Ironman Texas May 21, 2011

Sometimes blogger makes me very angry. This picture was at the bottom of the post where it belongs until I had to log out and then back in and now it is here and I can't move it. So when you get down to the finish, you can scroll back up here and see me finish :)

A journey of 12 hours begins with 32 weeks. Of training. What a great journey! I have to say that this time I am not sad that the training is over. I am sad that the race is over; racing is so much fun (if you have trained)! But training for a spring ironman is something I do not plan to do again. Late summer and fall races for me.

Here are the pictures. All that is left of 32 weeks of sacrifice leading to an amazing day in The Woodlands, Texas.

Race morning. 5 am. Ready to head over to transition to stock our bikes with a bottle of delicious perpetuem. Danna and I both used 8 scoops in one bottle and packed a gu and a snicker's bar.

Nancy and Sara

Danna and I were blessed to be supported by Pops, Nana, Pete, Kara, Zach and Trey! They all sacrificed their weekends to come be with us. Thanks, guys. It means so much! And as always, I owe Grandma Charlotte a HUGE thank you for driving down to Burleson and picking up the girls so Pete could come down to be with me. There is no way I could ever do this without the support of so many people.

Trey and Danna

Danna makes sure everything is set to go for 112 miles in the pre-dawn hours

Always gotta throw in a picture of old dog Trey :)

I tried to upload these in order but blogger does not always cooperate, so some of the pre-race pictures are out of order. Here we are entering the water. It was not a wet suit legal swim, meaning that the water was above the temperature allowed to wear a wet suit and qualify for the world championships. You can choose to wear one and know that you cannot qualify for any awards. Most of us don't have to worry about that anyway and a wet suit really helps a lot with buoyancy and makes you feel a little safer when you do the water wrestling that is an ironman swim. Danna and I chose not to wear wet suits because we were afraid that we would get too hot. My good friend Nancy loaned me her speed suit! Sweet!

This bridge offered a great place to watch the swim start. It was so neat to have such amazing crowd support.

Danna waves hi to Pops

spectators lined the lake shore

And we're off! There's no turning back now!

sorry, another one out of order.

This was by far the most difficult swim I have ever experienced. I added 17 minutes to my swim time from Cozumel! I can't even call it a swim. It was a wrestling match in the lake. I did breast stroke until the last half mile because I could not break out of the crowd. It was frustrating at first but then I realized that we were all having to deal with it, so I just did my thing and waited out the LONG 1:16 battle. I was appreciating the fact that even though I had been kicked in the gut and drug under by huge guys wearing wet suits and climbed on top of and swallowed half the lake, I had not been kicked or punched in the face. And then, POW, a nice heal right in the chin brought my head up out of the water (this was about 1/3 of the way through the swim) and I immediately recognized the purple swim suit and blue goggles. Thanks, Danna! :)

total swim time 1:16. My slowest ironman swim by 6 minutes. Glad it's over.

Trey watches the swim start

Danna's swim experience was the same as mine. Here she exits the water with a swim time of 1:19

This race was a one loop course for the 112 mile bike. I realized while I was out there enjoying the beautiful ride, smooth roads, mostly cloudy sky, not too windy (12-15 mph is better than 25!) that I absolutely love one loop ironman bikes! It went by so fast. I had a perfect bike experience. I enjoyed myself so much. Looking back I think I could have pushed harder, but it is so hard to know. I am glad that I was able to have fun on a ride that is so long. I did not have any problems along the way, what a great ride!

Here I am coming in to the bike finish with a total bike time of 5:49 19.21mph average

out of order swim pic

There were some really funny signs out on the bike course. Some of my favorites: "Welcome to Ironman. Now you are broke." "112 because 110 would just be wimpy" "Making all of these signs was really hard work, too!" "I see crazy people"

And here comes Danna! Total bike time of 6:06 18.3 mph average! WooHoo!

