Racing on the Last Sunday of September

Racing on the last Sunday of September is apparently a thing I do now, if you stretch journalism rules a bit and call two a trend. Last year, I was already in Berlin, picking up my bib for my first marathon. This year, I’m about to head down to Santa Cruz for (perhaps) my final tri of the season.

It’s funny, looking back to last year. Berlin was the capper to the straight-up craziest month of my life, in which we spent three out of the first four weekends at weddings, had an offer accepted on a house, scraped together the downpayment for said house, discovered Pete had to go on a last-minute international trip, talked a friend into accepting our power of attorney in case we were in Germany when we had to close on the house, sent Pete off to Chile, closed on the house with exactly enough time left to get to the airport (as I recall, I rolled up five minutes before the flight to Frankfurt closed), flew to Germany, reunited in Berlin with my parents who had been traveling in Italy, and — oh yeah — ran 26.2. It was wild and crazy and it’s all happening-y, and when we came back to San Francisco, we were marathoners and home owners and about to enter another major phase of our lives.

This year, September hasn’t been quite so…dramatic. Aside from a trip to Portland last weekend (Cliffs Notes: a run on my favorite path, Pine State Biscuits, getting rained on before seeing Frightened Rabbit and The National outdoors, probably a top five favorite meal at Ava Gene’s, and a lot of beer), we’ve just been here. Doing normal things. Living the life that got put in motion last September. No complaints — normal is good! — but wow, I’m coming into this particular race weekend with a significantly smaller dose of pure adrenaline.

When I first decided to keep training after Vineman —  and that it seemed like my body and my brain could hang on for at least one more hard effort this season, which was not at all a given, since I started in February and that’s a long time for me to continuously train — I had Big Plans for Santa Cruz. I’d heard it was a forgiving, flat course, and I got it in my head that I’d be able to go under three hours. That would be another 15-ish minutes off my Olympic-distance PR (from Napa in April) and a nice, round number that I’ve had in the back of my head for a while.

Realistically, though, I don’t think that’s going to happen. My running has apparently gotten somewhat faster, but I haven’t pushed speed at all on the bike, and my swimming is stuck at the same pace it’s been since March 2012. Flat courses aren’t necessarily better for me, especially when they have a reputation for being windy. (My best Olympic ride ever was at Napa, which had two rated climbs. I rode significantly worse at Folsom, which was flat as a board but into a headwind. I think there are two things going on, even if you subtract wind from the equation: I’m good at climbing, and I’m bad at pedaling consistently with no breaks.) I’ve never done an ocean swim. And Santa Cruz also features a long run — half a mile? — from the ocean to transition; I think the fastest transition time I saw in my age group last year was 5 minutes.

I still think I can PR the distance, though, and I’ve got a couple of other goals. The big one is to really race; this may or may not be my last Olympic tri of the year, but the other one I’m considering would be maybe 75% caper/vacation, 25% triathlon — so I want to race like this is it for 2013. As for the rest:

Swim: I would like to be closer to 30 minutes than to 35, which roughly encompasses the range of times I’ve had this year. I would also like to take advantage of the fact that the pier we swim around is on my right (breathing) side and swim in a relatively straight line for once. And if a sea lion comes near me, for the love of god, I am throwing out all of my swim goals and hanging out with that sea lion! (I don’t think the sea lions come to the people who want to swim with them, though.)

Bike: This is the big one: I want to bike under 1:30. I’ve been relatively close twice this year, and I hit the 25-mile mark under 1:30 at Vineman, but that doesn’t count. If we’ve got 20-mph headwinds, this won’t happen. Otherwise, I think it can, and I’m going to push for it.

Run: It would be cool to run something in the 56- to 57-minute range. My 10K PR is just over 55 minutes, and I don’t have any illusions that I’m going to come close to that, but 57-ish seems doable. (I did that in Napa, but there’s no way that course wasn’t short.) B-goal is under an hour.

Transitions: I would like to not be embarrassed by my transition times. That said, I expect my T1 will be on the order of 6-7 minutes, so my overall hope is for under 10 minutes total.

If I hit those numbers, I’d be coming in around 3:05-3:10 — which would be a more than 30-minute improvement from my first Olympic tri, and while that hardly counts because that was Wildflower and Wildflower will always be slower than everything else, it would still be cool.

Overall B-goal is to PR (under 3:14). C-goal is to beat my Folsom time of 3:22 — my current best on a flatter course — which should be doable as long as I don’t repeat my pre-Folsom trick of slicing open my finger the day before and having to waste 7 minutes in T1 searching for a band-aid.

And seriously, all time goals go out the window if a friendly sea lion wants to play.

Vineman Race Plan and Goals

I’m sitting here surrounded by stuff. Our trip to Vineman starts after work today, so I wanted to get as much packed as I could ahead of time.

I don’t know why I feel the need to write out my entire packing list by hand every single time, but I do, though it really doesn’t change that much from tri to tri. I think it’s one last little way to exert control before going into a somewhat unpredictable environment. And frankly, checking things off lists just makes me feel like I’m Doing Things Right.

In the past few days, I’ve gotten a few things out of the way: a bike tune-up and final ride; a last swim; an aquajog subbing for my regular shakeout run (my calves were tight after last Saturday’s run, and I’m not taking any chances, which seems like the kind of mature and reasonable decision I’m hardly ever capable of making). If anything, I’ve tapered too much, but I’m not sure I believe that’s a thing. Riding my bike home from the shop yesterday, I wanted nothing more than to keep riding, but I was out of time and told myself it would be better to save it for Sunday anyway.

So, all that’s left is thinking through the day and then executing what I’ve trained and planned for. My overall time goal is to finish under 7 hours, but that could break down a lot of different ways. But I had to figure out some rough time estimates to tell spectators where I’ll be, and to figure out how much food and water to carry, so, here’s how I’m hoping each leg will go. (Note that there’s an implied “just finish!” goal for each of these.)

Swim
A goal: 42 minutes
B goal: 45 minutes

I’ve gone 41-42 minutes in both of my swims in the river this year, but a) that didn’t include actually getting out of the rocky river — something I’m ashamed to be a wimp about but am a wimp about nonetheless — or any issues that arise from swimming in crowds, and b) looking at my swim times in the pool and at other races, a 42-minute swim would, frankly, be beyond my demonstrated abilities. I hear that happens sometimes on race day, and if it does, that’s great, but I’ve been expecting to swim 45 minutes this whole time, I think that’s in reach, and anything faster would be icing.

Other stuff:

• Eat and drink throughout the morning — a little bit at a time is fine.
• Try. Act like I’m swimming in a race, not just out for a lazy Sunday float.

