Anyway, this long holiday weekend weather has been beautiful! I spent 6 hours on Saturday working my new job. I recently became employed as a “health enthusiast” at the Vitamin Shoppe part-time on Saturdays. Come and visit me! Apparently, I need to be watching Dr. Oz because it appears everyone who comes into that store is looking for something he talked about that week on his show. Then Azul got a nice little tune-up at the bike shop and now she is shifting smooth as butter! I also got my new book “Developing Endurance” in the mail and I have been reading it the past few nights. The book is written by the NSCA and shows “how to achieve optimal stamina to race your best through science-based aerobic, anaerobic, and resistance training.” I purchased the book for several reasons. The first being that since I’m an endurance athlete I like to understand the rhyme and reason (no pun intended 🙂 ) of why my coach assigns certain workouts and what my body is doing during those workouts. I also am developing bike shop boy’s training plan for Beach to Beacon and hopefully (the key word) he will listen to me and follow it (but I have a feeling that will not be the case). I recently just learned that the USAT is having a Level One Coaching Certification clinic in September in Providence and I’m pretty sure I am going to attend it and thus I think I shall get a head start studying. 

I had my first open water swim Sunday morning at Crystal Lake. The water was super warm! It was also the first day I have put my wetsuit on since Pumpkinman last September. It went on super easy, but mostly because I’ve lost a lot of weight and thus it’s actually too big for me now. It will work for now, but I will have to get a smaller suit later this summer. We swam from the boat launch to the point and then back, which is about a 1.2 mile swim. Many of the camps have not put out their docks or floating rafts yet so there was not much to spot off of, but I just used the shore line to spot. The other girls used me to spot off of because I just took off from them. I finished the total distance in about 32 minutes and I actually kicked most of the way too! 

I was suppose to ride with someone Saturday afternoon but he ended up having to work. I understand his need to work, but I will admit that I was disappointed. I look forward to our Sunday afternoon rides because that is to only time we ever get to hang out. I told my new employer that I can’t work Sunday afternoons because he and I usually ride together. Now I’m questioning if that was such a good idea… Anyway, I ended up riding solo from my house. Between my coach and I, we can’t do math. My ride was only suppose to be two hours, but ended up close to 2.5 hours instead. She provides my training in two week blocks through Training Peaks. She will give me the total time for the workout and then in the notes will provide the breakdown of each workout. She had edited my long ride workout, but apparently forgot to edit the details. As I was uploading the workout into my Garmin, I didn’t even think to double check her math. I headed out on a 40 mile route that I knew would take me about 2 hours to complete. About three quarters into the ride (mileage-wise) I realized that I wasn’t even halfway through my actual prescribed workout and started mentally adding the numbers. Yup, my workout was more like 3 hours so I stopped doing the workout out after my second 15 minute power interval and just rode easy the rest of the way home. My ride wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. I spent most of the time avoiding the vast array of dead animals on the side of the road, bad drivers who came close to hitting me, and avoiding an 18-wheeler water tanker that almost ran me over on a really crappy country road with no shoulder! 

Now that I have a powermeter my coach gives my intervals in terms of power zones. Apparently, I can’t hit a power zone if it was right in front of me! It was a rough workout. My Garmin computer kept beeping at me because either my power was too high or too low. When I uploaded my data this morning for my coach she informed me that I need to change my settings on my computer from one second to 30 seconds power reading. It will be a much smoother power reading and hopefully my Garmin won’t beep every 10 seconds at me! I had a 30 minute transition run after my bike yesterday. As I was riding up the hill to my house, I was really dreading the run. My crotch hurt because I finally decided to commit to the Cobb Plus saddle this week and now I have to “break in” my new saddle. I probably should have just kept the test saddle till after Mooseman because I was use to it, but I would have felt really bad if I actually did pee on it… (my coach also informed me that I need to learn to pee on my bike. Poor Azul…)

The first 200 yards of my run just plained sucked! However, I started to settle into an easy pace and felt really comfortable and strong! I kept the pace easy, but my legs wanted to go faster. I just kept reminding myself that next weekend I will have to run 10 more miles in addition to what I was currently running! This morning was another swim at Crystal Lake. Today it was full of pollen, but the water was still warm! I really LOVE open water swimming. I’ve always been very comfortable with it since I spent most of my summers growing up living in the water at our camp on Sebago Lake. It’s practically second nature to me.   

Mooseman is in less than a week. I have mixed feelings about it. I have learned that the water temperature at Newfoundland Lake is 65 degrees! That made my day! I guess the lake is notoriously cold and I was kind of dreading the water temperature. Mostly, I’m dreading the bike portion. Secretly, I have a time in my head that I want to beat; however, I know this course will not get me the time I want. I hope to PR at this race, but again, from everything I have read and heard about Mooseman, it is not the course to PR on. So, we’ll see. My goal is really to just finish (in one piece)! There are a few people I know doing the race whom I have a target on their backs. I want to beat them, mostly for my own ego. I think the main reason I’m dreading the race is that I will going to it solo. My coach will be there and some of her other athletes whom I will probably meet, but really, I will know no body and have no race support. My father is not really supportive of my sport and I know he will not come to my race. I practically had to beg him to come to Pumpkinman last year. I already told him about a month ago that I will probably be doing Lake Placid next year and that he will be coming. He argued with me a bit about it but I kindly reminded him that I will be picking his nursing home someday and that he should be nice to me! Just kidding…. but I did tell him that doing an Ironman will be one of the biggest days of my life and I would appreciate the support. Last year I had great support from my Tri ladies at Pumpkinman which was awesome! But this year they are all racing the Dynamic Dirt Challenge that day and of course I don’t have a significant other so I guess I just need to suck it up and race. I’ll get through it, but it’s always nice to have supportive friends and family there to cheer you on!