If Yer Gonna Play in Texas...

The season in review so far has yielded:
1. A DNF with cooked brain cells at my A-race
2. A PW (personal worst) at Musselman

All time goals have not been met. So now that I've come home from running away to the hills with my mountain bike I've dusted myself off and found that I've got another half-Ironman race left in me. This cowgirl is off to Austin, Texas for Longhorn 70.3.
I've always wanted to visit Austin: it's supposed to green, hilly, and a pretty part of Texas. I've been to Houston twice too many times and found the sprawling concrete Generica stifling. Lance Armstrong's bike shop, Mellow Johnny's, is there as well as some yummy Texmex enchiladas. Also, a road trip with Kevin, Mary, and some TT pals is irresistable.
10 weeks from now until the race should be enough time for me to regain some fitness to feel confident at the start line. I have revisited my 2008 season goals and have a single goal for this race: To leave it ALL out on the course. Period. I want to cross that finish line having given everything I possibly could.
Yes, I shall have a pacing and nutrition plan. I'm not planning on going out as hard as possible until I blow up. Been there, done that lots of times. I shall continue to ride/run during the hottest, most humid and oppressive time of day to acclimatize (last year's Longhorn had a heat index of 107--deja vu Eagleman!). The shift is from a time goal to an effort goal. I want to see if I can take pride in the labors of the process instead of a numerical result.
The adventure starts tomorrow with a week of testing. Time to get back in the saddle. Giddy up!

An Easy Decision

After 3 glorious, alpine days of playing in the woods with our bikes, Kevin and I headed to Lake Placid to volunteer, cheer on our fellow tri-pals, and eventually sign up for Ironman 2009. For the last 2 years we were at IMLP, we stayed outside of town in Saranac. We would get into town by 7am to swim in Mirror Lake, register, rack bikes, quickly run through the expo, and get the heck of there by 9am. I remember alot of nervous energy in town and wanted to limit my exposure to it before my first Ironman as did Kevin.

On Saturday, we arrived in Lake Placid midday, right in the middle of Ironman mania. Hordes of triathletes in their aerohelmets were riding their bikes in packs in the middle of traffic, seemingly oblivious to cars and pedestrians who apparently must step aside to their entitled Ironmanness. Even larger hordes of Ironman pedestrians paraded in their Mdot gear and finisher's shirts, posturing in overwhelming self-importance. I had packed my IMLP 07 finisher cap, but now didn't want to wear it. I didn't want to be part of some group of people who thought they were better than everyone else just because they did this race. Kevin felt the same and bemoaned that we should've never left Vermont. When did we become so negative about the whole Ironman scene that we were once part of? Did we mistaken all of this pretension for race enthusiasm for the last 2 years?
I tried to be equanimous (but not so much eloquent) and said,"In every group of people, there's always gonna be a few who are douche bags---that shouldn't take away our love of the activity" Take my profession: I know a tremendous number of conscientious, brilliant, caring surgeons who make me proud to be part of that vocation. I also know throngs of insecure, pompous, insufferable surgeons as well. I want to say to them,"Intimidating and belittling people now isn't going to make up for no one picking you for their dodgeball team in 2nd grade!" We tried to lighten our misanthropic mood by picking out the "Biggest Iron Douche" and got out of town as fast as we could.
Race day started with rain which reached a crescendo of monsoon-like downpour. We'd missed the swim start, but managed to catch a glimpse of some friends as they were finishing the first loop of the bike leg. Everyone was soaked and appeared to be ice-cold. Both of us volunteered in the medical tent from noon to 4pm. A few athletes trickled in with hypothermia. It seemed that anyone who crashed on the course was taken directly by ambulance to the hospital.
Then I saw the one person I hoped I'd never see during my shift at the medical tent. EMT's wheeled in Coach Mary on a gurney, wrapped in a blanket. I gasped when I saw her. She took one look at me and burst into tears. I started crying. She cried,"Kitima, I don't even remember your last name!" Her lips were blue and she was shivering uncontrollably. We quickly placed several bags of warmed saline around her. She recalls in detail how she received 3 hard blows to the head during the swim and where on the bike course she started having double vision. She remembered EXACTLY how many calories were in each of her bottles, the number of calories she had consumed, that each of her salt tablets contained 341 mg of sodium and that she had taken one precisely every 15 min. Not bad for someone who has a concussion! However, a few neurological hiccups in her exam made it obvious that there was no way she could or should continue with the race.
With my own DNF still fresh in my memory, I could feel the crushing disappointment of hers. While you can make mistakes in pacing, nutrition, salt intake, bike handling that will land you squarely in the medical tent, you can't predict or prevent getting kicked/elbowed in the head during the swim. But even something that was out of your control doesn't lessen the heartache of not finishing what you started and anticipated completing with outstanding results. I knew she'd get over it (if I could, she could!) in time, but for the immediate future Kevin and I stayed with her and tried to cheer her up with some pretty bad jokes.
The three of us eventually left the medical tent and made it to the Score-This! tent where we dropped off Mary with Rich Clark. Kevin and I cheered on the athletes running up the steep hill into town in the deluge. We knew what it was like to suffer through an Ironman, but to endure one in this horrific weather seemed a herculean effort. It was a truly inspiring sight. I thought that if my first Ironman last year had weather like today...of course, I'd do it. Rain was not about to spoil all that time, effort, money spent on training. However, 3 well-placed, perfectly timed blows to the head can. Up until my arrival in Lake Placid, I search for some nugget of enthusiasm to do this race again. I wanted the reason, the motivation for a second IMLP to be more than just go faster than last year. I thought I should have some excitement, some fire (even a whisp of a flame!) to want to do this Ironman again. I did not. Mary said (even in her brain scrambled state),"Unless you can't wait to sign up for Ironman today, don't do it tomorrow." The decision was easy and obvious. I wouldn't take a voucher tomorrow because I didn't feel utter committed or even remotely eager to do IMLP next year.
I know someday I'll be back. I truly do love the training and the race venue is like none other. When I do return, I'm sure I'll still want to go faster than my '07 time but I'll be at the start line with a passion for doing the race regardless of what that race day may bring.