Bike
A+++ goal: 3:30
A goal: 3:45
B goal: 4 hours

My first course ride came in at 3:44; my second, with a few minor detours and a long water stop, was 3:55. My initial goal was to be able to hold 15 mph, which would be 3:45, and I’m sticking to that. Before my water stop on the second ride, I was closer to 16 mph, hence the A+++ goal — but I did stop and am expecting to stop at least once during the race (either to refill water or to stretch or to use a bathroom or all of the above), so I don’t expect 3:30. Still, I’m going to see if I can hold 16 mph until the turn onto 128.

Other plans:

• Two bottles on the bike: Rocktane in the front and either water or Skratch in the back. Plan is to supplement with aid station water — and I could do a full swap at mile 29, if I want to. I still haven’t decided.
• Salt caps in the outside stretchy pocket of my bento, one every hour.
• Food! I will, will, will get a whole Gu down in the first five miles before we’re off River Road. I’ve waited too long to eat both times I’ve biked the course, and it really catches up with me around mile 40. Not this time! I’ll also have a Picky Bar and Shot Bloks in my bag, some extra food stashed in my pockets, and a special treat — either a Fig Newton or gummy watermelon rings, whichever I’m in the mood for — after Chalk Hill.
• My main goal is to not avoid the crushing low I’ve felt both times after the turn onto Chalk Hill Road. It’s a rough part of the course, I’ve been baking in the sun for hours, and I’m just ready to be done. I think not eating enough has been a big part of the issue on previous rides, but part of it is also attitude, and I want to psych myself up to be as positive and happy as I can be on that stretch, no matter how the rest of the ride is going. It’s kind of the “three-hours-to-go” mark of the day, and that’s awesome, but three hours is still a long time and I want to have the best energy I can going in.

Run
A goal: 2:20
B goal: 2:30

Oh, who even knows with this run. I really think it’s going to come down to weather. I thought at one point that if I had a really blockbuster day, I could run 10-minute miles, but I deeply doubt that now — especially since I’m planning to walk the aid stations.

I barely ran 11-minute miles on my first course run, the day of 95 degrees and the emergency garden hose. The weather forecast has gotten more favorable since then, but “more favorable” still means 80+ degrees. I ran at a 10:15 pace last weekend for 10 miles of the course, but it was only 70 degrees and I’m not banking on that for Sunday.

I don’t mean to use weather as an excuse for my performance, whatever it may be. It’s not an excuse. But it is a fact that I run poorly in heat, and while I’ve done what I can to get up north to practice, three hot runs does not equal acclimation. I’ll be armed with salt and Nuun and water and I’m going to do as much as I can without ending up in a med tent.

2:20 feels reasonable; I ran the SF half in 2:07 a month ago, and while I think that course is slightly easier, a whole minute per mile should be enough to play with. But if it’s exceptionally hot or sunny, all bets are off.

Other plans:

• Walk every aid station at least in the first half. Water on me, water down the hatch, eat whatever sounds good.
• Tri club friends will be at mile 4, after the worst of the hills. High-five everyone. Draw on that energy.
• Turn the Garmin to a useless screen if needed. If it’s a rough run, just finish.

And there it is. I start at 8, I’m number 1818, and I’ll be back on the other side of 70.3!

In Which I Write About a 2013 Goal While It’s Still January and All

I am not a brave person by nature. If anything, I’m cautious to an obnoxious degree. I was the kid who got her learner’s permit and, when asked if I wanted to drive home from the DMV, said no no no no no no no. I spend a lot of time being scared of things, and a lot of the time I do those things anyway, but I still wish I could be less fearful in the first place.

Getting on a bike after years of being terrified was a big deal for me, and I made huge strides in 2012. A year ago, I was still walking my bike up some blocks of a route I now ride like it’s no big deal. I mean: Last January, I couldn’t signal a turn or drink from a water bottle or imagine swapping my platform pedals for clipless ones. I did those things; I’ve done all of those things. It’s been hard and stressful and exhausting but sometimes exhilarating, at least enough of the time that I want to keep riding. I don’t get the same peace on my bike that I can get from a run; in fact, if there’s an opposite of inner peace, that’s where my mind is on the bike, all look and brake and pull and sit up and sit down and watch that car and get further to the right and pothole and what is that car doing and pedal pedal pedal and turn whoa stop now now now unclip oh wait shit OK it’s fine, we’re fine, green light, deep breath, GO.

But still, there’s something about riding that makes me come home smiling more often than not. I don’t love it the way I love running or even swimming, but I like it enough that I would miss it if I quit, and if I’m not going to quit, I might as well at least try to get better.

So here’s what I want from 2013 — and it’s not a race finish or a time goal, though if those come along, I won’t say no. I want to be less of a baby on the bike.

Real talk: I still freak out a little every single time I ride, actually every time I so much as think about riding. I squeeze the brakes on every descent. And I’m still a princess about riding, when I can get myself to do it: I need the perfect conditions, the best weather, the right route, the least possible traffic. But I know enough to know that if I keep riding like that, if I keep biking the same 12-mile route at the same middling speed and only when it’s nice out, I’m going to stay stuck.

Here’s my action plan for being less of a wimp:

Bike as transportation. Normalize the idea of getting on the bike to go to a place. Learn the bike-friendly roads and routes through the city. Practice being on different kinds of streets. Stop feeling like I need eight hands to lock up my bike efficiently. Our new house is in a great place for this; I can start almost every ride in the park, where I’ve been reasonably comfortable riding ever since I first got Penelope, but I can also experiment with different routes on “real roads.” I was going to start this by riding to yoga last week, but at the last second I panicked that I’d be wobbly and unbalanced with my yoga mat in tow. (If this turns out to be true, I can store a mat at the studio; I won’t let this be an excuse for long.) Instead, I rode to brunch over the weekend, five miles each way, with a bottle of prosecco in my bag that, no, I did not fall onto and shatter all over myself.

Bike to work. A specific version of the above. I’ll never take the most efficient route; biking with the buses and trolleys and wild drivers and train tracks of Market Street is truly not aspirational for me. But there’s a slightly longer route that’s more protected, and I’ve ridden almost all of it. I’m being princess-y about this still; I’m not comfortable doing it in the rain or on days when I have to carry my computer. But once a week seems reasonable.

Ride the trainer. A, the weather or the time of day aren’t excuses not to ride when I can do it in the garage. B, I can practice skills better there, when I’m not stopping every seventeen seconds on city roads or freaking out because a car may or may not be turning in front of me. After much deliberation, I cashed in some REI gift cards for the Kinetic Fluid Trainer and got it set up in our garage. I’m not totally happy with the arrangement (the garage lights are on a timer and so after 25 minutes, I’m biking in the dark — which is fine by me, actually, but it’s a shared garage and I don’t want to give our neighbors a heart attack because they’re not expecting a crazy girl biking in the basement), but I have WiFi and Hulu and I don’t mind tucking in for a long ride.

