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.

T is for...

Tired...I think it's the result of the cold medicine I've been taking,
but I'm just exhausted. It's not like I've done anything. Maybe I've
just forgotten what it's like to be sick. It has literally been years
since I've been sick. I'm not very good at it.

Turkey Trot...still debating on if/when.

Training...nope...

Trainer...thanks for all the ideas and suggestions! I must do some
research. So far I've been using my bike trainer in the garage. No TV.
The one time I used it in the house I had to turn up my TV almost as
high as it would go and still found it hard to hear, of course my
hearings not that great. :) I usually use it early in the morning
before anyone is up so wouldn't want to do it in the house and wake
everyone up.

Tacos...I've been craving Tacos & Salsa tacos. Gonna get me some tomorrow.

Terrified....I can not believe that I signed up for the 70.3. What makes
me think that I will be able to do this? I'm alternating between panic
and excitement.

Tis...tis the season. The holiday season is here, so begins the food
struggles, time struggles, money struggles and all the other struggles
that go with the end of the year.

'Tude....Seems mine isn't to good today.

Next season is set.....

CRAP! What did I do?!?!?!?

Random Rambling

1. Amazed at how good I felt after the 1/2. I really didn't have any soreness to speak of. I always feel like that must mean I didn't push it hard enough. Took a couple days off but did a short easy run on Wednesday and it felt pretty good.

2. I've actually used my bike trainer (that I acquired in the spring from a great guy on BT that offered it free to the first person who contacted him. ) two times this week. I've not wanted to run in the cold dark morning, but getting on the trainer in the garage, where it's cool but not cold, and reading as ride my bike is kind of nice. I do need some ideas on workouts though. I need to work on finding some intervals or something. Ideas?

3. One of my goals for the year was to do a 5k in under 35 minutes this year. I've not done a 5k that was not at the end of tri this year. So I've printed out a short training plan for a 5k based on my 1/2 marathon time. It says that I should be able to do one in 33 minutes. Now I need
to follow through with the plan and pick one, possibly a turkey trot on Thanksgiving.

4. Swimming....nope...

5. Pictures are up for the R'N'R 1/2. A couple of them actually turned out pretty good and I think I will be buying at least the 1st two here. I always feel like I need to have them. In my former life, :) ok still, I'm a scrapbooker, I just don't seem to have as much time for it. I keep saying I'm going to put together an album with all my bib's medals and pics. Some day...maybe I should get back to work on my boys albums first. Do you buy race pics?

Rock 'n' Roll Denver 1/2 Marathon Race report

Or...Your feet hurt because your kicken so much a$$! And I gotta say overall I feel like I kicked a$$!

But let's start at the beginning........

Race shirt and goodies!

This is the shirt I bought, I wasn't sure about it when I bought it but after trying it on when I got home I LOVE IT!

.....And the beginning started really early at about 1:30 when a 14 year old boy that took his mom's car and was being chased by the police crashed through the neighbors split rail fence and into the neighbor behind his house's truck...yea sirens and flashing lights outside my open bedroom window, then more sirens, lots of sirens....turns out there was a shooting a few blocks away too...wow this is the suburbs people!!!! Needless to say sleep there was not much more sleep to be had. I think I may have dozed back off around 3:30 but of course the alarm went off at 4:30. I had my usual bagel thin with PB and banana and a couple of cups of coffee and headed out the door at 5:30. Traffic was a little crazy getting downtown but I managed to find a spot and proceeded to walk at least a mile to the start, stand in line for the potties, drop my gear bad and get to my coral which was clear in the back, so at least I had a little extra time, as the race was starting. I was looking for Kathleen but never found her in the corral although I'm sure she was close.

You can just barley see the start way up there in this photo.

