Week 34: The Ridges 5K Swim: Lost at Sea

Sometimes it is better to go into something blind, not knowing how hard it will be before you do it.  The Ridges 5K swim was one of those things.

On Sunday, a small group of us set out to swim what we thought we be 5,000 Meters.  I say small group because I think it was just over 100 people.  And I say THOUGHT because it ended being a lot more than 5,000 Meters.

As a triathlete, I’m used to swim courses being short or long.  Being REALLY well marked to being just so-so marked.  And you deal with it.

But the directions on Sunday were almost a joke, like “you know the Smith barn, well, you don’t turn there, you go to where that tree fell 4 years ago and you turn kind of near there but not really.”  Swim under the power lines, turn left and aim for the 2 story dock, head towards some green things and eventually you’ll see buoys.  Ok, thanks!  For the record, there are lots of GREEN THINGS near a lake.

Strangely enough I start off the day without being nervous, and even with only 4,000 yards as my longest distance (which included breaks) under my belt, I get in the water and start swimming.  With so few people, there is almost no body contact.  And I’m thankful when a large guy swims close to me so I can draft off of him for about 5 minutes.  It was probably the highlight of the day.

I follow the directions and feel pretty good about it even though I know my pace is pretty slow.  I blame it on the century the day before.  But my head is in the game and I’m happy to be setting out on a new adventure.

Under the power lines, check.  Double decker dock, check.  And then where???  Oh, is that a buoy way off?  Looks like I can see some arms of swimmers.  I’ll go there.  Out in the middle of a lake and then the waves start hitting me in the face and I am wondering how far off the finish is.  My mouth tastes awful from the lake water so I flip over and suck down the pack of honey I brought along.  Unbeknownst to me, it must have been leaking a little and some critters got in my suit and were biting me.  I discovered this when I got home.  Nasty red bites.  Oh well.

I start to lose a little energy when a kayak passes me and the girl says “you’re almost there!”  Now, my definition of “almost there” is 5 minutes or less.  Seriously, it is.  It was the cruelest thing she could have ever said to me.  It was over an hour before I finished from the time she said that.  CRUEL!

I continue to swim and I start to realize that I’d be ok if I drown and this becomes a very scary thought to me.  You don’t want your head to think that way in the middle of a swim.  It’s not a good thing.  So instead I start counting because I remember Josh saying he counted all his strokes at his last race  1,2,3,4,5,6.  Over and over.  And I keep hearing Matt tell me to glide and Trey tell me to watch my form.  You MUST have good thoughts to replace the bad ones when you get in a situation like this.

What saved me during this swim is similar to what saved me during my second century.  A girl swims up behind me and bumps into me and we both stop swimming.  And we both voice our concerns over where the hell the finish is?!?  So we keep pace with each other and stop every 500 yards or so to regroup.  I finally see what I think are red flags…they turn out to be orange traffic cones.  But it is the ending.  I show it to her and we were like horses going back to the stable and I swear at that point we race each other to the finish.  She wins and I don’t care…I am happy to be back on dry land.  I had to hold back the wall of tears that were going to spill down my face.  There was a point during that swim where I felt real fear. Uncertainty.  Despair.  When all you can see is a black abyss below you, it gets very weird.

 At the finish, I hugged the girl who swam in with me.  And thanked her.  I look up and see my time of 2:25 which is about 10-15 minutes longer than I expected.

I spent the next two days feeling down.  Not because I didn’t meet my goal.  But because of how close it came to breaking me.  And today?  Today I woke up feeling amazing and creative and powerful again.  And I signed up for another one in 3 weeks.  This one, I know is well marked.  And thank heavens, it is typically short.  And yes, there is probably something wrong with me. J

Week 33: Why do we do this?

While swimming at Red Top Mtn last Sunday, a teammate turned to me and asked "why do we do this?".  It seems to be almost an inside joke of sorts between triathletes.  On those long, hard training days, we often ask that question among our friends and to ourselves.

I find the best answers come on those long training days.  Like last Saturday when I did my second century.  I think anytime you attempt to do a super long distance (even if you have done it before), it is a bit of a leap of faith.  You don't know what the day will bring, whether mental or physical, and you just have to tell yourself you're going to do it.

My favorite part is the unexpected.  My friends often think I am hallucinating but I find that the most fantastical (yes, I know that is NOT a word) experiences happen out on long rides.  It often mirrors life.  At the beginning of the ride I had to deal with my discomfort of pushing off and clipping in while going uphill with hundreds (over 900) people around me.  "Do not fall, do not fall"...do not embarrass yourself Patti!

