South padre!

Summer vacation is pretty nice when you actually make a point of sitting and doing nothing. Usually I try to run when I can, and swim if possible, etc.. This year all I can do is hobble and drink, and I don't like trying to hobble much. I got up this morning and tried to swim laps in a cresent shaped pool in water so murky I couldn't see the wall, so now I can't even swim for a week. The rest of the day consisted of breakfast/coffee, floating in the gulf, lunch, then floating in the gulf drinking beer, and now it's drinking beer in the condo, eating dinner, possibly going to check out the weight room, drinking beer and launching water balloons off the balcony, then call it a day so we can start over tomorrow. Hope everyones summer is as relaxing as mine!

P.S- crutches don't work well on the beach

End of season post

So I'm making this my end-of-the-season recap-of-a-terrible-season post, even though it's july. Buffalo springs 70.3 went very well for me because I was determined to have a good run for once this season and I feel acomplished. It rained most of the day and I'm a wimp when it comes to riding on wet pavement down winding hills, so I spent about 2 1/2 hours riding my brakes and getting passed by everyone. I was having pains on the back of my lower calf that I passed off as tight muscles so I took a week or so off before the race then just ran through the pain during the race and managed a 1:39, and haven't been able to walk since. In the past week (2 1/2 weeks later) I decide to go to the doctor to be told I have a stress fracture in my tibia, so no weight on my right leg for at least a week, then a walking boot for at least a month. I'm hoping to race a couple sprints and maybe an olympic before the season is over and train through the winter for next year...CDA '09!

Almost made it a month!

It's been almost a month since I've posted, and I'm proud of that. This seems to be my fall-back when I have a few minutes to kill. So life is back to normal, but sadly I'm still having hamstring problems from that one time I did an ironman. Training is back up, school is back down, and I'm still working 40+ hours a week.
There are a couple semi-important races coming up but I'm just trying to have fun and enjoy what I'm doing rather than force myself to get out of bed and despise training the way I did towards the end of Arizona training. It's almost summer which for me doesn't mean alot, but I'm looking forward to being done taking a class taught by a rabid Captain Insano. She really is visious. Off to run now, happy almost summer!

Last day off

So today (thursday) is my last day off from work. As fun as it was sitting around doing absolutely nothing (besides drinking beer/watching movies) I swung by the shop to give my bike the bath it desperately needs and it was completely hectic. They're backed up about 4 custom bike builds, probably a few other builds, and had more repairs and customers than the 4 people working could handle. It really snowballs because when everyone gets stressed, everyone deals with it differently. Don and Adam just give up trying to stay on top of everything and hang out, usually on slowtwitch.com, and not uncommon for them to be drinking beer. then brad tries hanging on to his end while picking up don and adams, and missy maintains her norm by consistantly working harder than anyone else. Often times I keep on working and hold off the catastrophic crash, but sometimes adam and don make relaxing look way too tempting. It really is one of the most entertaining disasters you can witness. The end result is Brad takes a week or 2 sabatical, lately working at the repair shop at his house, and we eventually get caught up.
On a lighter note, my new bike came in and my lineup now includes an '08 Cervelo soloist-carbon along with my cervelo P3C. Woooo

Still Alive!

So for those who've never done an ironman before, you wouldn't know that for the 2-3 days following the race it feels like you've been hit by a truck. Walking hurts, sitting hurts, moving hurts, eating hurts, sleeping hurts, showering hurts. I tried taking ibuprofen constantly to try to get ouf of some of the aches and pains of muscle soreness, chafing-scabbing, sunburn, and a totally distorted sleep schedule. I found yesterday that the only way out is drinking beer all day. That didn't help how I felt this morning :-P The back of my neck has a few good sized scabs from where the skin chafed off from rubbing on the wetsuit during the swim, then sunburned from the rest of the day. Probably the worst of the pain because I can't move my neck much since it's so brittle. And the worst catch-22 of all is I'm always hungry, but can't function without a couple cups of coffee, then in too much discomfort to eat so I take a couple ibuprofens which make me naceous and no longer want to eat and I try taking a nap until I wake up again and repeat the cycle. The muscle soreness is still present but not painful and slowing me down anymore. I just can't wait until I can get a good nights sleep at decent hours, a few good/regular meals, and the sunburn/chafe to go away. Being conscious sucks right now but I promise I'm going to swim at least 500 meters this afternoon and be back on the bike tomorrow.

Arizona Airport

Thank god I made this blog. Again I've stressed everything else there is to do on the internet when there's nothing else to do but sit at a computer. Our checkout time was 1 and our flight is at 7:30 so we're just sitting in the airport for a few hours. Luckily I did an ironman yesterday so I don't have the excess energy that has to be burned off before I can sit still for the next 20 until I get my next whim. Honestly my parents are saints for putting up with me as well as they do. As we've found in the past I don't do so stellar in airports where you simultaneously need to be quiet and behave. The only dumb thing I did so far on our trip back was send my boarding pass in with my items being scanned and worried they wouldn't let me through the metal detector without it, they did. I also got a new book today, which I feel is something to mention since it only happens every couple years or so, and I plan on finishing this one! It's titled "I hope they serve beer in hell" and saw it very fitting as a book I can relate to. Brittany, I'll lend it to you when I finish it. Happy monday and I hope all 3 of you who read this have a great week :)

Recap

Well....shit. The good news is i finished, the bad news is I messed up my right calf at the end of the bike and my time was not between 10-11 hours like i wanted. It was a brutal day, much hotter than expected, and winds so strong I couldn't get up over 14 mph for half the ride. At the turn around on the last loop of the 3 loop course i didn't have enough electrolytes in me and so my body stopped digesting anything, I threw up then blacked out and next thing I know the medic is holding me up telling me I'm out of the race... I said no and got back on my bike :) At the very end of the bike I stood up to climb a small hill up to the finish without realizing my calf was completely cramped up so I get up and push down on it as hard as i could and it felt like every muscle and tendon just shredded. Then I had to run a marathon on it. During the transition from bike to run Dr. Sellers found me and checked it out while i got my helmet and sunglasses on. He gave the ok and I ran my marathon about an hour slower than planned at 4:40 on a very painful leg. During and after the race I swore up and down I'm never doing an ironman again, but now I'm seeing mistakes that could have made the day much faster and less painful. My finishing time was 11:27:16 for a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run, and coming in 263rd place. For a first ironman I'm happy I finished and happier it's over with. And thanks again for all of the texts and phonecalls!