Happy New Year!

A new year and a new start? Do you make reseloutions? I really don't. I do tend to set goals for the year around my birthday and I shared with you some of my goals for the next year back in November. I believe any day is a good day to make change, why wait until the 1st of the year? I'm sure Weight Watchers and probably the rec center if I have to go there, are going to be crazy for the next month or so.

So totals for 2010:
Run - 472
Bike - 1,186
Swim - 38.1
I'm pretty happy with those totals a definate increase over last year

Miles for 2009
Run - 364.6
Bike - 484.8
Swim - 30.3

Although I didn't quite get in the run mileages of 2008. Had I realized I was so close I might have tried to beat it, however I've been fighting a cold and have not even run this week so I may have come up short anyway.

Miles for 2008
Run - 500.1
Bike- 770.5
Swim - 20.6

So my only new goal will to beat all those numbers next year and I'm guessing by the races on my calander that the triaing for those should take care of that without a problem.

I believe I will be spending much time here this winter

Yes this is my garage this morning when I went out to ride on the trainer. Quite a view huh? You can see my son also works out out there, it's his bag and his weight bench. Although I may join him. I keep telling myself that strength training is going to have to happen this year. You can also see both the fan and the heater. Today it was around 40 in the garage, not bad really.

As you can see I go all out to look good when I' go out to workout!

So my friends Happy 2011!
Now let's go out and kick some a$$ this year!

The best of 2010

Wow what a great year 2010 has been! I had so very many favorite things it will be hard to choose among them!

Favorite Race: I had to pick two ok maybe three :) ... what can I say I told you it was a great year.

1st place I loved everything about the Iron Girl Race. From the venue to the weather to the swag. But most of all I loved the people. Race Report here

It was the first time I met Kathleen from Dare To Dream and Aimee from I Tri To Be Me Both are such great people and consider to inspire me!

Also racing was friend from CWW Kelli. It was so nice to see her!

2nd place was the Denver Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 Marathon this race was all about the people! It was fun to be part of the inaugural race but overall not quite what I expected. But it was so SO fun to see so many people that I knew out on the course. Race report here

Kathleen and I

My Cousins mom Jan (she just turned 70!) and my cousin Craig and I.
Me and my cousin Nicole and her husband Mike.

Also out there was Sarah running with Kathleen most of the race and then caught me and helped me to finish strong! Another cousin Robin running and many other relatives cheering on the course. In addition I was pleased with my race (a PR!) as well as the fact that I felt good after the race!

And an honorable mention goes to the Tri for the Cure, race report here, again it's all about the people! It was so nice to have my boys out at this race taking pics and cheering me on!

Favorite Training Run:

Without a doubt the run I did with Kathleen on the Highline Canal there are a couple reasons for this. First off again the people. I enjoyed running with Kathleen and we ran into Aimee out there so that was fun. But also because for the first time I found out that I can run without stopping for walk breaks. I ran (with the exception of a potty break) the entire 11 miles with no walking! Amazing!

Kathleen and I during the Park to Park 10 mile race

Favorite Just for fun Run:

That would have to be the run I did with my Dad at Thanksgiving out on the golf course. It was a really good time! And it was so fun to be somewhere different that you would not usually run!

Favorite Picture while training:

Bridge right before you go down into Golden on the Clear Creek Trail

Favorite Accomplishment:

Finishing the Creek Streak Olympic distance tri. Race Report here I was very proud of myself for getting this done! It wasn't pretty but I did finish.

In 2011 I look forward to many more great moments with those of you I've already met and hopefully some new friends too. I also am looking forward to some new adventures and accomplishments and a year every bit as great as this one.

Merry Chirstmas!

Wishing all of my blogger friends a very Happy Holiday and all the best in the New Year!

What's Up Weekly 3

It’s been a while so I figured I better get in here with some kind of update!


Weather…it’s crazy! Don’t get me wrong I’m kind of enjoying the fact that we have not yet had any kind of “real” snow at my house, however I’m starting to worry that this means there could be snow until July.

Christmas…. I wish I had some spirit. I’m just looking forward to the time off work but it does not seem like Christmas. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve had the Christmas spirit. Not that I’m bummed or sad or anything it’s just that other then getting together with family which I enjoy holidays just don’t seem to mean much to me. It’s a far cry from the decorating and entertaining I used to love doing.

Swimming… not so good. I’m committed to getting back in the pool come the first of the year.

Cycling…still loving the trainer. Although we have had some (read many if your hardy!) days that you could get out and ride I’ve not been out. Partly because it seems most of the really nice days are during the week when I’m at work and I won’t ride in the dark.