Time to run. Just 26.2 one mile jogs to go. It was a 3 loop run which means that we had crowd support the entire time. It was a life saver. I had a great run because I felt good. I was able to take in all of my nutrition (a gu and 2 electrolyte tablets every 3rd aid station). My run plan was to walk at each aid station and try to run between them. I was successful except for one unscheduled walk at the beginning of the 3rd loop. My stomach got very upset so I walk an entire mile at a slow pace (added a good 15 minutes to my run time) but then I felt find and was able to enjoy the rest of my run. Also added a good 10 minutes waiting in line at a port-o-potty about half way through the run. I hated to sit and wait so long but it was, um, necessary. Overall my run experience was awesome!

One funny sign on the run: "140.6 because 140.7 would be CRAZY!"

Danna comes around during loop one of her run

Our loyal supporters, Kara and Nana

Here I am coming around to finish loop 2. Only one more loop to go!

Pete cheers me on as I pass by

Danna comes around finishing loop 2

I made it! Coming down the chute after a 4:45 marathon run. I teared up a little. Not sure why. It is just such an amazing feeling and hearing all of the people screaming for me choked me up.

Here comes Danna! 6:00 ironman marathon!

Danna's finish. 13:42

So tired. So excited.

My sister is an Ironman!

When it's all over I am always left with overwhelming feelings of gratitude. I am the luckiest woman in the world. I have a husband who loves me and supports me and trains me to great success. I have children who graciously let me be selfish during long weekend training. Soren wrote me a letter wishing me luck and telling me how proud she is of me, how much she loves me and how she looks up to me. I will treasure it always, thank you Soren! My family has made this possible and I can never thank you enough for your love and support. It is a blessed life.

THANKS FOR THE AWESOME PICTURES, POPS!

Check in pics

We got the bikes racked and the transition bags checked in. Ready to roll!

Nancy, Danna, me and Eric

run bags
bike bags

sea of bikes

It's Time!

It's here! Race weekend! Today we went down to the lake for a practice swim. It was so nice that Danna and I decided not to wear our wetsuits for the race tomorrow. We soaked in some of the Ironman atmosphere at the Ironman Village and now we are getting our bikes and gear ready for check in this afternoon.

They offered a gear bag check in for the practice swim...nice!

FINALLY. A good ride!

On a whim, Danna and I decided to meet in Houston this weekend and ride the race course. I cannot tell you how glad I am that we came! I did not want the weekend to be a waste of time or money so Monday night after we made the decision, I got online and just started searching for information about riding the course. I happened upon a local tri group and sent a message to their trainer, Dana Lyons. He responded immediately and let me know that there was a group ride planned on Saturday with the support of 2 sags! Awesome! We met up with them this morning and set off on the course with a great group of 50 riders, turn by turn maps and two sags. Amazing. The route was completely perfect. Finally smooth roads! I was in heaven. I was so happy about the road conditions that the 20 mph winds did not bother me at all. I had such a great training day, finished off with a nice 50 minute run. Danna had an awesome day, too, once she overcame three mishaps! Right off she knew something was up. She was working HARD and going about 9 mph. She stopped and realized her brake was rubbing on her rear wheel. No big deal, except she got dropped right off the bat. I noticed that I did not see her in our group and waited for her to catch up at a light. We rode hard and caught back up with the back of the group. Shortly after, we decided to pass the few people who were riding in the rear of the group (the course has lots of traffic and we were riding single file) so I took off to catch the rest of the group and assumed Danna was right with me. A few miles later I realized she was not there and decided to wait for her at the first rest stop which was scheduled to be at mile 24. Once she got there she told me that she took off like I did to catch the group when all of a sudden she came to a complete stop. She looked back and saw that her brake was rubbing on her wheel. She thought that was strange and did not know how it happened, but she moved it over and tried to take off again only to find that she could not pedal. Her rear wheel had come off! I have to mention here that last night when we arrived at the hotel I helped her put her bike together (she flew here, so her bike was in pieces in the bike box) by putting on her rear wheel. Yikes. So sorry! So she puts her wheel back on and heads out to try to catch up. She decides to try to call and let me know what is going on so she reaches for her phone and it goes flying out of her hands and crashes in pieces all over the road and into the grass. She stops to retrieve it and has to spend time searching for all of the parts. She never finds the back but decides to move on, feeling frustrated about the start of this very long day! When she arrives at the rest stop and tells me what happened I felt awful for not being there for her and lots of guilt over the rear wheel thing. But Danna presses on, like nothing at all has happened, and we finished the rest of the ride without incidence. It was such a great training day. We are so pumped about the race! We loaded the bikes in the van and ran just over 5 miles, came back to the hotel, cleaned up and then headed down to the mall area and enjoyed a great dinner outside at an Irish pub on a river. Pretty cool. Tomorrow morning before we head home we are going to go run a couple of loops on the run course. Looking forward to these last few weeks of training!

