the best thing I’d ever tasted.

Around 40 miles, things started getting dicey. I was down to about half of my water, and I knew I still had the course’s only major climb to come. But surely SAG would be around here somewhere for a refill, right? No dice. Chalk Hill was a slog — and was the first time I’ve ever thought, “How much longer can I go without water before I have to call SAG?” Two big sips left for the last 10 miles.

Thankfully, they were downhill; thankfully, I could ride them with friends, who also confirmed that they hadn’t seen water for miles. We got each other through it, telling stories and taking turns in the lead and convincing ourselves there was going to be water at the high school, there would have to be water at the high school, obviously there was water at the high school. I drank my last sip of water just as the high school came into view — 56 miles down, my longest ride to date.

And yes, there was water at the high school — though my friend and I wandered around for at least 10 minutes too stupid to find it and had to ask more than once for directions to the fountains. I have no idea how long we were there — half an hour? — but we finally admitted that it was time to get back on the bikes and ride back to Guerneville.

For some reason when I’d seen the two options for this workout — 56 miles with a car at either end of the route, or a 70-mile round-trip — I’d never questioned doing the 70. What’s another 15 miles? Well, for one thing, it’s 15 miles longer than the longest ride I’d ever done. It’s also, when moving at a decent clip on streets with some traffic, an hour. Why I never questioned whether after almost 4 hours on a bike I’d really want to sign up for a 5th, I have no idea, but I cursed it in that moment. The road back had a handful of little rollers that felt like mountains by that point, and my butt no longer wanted to be anywhere in the vicinity of my seat, and I did more coasting than peddling, and the road was a mix of giant potholes and bumpy, tarred creases. By the time our coach drove by calling “five more miles!” I had no positivity left and sent him a death glare severe enough he apparently texted my carpool buddy to warn her about my mood.

But oh, when we rolled into Guerneville at last! I have not felt that kind of exhausted elation since some of the longer runs of marathon training. “How are you?” “I’m not sure. I might be dead. Am I dead? Is this heaven?” “Are you going to run?” “No, I’m going to puke and then drink a margarita.” It took me 10 minutes to take off one shoe. I thought about running, but only in the vague way that one might contemplate what it would be like to fly. I thought about standing in the river, but it seemed really far away. I ultimately decided to go to the bar with my teammates, mostly because I could drive there. And there, everything was amazing, in an exceptionally loopy way. Lots of sweaty hugs, and funny faces in photos, and the $2.50 quesadilla (chosen off a food menu of “quesadillas, corn dogs, and bloody marys”) that will forever go down as one of my life’s greatest moments of having expectations exceeded.

In the end, that stupid, sun-drunk, goofy, give-me-all-the-salt, holy-shit-did-we-just-do-that feeling stayed with me for all the rest of Saturday, and even carried me through 11 rickety miles on Sunday. And that’s what keeps me coming back to this sport.

Some assorted notes on the course that I don’t want to forget:

• The first 30 miles trend gradually uphill. It’s a flat course on the whole, but the trend until Canyon is ever so slightly up. Do not feel discouraged if it feels like you are riding uphill sometimes, because you are. Almost all of the climbing is done before Chalk Hill.
• The road conditions really are pretty gnarly. I’d heard it, I believed it, but I was still surprised at just how bad some stretches were. The worst of it seemed to be in the first 20-ish miles.
• The 10 miles between the two climbs — from Canyon to Chalk Hill — are mostly flat and should be a place where I can pick up the pace on race day. It’s also unshaded for long stretches, and we had a bit of a headwind.
• The big Chalk Hill climb doesn’t start until several miles onto Chalk Hill Road. There are a couple of rollers before that, but no, they are not just Chalk Hill “starting early.” It’s legitimately at mile 45.
• Chalk Hill is steep but no worse than an Orinda “Bear.” Maybe a 4-to-5-minute climb.
• After Chalk Hill, it’s all downhill to Windsor High. What with having to obey stoplights, I didn’t get a good sense of what that would do to my overall pace, but I have to imagine it’s only good things.
• My Garmin thinks I hit 37 mph somewhere on the course. If true, that’s … awesome? Terrifying?
• It’s a beautiful course. Remember that when things get tough. Remember to look around.

Vineman 70.3: Week Six

OK, so I learned my lesson from Week Five. Week Six — or, at least, the weekday part of Week Six — had a nice, big dose of recovery. Easy spins, easy runs, no track, lots of quality time with my compression socks and my foam roller.

And it’s a good thing, because the weekend brought the start of peak training.

The plan I’m following has what I consider two “peak weekends.” There’s a small increase in weekday volume in between them, too, but the big jump comes in both distance and importance of the weekend workouts. This weekend was the first — a swim, and my first 56-mile bike ride, and then more riding, and then a double-digit run 12 hours later (with a bit of sleep, and some beer, in the middle). It started in the Russian River, hit 96 degrees in the middle, included a photo of me giving our coach the finger (in jest…sort of), and ended with me collapsed on top of the foam roller in a shirt so thick with fog-rain I could wring it out.

It was awesome.

Just when the logistics of training were starting to get to me — just as I was stomping around angry about having to drag the stupid bike rack out of the stupid garage and put it on my stupid car at seven stupid o’clock — this weekend came around and woke me back up. Endorphin-drunk (and, OK, maybe also the kind of drunk you get off three sips of beer after riding your bike for 70 miles when it’s 96 degrees outside), awed at what my body can do, dreaming up new challenges. This close to Vineman, I think it’s a good place to be.