Not too long after the start I looked down and saw a dead baby bunny and it broke my heart.  Sometimes a long ride shows you life can be cruel.  Not long afterwards, a bull who had jumped his fence was charging down the road at us.  And the other cattle still in the fence were freaking out.  And quite frankly so was he because he wanted to be safe back inside the fence and not on the road.  The cyclists around me slowed down and let him figure out a solution and he jumped back inside the fence.  Lesson: If something threatens me, back off and it usually will pass.

I also dealt with the fear of riding in aero downhill.  And I found that if I sing to myself, very loudly, the fear passes and I enjoy it.  Yes, I was a little embarrassed when I realized there were 3 people riding my tail.  I hope they like Pink.

You also meet friends along the way on a long ride and get to discuss the most interesting subjects in life with them.  And you find that when you are melting down and freaking out that if you help someone else out in your same shoes, that you forget your problems while helping them and you both get to finish.

A century ride is a great way to discover more about yourself, more about life, more about what makes you tick.  And that's why I am doing another one tomorrow. :)  I'm still not sure why I'm following it up on Sunday with a 3.25 mile swim....but that's next week's post, right?

Week 32: Mommy, My tummy hurts

When you train for a sprint distance race, there are said to be 5 segments you need to consider.  The swim, bike, and run, of course.  And T1 and T2.  In the sprint distance races are won or lost in transition.

In training long, I could care less about being fast in transition.  I’m not going to dilly dally and get my hair and makeup done, but I’m not going to rush either.  But there is a new beast to tackle for Ironman training and it is nutrition.

You get a taste of this (pardon the pun) when you do an Olympic.  It becomes more pressing during a half ironman. Of course I have only done the first 2 parts of a 70.3 so I don’t truly know the whole feeling.  Hoping this changes as I am planning on doing Augusta employing my walk/run strategy.

The race reports I have read have listed nutrition issues as one of the main reasons someone has a meltdown during their Ironman.  Too much food.  Too little food.  Too little salt, too little water or too much water.  I’m not a scientist or nutrionist and I’m not sure even that would help me.

What will help?  Trying things out during training and racing.  To train my stomach to accept food and water while exercising.  Figure out what works and what doesn’t.

But what happens when I use the same nutrition 2 weekends in a row…Gulf Coast and REV3 and have 2 different results?  Then I have to look at what I ate for breakfast that day…what I had for dinner the nights leading up to the event.

And I’m starting to wonder if sometimes your body can accept the conditions, the stress, the nutrition.  And some days it just can’t.  I have heard athletes who actually go eat a meal they know will upset their stomach and then go run 15 miles just to get used to the feeling of racing while sick. 

Recently while reading Velonews, a cycling mag, I saw that some of the pros eat a mixture of white rice and eggs for breakfast.  I like this idea and will be trying it out.  I know those two foods work well for me.  The rice being a quickly digested “sugary” food and the eggs containing protein and fat.

The only thing I have consistently heard is that overeating during an Ironman will surely make me puke.  And not drinking enough water with the appropriate amount of salt (for me) will dehydrate me.  And possibly kill me.  So what I’m hearing is go lighter on the food and heavier on the water and get the salt correct.  When I started at Georgia Tech, my major was chemistry.  Perhaps I should have stayed with that.

So all of this thinking about food and keeping it in  your tummy brings me back to when I was 13 years old and ate Carnation Instant Breakfast in Strawberry Flavor every day before school.  One time I ate it while I was sick and had a fever.  The outcome was not pleasant and it did not stay down.  I have not been able to eat strawberry flavored items for years.  A friend recently gave me a tub of Recoverite.  Yep….strawberry flavored.  I can assure you the training has begun. ;)

Week 31: Color Me Happy

Another week in the life of training for an Ironman and this week definitely did not disappoint me.  I have lived most of my life in the world of black and white.  Everything had to have clearly defined lines.  I’ve always used the excuse “I’m German, that’s just how I am” but truly I think it’s that I feel more in control when life is clearly laid out for me.  The problem with living life that way is that there are no areas of possibility for the life that exists outside perfection.  And when parts of my life did not meet the clearly defined areas, I would push so hard for them to fit, that often I ended up destroying them in the process.

One of the Webster definitions of Grey is neutral or dull, esp. in character or opinion.  But I disagree.  Grey is where the dance of life begins.  Grey is where I begin to accept that life is not perfect and it doesn’t always have to be exactly what I wanted for it still to work.

I had the vision of what being an Ironman meant to me.  And part of that definition was that I would run most, if not all of the marathon.  Now I know that a lot happens on the day of your Ironman and oftentimes situations prevent this from happening.  I understand and am completely ok with that.  But I thought that if going into my Ironman, I had already planned to walk the marathon that I was somehow cheating.  That I wouldn’t “really” become an Ironman.  And since I wouldn’t, why do the marathon part at all?  I planned on DNFing once I knew I couldn’t run. I started to refer to it as “a training day”.