Running…been keeping at it. Must say I enjoyed a great run/walk with my Dad this weekend. It's fun to get out there. He has just recently started to run with his walking and he runs pretty fast! He kept telling me I was killing him, but he was setting the pace and although we did a lot of walking we still managed just over a 12:00 minute mile pace for 4 miles. Even according to Garmin hitting (however briefly!) 7:58 when we were sprinting. And believe it or not, he does this in jeans! I did notice the other day something the other day. I seem to be getting faster month by month which makes me very happy! Now I'm still by no means fast but I'm seeing improvement!

Below is my miles/time spent running/average pace for the last 6 months.
December: 31.3 Mi 6:29:15 12:25 / Mi
November: 33.5 Mi 7:01:51 12:36 / Mi
October: 53.9 Mi 11:20:33 12:38 / Mi
September: 72.4 Mi 15:25:14 12:48 / Mi
August: 57.6 Mi 12:10:45 12:42 / Mi
July: 48.9 Mi 10:29:12 12:52 / Mi

So I've gone from an average of 12:52 to 12:25 and that makes me happy!

I appreciate everyone who stops by to read about what's going on in my world and wish everyone of you a happy and safe holiday season!

source

85 minutes with Jon and the gang

Damn isn't he sexy?!

Fantastic ride on the trainer.
Great workout:

Bike ME
Muscular Endurance
85
WU: 15'
MS: 5x3' w/ 1' RI, Repeat w/ 15' of Zn1-2 riding in between sets.
#1 End at low Zn 3
#2 End at middle Zn 3
#3 End at upper Zn 3
#4 End at lower Zn 4
#5 Build to Zn 4 in first 45s and hold.
CD: 15'

Fantastic music all BonJovi for 85 minutes of old Bon Jovi new Bon Jovi all great Bon Jovi.
Triathletes.... We've got it going on!!!!

What's Up Weekly 2

November, feeling really good about my workouts in November, 3 of the 4 weeks I trained 6 out of 7 days and I even made it to the pool a couple of times! Still need to work on that, and the strength training, but happy to be keeping up with the running and bike. The lack of snow has played a big part in that and although I've enjoyed it I'm sure it will end in the near future. It is now December and we have not had anything even coming close to a snow at my house.

Hot Spots...this mornings run was a little strange. First of all it was almost 40 degrees at 5 am this morning and second of all I kept running through these spots where I think the temp was at least 10 degrees warmer. It felt so strange I mean it was very noticeable warmer kind of like those hot spots in the pool.

I received this in an email today about the Turkey Trot I did...

I asked the timer to give everyone a "chip" time (which means your time starts when you cross the starting mat) and he instead did a "gun" start (which means every one's time started when I said "go"). I apologize for the difference you will see in your watch time and the results page. I am taking up this disappointment with the timer myself and I promise it will not happen next year. You train hard for the race and it is my job as the race director to ensure an accurate course and time and I feel horrible as a fellow runner!

Explains the difference between my Garmin and the official time, and means I really did do around 32 minutes. Need to find another 5k to do soon and see if I can get that kind of time again or was it just because of the fast course. :)

I want to give a shout out to Kevin over at Half TRI-ing who posted a link to some fantastic tips on cycling safely. It's worth a few minutes of your time to give it a look and watch the video clips

Does anyone use Athlinks ? I've not fully explored it but I have added my races in and it's really nice to have all that info right in one place, broken down by year or category. I need to spend some more time seeing just what else you can do, but even if I don't I like what I've seen so far.

While filling out paperwork for insurance at work today I had to pull out my drivers license to put down the number and so of course I had to check out the weight...feeling really good that my actual weight is almost 15 lbs lighter then my drivers license weight...feels so good! I'm sure I fudged the number when I got it, doesn't everyone?

Have a fantastic weekend!

I BURNED the turkey!

Happy Thanksgiving! A little late I know but I hope all of you had a fantastic Thanksgiving. I had a really great 2 days of celebrating with family. As you know I was doing the Anthem Turkey Trot 5k. The weather predictions were calling for single digits in the morning started.
but the sun was beautiful bright and warm and it was right around 25 when the race

The race was billed as a very fast course, and fast it was! As you can see there was very little flat ground but lots of downhill, downhill is good...of course along with downhill you must take some uphill. It was a pretty smallish race of about 300 10k runners and 1000 5k. And let me just note that this was the first time that not only did I not have to wait in line for a port-a-potty, in fact I didn't have to use a port-a-potty as the race expo was in the recreation center. And I was amazed to be able to walk right in to the bathrooms and not have to wait, at all, that's right no waiting! Doesn't take much to make me happy. :)