Dailies:

Monday: Rest. In retrospect I might have wanted to swim out some of the post-race soreness, but the foam roller was good for that, too.

Tuesday: In the morning, 2400 yards of swimming, including a main set of 3x(3×100, 300). At night, I hopped on the trainer for a few minutes and then rode to get burritos. ~10 miles total.

Wednesday: Skipped track in favor of a chatty run through the park with a friend, punctuated with a photo session for a Top Secret Project (TM). Just over 5 miles total.

Thursday: In the morning, a 3×600 tempo swim that went far better than last week’s. Again shooting for 12:18, and I squeaked under that marker two out of the three times. At night, “12 miles” of easy spinning in the basement while watching the NBA finals online.

Friday: Rest. I wish I could find a Friday morning yoga class, or convince myself to get up on Friday mornings and do some yoga, but I also like sleeping.

Saturday: Vineman training day: 1.2-mile swim in the Russian River, then 56 miles of cycling the race course from Johnson’s Beach to Windsor High. Then, because simply riding my longest ride ever wasn’t enough, I’d chosen the option of riding back to Guerneville, so my day ended with 15 hot and cranky miles back to the car, probably coasting as much as I pedaled. Full post to come once I’m done stealing pictures from other people.

Sunday: 11 miles of running through soupy gray fog. Chased a couple of friends for the first 8-ish, then slowed it down for the final 3 home.

Week Six Stats

Swimming: 6900 yards
Biking: 92 miles (70 “real miles,” 22 trainer/city miles)
Running: 16 miles
Other: A lot of foam roller QT

Most proud of: 70. Freaking. Miles.

Need to work on: Keeping a good attitude in bad conditions — something I did reasonably well on Saturday, but it took a lot of concentration, and friends, and promises of beer and soda and gummy candy. I’m good at whining, but whining is the easy way out; being border collie excited takes more work, but it also pays off big.

Vineman 70.3: Week Five

Week five (!?) was a funny one. It came after one race and ended with another, but because neither was a race I cared much about independently, it was hard to know how to position what I was doing. Was I recovering? Tapering? Just normal training?

For most of the week, I felt great — endorphin-high from racing, so darn happy to be swim-bike-running. A couple of friends warned me to make sure I wasn’t getting too tired or burned out, and I’d just chirp back, “Nope! I’m awesome! I want to run! I feel great!” And then Thursday night’s swim rolled around. The thing with me and swimming is, swimming never lies. I can push through a run or a bike ride; the sheer joy of being outside and going places is usually enough to overwhelm whatever sluggishness I feel. But swimming is a true barometer, and Thursday’s was a slog. Friday’s rest day helped, but I definitely learned a thing or two about the effort racing takes, whether I’m capital-R Racing or not.

Dailies:

Monday: Rest. Sleep. Not enough stretching.

Tuesday: In the morning, 1760 yards of swimming, including a main set of repeats of 6 40s and a 200. (It was supposed to be 5 50s and a 200, but: 20-yard pool). Feeling good! Recovered! Awesome! At night, my second computrainer class, which I liked much more than the first (positioned myself in the corner away from the mirrors; brought food). Brought shoes for a transition run after, but my coach made me sit down and watch the “I am injured; I am an Ironman” video instead. Point taken.

Wednesday: I went to track and — surprise! — it was 2-mile time trial night. I thought seriously about ditching, and waited for the typical “taper/recovery/new runner” option to appear…but it never did, and I ultimately decided that as long as I was there, I’d give it a shot (and quit if I felt terrible). I ran 16:29 (8:14/8:15), the middle of my three times this season, which left me itching to run a 5K once all this craziness is over. 4 miles total for the night.

Thursday: Biked to/from work — still feeling awesome! — then went to swim, at which point I just could not work hard enough to get my “tempo” 3×600 anywhere near my base pace. My closest was 12:22 (I was shooting for 12:18 or under) — and that’s only because I was circling with a fast collegiate swimmer who was rightfully none too pleased to have ended up with Breaststroking Lady and Flailing Freestyler (<–me) for the last few minutes of her own workout.

Friday: Easy biking — a few minutes on the trainer at a bike fit follow-up (swapped for a narrower saddle; we’ll see…) and then a few miles around town to get my packet at the SF Marathon expo and make a return at REI.

Saturday: Awesome, endorphin-full day. Started with ~35 minutes of swimming including my first trip around the perimeter at Aquatic Park (no sea lions but a decent view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the gap at the end of the pier). Then solo-biked 45 miles over the bridge and to Fairfax. I still hate the bridge, and I absolutely gave up and walked around the pylons on the way back, but the rest of the ride was a blast, and to be able to ride through all of West Marin by myself, without even needing directions? I’ve come a long way.

Sunday: San Francisco Second Half Marathon, which I ran mostly easy but wish I’d taken even easier, in retrospect. I disobeyed the first rule of “run easy,” which is that I judged my pace and picked it up beyond where “easy” probably should have been for the second half of the race. Finished in 2:07:16, which is I think #3 of my 8 half-marathon finishing times. Paid for it by being stupidly sore. But, I did run the whole race without music, which accomplished one of my goals.