Ride in new places. I started this on New Year’s day, riding near our rental house in Dillon Beach. Part of this process is learning when my fears are actually prohibitive and when I can find some way around them; in this case, we cut out two miles of climbing on a shoulder-less road by driving our bikes to downtown Tomales and starting from there. For the most part, I loved this ride, which took us past grassy dairy farms and an absurd number of tiny little lambs. I also freaked out massively 2/3 of the way up the very last climb; I was riding so slowly that I started to envision myself coming to a complete stop, not being able to unclip, and rolling backwards or tipping over (or, most often, tipping over while rolling backwards). Once the image was in my head, I couldn’t get it out, and I’m not proud that it’s the only climb where I’ve ever had to stop. (Though I suppose I’m glad to have proven that I could stop without crashing.) But I am proud to have finished the ride, and to have biked up Twin Peaks yesterday, a ride I’ve wanted to conquer for a while. It was rough in spots — a stretch of busy, rutted road; another climb-so-slow-I’ll-tip hill — but the views were worth it.

Only slightly Instagram-enhanced

Ride with people. This is going to be hard for me. Most times I’ve ridden with a group, I’ve been the slowest rider in it. Someone from my tri club posts a public ride almost every weekend, but I’m terrified to show up, because even on supposed “no-drop” rides, I worry about not keeping up. (Feeling embarrassed and self-conscious and worried that I’m holding up everyone else would be almost worse for me than just being dropped.) It’s funny — it would be totally normal in that community to post a run and say I was going to be running 10-minute or even 11-minute miles, but to say, “Hey, come ride around 12 mph with me” would never happen, so I have this idea that everyone else’s leisurely pace is way faster than mine. Maybe I’ll be right, maybe I’ll be wrong, but it’s worth finding out, I guess.

Learn to take care of my bike. I know, basically, how to change a tire. I’ve done it once, with lots of help at my disposal. I fixed a dropped chain this one time. And that’s the extent of my bike knowledge. I’m scared that something will happen when I’m out riding and I won’t know how to handle it. There are lots of free or cheap bike maintenance classes around here, and I plan to sign up for one and make this happen.

Ride in the big gear. Just, I mean, seriously. I don’t ever ride in the big gear. I’m scared to shift onto it, and I’m scared that I’ll drop the chain getting there, and I’m scared that I’ll hit a big hill while I’m in the wrong gear and suddenly be moving so slowly I’ll tip over while rolling backwards. (Yes, that again.) Basically, I don’t know how or when to use it, so I don’t, so it becomes yet another thing I can’t do. I need to find a good, calm stretch of road and figure this out.

Start and/or stop without my butt in the saddle. Yeah, I stop my bike by slowly leaning to one side, ass firmly in the seat. My tri group coach spent all of last season calling me Twinkletoes. Maybe, ultimately, this will end up being the way I feel most comfortable starting and stopping, but there’s no denying that I do it now because I don’t know how to do it the other way. I have no clue how I’m going to practice this — I thought it would be the trainer, but the geometry of riding feels different enough to me on the trainer that it’s not a great simulation — but, I mean, I really should figure it out sometime.

Be kind to myself and let myself learn. This is going to be the toughest thing on this list by a mile. I feel slow and silly and scared when I ride, and I get angry with myself for not learning skills or getting faster or being able to climb (or descend) as well as I think I should on a route that looked well within my wheelhouse online. I need space to try and fail, and I need space to let myself succeed.

I’m doing a couple of other things that I think will make these goals more attainable. I want to get a proper bike fit; I suspect it will make me more comfortable when I ride and therefore more enthusiastic about doing it. And I’m looking for opportunities to ride outside my comfort zone but within a protected structure; I’m anticipating doing the bike leg of at least one tri relay this year, and I’d like to find a long supported ride where I can ride more or less my own pace but with other people giving me directions and perhaps feeding me.

I’m a far different rider this January than I was last. If I can say the same thing in January 2014, this year will have been a smashing success.

Race Recap: Wildflower Olympic Triathlon

“It’s about that white line,” Neil said on Saturday as we gathered for our race briefing. “Ten weeks of training, the early mornings, the hours of workouts — it’s all about that white line.

“So don’t you dare take a finish line photo where you’re staring at your watch. You smile.”

Mission accomplished.

The quick story of my Wildflower is: 3:36:36, almost all of it smiling. Great swim, great-for-me bike, and a hard run during which I was happy not to have my watch broadcasting split times (more about that later), all adding up to 20+ minutes faster than the fastest I thought I could do. That’s never happened before in my racing life, and it quite likely could never happen again, so I’m going to bask in it for as long as it’s appropriate to bask, and maybe longer.

For all of the blank peacefulness of last week, I now have a whole little three-ring circus of thoughts dancing around — about the sport, about training, about how maybe I am a group-exercise person after all — but since I can write 2,000 words about breakfast given the opportunity, I’m going to try to keep this one focused.

Pre-Race

I don’t camp. The last time I “camped,” my yurt had an outlet to charge my phone. Camping was the fourth discipline of my Wildflower and easily the one that put me most on-edge.

Of course our borrowed tent was the one the tri club volunteers couldn’t figure out how to set up, and of course we hadn’t read the instructions. I made the dusty, two-mile walk to the expo while Pete fielded questions from our camp-neighbor’s kids about why our tent kept falling down; he eventually located the magic spring that locked it into place. On the walk, I spotted some of the long-course racers I’d met at training weekend hauling their bikes back up the hill (people told me a lot of alarmist things about Wildflower, but nobody mentioned walking your stuff back up the hill) and hugged them and asked about their races and started to pick up some of the Wildflower energy I’d heard so much about.

We ate a quick dinner, I arranged and re-arranged my gear bag about 6,000 times, and the Cal Poly kids ran naked past our campsite, during which not a single woman was legitimately nude. I expected much more noise and partying from the long-course finishers (see above re: alarmist things people told me) but things seemed calm, and I fell asleep sometime around 10:30. I slept solidly till 4, then dozed off and on until 7, when a tent neighbor’s alarm (eight bars of this) started going off incessantly and I became convinced I was going to spend my entire race yelling “RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW! RIGHT HERE! RIGHT NOW!”

I was not looking forward to any part of transition set-up — not biking my stuff down Lynch Hill, not hanging out for 90+ minutes in transition before my wave, not sweating off my sunscreen before the race even started. But there were enough little things to do — get marked, eat breakfast, get in and out of the portapotties only to get right back in line — that I was surprised how quickly I was pulling on my wetsuit.

