Seattle Ironwoman

Quick Summary: Swim: good. PR by 1ish min. Got punched in the eye. Bike: good. PR by 45 minutes. Didn't get a flat, hit my goal time, really enjoyed it. Run: hard. PR by 1 hr 15 min (in Ironman racing). Was proud, but know I can improve here. Best Ironman race without a doubt.   I put together all three legs of the race which was my main goal. Am thrilled with how race day went! To all my friends and family that supported me throughout training, sent texts and messages and love all day - I am so grateful and humbled to have you in my life. Knowing you were tracking and watching all day helped me keep going all day. I love you all! Ironman Arizona Race Report Night before:  Slept three hours. Morning of:  Woke up with a massive headache. Super cranky. 3:45 am wakeup in mountain time is toughhhh. I ate my standard English muffins with pb+j, 2 cans of cold brew coffee, and some nuun. Isaac and I were able to walk to the start line which was only 0.7 miles from o

IT'S RACE WEEK for Ironman Arizona. I can't say I'm enjoying tapering, but I am looking forward to heading to AZ! For the first time - I feel like I'm heading into this race prepared. I did 3 - 100+ mile rides. Last year, I went into Boulder having gone 82 miles as my furthest ride. This year, I ran 16.5 miles as my longest run (did that 3 diff times), but on one of those days ran a second time and hit 21 miles running for the day. I swam about the same as I have for every race. Maybe next year I'll actually try to get faster at swimming... :) I know what I can control on Sunday, and that many things will cross my path that I can't control. That's the part that makes it an adventure. KNOWING that things will not go according to plan is really the only certain thing about racing a full ironman distance! This year I've had some success racing - I did two triathlons (olypmic and 70.3 distances) and got first in my age group and top 10 overall for the wome

Light at the end of the tunnel! Only one month until Ironman Arizona! I haven't hit serious burnout on this training cycle, probably because I took 3 weeks worth of vacation during the 6 months of training (without biking or swimming those weeks!). What I'm looking forward to the next few weeks is being DONE with 6+ hour trainer rides. The weather has gotten too cold/stormy to ride outside. I'm a fair-weather cyclist and have no interest in freezing my butt off outside. However, 6 hours on an indoor trainer is a major mental strain. When you ride 100+ miles outside it's hard, but you have downhills/flats you can coast, scenery to distract you, and a lot of movement in and out of aero position.  6+ hours on the trainer is sweaty. It's uncomfortable. You ache, you sweat a lot, you doubt yourself... a lot goes through your mind. The setup. Towels underneath and all The mental breakdown of 100+ miles on the trainer: :30 - Warmed up. I can do this.  I'm an I

This last weekend I raced in my first ever 70.3 distance triathlon (half ironman)! I had a great race - not only did I manage to PR my half marathon time (1:47) after biking hard, I estimated a finish time around 6 hours and ended up with 5:26:20! I got first in my age group and 9th woman overall! I enjoyed the course, Raise the Bar put on a great event, and had a blast racing against some stellar triathletes! Swim: It was a 2 loop swim course around a diamond of buoys. I started in the middle of the pack at the very front which is so not my style, and I did not enjoy getting kicked and dunked and slapped around! Someone hit my goggles and I freaked because they filled with water in the first 100m! I fixed them fortunately and focused the first 10 minutes on just finding some space where I could get into a groove! I found this woman who was doing a stellar job sighting and navigating around the slower men so I followed her the rest of the swim and then passed her at the very end. M

Training has officially started ramping. I wish I could say "I feel so strong!" or "I am so looking forward to 75 more days of training!" but I'm just so. freaking. tired.  I've been pushing SO HARD to get faster... stronger... further my endurance... but I have never pushed like I am now. Mentally, I feel strong while I'm moving. Physically, I feel awesome while I'm moving. But the rest of life can feel like I'm in a haze. I feel nauseous more than I care to admit. I'm having a hard time sleeping. Why does my body have to remind me that I'm not a super hero... I'm merely human and can't go and go and go without rest?  Part of me thinks that I'm just not replenishing my calories enough, and part of me knows this is just the ramp. Do other Ironman athletes feel this way? Am I doing something wrong?  Anyways, less than 3 months till Ironman AZ. I'm killing it on the bike and run. I'm really slacking on getting my ass in

Raced the Lake Meridian Triathlon this weekend for the third time! The athletes range from first time triathletes participating in a super sprint to super competitive Kona level Ironman triathletes racing the oly distance (LOTS of people wearing Ironman gear pre-race!) Because Isaac is the earliest person I have ever met (I would be totally fine showing up 20 minutes pre-race, finding a spot to rack my bike and throwing on my wetsuit!) we left Seattle at 5am. The race started at 7am so I guess we weren't TOO early... but still. Not fun getting up at 4am on a Saturday! I was super nervous to race, I always am. I am so competitive, but also have this inner mean girl who likes to tell me things like "you're not fast enough to compete in this sport" or "you'll never be that fast" or "you're actually not that good at triathlon" or "you're not a good cyclist" (I say that last one out loud a LOT). I setup my transition, pretty mini

I am two months into my six month training block for Ironman Arizona! (11/19 in Tempe). It feels so RIGHT to be back into  triathlon specific training. I've spent the first half of this year focusing on my nutrition, working out as much as I could to drop some weight before training started. I dropped 15lbs but also gained a lot of muscle! Looking forward to seeing how these changes in my body composition affect my training and race times. Also, would love to drop 5-10 more pounds during training to get to my ideal racing weight. Which shouldn't be hard now that I've figured out my macros and gotten everything nutritionally dialed in! (and will be working out 2 hours a day during the week and 4-8 hours each weekend day...) I've already gotten faster on my average run time, will be fun to see what I can do speed wise when I race a couple shorter tri's the next few months. I'm using TrainingPeaks this time around for training - a training plan written by D3 Multi

If you follow me on social media - you are probably well aware of the fact that I ran Ragnar Wasatch Back with Team Nuun this weekend! When I got selected to join the team I was SO excited, but all I really thought about was the running part. I started doing some speed training so that I could fit in with my team and be quick enough because from what I could tell on their instas and fb's - they were better runners than me! They were all just getting back from the Boston Marathon, had run bunches of ultra's, and I wanted to be sure I fit in! I had no idea what this weekend had in store for me. It's funny - because the running parts are the parts I'm going to forget. Yes - I ran 10.5 miles all alone in scorching heat, sprinted 2 miles in the middle of the night, and ran 6 miles all alone at 4ish in the morning and actually missed the entire course but somehow ended up at the exchange point by awesome chance. But what I'll remember is my team. The laughter, the insid

WOW - it's been a while since I blogged. I suppose when I'm not devoting my life to Ironman training I don't feel the need to vent on here! 2017 has been a great year so far! I've stuck to my goal of running one race a month. Although I can't say that I've overcome my fear of racing, I've been meeting some awesome trail runners through the NW trail run series, so enjoying that at the very least and running in some new places! Isaac and I joined the Washington Athletic Club - best pool in the city, no doubt. Also, incredible amenities and community - we have really enjoyed spending time at the SAME gym together, which we haven't been able to do since 2010. A couple months ago I started thinking more about my long term racing goals. What kind of triathlete/runner do I want to be? Someone who just survives the endurance races - or someone who gets faster every year? I'm not saying I anticipate I'll start winning races like Isaac does, but someon