Week Five Stats

Swimming: 6020 yards
Biking: 90 miles (21 commute miles + 45 “real miles” + 24 computrainer miles)
Running: 18 miles
Other stuff: no yoga, a little core, a little stretching

Most proud of: Going back to the computrainer class and hating it less

Need to work on: Being smarter about recovery this week

Race Report: Folsom International Triathlon

Pre-Race

I headed out for the drive to Folsom just a couple of hours after riding Alpine Dam. People had been telling me it was crazy to do that ride and then race; I kept insisting I wasn’t doing Folsom to race. I entered Folsom as a rust-buster; I hadn’t raced since Napa in April, and I needed to remember how. I also wanted to feel the heat, to give my race nutrition strategy another test, and to practice walking aid stations and then running again — something I’m expecting to do at Vineman. It was all about the experience; time was beside the point.

And that’s a good thing, because the entire thing was sort of a boondoggle — from the 90 minutes I spent stuck in traffic three miles from my house to the end of the swim, when I couldn’t figure out how to exit the water. One hot (but at least not apocalyptically hot) mess.

This was my first USA Productions race, and it’s a big event for my tri club. We had our own rack in the club area of transition, which was good and bad for me — good because it was nice to be around people, bad because it wasn’t where I would have chosen to be and, well, because it’s not always nice to be around people. Being around people means being around people’s neuroses, and after a fair amount of “can I…” and “have you seen…” I had to have a talk with myself: You are not in captain mode right now; you don’t have to fix things that aren’t your responsibility. My responsibility was to feed myself and use the porta potties and get down to the water, and I tried hard to just focus on that.

Swim – 35:40

I decided in the five minutes before my start to wear my regular wetsuit. The morning air was a little chilly, and the water was supposedly still in the low 60s, so I figured I’d go with what I knew worked. This was my first-ever in-water start, so my warm-up was paddling slowly out to the first buoy. I was feeling pretty good until I realized I had no idea where the next buoy was — we were looking straight into the sun. I asked a couple of women next to me if they could see it, and they said nope, they had no idea either.

So when the horn went off, I hopped on some feet and hoped the feet knew where they were going. There was a rowing buoy line in the water, and I was right on it (I could see the underground cable and my hand occasionally hit one of the little round buoys), but I had no idea if it went to our buoy or not. At least I was going straight to somewhere …

I truly never saw the buoy until I was about 10 strokes from it, and I only saw it then because I noticed others making the turn. Even once we were out of the sun, I was never really sure I was on course. At the end of the swim, my Garmin recorded 1.08 miles, so perhaps I never really was on course. It was my slowest Olympic swim ever, though actually at a decent mile pace (if only I’d managed to swim less than a mile).

As I got close to shore, I realized the last few feet between the water and the beach were littered with big, slick rocks. I stood up, tried to take a step, and kicked a rock. Tried again, stumbled on a different one. People around me were running out just fine, but between the rocks and general post-swim disorientation, I literally could not figure out how to get onto the beach. It didn’t help that I started laughing at how ridiculous I felt, which only made me more wobbly. Eventually I managed a solid step forward and beelined out of there.

T1 – 7:06

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that on my way out of the house on Saturday, I cut my finger slicing bread. I slapped a band-aid on it and it seemed well on its way to healing, and I was more worried about waterproofing it on race morning than anything else. Besides, how much do I bend my finger when I swim?

So. I got to my transition area, accidentally pulled off my timing chip (which I’d pinned) with my wetsuit, and noticed a little bit of blood on the ground. I wondered if I’d maybe scraped my ankle with the pin. And then I looked at my hand, and … I’ll stop there. I didn’t see a medical area inside transition, and hell if I was going to drop out of the race because of a knuckle cut. I had some tissues and band-aids in my bag, and eventually I decided that the best plan was to wrap a band-aid on as tightly as I could and go ride. So that’s what a 7-minute transition looks like. I hope I never see one of those again unless I’m bleeding, and I hope I’m never bleeding again in transition.

Bike – 1:36:58

I frankly wasn’t expecting much out of my legs after Alpine Dam, but I did want to get at least a bit of race-pace riding in on a fairly flat course. The one thing I didn’t consider was that flat course = crazy wind. I worked a little harder than I should have in the first 10 miles and had something like a 13 mph average to show for it. I’m not a great at riding into a headwind; it’s hard, but it also gets to me mentally. And I wasn’t familiar enough with the course to tell myself there would be a tailwind later — because what if there never was?

At least the flat course meant the wind wasn’t scary (just annoying and loud). We made a turn onto a random out-and-back stretch just after the halfway point, and I got a few minutes of the wind at my back, which felt awesome. The aid station was on this stretch, and I checked one of my race goals off the list by successfully grabbing, drinking, and ditching an aid station bottle.

Back on the main road, we made a right turn and picked up the tailwind. Miracle! My sole goal became to get my average speed over 15 mph, and it was amazing to routinely click off miles in the 17, 18, even 20 range while doing very little.

The one frustrating thing about this stretch was that I knew I could have gone even faster if my saddle hadn’t been so uncomfortable. I was trying Soas shorts for the first time, and I was hoping they’d solve all my problems, but they…did not. I stood up a handful of times in the last 10 miles to readjust my position, and every time it was hard to convince myself to start pedaling again. (I’ve since gone back to my bike fit guy and have a narrower saddle to try. This only seems to happen during harder rides, but since I’m hoping to ride 56 miles at race pace in a month, I’d like to fix it.)

I’d expected this course to be a slam dunk sub-1:30 bike split, given that I wasn’t all that far off at Napa, but I actually rode about a minute slower than I did there even though Napa is objectively harder. I think that a course with some climbing suits my riding strengths better than a windy, flat one — which is something to keep in mind for future races.