The Swim

The swim start is on a boat ramp, and the warm-up takes place in the minutes between wave starts. It turns out I love this. That quick heart-pounding-OMG-go-now! feeling showed up, but since all I had to do was splash around, it was fine. A lot of ladies from my training group were in the same wave, and we used some of our nervous energy to karaoke “Don’t Stop Believing” along with the loudspeaker until a few seconds before our start.

I usually count 10 right-arm strokes and then sight in open water, but I rarely got all the way up to 10 on this swim. I felt distracted; someone bumped my timing chip early and I worried about it falling off, and then I idly wondered how everyone else’s races were going, and I tried to guess whether any of the guys in my group would be done by the time I was out of the water. But my breathing was calm and my stroke felt as smooth as it ever gets.

I remember getting a side stitch after the second turn, but it didn’t stick around. At the third turn, I felt a little seasick, and I popped my head up to see a huge swell coming at us. (I thought, in the moment, that I might have made it up, but after the race I mentioned it to my parents and three separate women turned around and said, “Yeah, what was that?”) As it passed, I realized that some of the fastest swimmers from the wave behind me had caught up to my group, and I was momentarily discouraged, but then I thought: Use this. I followed some fast feet all the way in, and while I could have done a better job of sighting to the finish — the only left turn on the course — I was out of the water and running up the hill with a 32 on my watch.

The Bike

So I got to transition, and I forgot what to do. My order of operations was all messed up — I put my sunglasses on, but my hair was dripping on them, so I took them off, and then I couldn’t figure out where to put my wetsuit. The woman next to me kept saying “this is the longest transition ever!” and I was thinking, come on, it’s not taking that long, but uh, my T1 was 6:28.

This is also when I discovered that I’d somehow turned my Nike watch on — maybe in my backpack, maybe at transition — and the stopwatch had been running for hours, and when I tried to re-set it, the low battery warning flashed on. My swim watch was still running, though, so I shoved it in my pocket and headed to the bike out.

Then it was uppppp Lynch Hill. People were packed pretty tightly, and I was fighting for space to climb. A woman from the training weekend was a few people ahead of me, and she’s a much stronger cyclist, but I can climb, dammit, and so I resolved just to keep her in my sight till the top and not let anyone slip between us.

My watch died for good somewhere in the first 5K, and I spent the next 5K or so debating the merits of trying to get the other watch out of my pocket (pro: I’d know my time and could eat/drink accordingly. con: if I dropped it, I wouldn’t know anything ever). I settled on leaving it in my pocket and fueling by distance rather than time. I downed my whole Nuun-water bottle during the ride, and I also managed to take two water bottles from aid stations (!) (this is a milestone I would have never imagined in November) and execute the drink-and-toss.

I got my watch out of my pocket long enough around 22K to realize I’d been on the bike around an hour and was more or less on pace with my training ride. There were a few stupid moments with people trying to pass inappropriately or riding in the middle of the lane — a wake-up call for me, because I’m always afraid I’ll be the most discourteous rider out there — and a few times, the desire to get the hell away from some nonsense was the spark I needed to push past a group.

On a downhill somewhere in the last 10K, a bee stung me on the lip and held on, and it was one of those “um, what happens now?” moments — like, I’m not allergic, but how much is this going to hurt? and how do I get it off me? and what if it flies into my mouth and stings me inside of my mouth? — and eventually I shook it off like a dog shaking a stick. And really, for the worst thing that happened during the bike to be a bee sting? Not bad.

I spotted my parents and Pete at the top of Lynch and then started my ride down, which turned into a long, coasting “OMG WHY ARE YOU HUGGING THE YELLOW LINE” ride — and yes, the last thing I wanted to do was crash on Lynch, but some people were being way too cautious, and the age-group-competitive men were finishing their run so that was another layer of activity in the same little lane. I finally squeezed past one woman and had clear road all the way to transition.

The Run

Helmet off, shoes off, hat on, swap watches. I wasn’t doing math particularly well, but my total time was in the 2:30s, and I knew I could walk in most of the 10K and beat four hours. I headed up the stairs and out onto the course, sipping water and wondering if I’d regret not taking the salt packet out of my bike bag and shooting it along the way.

And uh. Yeah. I regret that. I have no idea if salt would have made any difference, but my stomach cramped for the first 45 minutes of the run, and I wish I would have at least had the option of trying it. I used to get side stitches regularly when I started running, but my nutrition/hydration plan usually works. Except, it turns out, it doesn’t work on an 85+-degree day, after 26 other miles, on a hilly and exposed course.

I had planned long before Sunday to walk through every aid station, but there were a few spots in that first handful of miles when I also walked every time the hill felt too hard, or every time my watch hit a 5. I was so happy not to know my average pace or be able to see it drop; I might have fallen apart more mentally if I had.

Around 6K, I worked to catch up with a couple of friends from training and also started chatting with a runner who had been next to me for a while. I could talk easily, so I couldn’t have been pushing that hard, but I could not imagine moving even one second faster. Our conversation (which mostly consisted of listing things we wanted at the finish line; mine: “A Diet Coke. No, a Coke. No, a Coke Slurpee.”) got us near the top of a hill, at which a) a teammate took a gulp from some Cal Poly kids’ beer bong and b) the crowd noise picked up as people pointed 200 meters ahead and yelled, “That’s the last hill!”

At the top of Lynch, I spotted my boss, who’d done the long course on Saturday. He jumped in next to me and I fought to keep up as he said things like, “Am I running too fast? Cause you’re running really fast!” and asked me how the race was (me: “hot”) and how the bike course had been (“hot”) and how I was feeling (“hot”). On the way down Lynch I started to see some carnage — one girl was standing stock-still in the middle of the road while a guy poured water over her head — but most people looked strong. I remember thinking, “In less than 10 minutes, I can stop moving.”

Then it was a left down the finish chute, and I saw the clock, and my mind was on whether I should try to kick or let the woman in front of me finish with a good photo, and I crossed and smiled and saw my coach and parents and Pete and smiled more and it was done.

The Aftermath

I stayed in the finish area for a while, finding friends and walking between the one strip of shade and the water table to get tiny cups of water (my only complaint, again: why not bottles?). Pete ducked the line to the finishers’ area and asked me if I needed anything, and I explained my Coke Slurpee fantasies, and he found a slush machine at the general store, and I have possibly never been so happy in my life. No, wait — I was happier about 15 minutes later, when I was drinking cherry slush and eating string cheese in Lake San Antonio.

My final stats were 32:20 for the swim, 1:50:27 for the bike (negative split by about 20 seconds), and 1:03:01 for the run, which is so much faster than I would have guessed I was moving. I was more or less the halfway point in my age group and had not-unsurprising rankings for the three disciplines (run the best — even with a 1:03! — and bike the worst).