Now here is where life gets interesting.  A good friend of mine takes me to lunch on Monday and boldly states, “you should walk.”  This is someone with 20 years experience of triathlon under his belt and several IM finishes.  He is telling me it’s ok to walk?  Maybe being an Ironman doesn’t have to mean one thing for me.  And boom, with that realization, life changed overnight for me.  I don’t mean my life in regards to my Ironman, or triathlon.  I mean just about everything in my life changed this week when I opened up the door to the possibility of grey.  That life does not have to look and be a certain way for it to be ok.  For me to be happy. 

Neutral or dull?  No.  Not even close.  I’d say that Grey could possibly be the brightest color of them all.

Week 30: Another milestone: My first century

Last year I watched many of my friends train for their first Ironman race.  One of the things I remember them doing over and over again was "The Century Ride".  After a complete meltdown of a 61 mile ride at the Jackson County Brevet last year, I wondered if I could ever be part of the club who can do that.

Earlier this year I signed up for one called "The Challenge of the Centuries".  I didn't bother to look ahead and read my schedule and see that I was only supposed to ride 4 hours that day.  And for some of you speedy folks, I don't know, maybe you are riding 100 miles in 4 hours.  But not me!

So on Saturday, I drove up to Lake Hartwell on the Ga-SC border expecting to ride 66 miles by myself.  No biggie.  I had already cycled 80 miles on 2 other occassions.

In the meantime, I meet a nice triathlete named Heather on BT.com and also realized (from facebook) that 2 other friends, Jackie and Eric, are there doing the ride as well.  But guess what?  They are all doing the century.  And worse, the rides split at mile 30.  So I wouldn't get to spend much time with them.

And the day is beautiful, it's overcast, the hills are rolling and gentle.  And the 2 girsl I am cycling with are fun and interesting and have lots of ironman stories to tell me.  DAMN IT!  OK, Yes, I will throw caution to the wind and just do it.  Do my first century.

With adrenaline flowing and girltalk at hyper speed, we set off and do the first 50 miles in 3 hours. In the back of my head though I know I have pushed a little too hard and that the next 50 might not be as easy.  Somewhere around mile 70 or 80, I start having to talk myself into 10 mile increments.  I'm still doing ok and I'm still averaging an overall 16 mph which I'm happy with for my first go at it.

I think somewhere around mile 85, I really start hurting.  I can ride in aero, but if I get out of aero, my lower back screams.  My quads are tight and my sitbones are very very unhappy having to be on a saddle for so long.  Yet, my mind is still fine.  And that's the thing I was most worried about since the meltdown I had a year earlier in Jackson County was my brain screaming to stop.

There is a SAG stop at 85 which I take and sit for a few minutes to regroup and eat Nutter Butter Sandwich Cookies.  They are new and improved and no longer the peanut shape but rather a round cookie with now 3X the filling.  I eat 2  of them and shove 2 in my pocket for later.

The race planner is smart and puts another stop at mile 93.  This I couldn't figure out until Heather tells me it's 102 miles, not 100 like I thought.  I don't need another stop and keep going and tell Jackie and Heather I'll see them back at the start since I'm going pretty slow at this point.  Heather keeps telling me I'm doing great and this helps a ton.

Yeah, I tear up a little at mile 100.  It's a huge accomplishment to me.  I started off last year barely being able to ride 30 miles.  I've come a long way.

I pass mile 102 and am a bit disturbed I am not back "home".  102.5.  103.  At 103.5, I am convinced that I have started the course again and have somehow missed the finish.  The meltdown begins since I simply do not have the energy to go for any more miles.  I stop.  I put my bike against a tree in someone's yard.  I sit down under the tree in a pile of dirt and I start hyperventilating.  I honestly do not know what to do.

Finally I remember I have my iphone in my back pocket and I dropped a pin on the starting point.  And it has GPS so it knows where I am.  It shows me where I am and where I need to be and I realize I'm fine, get back on my bike and finish.  6 hours 32 minutes.

There wasn't any food for us at the finish and I'm ok with that.  They do have showers, albeit cold, and I take one, dry off, put on new clothes and eat 2 hard boiled eggs and my Recoverite mix.  Oh yeah, I also eat the 2 soggy cookies still in the back pocket of my jersey. :)

I celebrate on the way home by stopping off at McDonalds for a small fries and real coke.  I'm just not very hungry.

It was a good day.  It was a great day.  It was a day that changed my life forever.