T2 – 3:59

I got back to my rack and there was nowhere to put my bike. Not only was I clearly the slowest person my tri club, but I got the added insult of having to duck and weave between bikes (AND WETSUITS) to squeeze my bike back on the rack. It’s a good thing I always take my helmet off last, because I kept bashing my head into someone’s aerobars. The shoe swap/sunscreen spray/hat grab part of things happened pretty quickly because I was pissed and wanted to go run.

Run – 58:23

What I wanted from this run was a) some quality time in the heat and sun and b) a sense of what would happen to my pace if I walked through every aid station. This is the one part of the day that I am 100% happy with. It took until almost the turnaround for my legs to feel normal, but I bribed myself with Shot Bloks (one each at miles 3, 4, and 5) and splashed cold water on myself at every aid station. I also took a few sips of Cytomax somewhere in there.

Honestly, I was shocked to see how steady my pace stayed. I’ve had a hard time before with running after walking an aid station, but knowing I could keep my pace solidly in the 9:2x range even with those breaks kept me going. I’m aiming for 10-minute miles at Vineman, so this was encouraging.

The heat was noticeable for the first time all day — I heard it was 85 by the end, still not as hot as the forecast said — but the cold water helped tremendously. I passed a couple of people in my age group in the last couple of miles, and I felt strong running back through transition and across the finish line.

Minutae

• My final time was 3:22:06. It’s fine. It’s probably about right for the effort I wanted to put in, though I would have liked to not spend 11 total minutes in transition. It’s also proof that if I really want to finish under three hours, I’m going to have to learn to ride faster.
• Eating: some bread and almond butter in the morning; most of a bottle of Roctane, 3-4 gummies and about half a Picky Bar on the bike; 3 shot bloks during the run. I also had some plain water on the bike course, refilled my handheld bottle a couple of times on the run course, and used 2 salt packets, one at about mile 20 of the bike and one at mile 4.5 or so of the run. I forgot to eat a Gu before the swim and I don’t think it mattered, mostly because I didn’t have as much time to kill before my wave start as usual.
• Someone in my tri club recorded almost exactly the same swim distance as I did, and she said she missed a buoy. I wonder if I missed one too, though I don’t know where that would have happened. Most likely I just swam stupidly.

Vineman 70.3: Week 4

Big week, this one. I rode up a mountain on my bike, and then the next day I managed to not only drag myself out of bed at 4:30 a.m. but also race participate in a race with not-terribly-embarrassing results. I passed the 100-overall-miles-in-a-week mark on Dailymile for the first time (which may or may not be accurate — I haven’t always recorded mileage for, say, spin classes or trainer rides — but wheeee! numbers!). I swam four miles — which is still less than Victoria swam in a day, but which is still almost certainly an all-time high for me. Week 4 felt good.

I’m going to write a full post about my first time climbing to Alpine Dam and Seven Sisters, and I’ll recap the race-that-wasn’t-really as soon as the pictures go up, because lord knows it would be nice to have something besides a block of text ’round these parts. But before that, here’s the bare bones of Week 4.

Monday: Just over 27 miles of morning cycling around Lake Merced, in the (probably futile) hope that 23 miles on Friday + 27 miles on Monday would equal one 50-mile ride.

Tuesday: 2480 yards of swimming, including three times through a main set of 4×40, 100 kick, 300 swim at base pace. Kept tossing in random 20s of breaststroke and easy freestyle to get back to the end where my kickboard was waiting; odd numbers are annoying in a 20-yard pool.

Wednesday: A track workout of just over 5 miles, including 10×400 with 200 recovery jogs. Compared to last week’s 1000s, this just flew by, and I hit all the intervals between 2:03 (the first one) and 1:56 (three of the others, including the last one).

Thursday: I rode my bike to work in the morning and planned to ride more after, but I’d been having some shifting issues and when I saw my weekend ride — and its 3300 feet of climbing — trickle down through TrainingPeaks, I decided the better decision was to get my bike to a shop. I had to leave it overnight, so I bussed home and then did my weekly “long swim” of 2800 yards. The main set was 4×500 at tempo pace, which I decided was anything under 10:15. Swam 10:13, 10:09, 10:12, 10:09 and was pretty pleased with the effort.

Friday: Rest other than getting my bike home, ~6 commute miles.

Saturday: Alpine Dam/Seven Sisters — 33 miles, 3400 feet of climbing. So, uh, this, with a 15-minute transition run after.

Sunday: Finished the Folsom International Triathlon in 3:22. Some annoying/frustrating moments, but also a really delightful endorphin high (and equally delightful cheeseburger).

Week Four Stats

Swimming: 6920 yards
Biking: 100(!) miles — 85 “real riding”/racing miles + 15 commute miles
Running: 13 miles
Other: Hahaha, whoops.

Most proud of: Riding Alpine Dam, by far. I was more nervous about that ride than I’ve been about a race in a very long time, and in the end I left it thinking it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.

Need to focus on: Longer rides, especially longer rides with bursts of race effort. As I re-learned in Folsom, riding hard on flat roads without stopping is way different from the type of riding I usually do (the kind where I climb a bunch of hills and stop at a bunch of stoplights).

Can’t wait for: Riding the Vineman course, finally, the weekend after next.

Thinking Cold Thoughts

So, I’m racing on Sunday. Or, maybe more accurately, I am participating in a race — the USA Productions Olympic tri in Folsom.. After a better-than-expected race at Napa in April, I’m not going for any kind of PR. I just wanted to practice execution and transitions — and to experience racing in some warmer conditions before Vineman.