I suppose I’m curious to know what I could have done if I hadn’t cramped so badly on the run, but realistically, I think I’d cramp on that run in those conditions no matter what; I have so few opportunities to train in real heat. I wish I’d taken the salt, and I wish I’d had a Gu before the swim, and it would have been nice to spend less than almost 11 minutes in transitions, but these are good lessons for the future; I raced a little better than I trained and a lot better than I could have predicted, and there’s nothing to complain about there.

I like this distance. I’m curious to know if I could go under 3:30 on a less-punishing course. Not to say I’ll never go longer — swimming in the Russian River got me interested in this crazy sport, and to do that in a race requires a 70.3, so yeah, that’s out there, it’ll happen someday — but Olympic is exactly enough of everything right now. I’m dedicated to respecting the Nothing, but if this had been a training day and I needed to hop in the pool today, I happily would.

And yes, I have more thoughts, but it’s already been too many words, so I’ll save them. I’m just happy, and proud, and excited about whatever comes next.

After Wildflower

I started to write about my goals for Wildflower, and then I realized I don’t have much to say — not because I’m not excited but because the zen feeling that settled into my bones during the training weekend still hasn’t let up. I often roll my eyes at “the race is just the celebration of the training!” and similar sentiments, but in this case, it really has been about the process. I think about where I was six months ago — and where I was, incidentally, was still walking my bike on any street that wasn’t JFK Drive — and I’m stunned at how different I feel, physically and emotionally. I stopped being scared of my bike, and I stopped being (quite as) scared of looking vulnerable in front of strangers. When I think “triathlon” right now, the image in my brain is of swimming in Lake San Antonio, looking at my favorite mini-mountains, sun shining, water cool, deliciously calm — and I have no desire to lose that anytime soon.

So I do have goals for Wildflower, but my main hope is that I can keep relaxing into this race, rather than thrashing my way through it. Assuming there are no major race-day disasters, the only thing I want is to race to my potential. A pro and a con of having trained on the course is that I can’t quite divorce that goal from times. Training weekend wasn’t a race-day simulation, in ways both good (it will be less hot, though still hot, on Sunday) and bad (I didn’t run a 10K at 2 p.m. in the sun with 26 miles already on my body). But if I hit anywhere near those times, I have a shot at breaking four hours. When I registered, I put my estimated finish time as 4:30, so anything faster than that would be, literally, better than I expected. And if not, well, that’s not really the point right now, anyway.

I’ve been thinking more about what comes after the race — and, more precisely, how I can keep this peaceful feeling going as I roll into the vast uncertainty of marathon training. I have all this momentum, I want to go-go-go-go-go, but I also want to heal. I want to know not just that my head is in the right place as I stare down the summer months but that my body might be able to follow.

A couple of weeks ago, I got out my calendar and all my training ideas and ran them by my physical therapist (whose role has definitely been heavy on the “therapist” lately). He’s a runner and triathlete himself and I was nervous that he’d say there was no way I’d be ready for a marathon in September doing what I had in mind, but he actually thought I could dial things back even further. I’m still working out some of the details and editing the actual training plan, but I have a month to do that, because all of May is about recovery.

For at least one week after Wildflower, and ideally two, I’m doing nothing. Big-N Nothing. Exceptions to Nothing include foam-rolling and, I guess, walking when necessary, but that’s it. It hasn’t ever gotten out of my head that I first felt the pain in my leg while swimming, and sometimes swim days are the worst even now, so I’m going to shut everything down and sleep a lot and catch up on magazines. The first week of Nothing ends with a long weekend trip to Palm Springs, which will be spent doing Nothing by a pool during the day and Nothing in a hot tub at night.

The second week of Nothing brings the one major deviation I will allow from my Nothing-ness, and that’s my running analysis with my podiatrist. I have four pair of shoes already waiting at her office, along with Adrenalines and PureCadences new and old, and I’m hoping that 45 minutes on her treadmill will start aiming me toward some shoes that work. This will be my only run till June.

Week three brings the end of Nothing in the form of Bay to Breakers, which I will not — will not — run. I am going to wear something ridiculous and tipsy-walk 12K with a water bottle mimosa and take pictures of the ridiculousness. It’s going to take forever and be sort of obnoxious but hey, I already paid for the race entry, and the real party happens at the back of the line anyway. I ran it semi-for-real last year; I might as well experience one drunken Bay to Breakers in my life.

After Bay to Breakers, depending on how I’m feeling, I’ll get back on the bike and back in the pool and — I’m really excited about this one — back on the climbing wall. I’m debating joining the gym that has the pool-running belts or just buying an endless string of day passes, but either way, I’ll probably start working in some pool-running, too. Pete and I want to find a yoga class that we’ll stick with during marathon training, so the second half of May is for studio-hopping.

The last week of May, if I’m still feeling good, I’ll be starting the schedule I want to keep for the summer, minus the land running. That’ll probably mean at least one swim, ride, and climb per week, plus a yoga class and strength training. This is sort of the “test” phase of my marathon plan — if I’m wiped out by the schedule before I’ve even added in any running that’s not in the pool, I’ll readjust. The first week of June, I’m walk-running a few miles a week in whatever new shoes and with whatever foot strike we’ve settled on by then. And, assuming all of this goes well, it’s Go Time on June 11 — 16 weeks to Berlin.

This plan means I’m not doing a second Olympic triathlon at the start of June, and the amount of sadness I feel about letting that one go tells me something about where my heart is, sport-wise – but I’m still hoping to find a July or August (or November) tri that gives me a reason to keep using my bike and stay in my wetsuit. I never actually registered for the June race, and I’m not signed up for anything else except the San Francisco Half at the end of July, so while I’ll probably add a few more things, I’m not even going near Active.com until June 11. I’ve realized that a big part of my stress about running comes from having to commit to races months in advance, and I don’t want to have the “if my body doesn’t hold up, I’ve wasted money” logic hanging over my head anymore. If things sell out, they sell out; there are more races, and I’ll do them when I’m ready.

I feel — I know I keep saying this — at peace with this plan. The best part about it is that I have a month to work with and still get 16 weeks of Berlin training in. When I envisioned the year, I thought I’d be hitting June with a good Olympic-tri-built running base, but I won’t be, really, and that means my marathon plan is going to ramp up slower than I expected. But that’s fine. I honestly have no goals for Berlin besides showing up, running it, and loving the process as much as I’ve ended up loving the process for Wildflower. And if it takes a lot of Nothing to get me there, so be it.

Goals for the Ice Breaker Sprint

When I signed up for the Ice Breaker Sprint as my first triathlon, I figured it would be just another workout — a triple-brick with a timing chip. After my relay team skipped Oakland, though, I started to get itchy to race. And after Tuesday’s annoying doctor’s appointment and the possibility that this might be my last race of the year*, I started wanting to race-race this, to really see what I can do.