The 5k started 15 minutes and up the hill from the 10k race so after watching that group take off I headed up the hill. Just a short wait before we heard GOBBLE, GOBBLE, GO! And we took off. I did some weaving in out and passed a fair amount of people as you can see the first almost 3/4 of a mile was downhill and it was fantastic! I don't have mile splits as I was using this race to do my TT running assessment for my training program, but according to Garmin my first mile was done at a 9:35 pace...wow can I just say I'm amazed! It was right around that point that I once again saw the girl from both the Park to Park 10k and the Denver R'n'R 1/2 marathon slamming her feet next to me. Although this time she seemed to not be doing the intervals. She has such a distinctive run I could hear her running behind me. I would like to say that I ran the whole 3 miles but I didn't. I took a couple of very short walk breaks on some of the hills and I walked the water station. It didn't seem like long before we were headed back up the hill to the finish line. And I heard the announcer call out my name as I passed (love the personalized bibs!) I hit my garmin and looked at the time and I was to say the least floored! The time on my Garmin showed 3.18 miles and 31:53 with an average pace 10:03 Now for a person who was hoping to beat 35 minutes this was fantastic!!! I was so happy! Now I have to way that the official results came in quite a bit different and I don't know why that is (it was a chip timed race), usually I'm within seconds of the same time however I'm almost as happy with my official time 33:17 and I'm thrilled with my ranking! I was 199 out of 497 women and in my AG 40-49 I was 25 out of 60. All in all I thought it was fantastic race, well run and I love the t-shirt, that's important you know!

After the turkey trot I got cleaned up and headed to my parents where the 3 of us quickly consumed a wonderful turkey dinner and headed out to my Aunt and Uncles farm between Holyoke and Wray Colorado (about a 3 hour drive to the middle of nowhere) We made it just in time to join in for the hay ride

The rest of the evening was filled with food, talking, "Kari"oki, fiddling, roping and dancing in the barn. A good time was had.




Seriously fun stuff! Most of us were staying at a pretty exclusive Private Golf/hunt club out there called Ballyneal. It was nice!!! The rooms were fantastic and the bathrooms huge! My dad and I decided we would go out walk/running Friday morning on the Golf Course. We were a little worried about the cold as when my Dad looked at the car temp it said 13 and there was a slight breeze, however it turned out to be beautiful out there. It is for sure a rolling course!

Now if that wasn't enough the day continued with more food, clay shooting, Minute to Win it games, crafts, and much more fun!





I'm thankful to have such great family and so many wonderful memories!

Me-I-Want-To-Be

In years past on my birthday I’ve done a list of goals (the amount of goals equal to the number of years) that I wanted to accomplish over the next year. It has been only mildly successful. :) This year I thought I would take a different tact. I believe I’ve mentioned that I’ve been going to Weight Watchers and this week our meeting topic was about goals. And the exercise was to write a letter to yourself stating the goals you have accomplished as well as the goals you plan to accomplish and the changes you will make to get there. So I decided to expand on it a little.

Dear Me-I-Want-To-Be:

What a terrific year this has been! Over the past 12 months you’ve made great strides:

You’ve completed an Olympic triathlon as well as 3 Sprints, one ½ marathon, a 10 mile race and two 10k’s. You are in as good as or better shape then you’ve ever been in your life.

You’ve lost 25 pounds! Your starting to feel better about yourself and having more faith in your abilities.

You’ve maintained a good relationship with your boys even though they are teenagers!

You’ve made changes in what you eat. You have managed to change your diet to much healthier food, eliminating most “fake” sugar and many processed foods and sticking to “real” foods and whole grain ingredients.

You’ve stepped out of your comfort zone and done some things that you wouldn’t normally do both in the athletic area and the personal area.

It hasn’t always been easy but you have acquired some tools to make these changes easier and to help you to stay on track and continue to grow. And in the coming year you can and will achieve these things:

You will train for and finish The Boulder Tri Series including the ½ Ironman.

You will be at or very close to your “goal” (this is yet to be determined) weight. And continuing to work towards a healthy relationship with food.


You will find in your life a little more balance. Balance between work, training, computer, home. Making more time to spend with the boys and “forcing” them to do a few more “family” activities. :)

And that comfort zone…well you will be stepping out of it in many ways this years.


Good work MIWTB, You’ve come a long way in the last 4 years and here’s to another year of healthy, happy living!


Love

MIAT (Me I Am Today)

Advice and What's up Weekly

So first of the advice.....as I said before I'm using the Winter Maint. program from BT which by the way I'm really enjoying. It gives me the structure I need as well as the direction my workouts should go. The only real problem is that they use time for the running workouts and being as I'm not a fast runner I'm not going as far as I think I should be. So my thoughts are that instead of running for 30 minutes I will call that 3 miles/50 minutes=5 miles, it seems to me that might bring me more in line with the mileage I will need to be at when I start into the real training this spring. Does that seem logical? The longest run in this plan is 70 minutes (it's a 20 week plan) and I would much rather be running my long runs of 7 miles versus around 6 which is what they be with my current speed. Opinions please?

So this plan has been great for biking and running...have I mentioned I haven't been in the pool since my last tri? Yea this week....this week it is going to happen!