But. I did not mean this.

Yes, where normally there is a picture of clouds or the sun, there is a picture of a thermometer full of blazing-hot mercury.

I do not do well in the heat. I mean, I do NOT do well in the heat. I was dripping sweat just standing outside in 95-degree weather in Paso Robles last weekend. I train in a place that is 65 degrees and zero humidity for all but about four days of the year. Obviously, this is why I knew I needed to get some experience in actual heat before July, but 100+ degrees is a little … aggressive.

{And to be fair, Accuweather now has the temperature at 100 on Sunday and my phone has it all the way down to (“down to”) 90. I’ve never before in my life said “oh thank goodness it will only be 90!” but there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.}

I need a game plan (other than googling images of cold places), but I feel a little like a polar bear trying to figure out how to pack for a strenuous vacation to the equator. I’ve been in 90+-degree temperatures probably 10 times in the past 10 years, and I’ve spent most of those days either splashing around in a lake or lying under a mister moaning “whyyyyy is it so hotttttt?”

Salt. Right? I’ve got my normal fast-food salt packets that have saved my ass in Napa and Berlin (both races when it was, y’know, 65-75 degrees). I also have SaltStick caplets that I bought before Wildflower last year and never used because swallowing them kind of weirded me out — but they’re an option.

The wetsuit issue. The USA Productions site says the lake temperature will be 60-65, which I suspect is a damn lie. On Sunday I swam in Lake San Antonio in just a swimsuit, and I’m guessing the water there was in the high 60s, and I was comfortable (if slow). I’ve never tried swimming in tri shorts/top. What do I do if the water is 60 degrees and the air is 80+ degrees? I overheat so easily that the idea of putting my full-sleeve wetsuit on in those conditions makes my skin boil. I found a sleeveless wetsuit I can rent for the weekend, so I’ll have a whole array of choices, but I’m not sure how to pick.

Hydration. I’ll have two bottles on my bike, but I can really only reach one of my holders while riding — the other is a backup. There is an aid station at the halfway point, and I’ll plan to grab a water there, drink half and pour half on me if it’s really hot, and ditch that bottle. If I have to slow down or stop and get my second bottle, no big deal. On the run, I’ll take my small bottle and Nuun and plan to refill as frequently as I need; there are aid stations marked for every mile.

Speed. As in, this race is not about that. I legitimately do need to practice being in hot weather, and I need to know how it feels to put effort in under my least-favorite conditions, but if I have to really slow down on the run, that’s fine for this race — as long as I learn something from it for Vineman.

Ice. Leah suggested freezing a bottle overnight and shoving it down my top for the run, and my hotel room has a mini-fridge, so that might be feasible. I don’t know if the aid stations will have ice, but my Vineman plan was to run with a plastic baggie that I could fill with ice and shove under my hat or down my shorts, so I’ll pack some baggies just in case.

What else? Acclimation is clearly not an option; this is my acclimation! But any tips for making it more bearable?

Iceberg photo by MrHicks46

Vineman 70.3: Week Three

Week three: commence freakout(s).

Specific freakouts: that I’m not doing enough. That the weeks of group training I’m missing or altering will mean I don’t finish Vineman. That I’m not riding hard enough. That I’m not running easy enough. That my stupid swimming base pace has been the same for the last 18 stupid months.

All of these thoughts are easy enough to tamp down with a workout or a cookie or a moment of looking at my training schedule and really counting the remaining weeks. There’s a lot of work left to do; I shouldn’t be ready to cover 70.3 miles today; dailymile shows numbers going up and graphs don’t lie, right?

And yet. It nags at me that I haven’t done one of those really key workouts yet — a tough ride over 50 miles, or a day on the Vineman course, or a big, meaty brick. They’re coming, I see that, and I trust my coach and know I’ll get there when it’s time. I also know that the changes I’ve made to the schedule are crucial for keeping my life in balance. But it’s still hard to see the rest of my group ride the Vineman course one weekend and race the next when I haven’t done either.

Rational brain says this: I’m plugging away. I’m doing the work. I’m doing things other people in the group aren’t doing. I’m making this plan fit my life the way I like it. I know I can ride 56 mostly flat miles. I’m about to prove, again, that I can run a half-marathon. And swimming? In that river? That’s what I spend every summer longing to do. The pieces will fit. It just takes time. And contrary to what I see when I page through TrainingPeaks, I do still have time.

Here’s how I spent week three:

Monday: Rest, though I did walk a couple of hilly and drizzly miles to retrieve Seattle Memorial Day indoor picnic supplies.

Tuesday: Mini brick: 13 miles of biking with hill repeats (1300′ of climbing up El Camino Del Mar and Clement), then a mile transition run. When I got home from work, the weather was sunny and still; by the time I got my stuff together and figured out how to reinstall my bike pedals, it had turned cloudy and windy and made for a rather scary descent down to Ocean Beach.

Wednesday: Track workout — warm-up, 4-5×1000 with 200m recovery, cool-down. I’m still getting my legs under me for these relatively longer track intervals and ran 5:18, 5:28, 5:27, 5:19, 5:19. Totaled just over 5 miles by the time I got home.