{*I’m a pessimist. I would rather believe the worst and be pleasantly surprised than try to keep my hopes up and get let down. It might sound strange, but I’m trying hard to make myself believe there’s no way I’m doing Wildflower much less running Berlin. The worst that happens is that my expectations are met.}

It’s still my first time doing this distance, though, not to mention my first time doing a multi-sport event of any kind. So my overall goals are to a) finish b) with a smile on my face and c) with some idea of how to train between now and Wildflower if that remains an option.

But I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t also have some rough times in mind. I’m curious to see how my racing differs from my training in triathlon; without knowing the course, I expect my bike performance to be better than how I’ve trained it (biking without traffic should mean some kind of improvement, I hope…) and my swim will almost certainly be worse (I’m expecting to pace myself poorly, veer off course, and probably freak out a little). I’m looking at this as a chance to figure out what my race paces are in two new sports while also learning the mechanics of transitions, how much time I should expect to need to get my wetsuit off, etc. If I happen to do all of that reasonably quickly, well, that’s cool too.

This particular sprint is a half-mile swim, a 13-mile bike, and a 4-mile run. I don’t know enough to know how that compares to other sprints — I’ve seen both longer and shorter — but my sense is that it’s a relatively short bike with a slightly longer swim and run. In theory, this should benefit me, but there are a lot of unknowns going into that theory.

The swim: I know nothing about the swim course other than “it’s a triangle” and it’s in a lake. I could swim 800 yards in ~16-17 minutes in a 20-yard pool at my steady-but-not-racing pace, including lots of wall turns that I suck at doing. But do I suck at wall turns more than I suck at open-water swimming? Probably not. I’m assuming my open water time will be slower than my pool time, given the likelihood of freaking out/going off course/getting kicked in the face/etc. I’d like to finish this around 20 minutes, but I’ll be OK with a slower time as long as I can figure out why and it’s something I can practice (e.g. I veered too far to one side, I didn’t sight correctly, I had to fix my goggles, I did the whole thing as breaststroke).

The bike: Thirteen miles over two laps. I’m not worried about completing the distance. What does worry me? “The bike course is windy and has several sharp small hills and tight turns.” “Riders will need expert cornering skills to ensure winning times.” “The climbing is confined to short plentiful spurts.” (“Confined” is an interesting word for it; the elevation profile looks like an EKG.) Basically, hahahaha this is going to suck for me. My cornering is terrible, and my downhill skills are worse than my climbing skills, so I don’t expect to get much benefit from rolling terrain. Also, if it’s windy, I will cry. Given that, my goal time will be anything up to and including an hour.

Real goal: Just don't fall over.

The run: It’s four miles of single-track trails (which I have very little experience running), mostly rolling with one giant hill right before the 3-mile mark (the map makes it look like 100 feet in about one-tenth of a mile). While I haven’t done much hill-specific training, San Francisco runs are rarely flat, so I know I can survive it. I’d been planning to run the first half of the Wildflower run at about a 10-minute pace and pick it up in the second half if I felt good; here, I think I’ll shoot for that through the big hill, then pick it up from 2.7 to the finish if I can. Goal time: 40-ish minutes if I’m being honest, 36-38 if I’m being optimistic, which — as previously mentioned — I’m trying not to be.

Non-time goals: Eat and drink something on the bike just to prove I can. Put on extra sunscreen even if it makes my transitions slower. Don’t spend the whole time being angry at the timing chip (I hate having things strapped to me). Remember to put the extra Shot Bloks in the back of my top coming out of T1 so I have something to eat if I drop the bag that’s in my bento box. Attempt to get my headband on for the run but don’t stress if it doesn’t work. Remember which water bottles have water and which have Nuun, and act accordingly.

I will be pleasantly surprised if I break two hours. I will be happy with any time I think I can learn from. I will be pissed if I do something dumb. That’s about it.

Favorite first-tri tips? (Mmm, tri-tip.)

On (Not Quite) Letting Goals Go

So Kaiser weekend came and went, and my bib stayed firmly in its envelope on my bookshelf. This took a lot of willpower, especially as I rode my bike on the course on Saturday and felt fantastic, especially as I thought, “Well, now that I’m fairly certain nothing’s broken, what would be the harm?” Going to a comedy show and having some cocktails and getting home late enough to ensure I’d sleep through the race start helped, and I stayed far away from Golden Gate Park and let my no-really-it-should-have-been-a-PR-if-not-sub-2 race go. Yeah, I got a little jealous reading about all the awesome PRs — I’m thrilled for lovely runners who had great races, but that doesn’t preclude a little moping. Still: looking ahead, bigger goals, and all that.

But. But.

It’s hard not to look at these last few, um, months of training and feel disappointed. Let’s go back to 2011. I start the year coming back from injury, do all my “training” for Kaiser in six weeks, and somehow PR. Then I get busy, write a master’s thesis, sign up for (and drop out of) a bootcamp class that basically steals all my energy and my workout motivation for a few weeks, and run a total of 100 miles in the next four months. I “race” twice, but both are fun runs with friends. I’m running, I guess, but I’m not really thinking about running.

In late May and early June, I go to Europe. Pete and I run everywhere, and it’s one of the most special things about a trip that was already pretty darn special. I love that there’s no pressure on these runs; we’re there to see things, and if we want to detour around a zoo or get a drink in the middle or get stuck at every freaking stoplight in Barcelona, who cares? We’re there to explore. I love these cities, and I love running again.

I get home and I want to run. I’m unemployed, so I want to run a lot, and because I’m unemployed, I can run a lot. I look at the paces I’m running and decide it’s high time I go break 2:00 in the half-marathon. I find myself a nice, flat race and a nice, flat 10K about a month before. I sketch out a training plan, and I get to it, because applying for jobs is a miserable crapshoot and following a training plan is something I can control.

I run 12 miles the last week of July, and at mile 11, my knee starts to hurt. I run the 10K the next weekend, and I PR, but then I want to cry when I try to get out of the car for brunch. (It’s a good thing I do get out of the car for brunch, because that’s the brunch where we discover the life-changing breakfast sandwich combo of eggs, cheddar, and jam. Try it; it’s no joke.) I find my awesome MD and my awesome PT and start fixing my IT band, or fixing the rest of my body so it doesn’t piss of my IT band, or whichever; it works, but not before the race that was supposed to be my first sub-2 attempt turns into a casual jog with walk breaks.

Things get bleak for a while, and then they get better. I’m running well. I’m running stronger. I’m running Nike, and the hills eat me for breakfast because I’m only just getting back to a regular training volume and am still avoiding things like “hills” and “speed” and “hard runs,” but I come out feeling OK. I come out feeling not done.

