Seattle Ironwoman

Lake Stevens is less than 40 minutes from downtown Seattle, so Isaac and I decided to go watch the Lake Stevens Ironman 70.3. We had assumed earlier in the year we couldn't race this half Ironman 3 weeks post Ironman Canada and didn't sign up. We saw some participants wearing their IM Canada 2015 Finisher hats and were a liiiiiittle jealous. Would have loved to participate, but who knows how that would have felt on my knee, which is still hurting on runs post race (but my brain was wishing I was out on the course the whole time!) The swim start was in waves, which I'm assuming was fantastic. Nice and calm, surrounded by your age group instead of 2,000 people! Swim start So foggy on the lake! Coming in from the swim T1 and T2 were in the same spot. This portion felt like a normal tri - you have your transitions preset and have to get your run gear wet while you strip out of your wetsuit! I really loved having gear bags and changing in tents in two separate tra...

"I can't wait to have my normal life back again!" I said that multiple times a week during training. Every time I said that it was after turning down a happy hour after work, a night out downtown with friends, a weekend away... At the time I meant it. I was counting down the days until I could do all of that stuff again. I basically stopped drinking alcohol for 6 months. It was too hard to drink and wake up at 5 am the next day for training. Have you ever tried to run for three hours or bike ride for 5 dehydrated? It sucked constantly turning people down, but I had to. I couldn't wait to finally be able to say yes! While I have thoroughly enjoyed  reconnecting with all the people I care about the last few weeks and am looking forward to more this next week... I still just miss training.  It's a void that I haven't figured out yet how to fill in the next 6 months without training. I've started running in the mornings again, for about an hour or so at a ti...

I never considered myself a runner despite being an athlete my whole life. After an ACL injury took me out of competitive sports in high school and I went through 9 months of physical therapy, I started running on treadmills to try to get back into shape. It makes me laugh now because you couldn't pay me to run on a treadmill. I was too afraid to run outside; I am by no means some incredibly graceful and natural looking runner. I didn't do cross country or track in high school... I don't look like the Nike ads - and that made me self-conscious. Little did I know the beauty of it all is that no one looks like that. Hit a trail any Saturday  or Sunday morning and it is filled with all kinds of people - old and young, skinny and heavier, graceful and clumsy; they all have something in common - they're trying! And they're all runners. I started dating Isaac when I was 20. A few months into our relationship, he made a simple statement - "running outside is h...

Ironman Canada is over. Training is over. I have all the free time in the world to do whatever I want. You would think that after training for 6 months, I would be excited to get my life back... but the feeling is totally the opposite. Sadness, let down, feeling lost... what do I do when I don't train? Am I still an Ironman when I'm not training for one? What next? What now? PID's - Post Ironman Depression  - Definitely dealing with this post race. I've always felt a little let down after marathons, but I've never put as much of myself into a race as I did for Ironman, so the letdown has been pretty huge. The worst part about the weeks after race day is being unable to workout to make yourself feel better and get those endorphin's flowing. You can start swimming again a few days after the race, but I got an m-dot tattoo last week (first tattoo ever - WOW, tattoos hurt...) so no swimming for me for a couple weeks. We're allowed to start biking after a wee...

I am so thrilled to have successfully completed Ironman Canada 2015! It was an incredibly challenging race - the hills on the bike were no joke - and it poured rain on us the majority of the day. Despite the things we couldn't control like the weather, I had a very well planned and executed race. It's so easy to already forget the low's of the race and only remember the high's. Before the race: We were lucky that the rain held off until we climbed into the water. We took the shuttle from T2 to Alta Lake, and it felt like the longest ride of my life. It was very overwhelming to begin mentally preparing for what was ahead of us. We setup our bikes, added fuel to our race bags, and climbed into our wetsuits. The Swim: I had been very nervous about where I should start in the pack for the swim. I didn't want to get run over and kicked in the face and also wanted to make sure I didn't spend the whole swim passing people. I decided to stay off to the side at t...

We made it to Whistler and the past three days have been a whirlwind! We're staying in a condo near the village and the location is fantastic. We're so lucky to be up here with such a great group, but you can see the anxiety across our 4 faces during certain points of each day since we got here. Most of our current anxiety is coming from the unpredictable weather. No one is sure how much/when it will rain, what the temperature will feel like on the bike, if we'll need a coat or not and how hot we'll get on the hills. Today our workout was the shortest triathlon of all time. Our swim was cold - no wetsuits today so they wouldn't be wet tomorrow, and the water was super choppy. Our bike ride was during the rainiest part of the day but it was nice to get a feel for how slick the roads would feel. Our run was super short but great for loosening up for tomorrow. We're all nervous but ready to get this done!  If you want to follow me and my team tomorrow - visit t...

As we've been tapering, I've been overwhelmed with all kinds of feelings. Happiness, fear, anxiety... all the feelings, more than I've felt in a while. I have been so exhausted the past 6 months that I've felt a constant state of being "out of it" and haven't felt as emotionally connected, so this overwhelming rush of emotions throughout the days has been very different. I thought that when they said not to go crazy during taper that it would only apply to elite athletes that train a LOT harder than me. Already, I've found myself pushing my workouts too hard. Everything this week is supposed to be super easy or don't do it at all. I'm swimming, biking, and running too fast and hard. It's challenging to not keep pushing at the intensity I'm so used to - every workout I have to remind myself constantly to slow down - total opposite of everything up until now! While tapering has certainly been challenging mentally and emotionally, I am e...