Thursday: In the morning, I lifted some things and put them down in the living room while watching the French Open — about 20 minutes of squat and deadlift variations. Here’s how often I’ve “lifted weights” since we moved in October: the weights live on a built-in bookshelf, and when I picked them up, some of the bookshelf paint came up too. In the evening, I swam 2200 yards in a crowded pool where some people refused to circle and others said they would but really just wanted to chat and mostly it was all stupid. The workout included a whole bunch of 40s with different prescribed paces, but I just swam what I could when I could.

Friday: “Long Ride,” Part One. I’d thought about trying to ride long on Sunday after the beer festival, but when we worked through the logistics, driving the bike down seemed like a terrible idea. Instead, I decided to split up the miles into two rides, Friday and Monday. This one was ~23 miles including two laps around Lake Merced, finishing with a 20-minute transition run. Lake Merced isn’t the most challenging ride, but frankly neither is Vineman, so I got a little “race pace” practice in. I had a presentation at work that morning and gave myself permission to cut the run short before I’d even started, but for some reason the phrase “this is what your house is built on” popped into my head as I ran, and I decided the extra 10 minutes would make more difference for Vineman than for the presentation. Also, I think the word I was looking for was “foundation.”

Saturday: Rest via tastes of many beers, with the New Belgium Prickly Passion Saison surprising me as a favorite. It was nearly 100 degrees and I was sweating just standing around, so I’m happy with the decision to take this as a full rest day.

Sunday: On the way home from the festival, 1.2 miles in Lake San Antonio, sans wetsuit. The water temperature was probably high 60s, but the air temperature was still in the 90s and the idea of putting on a wetsuit made my brain boil. I finished just under 50 minutes and was not thrilled with that time, but it gave me something to reference when I think about going wetsuit-free for my (hot) races later this year. I closed out the week with a 10-mile run once we got back to the city, cheating on my no-music rule to make sure I’d get out of the house.

Week Three Stats

Swimming: 4350 yards
Biking: 39 miles
Running: 18.5 miles
Other: lifting things for ~20 minutes
Most proud of: Getting up with a 5 on the clock and riding when the sun came up on Friday. I could have let the timing of some work stuff derail my plans, but I didn’t, and while the ride wasn’t as long as I initially wanted it to be, I can confidently say I made the most of my time.
Need to focus on: Time in the damn saddle. That’s where I most feel like I’m playing from behind right now. Luckily, partially owing to Long Ride, Part Deux on Monday, week four’s bike miles will be relatively huge.
Can’t wait for: Racing again this weekend, more to come …..

Vineman 70.3: Week 2

I loved traveling during marathon training. Adored it. Relished it. I did my first post-injury-break 6-miler in Philadelphia, my first 8 in Chicago, some hot and humid runs in Michigan, and a 15-miler in Madison. I got to run with friends, and run to things, and run around places I wouldn’t have otherwise gone. It took a little planning, but only of the “maybe two drinks instead of three at this wedding reception” variety, and it kept training fresh. I almost wish I’d done more of it.

Traveling during 70.3 training is a different beast. It’s logistically challenging. It requires stuff — bikes! — and facilities — pools! swimmable lakes! — and the weather to be halfway decent and others to be either OK with you disappearing for several hours or crazy enough to come along.

When I first hit on the idea of going to Seattle over Memorial Day weekend, I envisioned some kind of triathlon training camp — kind of like my “Berlin Marathon training camp” in Madison in which I took a long flight, slept very little, ran a bunch, and then drank beer and ate sausages. But there were a few problems with this, namely: 1) it rains in Seattle; 2) a bike and a wetsuit are a lot tougher to travel with than a pair of damn sneakers; 3) if I was going to devote the weekend to swim-bike-run, it would not leave a lot of time for the real reasons I wanted to go to Seattle, namely seeing our friends and meeting their babies and eating things and drinking other things.

So, I tried for balance, or some version of it. I emailed Rebecca for training suggestions, rented a bike for two days (initially — though it turned into three once the rain pushed our ride start several hours later and I didn’t want to worry about returning it on time), convinced a friend who’d never ridden more than 20 miles that 50 would be totally doable, and squeezed in a long run before leaving San Francisco. In the end, I only skipped one of the scheduled workouts (the shortest of the swims), though any benefit that was meant to be derived from doing things in a particular order certainly went out the window.

I’m traveling again this weekend — to a beer festival — and so am shifting workouts around yet again. Most of my group is racing this weekend, and I’m clearly not, so I think things are going to feel discombobulated for a bit. After this, I’m not going anywhere till Vineman, so as long as I don’t dig too big a hole, it’ll be OK … I think?

Dailies:

Monday: Rest

Tuesday: In the morning, 2080 yards of swimming including 3×500 in fine but not-as-fast-as-when-I-swam-with-the-fast-ladies times. I was intending to bike to some errands and then to yoga in the evening, but the wind was terrible — maybe the worst I’ve ever biked in — and I badly missed the start of class after miscalculating how long it would take me to ride in those conditions. I was slightly disappointed but mostly relieved to be able to get home and out of the wind sooner.

Wednesday: Track around the outside of the track again: two .7-mile loops, then two double (1.4-mile) loops, with the double loops clocking in at 11:40 and 11:39.

Thursday: I took advantage of a weird work schedule to get in a longer morning swim: 2760 yards, including a main set of 400 pull/400 swim, 300 pull/300 swim, 200 pull/200 swim, 100 pull/100 swim. I did pull sets all the time last year but haven’t done them in a while, and it was crazy how dead my legs would feel when I started kicking again. I got home too late to drive up to computrainer class, so I hung out in the garage for an hour making up a trainer interval workout and watching Scandal.