I register for Miami. I go back to the track. I work on being fast for the first time since early July. It feels amazing; I set an unofficial 10K PR in training the week before the race. But we know how that ends.

I come out feeling not done, again. I register for Kaiser. We know how that ends.

From June till now, I’ve signed up to run four half-marathons with my eye on breaking two hours. I’ve had two of those attempts derailed by injuries that are minor in the grand scheme of things (for which I’m thankful, don’t get me wrong) but undeniably poorly timed. My best time of the four was a minute slower than my PR.

I have no doubt I’ll come out of this a stronger, smarter, and maybe even faster runner, one who runs mile repeats and who faithfully does her PT exercises twice a week. That doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been training for more than six months for a race that I feel like I haven’t really gotten to run yet.

And, if I’m smart, I won’t ever run it. What I should do is put my head down and focus on kicking Olympic tri ass in May and starting marathon training in June and making it out of there in one piece. What I should do is wait till after Berlin and pick another goal half in, I dunno, December?

But — and this is a stupid thing to say, because I run for fun, and I run because I love it, and it’s not like anyone’s winning any races around here — that still makes the last six months of training feel ever so slightly like a waste.

This is my immaturity talking. This is someone who’s just transitioning from (hobby) runner to (hobby) racer, someone who hasn’t quite accepted that sometimes races just don’t go the way you want them to and you have to say, OK, that sucks, but the season’s over, and the moment has passed, and we’ll put in the work and try again next year. I’m not used to that yet. The idea of shelving this goal until it’s practically winter again seems absurd.

This is why I end up on the Oakland site at least once a day, finger hovering over the register button. I may know deep down that I’m never going to run the race I’ve been training for, but my brain still wants me to try.

12 Goals for 2012

(A fitness-related blog with a goals post? WHAAAA? I realized the other day that Running Cliche would have been an awesome name for this blog.)

I’ve been running since 2008, but 2011 was the first year I’d even toy with calling myself a runner. I started the year coming back from injury with my second half-marathon and a PR at Kaiser in February, discovered the joy of shorter races with a Palo Alto 8K in March, trotted through Bay to Breakers in neon-blue footless tights in May, set a 10K PR at Lake Merritt in August, and finished half-marathons every six weeks from late August through early December.

I ran all over the Bay Area and in Seattle, Miami, Portland, Midland (MI), Barcelona, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Munich, Oslo, and Berlin. On January 1, 2011, I set a goal of 450 miles for myself, and I finished the year closer to 650 (between my Nike+ and my memory of what Nike+ left out, I’m somewhere around 635 for the year) — 200 miles more than I’ve ever run in a calendar year before. And for the first time, I made it through a running year without significant time off due to injury; perhaps that’s because my injuries were ones I was cleared to run through, but regardless, I discovered a physical therapy routine and a training strategy that I hope will keep me healthy through 2012 and beyond.

In 2011, I felt — for truly the first time in my life — that I have athletic potential left to reach. And in 2012, I’m ready to start reaching.

Here are a few things I’m hoping to hit along the way.

Overall goals
1. Start and finish my first marathon healthy
This is the big goal for the year and the one that scares me most. September 30 is a long time from now, and I’m an injury-prone runner with a history of making it till about August before falling apart. Having all my precarious eggs in one race basket (METAPHOR!) freaks me out. But I’m going into 2012 with a better base than I’ve ever had, a good strength-training and physical therapy routine, and some time to experiment with running and cross-training schedules during and after triathlon training in the spring. My experiences in 2011 taught me that being proactive — and just plain active — helps me heal faster, and I’ve got a good team in my corner that believes in that philosophy. I won’t be officially training for this marathon till June, but in my mind, I’ve been training since the day I registered.

2. Race once a month
I train better than I race, practically 100% of the time. But I’ve raced relatively rarely, and I’ve only gone to the line with a “go kill it” mindset twice (one of which worked — my 10K PR — and one of which clearly didn’t). I want to get into the habit of showing up to a race to race it, to learn to use my watch for good instead of evil, and to never make the same mistake twice.

3. Run 750 miles
This is part of a bigger goal — I hope to run 3500 miles between ages 30 and 35. This would set a good pace.

4. Get over my fear of the bike
To me, this means: being able to ride in a bike lane on a street with traffic; being able to consider clipping in by April; riding across the Golden Gate Bridge; learning to pick up speed downhill rather than ride the brakes the whole time; and feeling comfortable steadying myself with one hand to signal or eat.

5. Learn how to prioritize
My original version of this list was silly-long, filled with goals both big and small in every sport I’ve ever dabbled in. And then I took a step back and was like, Whoa, Kimra, this looks like a disaster in the making. For someone who hated all exercise until 2003, I sure have a lot of things that I love doing now, and I want to do all of them, all of the time — and I have the exercise-related Groupons to prove it. This year looks like it will unfold in phases — a running phase, a goofing-around-at-Crunch phase, a triathlon phase, another long running phase — and I want to use other activities in a way that makes sense for each of those times, not in a way that’s foolish and overwhelming.

6. Make yoga a regular part of my life again
Yoga always makes sense and is never foolish or overwhelming. I know this to be true, and I still skip it. 2012: More yoga than any year since 2009, mark my words.

7. Figure out nutrition
I will never be a “food-is-fuel” eater (I’m a “food-is-delicious-and-I-love-cheese” eater), but I could, uh, eat smarter. I think my birthday gift to myself will be a trip to the very-much-not-covered-by-insurance nutritionist at my doctors’ office.

Race Time Goals
8. Run a sub-2:00 half-marathon
Um, duh. I’m one cocktail away from officially signing up to try again in February.

9. Run a sub-54:00 10K
I actually like the 10K distance, and my PR is currently the fastest pace I’ve ever run in a race. And I finished that race knowing I could do better.

10. Race a 5K
I have never raced a 5K. I have actually never even run an official 5K. I may do this in March or later in the year, and I have no time goal in mind other than “run explodey hard.”

11. Finish a 10-miler under 1:30
I’ve got a 10-miler on my radar for January and it would be a good gut-check before Kaiser. I also just really like running 10 miles, so I have a sense I might also like racing 10 miles.

12. Run a mile — any mile — that starts with a 7
Supposedly my Nike+ mile record is 7:51, and I have definitely a) not run a mile that fast with a properly calibrated Nike+ and b) done it more than once even with an uncalibrated Nike+. I can hold a 7:xx pace for an 800 and low-8s for a 1200, so I’m close, but I haven’t put it all together yet. At least once in 2012, I will.

12 Days of Christmas Challenge

A couple of weeks ago, Theodora posted about her December fitness challenge. I love a good challenge, and knowing foolishly thinking I was going to be staring down a blank spot in my training schedule, I started kicking around some ideas for my own December event. I jokingly suggested a 12 Days of Christmas theme, and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Or at least an amusing one.