Spring Race Blues

Last spring when it was crazy windy I remember thinking how glad I was that I was not signed up for a spring race that would force me to be out doing long rides. Well, it is spring again. And it is crazy windy again. And this time I AM signed up for a spring race. Oh my gosh. I cannot begin to describe to you how much I hate wind now. Every Saturday I need to be out riding close to 100 miles followed by an hour run and every Saturday the wind is 25-35 mph with gusts to 40. It is making me grumpy. When I was training for Cozumel I would go do my 100 mile rides and average in the 18 - 20 mph range and then hop off and run for an hour and still be good to go for my long run the following day. These last few weeks I have been getting in about 90 miles at an average of 16mph with a painful run after because I am so fatigued from fighting the wind. Ok. Enough about the stupid wind. At least I am getting in the hours. I will just hope that this will be enough to help me have a good race next month. I hope to not be slower than my last ironman and to not feel like I am dieing during the race. I found some really great roads to ride on in Denton! I was going to do loops on 428 for 5 hours two weeks ago when Zach said he could show me a road off of 428 that he thinks would be good to ride on. I took it and it lead to lots and lots of great roads! They are so lucky out there! They have great roads to ride on and then you jump off and run on the greenbelt. Nice. So jealous! I am hoping to make a trip to Denver to ride with Danna over Easter weekend. It is going to have to warm up for me to go, though! Danna got snowed on during her run yesterday. It was 90 degrees with 80% humidity here. Even though that is hot and humid, it is good training, and I hate to be cold! If the weather looks good I will make the drive and we will do the Boulder 70.3 route a couple of times. So that's that. This is the longest week of the training with 19 hours on the schedule. I may end up with a little more if the weather holds out this weekend for the Aledo ride. I will ride from Benbrook to the ride, do the 88 mile route, ride back to Benbrook and then run. Good times. Only 4 more competitive weeks and then it is taper! Crazy.

Texas Hell Week

In preparation for IM Woodlands, Danna and I headed south to Fredericksburg to ride the hills during Hell Week. This was the 22nd year that this week of riding has been organized, so it seemed like a good opportunity to get off of the trainer and out on the road, not to mention the fact that Danna needed to log her first century ride! We arrived on Friday night and picked up our packets to find out that these rides are unsupported and you are given a turn-by-turn and are set free on the lovely roads of the Texas hill country. No problem. We're girls; we're good with directions :)

Saturday there was a ride offered that was 105 miles. Perfect. We set out with a group at 9 am. The first stop was at 44 miles and we were still with a pretty good size group and were not having to reference our maps, just follow the crowd. After the stop we found ourselves alone and so we started using our directions and, of course, got off route. We were not worried about it; we figured we needed to ride for 100 miles anyway and we had our phones with us and plenty of water and food. Unfortunately at one lost point we called and asked for directions but gave the wrong information about the direction we were going on the highway, so we ended up back in Fredericksburg at 70 miles. We were disappointed that we did not get our 100 miles, but the 70 that we rode were crazy hilly and windy and we did get off the bike and run 5 miles, so we logged that day in the books and got ready for another go on Sunday.

Sunday's route was 93 miles. We were on our own after about 25 miles and the hills were relentless. We were having a good time with the challenge of the hills, but there was a long stretch (about 20-30 miles) that was unbearable chip seal road. Luckily there was a store at the end of the bad stuff and we stopped for a snickers bar and refilled our water and headed back out to better roads....and more hills! By mile 60 we knew we were on the wrong road, but again, were not too worried about it. By mile 70 we were back on course and had added about 4 miles to the route, so we knew we would be that much closer to our desired 100 miles! Overall we rode 97 miles and it took us 7 hours! Unreal! That was the most challenging 100 miles I have EVER ridden. Good experience overall. I definitely gained mental strength and feel like if I can ride 1oo miles here, I can ride 100 miles anywhere! Danna is such a trooper. If someone took me on this ride for my first century I would be so mad! She takes everything in stride and I have tried to impress upon her that she has nothing to worry about; she will have NO problem with the bike at IM.