Friday: 10 miles before work through Golden Gate Park and along Ocean Beach, average pace 9:48/mile. Not much notable about this run, actually, other than its start time; it was a gorgeous morning, and while I did let myself listen to podcasts as an extra bit of encouragement to get out of bed, I probably would have been OK without.

Saturday: Rest. Initially thought I might make it to a Seattle public pool, but when the time came, I chose coffee and scones with friends, and I’m happy with that choice.

Sunday: 50 miles through Seattle and around Lake Washington with Pete, our friends A and J, and Michaela! More details to come, but — other than the two times I toppled over at extremely low speed on my rental bike trying to make tight right turns — I found Seattle to be an absolute biking paradise. The weather did not look like it was going to swing in our favor, but it only rained in the last five minutes, which was pretty remarkable since — including all stops — we were out there for five hours. I talked myself into skipping a brick run (it would have meant either heading sharply uphill or sharply downhill on slippery sidewalks), but after discovering the flat sidewalk path by the lake the next day, I wish I’d just gone down the hill and gotten it done.

one of those stops was for a slurpee.

Week Two Stats

• Swimming: 4840 yards
• Biking: 75ish miles (50 real miles, 10 commute miles, 15 trainer miles)
• Running: 15 miles
• Other: nnnnnnnothing. fail.
• Most proud of: Getting in all 10 miles of my long run, though I’d already given myself permission to cut it short before I even started
• Need to focus on: Not ignoring core and stretching
• Can’t wait for: Swimming again — I hope in the pool soon (waiting for my scraped-up knee from the bike fall(s) to heal a bit more) but also in open water this weekend, finally finally.

Vineman 70.3: Week 1

This week was all about climbing. Metaphorical climbing up the ladder of training (more hours, more distance) but also actual climbing — more than 6,000 feet by foot and by bike on Saturday and Sunday alone.

I’m slightly cursing the way I handled the last couple of weeks of TAG Wildflower training. I know taking a reset week was probably smart long-term, but in the short term, it made this first week a bit of a shock. I wish I’d gotten in a few longer bike rides over the past month, or tossed in an easy morning run back in April like I swore I would but never did. I feel a little like I’m playing from behind. Vineman’s in eight weeks, and that doesn’t seem like much. But then I remember that eight weeks out from my marathon, I hadn’t run more than 14 miles yet. A lot can happen in eight weeks (ahem, self).

A note about how this is all actually happening: I’m training with a group led by the same coach I worked with during TAG. We meet once a week for workouts, and he sketches out a schedule for the rest of the week. But it’s not a Vineman-specific training program, or even a 70.3-specific training program; most people in the group are training for that distance, but there are also people training for century rides, Olympic tris, a couple of Ironman races, etc. I’m using his schedule as an outline but filling in where I need to — especially some extra cycling, if I can handle it, because I know that’s my weakness. In these first couple of weeks, when I’m full of nervous 70.3 anticipation energy, I’m trying to see what it feels like to do extra. If it’s too much, I can always fall back to what’s actually on the schedule.

Anyway. Week one:

Monday: Rest. May eventually want to switch my rest day to Friday, but I haven’t decided yet.

Tuesday: AM: 30-minute easy run + 30 minutes of core/strength work. PM: Drove to my coach’s computrainer studio for my first class — more to come on that, but it was 90 minutes of cycling with a power meter. Others in the class headed out for a transition run after the ride, but I didn’t have my shoes. In retrospect, this was a bit aggressive for training weekday #1, and the drive to and from the class made for a long day.

Wednesday: AM: 2060 yards of swimming, including 3×500. For the second half of the swim, I was in a circle-swim lane with two very fast swimmers, and they pushed me to a 9:35 500, which is the fastest I’ve gone since I started keeping swim data. Too bad I can’t chase them around the pool every workout! (I have no business being in their lane, but the balance in the pool was weird that day, and I was too fast for the slower lanes. I could hold my own for 500 but probably not for much more than that.) PM: First “big-kid” track workout with Golden Gate Triathlon Club group (our TAG workouts were held in parallel but structured separately). The biggest difference to me was the overall distance of the workout, though that may have been a function of the track being closed (we ran on a .7-mile route around the outside). Including my jog to/from the track, I hit 7 miles, including two 1.4-mile segments in 11:28 (8:01/mile pace, way too fast to maintain) and 11:48 (8:29/mile pace and way more legit).

Thursday: Thought about getting up to ride before work; brain heard the alarm clock and said “oh hell no.” Instead, 12 miles of bike commuting at like 4 mph (I have no idea how slow my bike commute is, but that’s what it feels like). Yoga on the way home.

Friday: The first workout of the week that was mentally a struggle and I think why I want to shift my rest days to Friday. 2000 yards of swimming, including some “fast” 40s in a very crowded pool.

Saturday: Dipsea trail run! The race is a classic, and when I hiked this narrow, root-y, rocky (and beautiful) trail a few years ago, I said I didn’t know how anyone ever ran it. I … still don’t. The instructions were to do what we could in about 3 hours; I made it through 10.5 miles in 3:05 with plenty of hiking. Garmin had moving time at 2:39 (FINE, I stopped to take pictures, plus to check the directions at a few points) and elevation gain at 3250′.