I guess I really wasn't prepared for how many people there would be. Before long we started moving although I crossed the start almost 25 minutes after the start of the race. I felt pretty good starting out so imagine my surprise when I heard my Garmin beep 1 mile and looked down and it said 14:17...what! I'm sure I was running faster then that, I finally decided that because of the building it just wasn't tracking right so it was pretty useless to me through out the whole race. Around 1.5 miles I ran up on Kathleen and her friend Sarah. I ran with them for a few minutes and then kind of pulled ahead. And it's here I think I owe her an apology because I never really said I was taking off and unfortunately I somehow missed her at the end of the race and did not get to talk to her. I was just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. I had decided I would go out hard, keep running and let the end take care of itself instead of worrying if I was doing to much. Truthfully much of the race is a blur. I felt like I was passing many people which surprised me since I thought the corals were set up by time, I'm now pretty sure they weren't. One foot in front of the other, dodging people and enjoying the crowds. Hit the 5k mark at 36:38, One foot in front of the other...feeling pretty good over all checking all the bathrooms, lines to long, keep on running. Did walk a hill at around mile 4. Things are feeling a little rougher as I run into City Park and near the 10k mark. At this point I had really not walked much except to take some water and that one hill. Hit 10k at 1:14:36. At this point I started adding in a few walk breaks. I knew that I would have some relatives cheering at about the nine mile mark and started to look forward to seeing them. I actually saw them twice as that section was an out and back. It was so nice to see some faces that I knew! Shortly after I made the turn I saw Kathleen and got a high five from her and then passed the relatives at mile 9. Not to long after that I passed one of my cousins that was running her very first race ever! High five for Nicole! At this point I should explain that I had several relatives running the 1/2 also. A couple of my cousins were running with their Mom to celebrate her 70th birthday! And a couple others were running also. After that I had no friendly faces to look forward to, so it was back to one foot in front of the other. There were what seemed to be a couple of BIG hills...although I know they weren't that big, coming into Cheeseman Park, funny thing happened there, during the 10 Mile run I did a few weeks ago there was this girl that had the strangest run and she had a run/walk thing going were she would run fast for a short time and then walk for a longer time, well who should I see in the same park but her! I thought it was funny to come upon her like that amount all those people and in the same park. Finally get into mile 11 and look a porta potty with no line! I decided to hit it since I didn't want to take a chance at the end of having to miss people becuase I was in the bathroom. Near the end of mile 11 I run by my cousin Craig running with his mom (the almost 70 year old!) chat with them and here someone call me from behind. It was Sarah she had caught up to me. Now I knew that I would have to kick things up a little if I was going to beat the 2:45 mark and I thank her for keeping me motivate to run that last mile! She pulled ahead of me but it was due to her encouragement that got me across the line in my goal time!
Final stats: 2:42:14 a 12:23 average pace
Overall 7159 out of 9139
Division 350 out of 515
Gender 4689 out of 6312
I am thrilled with that! That gives me about a 17 minute PR! Amazing!!

Enjoying our post race beer! My cousin Nicole and her husband (his 35th bday!) Mike

Jan- my hero (celebrating her 70th! b-day), my cousin Craig and Me

Pretty huh?

Are you ready to Rock!?

Huge expo today with lot's of stuff to look at and sample. Including these absolutely to die for brownies...yea I had 2....they were sample size! :) I met up with Kathleen from Dare to Dream and we walked around for quite a while and dropped just a little bit of money, both of us could have spent much more! I did get a really cute long sleeve shirt.


The only time you will see me a finish line for a 1/2 marathon and the time 2:03.

After the expo came home and took my youngest to get a corsage for homecoming and then went over to their Dad's house to get some pictures of them....I can't believe they are so grown up!!! I just have to show them off a little. :)

My youngest (the tall one!) Zach, me and my oldest Josh

This is them with their step-brothers that are the same age as them. Looks like they are ready to rock!

Something else that doesn't rock...Beth over at Shut up And Run was suppose to run the marathon tomorrow but ended up with a stress fracture and is now on crutches. Damn the girl trained hard too. Something that does rock is she is giving away a $100 to Get Fit! Check her out if you haven't. She is a riot!

Denver Peeps!

I don't know how many of you have heard of Groupons, but they offer a deal of the day which are heavily discounted goods and services. I've only purchased one other but have seen many good ones and today's deal seems to good to pass up and so good I must pass along!

$22 for $55 Worth of Women's Apparel and Gear at outdoor DIVAS

I've never actually been to the store but you can't do a race around here without having heard of them. I'm getting one, and then I'm going shopping! Now you only have a short time to purchase so do it now! :) Make sure to read the fine print though...only good at the stores and not good on sale merchandise were just a few I saw.

Random rambling

Volunteering - Sunday I volunteered at the Tri for your Cause sprint tri. It was about 50 degrees and raining lightly. Yea a perfect day for a tri...NOT! I felt so sorry for those athletes and can not even imagine what it was like out there on the bike course. In addition to the weather I heard that they had some kind of issue in the last week and had to change the bike course. To say the least the change was not ideal. The course called for them to go straight out a road do a small circle around a few streets and come back to the road they went out on, at this point they had to not only cross an intersection (officer directing traffic) but they had to cross over the bike traffic heading out. Because it was a pool swim taking about 35 minutes to get everyone started they were very spread out which was both good and bad. This was without a doubt one of the scariest things I've ever seen. I was sure there was going to be an accident. Luckily everyone made it safely. It was quite interesting to see the riders pass. I was amazed to see one guy in just his tri shorts and a female in her swim suit with tri shorts on. Most looked pretty good and were doing fine but there were a few at the end that looked like they were ready to cry, I would assume from the cold, although it seemed to me that it was also a fairly hilly course, not steep but continually rolling, not much flat ground. Kudos to all that did this event!

Weight- Something seems to have kicked in the last few weeks and after holding pretty steady for the last 5 weeks I finally managed to start a downward trend again and get rid of 5 more pounds bringing me to a total of 25 lost in the last 5 1/2 months. Good riddance!

1/2 Marathon - My body seems to be feeling pretty darn good and I think I'm ready for the 1/2 mary this weekend. I've got no issues and although I've been a little short on mileage the last few weeks I feel pretty confidant about the race going well. The forecast right now looks like perfect running weather.

Swimming- Yea, I probably forgot how. I've not been since the last tri...yea the end of August...

Biking- better then swimming, but not much.