I can't say that I will come back to hell week. I can ride unsupported for free at my house and not pay $99 for a print out of directions and double price for a one star hotel. The people who bike here are true cyclists and I still can't consider myself one of those. I like my nice bike rallies where there is an aid station every 10 miles and there are arrows on the road that tell me where to go. If you are confident in your ability to follow directions, even when half of the roads are unmarked, then this is the ride for you. I am glad I came. It gave me a lot of confidence in my riding ability, but it was not my favorite experience.

Nana and Kara came, too! They did their own bike rides and got a taste of the hills. Then did some shopping and enjoyed some German food.

morning of day one

day two we sported our Texas Hell Week 2011 Jersies

Waiting to enjoy some italian food in the historic downtown area

The Cowtown Marathon. A new course. A whole new experience.

This weekend I had the pleasure of running with my brother as he completed his first marathon. He trained as much as possible and got most of the key runs in before the big day, but the arrival of a 3rd sweet baby girl makes it hard to find the hours sometimes. I am so impressed with people who are able to do that.

Pops came out in support as he always does. His weekend consisted of traveling between Soren's swim meet and our run to take pictures for us to enjoy. It means so much to have people out on the course cheering for you. Sometimes it is the only thing that keeps you going.


Anyway, I told Zach that I could not run with him (he is a 7:30 pace whereas I am at least a minute per mile slower) but that he was welcome to join me in my 9:00/mile training run. We set out and were cruising at a cool 8:40 pace and felt great! At mile 15 to 16 I took a new kind of gel that I had not tried before. BIG mistake. Within minutes I was desperate for the port-o-potty and had to stop at the mile 17 aid station. I had to wait for a minute before the facility was available and then had to do my thing, so that mile took us a little over 11 minutes. No problem, we were still way ahead of schedule to meet our goal of finishing under 4 hours. Well, the gel was not finished with me. I had to stop two more times and these two stops were a bit longer, making each of those miles over 13 minutes, eating away at our cushion to finish on time. Zach was so awesome and stayed to wait for me; I felt awful because he was feeling great and had tons of energy and was ready to book it to the finish. Even at mile 20 he was holding back to stay at my pace of 8:45, which was actually faster than I am usually able to go at that point. He was doing amazing. Shortly after the 20 mile marker the tables turned. Zach hit "the wall" and he hit it hard. His stomach decided it would take no more gu and no more water. It was over 70 degrees with about 100% humidity and we were 3 hours into a run; you cannot stop eating and drinking at that point! He was not able to take in anything from then on and started cramping. I cannot tell you how impressed I am with the way he handled it. He pushed and pushed all the way to mile 25 before he nearly fell over. He stopped to walk for a minute and sadly I had to keep going (I HAD to get to the finish line and find the next "facility"). I crossed at 4:00 and he crossed at 4:03. After stopping 3 times and having to walk the last mile, I would say that is dang good! Zach does not even remember crossing the finish line. He was severely dehydrated and had major cramps; but he was a marathon finisher!

Pops took us to enjoy some mexican food and within hours we were recovered and are already planning our next attack on the beast that is the marathon. It was so great to be out there with Zach. Overall we had a total blast! He learned some things about his run nutrition/hydration plan and I experienced the GI issues that I have heard about many times from fellow runners. We both hope to NEVER repeat that part of it again but know for sure that we will be running 26.2 together many more times in the future. Too much fun!

Always gotta take a pic by the necessaries

At the start line ready to "do this!"

Pops came out to see us at mile 10. We were running strong and feeling great!

This was when I was coming in to the finish. Could not stop to wave. Had to get to the bathroom!

Zach coming in to the finish. You can see how dehydrated he was!

This is the part he doesn't remember. Crazy.

Starting to recover. Trying to choke down some crackers and water