Much as I didn't think I would I am really enjoying using the trainer. It is so nice to be able to get out in the morning and ride my bike before work.

This week on the plan I have fitness assessments. Should be interesting, I've never done any time trials. I'm curious though to get a better idea of what my heart rate zones should be.

Tonight for dinner we made homemade pizza. I've always avoided making pizza dough and just used pita's or tortillas for pizza but today we used the new Pizza Crust Yeast and I gotta tell you it worked really good! It was so very easy to work with we made 4 thin crust pizzas and they were really fantastic. Give it a try.

Turkey anyone?

Are you ready to earn that Turkey Dinner? Get ready for the...


3rd Annual


Anthem Turkey Day 5k & 10k!


Thursday, November 25th, 2010

All signed up and ready to run a 5k!

What's Up Weekly

This time of year with few races on the books and not as much in general going on posts become harder and harder for me. Here's what's up this week.

Winter has finally come to Colorado along with the time change. The temps have dropped and we have a little bit of snow....and I was so enjoying the lovely fall weather. Oh well you knew it had to come sooner or later.

Update on Blogger comment reply. First using google I found a way that you were suppose to be able to add a reply button, tried it didn't work for me. I'm sure it was something I did but I didn't want to spend a ton of time (and I'm not that great with computer stuff) figuring it out. I did however figure out that if you receive email notification of your comments it will show a reply email if the person commenting has one listed on their blog. So I will be using that when available. (HINT HINT go make sure you have an email on your blog :) Use one just for your blog so you don't clutter up your "real" one if you want. )


Because I never want to pass up the opportunity to win a new Garmin and because he writes a really informative fun blog I have to post about the give away over at DC Rainmakers. Hop on over there and check it out and see his fantastic comparison on today's' GPS sport devices accuracy as well as a ton of other reviews and FANTASTIC photos.


Training this week? Not to bad actually. I've manage to get my runs in and ride on the trainer all week long, not so good on the strength training and swimming...working on that. But all in all I feel it was a pretty good week. I took advantage of the time change and have gotten up early 4 days out of 5 to work out before work. Very nice, I will try to continue this.

Taking advantage this weekend of a deal I got for the spa and having a mani/pedi done today. Can't wait! I find them both very relaxing! Also planning to get to Outdoor Divas and use the Groupon I purchased a while ago. And then lunch tomorrow with some friends as an early birthday celebration. We are planning on going to Lucile's Creole Cafe. I've never been there but the menu looks yummy!

Random Ramblings

Reply - Ok so maybe I'm missing something...is it possible to respond to the comments on your posts? I know I could post a comment but who the heck has time to go back and check comments for replies to every blog you post on? Often I want to reply to someone and just don't know how. Seems to me there should be some way to do this. And I've received emails that are a reply to post I've left I'm just not sure if I need to "turn on" something or it's not possible with Blogger.

Training - not much of it going on as I've been fighting off the cold still and things have been a little crazy. However that will change. I've signed up on BT and will be using one of the Winter Maintenance plans to give me some direction. I was going to start Monday the 1st but I was feeling like do-do so decided to put it off until next Monday. Doing this plan also solves the problem of what to do with my bike workouts since it gives detailed workouts. Although I still would like to give a Spinerval DVD a try one of these days.

Photos - Speaking of BT on one of the forums they have a photo contest every week and last week I happened to pop in there and the theme was patterns. I cropped the last bridge picture from below and entered it and actually won. Not that you win anything. :) It's not a big contest just a few pics and few people voting but I thought it was pretty cool. I'm really not a photographer (although my son does some really great stuff, especially using Photoshop!) I just get lucky sometimes with my photos.

5k - It's not looking good for 5k Turkey trot if I don't start doing some running. I ran this weekend a couple of short runs but not since then.

Bike trails - One of the questions that I wanted to respond to was Aimee's question about the bike path I road on. It does connect with all the bike paths in Denver including the Platte. I have ridden from my house in Arvada to Golden, to Cherry Creek Reservoir and I've been wanting to go down to Chatfield but so far have only made it as far as Belleview. I've also been out as far as the I-70 and 270 interchange. It really is amazing how you can get around. I've got much more exploring to do.

Weather - The weather this weekend, especially Saturday is suppose to be beautiful! I want to ride my bike, but unfortunatly I will be stuck inside all day! My son is doing the Annual Westernaires Horsecapades Show and I'll be volunteering as a ticket taker/usher for several of the shows. If your in Denver and don't have anything to do Saturday or Sunday check it out. It's a pretty decent show if you like horsey stuff.

Scenes from a fall ride

The sun was shining the temps were around 70 what a beautiful day for a ride! I set off from my house and road the Clear Creek bike path almost to Golden. I went really easy stopping to take many photos and just enjoying what I'm sure is one the last beautiful fall days.