Sunday: Between post-Dipsea soreness and an anniversary dinner featuring a lot of food and plenty of wine, my long ride started a bit later than planned. Pete and I escaped Bay to Breakers for the year and took BART to the East Bay to ride a route known as the Three Bears (three hills — Mama, Papa, and Baby, helpfully labeled as such on the pavement, we discovered) and finish off with a loop of the Lafayette-Moraga trail, which I hadn’t visited since my first 16-miler. Newsflash: when you’re used to San Francisco weather, 80 degrees is hot. But Vineman’s going to be hot, so I better get used to it. I’d also forgotten that the trail has stopsigns every quarter-mile (or more), and I never hit any sort of rhythm in the final 10-12 miles. I don’t think I’ll plan any more cycling routes there, though being out of traffic was nice. 2720′ elevation gain over the 40 miles. Plus 6 miles to/from BART and a 10-minute “transition run” after the ride home, though how “transition-y” it was after sitting on a train for a half-hour is surely debatable.

Week One Stats

• Swimming: 4060 yards
• Biking: 40 “real miles” + 18 “city miles” + 90-minute computrainer class (?? “miles”)
• Running: 21 miles (11 on roads and 10 on the Dipsea, if we’re calling that running)
• Other: One yoga class, one lifting session, not enough foam rolling
• Most proud of: Not quitting on the long ride when we biked past the train station at mile 20
• Need to focus on: Not freaking out about not doing enough
• Can’t wait for: a Seattle adventure this weekend. Fingers crossed for good cycling weather.

Vineman 70.3: Week Zero

I’ve spent the year saying that I wasn’t training for anything important to me. Not really. Not yet. Napa was an interesting checkpoint, and Wildflower was a celebration of others’ success, but neither of them was my race, my real race.

And then last Monday, it hit me: there are no more distractions, no more thinking it doesn’t matter how I train or what I do. In just nine weeks, I have 70.3 miles to cover. That’s a whole lot of miles.

I’m nervous — terrified! — but I’m also so excited. I looked in TrainingPeaks yesterday and I could see the sketches of my schedule starting to trickle in — a few big weekends, a note that it was “time to start adding up the miles.” I’ve been happily bookmarking 50-mile bike rides and calculating run mileage and finally getting the quick-release kit set up for my Garmin. July 14 seems way too soon — and yet, this is the work I’ve been waiting for since the moment I submitted my registration form back in November.

(We’ll see if I’m saying that after I run the Escape from Alcatraz course, sand ladder included, the day before an Olympic tri or do a half-marathon the day after a 70-mile ride.)

This week was a transitional one — I didn’t need Wildflower recovery, per se, but considering that I trained straight through Napa, I was probably due for a cutback week. So I took the start of the week easy — then met my training group on Saturday for our first ride and run, got my next 10 days’ marching orders, and started quaking a little in my Ravennas. But only a little. Mostly, I just feel ready.

Bringing back the weekly recaps, Vineman edition …

Monday: Rest after a late return home from Wildflower.

Tuesday: 1920 yards of swimming, including a ladder of 500-400-300-200-100 trying to get faster per 100 yards in each set.

Wednesday: Took a week off from track and ran easy around Stow Lake in the morning with a podcast in my ears. I wanted to do two loops but left late after cleaning up some various messes my cats made and ended up with just about 3.3 miles.

Thursday: First, 10 bike miles including 3 El Camino Del Mar repeats. Then, a quick shower and another 5.5 miles to work for my first Bike to Work Day. Later, 6.5 miles home, including a stop in the middle for a meeting. I thought I’d missed the “Energizer Stations” after the first mapped location I passed had no sign of one — if you know me, you know I’d have been pissed to miss free stuff — but there was another one a bit farther down the road, and I scored a wonderful, tiny San Francisco bike map and some other goodies.

Friday: Rest. I think I planned to aquajog, but it didn’t happen, and that’s OK.

Saturday: First group ride of summer training: 28-ish miles, including 1900+ feet of climbing via Chapman Road repeats and Paradise Loop. The day got off to an unpleasant start about a mile into the ride, when we realized a brake pad had popped off my friend’s bike and was nowhere to be found. While the rest of the group headed down into Mill Valley post-hill-repeats, she and I gingerly picked our way back to my car. She did a long run while I rode Paradise the other way and found the group in Tiburon, just a few minutes ahead of me. Hooray for still being in TAG Captain troubheshooting mode! Chased the ride with a 20-minute run on the bike path. I had a few low moments on the ride — I tire of Paradise really quickly (har har) — but I reminded myself to keep eating and drinking, and I eventually snapped out of it. I think my favorite moment in all of Northern California cycling is when Paradise turns from a potholed, rutted shitshow into a nicely paved, perfect road.

Sunday: Met up with some Golden Gate Tri Club folks for an early Aquatic Park swim and felt good in the bay for the first time all year. Turns out, it’s lovely not to be fighting a surging tide! Garmin recorded just under a mile in 34 minutes. Drove home to grab a parking spot before the weekend park surge hit (and so I could run in dry clothes for once), then ran 8 miles through the park before the fog cleared. That’s my first time over 6.5 miles since February, and it was clear — but not as rough as I expected it to feel. I’ve decided to go back to running without music/podcasts until Vineman’s over, and I believe this was my longest run without music or friends ever.

Zero Week in a Nutshell:

• swimming: 3640 yards
• cycling: 50 miles
• running: 13.6 miles
• strength-training: nope
• yoga: nope
• most proud of: bumping up my long-run distance
• need to focus on: getting back to yoga
• can’t wait for: a 40+-mile ride next Sunday