Plans- I'm trying to get an idea of what I want to do next year. I'm feeling the tug to do a 70.3 but the idea of it is quite frightening to me. I was sure that I would never want to do that distance, that an oly was as much as I would want. Why is it we have the need to find out just what our bodies will do? I've heard that the jump from Oly to 70.3 is much harder then the jump from sprint to oly, what have your experiences been?

Funny I should talk about such lofty goals after saying I've done nothing but run for the last month and a half.

Probably not my best idea...

I decided that for my long run this week I would try to fit it in while my oldest son was doing his thing at Westernaires. I headed out to Bear Creek lake to try some trails well of course the trail I picked which was the longest also had a pretty good climb. It was however very nice out there. The temp was just below 60, the sun was shining. I headed out not really having any idea where I was going since I'd never run out there before.

See that hill that see that little bump on the top that's a restroom we were headed up that "hill". Mt. Carbon Elev. 5,779

A view of some of the foothills behind me near the start.

Just before the climb looking over at the dam.

A view of Denver from the top.

About 1/2 way down the other side looking down at the dam and part of the lake.

Just a pretty little waterfall.

One of the nice flat trails

Run by the numbers

Number of miles- 9.6

Number of feet climbed and descended +852.8 ft / -850.6 ft / net: 2.2 ft

Number of times I got spooked by noise in the bush - 6

Number of times I actually jumped and did the hebegebe dance - 1

Number of times I thought about twisting an ankle - 10,000

Number of time I actually almost fell - 1

Number of times I saw a pile of poop and wondered just what animal left it - 4

Number of times my hat almost flew off - 3

Number of times it made it - 1

Number of times I thought about having made a mistake choosing this run 1 week before 1/2 -100,000,000

Number of times a road bike went by on the road and I thought how nice that looked - 15

Number of mountain bikes that went by and I thought I don't think I want to try that - 5

Part of the run was directly in to a pretty good wind. I went by my car just before mile 7 and refilled my water and continued on for a few more miles although it took all I had to leave my car. By the last 2 miles most parts below my waist were hurting.

Not dead, just look that way.

Those are some dirty feet!

I will definitely try these trails again sometime! Spent a good part of the afternoon watching Ironman live. What an exciting race! Tomorrow I will be volunteering on the bike course for the Tri for your Cause I'm really looking forward to it. I enjoy volunteering at these events. Plus they were offering a free entrance to one of next years races.

Exciting Eleven!

So September was a good month for running for me! I had 72.4 miles of running! The most I've ever run in one month by at least 15 miles. Unfortunately biking and especially swimming were very poor this month. In fact I did not swim at all. This is going to have to change.

So running this week first off I had a really great tempo run on Wednesday. I actually ran for the very first time 4 miles straight without stopping to walk. It felt fantastic! I forgot to set my times into my Garmin and didn't want to keep looking at it so I just tried to push myself to keep a pretty good pace. I was suppose to run at 12:46 pace and managed to do pretty good with a 12:08 11:44 11:32 and 12:18. Funny just now as I was looking at my schedule I realized I was suppose to do speed work and not a tempo run... :) oh well I guess this week I will try some speed work. Anyway I was thrilled to have run 4 miles straight.

Cut to my long run today. Kathleen from Dare to Dream and I met up at the Highline Canal to do our run together. We had decided that we would do as much as we could together both worried about holding the other up. It was a beautiful morning around 60ish degrees and the Highline Canal turned out to be a fantastic place to run. Love the dirt path and all the shade from the trees. We decided we would just head out and try to keep an easyish pace and just keep going. At mile 2 Aimee from I Tri To Be Me ran up behind us. She was doing her 20 mile run in preparation for the Denver Rock 'n' Roll Marathon and was on around mile 13 she chatted with us for a little before she headed off to finish up her last 7. No surprise while it is probably Aimee's slowest mile of her run it was our fastest at 11:36. So on Kathleen and I ran chatting and enjoying the morning with a bathroom stop in the 5th mile. We ran to 5 and 1/2 and turned around and headed back as we hit mile 6 Kathleen says this the farthest you've ever run without walking huh? I said yep all the while really amazed that I'm still running with no walk breaks and all in all feel really good. At the end of mile 7 Kathleen says she is going to do some walking but tells me to go on. I debated about it, really enjoying the company and not wanting to go on by myself, but also wanting to know just how much longer I could run without stopping...could I really do 11 miles with no walk breaks? So on I ran. It was indeed lonely those last miles. I had no idea until recently how really nice it is to run with people. Makes the time go so much faster. So mile 8 was ok getting a little rougher mile 9 and 10 I was really ready to be done and mile by mile eleven (still running with no walk breaks here!) I feel like I'm barley lifting my feet and everything is starting to hurt. I just want to be done. You better believe as soon as my Garmin registered 11 I hit the button and started to walk! I ran all eleven miles! I seriously never, never, ever thought that I would be able to do that! I thought that I would always be a run/walker and now I see that it really is just mind over matter. And really once you get passed the first couple miles it's not that hard. It helped tremendously that the weather was so great, the path so flat, and the company so good! Thanks Kathleen for helping me achieve something I never thought I would!