Two Weeks to Tri

Brown County Indiana State Park - on a hike around Ogle Lake.

The countdown is on! The triathlon in is two weeks and I can't believe it! May has been a nutty month for me, with lots of festivities going on including the wedding (and corresponding fun activities like the Bachelorette Party) of one of my closest friends and a lovely trip to Brown County, Indiana with my mom, sisters, aunt and cousins. While festivities are great and all, it makes it hard to stay on track with training and healthy eating. I've done pretty well, though, all told. I am still down from my initial weight when I started back to Weight Watchers at the end of April (3 pounds total) and have managed to maintain a steady workout schedule which included a spectacular hike in the Brown County Indiana State Park. While not as stringent as I'd have liked it to be, I did my best. And that's what I plan to do on June 12...my best.

These next two weeks are dedicated to brick training (refresher course on brick training, which is doing two of the three triathlon activities in a row like biking to running or swimming to biking) and organizing my gear for the day of the race. I've taste-tested some gels and chews for energy for the day of and have decided on Gu Chomps in the Orange flavor. I have a weird texture thing with some foods and the gels are too gooey for me and sorta make me gag (pleasant, eh?) and the Jelly Bean ones I tried made me choke, plus they had a nasty aftertaste. The Gu Chomps are chewy, but not too chewy and are pretty tasty with no yucky aftertaste. I'm going to need all of the help I can get that day and finding the right energy boost is essential (not choking or gagging is helpful, too). They say you need an energy boost for every hour of continuous exercise. I really have no idea how long the triathlon is going to take me so I am going to be sure to stock up.

My best estimation on my times for the race is that the swim will probably take me 20 minutes since there will be a lot of people swimming in a smaller space than I'm used to. The bike will likely take me an hour and a half or so. My pace is about a five minute-mile on the bike but I am rounding up to six minutes to work in recovery time from the swim and depending on the heat of the day. We start super early, so hopefully it won't be one of those scorcher days. Then the dreaded run...well, who knows? I'll probably walk a good portion of it but can hope to do it in an hour-ish. Work in 5 minutes or so for transition times (two transitions between the swim and the bike and the bike and the run), possibly longer if my legs get wobbly, and we're looking at three hours plus.

Three hours; whew, that's long. There's not much I like doing for three hours straight, least of all exercise, but I'm getting pretty pumped about the actual race. I'm not an overly competitive person, so I can't count on the thrill of competition to get my blood pumping so I'm going to focus on all of the people out there who think they can't do something because they think they're too fat, or old, or young, or because someone told them they couldn't. I'll remember the people who looked at me like I was kidding when I told them I was doing a triathlon, or who acted like I didn't belong in a sports store, or who are doubting that I can (or will) actually do it. It may not be fast, it may not be pretty, but I'll do it and while I'm soaring away on my bike, or huffing and puffing on the run, I'll be thinking about all of you, my cheerleaders, and planning my next race.

I Want to Ride My Bicycle, I Want to Ride My Bike

I love that song by Queen, Bicycle Race. I'm not one of those people who looks for deep meaning in song lyrics - I either like a song or I don't, hence my eclectic range of musical tastes - but I do like the actual lyrics in this song because to me it feels like it's just about enjoying life, not worrying about what's going on in the world, not caring if people disagree with you or judge you. It just about riding your frickin' bike. And that's what I finally did! Last week, I left work early, caught an early train and got my fat bottomed girl self on my bike and I rode like the wind. Note: the fat bottomed girl line is a reference to a lyric in the Queen song. I'm not being mean to myself but let's face it, this baby's got back, and back, and back (another song I love, ha!).

Fox River Trail before the trees bloomed and
I could still breathe through my nose.

Dam on the Fox River

So like I said, I finally (FINALLY!) took my beautiful bike out for a nice 6.5 mile ride. I'm so lucky to live where I live and have a gorgeous trail to ride on along the Fox River. I used to bike ride and run along Lake Michigan on the path in the Chicago when I lived there and the Fox River Trail makes me feel like I didn't have to give up something so wonderful when I moved out to the 'burbs. Plus there are much fewer people on this path and I'm not putting my life on the line to go out on trail like I did on the path in the city. I saw and heard of more accidents on that path than you'd believe so I'm grateful to have the Fox River Trail. Beautiful and safe!

The ride went great. It was tough at first because you use a totally different set of muscles for biking than you do for running. And while I was extolling the virtues of my ample behind in a previous blog with regards to it acting as a flotation device, thus helping me swim a little better, it's not such an asset on the bike. But it was still a great ride and it was wonderful to feel the breeze and to move quickly. When you are a slow runner, it's painfully obvious how slow you are and how each mile feels like twenty. But when you're biking, now, there's a different story! I wear my cell phone on an arm band and use the Runkeeper app to gauge my mileage for running and biking (and for safety reasons). It uses GPS and helpfully announces your distance every 5 minutes in a cool, semi-robotic female voice. When running, that robotic voice telling you that you've only gone 0.25 miles in 5 minutes can get, um, what's the word...irksome, to say the least. But on the bike, it ticks off the miles and is thrilling. I wish it also shouted out encouragement or had a mechanism that would yell obscure things at people as you pass them just to mess with them, but that's probably a different app (and I'm sure it exists, there's an app for everything...even an app to find obscure apps, I'm not kidding).

