One week to go!

Well, I can't express how excited I am to go to St. Croix. C'mon Wednesday!! This weekend was a fantastic training weekend. I did the Deer Trail RR on Saturday, a 54-mile flat, then hilly course east of Denver. I had a blast. It was really fun to race again with the cat 1/2 women that I hadn't seen since last season. Plus, we had some big gun cat 1 NRC-type gals show up to keep it challenging. The race really didn't begin until mile 40, but then it was a sufferfest. America's Dairyland (a US pro team) has set up shop in Boulder, so they are becoming regulars at the local races on weekends when the bigger NRC races aren't happening. Vitamin Cottage was there in force as well. I enjoy the added challenge, but that means I place even lower in the cat 1/2 field : (. My legs were great though, so I did manage 10th, putting me in the top 50% of the field. Not bad for an old lady ; ). The good news is I had put off my 1 hr tempo run and 2 hr tempo ride until today because those road races make me too tired to strap on the 'ol running shoes after the long car ride home. Despite racing yesterday, I had my best run of the year (7:15min/mi for 8 miles at 144 average HR) and also had a fantastic bike ride afterwards on the TT bike. Guess I'm ready to roll in St. Croix! Yeah!!

Taper Time!!

Well, it's finally arrived...taper time. It's a bit strange for me to be tapering so early on for a 1/2 Ironman race. I don't think I've ever tapered more than a week for that distance. Truthfully, I don't feel like I'm tapering yet, as I already put in a 3+ hour training day of good quality aerobic training today. I felt amazing on the bike today. It's funny how sometimes you really can't predict how you are going to feel from one day to the next. I've been exhausted and bailing on my swim workouts the last 2 days, yet today I had a great swim and then went out and had a great 2.5 hr ride in the hills. It was just last night that I had to quit early due to being too tired to train! No complaints here! Dang...I'm getting excited for St. Croix! I've posted the bike course profile, courtesy of Rick Campins, a MAO athlete I met on the forum who took a trip out to St. Croix to survey the course and then shared it with the rest of us (awesome guy!). Notice all of the bumps symbolizing lots and lots of up and down. That's my favorite! I love constant hills (not the long grinders...I suck at those...but the over and over short up and down hills are awesome!).

This time next week I'll be on the beach basking in the Caribbean sun : ))))))))))))))).

Time for an update!

Well, it's been a while since I've blogged, so thought I would post an update on what I've been up to. Life has been busy between work and my training program, but the racing is starting to pick up! So far all of my races have been training opportunities for my key 1st tri of the season, St. Croix 70.3. I just got through my first "bad" week of training, where I blew off a bunch of workouts just because I wasn't in the mood to train. Fortunately, that doesn't happen to me too often! At least I was able to finish off the light training week with a weekend of racing. Saturday was the Haystack Time Trial, a 16 mile ITT in north Boulder. I raced 35+ instead of 1/2 as I had work commitments later that morning and had to head back early. I was riding my relatively new aero position on the bike...much more aggressive aero setup than the past. I realized on my way to the race that somehow I managed to not get on my bike for the past 6 days! Those of you who ride a lot realize that this is not the best way to approach a time trial. Lucky for me, the new aero position served me well, despite a rather mediocre power output. I pulled off a win in the W35+/cat 3 category and apparently won myself a $30 gift certificate to Niwot Cycles (had to leave well before results were posted, so found that out later). I definitely don't prefer to do races with my cheapo non-aero Mavic powertap wheel, but was very interested in the data, so I went for it (good choice). Now if only I can get that power up within the next 3 weeks!

Day 2 this weekend was the Horsetooth Half Marathon, right in my own backyard (pic courtesy of Eddie Metro). I convinced my coaches that this was a good thing to do, despite my A race being 3 weeks away, but had to "not race" the first 5 miles (which are by far the hardest...steep hills). Boy...that was a challenge keeping my HR below 147 those first 5 miles! I had to walk at least a half a dozen times! The good news was, the legs felt amazing and I couldn't wait to put the hammer down at mile 5. I finally reached mile 5 and then picked up the pace (maybe a bit too much!), as my legs didn't feel quite as good at mile 7 ; ). My average pace was 9min miles in the hills over those first 5 miles, and I ended up finishing at an avg pace of about 8min/mile, so I had a nice solid effort those last 8 miles. I'm happy with the effort...wishing I was a bit faster overall, but I did manage a 3rd place in my age group...good for a nice pair of socks : ). Comparing the race to last year, my finish time was quite a bit slower (3+min), but I was definitely running a faster pace in the closing miles this time around, so I'm happy : ). Then again, I'm always happy ; ).