So, it’s December 15, and I’m arbitrarily deciding that today marks the start of my 12 Days of Christmas Challenge. The idea was to come up with 12 fitness-related somethings I could do before the end of the year, then 11 something elses, and 10 and 9 and so on. (Like the song, yeah?) I wanted it to be an actual challenge — no sandbagging — but also something feasible considering holiday travel, weather at the locations of said travel, time with family and friends, desire for rest, etc.

I did not know this book existed, but now I would love to see it.

Here’s where I ended up:

12 total workouts/workout days
For these purposes, I will consider a workout to be anything more than 30 minutes of exercise.

11 one-minute planks
I should be doing more core anyway (see below), and 11 good one-minute planks over 16 days seemed doable.

10 minutes of core work per day
Yes, per day. Including on days that don’t count toward the 12. This is something I want to make a habit in 2012, so I might as well start trying now. Some days this might be serious and sweat-inducing; other days it might mean doing three sets of crunches while mostly lying on the floor watching Revenge. For now, I just want the thought and intent to be there.

9 new exercises
I’m leaving the definition of “exercises” broad: It can be a new group fitness class or a new strength training move (I bookmarked this workout a while ago but haven’t tried any of it yet). Just nine new somethings, however big or small.

8(0) minutes of strength training
That boils down to four sessions of 20 minutes each, ideally just tacked on to a time when I’m at the gym anyway. Aka, what I was doing earlier in the year before I became a strength-training slacker again.

7 climbing routes/problems finished
This probably means two trips to the climbing gym, which I’ve been desperately missing.

6 days of running
If I do this, I can sign up for any races my little heart desires.

5 morning workouts
I originally wrote this as “5 a.m. workouts” and then realized I should clarify, because hell no, this night owl does not rise at 5 a.m.

4 yoga or pilates “classes”
“Classes” in quotation marks because OnDemand/online/YouTube sessions count and thus will make this feasible while traveling.

3 workouts with friends
My New Year’s rental house posse includes two triathletes and three runners. Easy-peasy.

2 miles swimming
I’ve been told there’s a pool in Pete’s hometown that might sell day passes, but I’ve never actually gone. This should be the year I check it out.

1 long ride on Penelope
Fact: I put this here because it goes best to the tune of the song. Conveniently, it also happens to match what I think is doable. More than one ride would be great, but since Penelope doesn’t travel, this weekend is probably my last chance for a 10+-mile ride before 2012.

Except where noted, double-counting is totally legal. (Morning run with friends? Check, check, and check!) As this is the season for making lists and checking them twice — um, and as it is always the season for making lists and ticking them off in my brain — I’m looking forward to dominating this completely arbitrary, self-enforced challenge.

Are you doing any year-end challenges/running streaks/holiday-themed fitness events? Or want to join me in my nerdiness?

What’s Next?

The doubts about Miami started creeping in on Monday, as I expected they would. Did I really try my best? Did I honestly max out my effort in those last couple of miles? Was it actually that hot?

For the most part, I’ve managed to push them away. It was a bad race, and yet, it wasn’t really all that bad. I’ve run five half-marathons; this one, time-wise, is the midpoint. If anything, I see that as proof that I’m ready to go faster when I’m running on my own turf. (Um, and that maybe I should run somewhere that isn’t 65 degrees year-round sometime.) I also crossed 600 miles for the year at about mile 12 of the race — 100 miles more than the goal I set on January 1, 2011. It’s not a half PR, but it is a big milestone for me.

See? I am almost, kind of smiling in this photo. Also, it is the only photo from this race that I will be posting.

Physically, I’m feeling nearly recovered. The only lingering issue is something in my right knee that I can’t quite pinpoint or roll out; the best I can explain it is that it feels like when you sleep funny on your neck, but inside my knee. It shakes out/goes away within a couple of minutes of exercise or walking, though, so I’m not terribly concerned. I planned to swim on Monday — my favorite thing to do after any race or hard run — but we didn’t get home till 1 a.m. (or 4 a.m. back in Florida, where we’d woken up that day), and I ended up snoozing my alarm in favor of more hours of sleep than I could count on one hand. Tuesday was a crazy work day and Whole Foods hot bar sounded better than the gym. I would have bailed again this morning, but I intentionally parked where my car would be towed if I wasn’t out the door by 7:30, which gave me just enough time for 25 minutes of easy laps. The rest of my “recovery week” plan includes more swimming, yoga or OnDemand pilates, and some care and feeding of Penelope. Running? Maybe Sunday. Maybe not.

So what happens next? I have a lot of ideas, most of which seem in direct opposition to each other:

Triathlon training — I’m planning on training with a group for the Wildflower Olympic tri in May. Based on the 2011 dates, official training should start in mid-February or slightly later.

Fun gym classes — A few months ago, I bought a Living Social deal for a one-month Crunch membership and one personal training session. I can activate it anytime between now and February, but I’m inclined to wait till the last minute to let the resolution crowd die down. The only goal here is to take as many ridiculous fitness classes as possible.

Yoga — I miss it. I want it back in my life.

12 Days of Christmas Challenge — Theodora gave me an idea for a pretty hilarious fitness challenge to do between now and New Year’s. Um, I still have to finish making it up, but I will write it down soon. And then I’ll do it. And it will be awesome.

Redemption half? — Yeah. Yeeeeeah. This wasn’t in the plan. The plan was, hey, let’s spend the next two months running shorter distances and learning to ride a bike without freaking out and taking silly fitness classes like yoga on a swing, and then go train for a triathlon, and then we can talk about road racing again in, y’know, May. I know a redemption race is seventeen different flavors of Bad Idea, and yet, I’m still thinking about it, because I’ve got this base of training now, and I don’t think I’ve used it to its best advantage.

It’s not helping logic’s cause that there are two great Redemption Races staring me in the face. The Kaiser half in early February is my “local” half, a race on the course I run for most of my long runs and where I set my current PR on not very much training. The Oakland half in late March gets rave reviews and comes complete with two awesome ladies already planning on pacing a friend to a sub-2 finish.

Kaiser would let me get another race in before triathlon training; it also means I’d need to keep training, like, now, through the holidays and potentially snowy conditions in Michigan and my 30th birthday and a debaucherous New Year’s. Oakland allows for at least a month of short distances and gym classes and yoga (and not doing anything at all, sometimes), but it’s also in the middle of tri training, which feels like a completely unpredictable beast.

Obviously, my brain is telling me to sign up for both. (Logic is a language my brain doesn’t speak.)

I’ve set one rule: No race registration till after I’ve run again. I think that’ll speak volumes about my motivation to keep going.

Have you ever run a redemption race? Do they ever end well?