The bike ride for the Triathlon is 14.5 miles so I'm a little nervous about it, especially the fact that I have to run 4 miles after that but it was reassuring to be out there on the bike and to hit a good distance on the first time out.

In other happy news, I lost 3.5 pounds last week on Weight Watchers. I can't say enough about how great the program is, how user friendly (it has an app too!) and how much I love it. I'm not a spokesperson and am not getting paid to talk about it (I wish!). It's just an awesome program that really helps and if you need to lose any amount of weight I highly recommend it because it can fit into any lifestyle.

Lastly, on a personal, non-workout related note, one of my closest friends is getting married this weekend. We've known each other since we were babies, went to school and church together our whole lives, grew up down the street from each other, worked at the good old family Dairy Queen together and have stayed friends and Dinner Club mates our entire adulthood. She is like a little sister to me and I couldn't be happier for her and her darling husband-to-be. He is one lucky guy and I can't wait to earn Weight Watchers Activity Points dancing my fat bottom off at her wedding.

Much love and happiness to all of you, too, who are out there reading my blog. I'm flabbergasted that you like to read my ramblings and your sweet comments stay with me while I huff and puff my way along to June 12 and after. Count down to the Tri is 5 weeks! Send my running shoes strong thoughts please! xo

Counting Down

It is finally, spectacularly beautiful outside! And guess what? I'm sitting indoors. I was listening to a commercial this morning on the radio and a guy was interviewing people on the street. He asked the question, "What do you want the most?" I thought about that and besides the obvious like world peace and the ability to eat unlimited amounts of ice cream and not gain weight, I thought, "I want to have summers off again."

Remember how great it was, when it was the last day of school and you knew that you had months of unlimited sleeping in time, laying out time, playing moonlit tag time? Ah, summer. My favorite time of year and I spend 50-60 hours a week of it indoors working and commuting. The old saying is definitely true, youth is wasted on the young. Do you know what I could do with a whole summer off? Oh, the possibilities. I remember the first summer I didn't have off and, boy, was that a slap in the face. I always worked before I had a career, from the time I was 12 years old I was slinging Dairy Queen or babysitting or working retail or in a restaurant, but there's a big difference between a part time job in the summer and working full time in the summer. Thankfully we have more daylight in the summer so we can at least enjoy part of the summer days once we are home from work. And I am lucky enough to work at a company that gives us summer hours on Fridays (we close at 2:00), which is incredible.

That being said, I am really enjoying running outside in the nicer weather and am so glad it's finally here. The problem is that I STILL haven't been on my bike. It is still Spring after all and it just so happens to rain on the days I have the time to bike. The only other day I had open to bike was last Sunday but seeing as I drank my weight in Skinnygirl Margaritas and Vodka and Club Sodas the night before at one of my closest friend's Bachelorette party, I wasn't running anywhere except to my couch to sleep the day away. Pathetic, isn't it? Someone who is a hardcore triathlete who would read this would scoff at my dedication to my training but I'm not a hardcore triathlete and I am a realist. I enjoy my life and am going to live it. Could I have skipped that last cocktail and purple frosted cupcake at midnight? Yes, I could have. But, I didn't. Am I going to beat myself up about it? No, I'm not. I mean, don't get me wrong, I was cursing myself when I woke up to the world's worst headache and a tongue that felt like people were walking across it with wool socks on, but once I recovered I didn't let it derail me.

As I said in my last blog, I started back to Weight Watchers last week and thankfully, it is a realistic program that lets you work in things like a night of partying and still lose weight. I lost 1.6 pounds in the first week, in fact. Even with the debauchery! Had I towed the line, not drank or ate too much, I probably would have lost 4 pounds, but I'm okay with that. I still lost because I was smart and healthy all week, knowing that I had this weekend of fun planned. After all, it's about the journey and doing this for the long haul, not trying something crazy and losing a ton of weight in a short time that I would just gain back after returning to normal eating again. Weight Watchers allows you to live your life, you just have to plan for extras like parties, dinners out and special occasions. Case in point for me this week. I'm right back on track and plan to stay on it. Until my friend's wedding of course!

One last thought for the day...it's about little victories that have big payoffs. I knocked 30 seconds off my 400 meter swim time last week. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not competing in the triathlon for time at all; I truly just want to finish but it was a good way to push myself to try and beat my last timed swim. And I did! 30 seconds may not seem like a lot, but it was a little victory for me that gave me a ton of motivation to keep training. It kicked my ass, but my ass needs kicking, so that's a good thing. Did you know you can sweat while swimming, by the way? It's such a strange feeling. The triathlon is 5 (gulp) weeks away. It's time to crack down and get some brick training in (see last blog for definition of brick training, it doesn't have anything to do with actual bricks, although that might be effective, too). That's my goal for this week. I'll let you know how it goes.