3 Days of Dirt

From the first time I saw a mountain bike (sometime in the late 1980's--some guy named Gary Fisher on a bike with knobby tires riding off pavement), I'd always wanted to ride down a hill, in the woods, over rocks and roots on a bike. I took my first mountain bike (Trek Antelope 6000, neon yellow with Biopace cranks, circa 1991) down a muddy park trail in Pittsburgh, heading straight into an enormous boulder. I thought I would "hop" over it, but ended up midair with the bike completely on its side then crashing down upon me. The seat stay and chain stay were bent, the rear derailleur mangled, and my right leg gouged from the big chain ring teeth. I was hooked.
17 years later I did something I've always wanted to do. Kevin and I left our mediocre triathlon performances behind and ran away to Vermont. I have discovered quite possibly the best vacation: downhill mountain biking at Killington, VT.
At 10am (no crack of dawn starts like triathlons!) the lift opens and we board the gondola with our bikes hanging on the ski racks. I thought we would rent downhill bikes with squishy, 2-feet-of-travel suspensions but decided our bikes and bike handling skills would more than suffice. Up, up, up to the very top of the mountain we went. Blue skies, sunshine, and alpine forests greeted us. We start on a fire road which in the winter would be a wide, gently sloping bunny trail. However, it's July and the road is full of loose gravel. No better time to test those skills at handling the back wheel sliding around (or even better--preventing the slide with some speed!). We take a detour into the woods and onto a single-track littered with rock gardens. Part of me is freaking out because the trails I ride at home are mostly dirt, roots, logs...maybe a stray rock the size of an apple. I haven't bounced over many rock gardens and the potential fall looks painful. However, the thrill of being on a mountain top, among trees and alpine air so overwhelms me. I'm simply too damned happy to be there to panic or be fearful. I pick my line and go. If I had any aprehensions about riding over rocks, I left them somewhere in the woods of southern Vermont. We rode for 5 hours that first day and only stopped because my hands hurt too much (must learn to relax that death grip).
On the second day, I took a 2 hour lesson. I was the only person in the "class" so I had the instructor, Jon, all to myself. He didn't teach me anything I didn't already know or had read, but having someone constantly reminding me how to lean the bike (and not myself) into a corner or how to look more than 6 feet in front of me was incredibly helpful. We practiced alot of cornering skills, especially through some sharp turns on loose gravel. On the road bike, I think of my Pro Tour heroes descending the Pyrenees or Alps and remember to keep the inside foot up. However, on the dirt bike keeping the inside foot up scares me--I'm afraid of the whole bike skidding out from under me. So Jon says "Outside foot down. Lean the bike, but counterbalance with your weight." Inexplicably, "outside foot down" is less scary than "inside foot up" and it works. I'm cornering like a champ.
Another basic we work on is my sighting. Jon tells me that I need to look 20 feet ahead. "Objects come at you faster if you're looking just 6 feet in front of your wheel,"he tells me. So we turn down a blue square (the trails are rated in likelihood of crashing--just like ski slopes) single track. He rides in front of me and in a commanding voice says,"Keep your eyes on me!" There is no time for me to wring my hands and fret that I'm riding a trail I think is beyond my skills. I'm hurling down the trails, eyes locked on him (riding about 20 feet in front of me--how does he do that?!), cleaning climbs, cornerning hairy, rocky, root clogged, hairpin descents that I would have never dared to ride alone. At one descent, I see him disappear over a ledge. Just as I'm about to unclip and call 911, Jon yells, "Stay to the right, it's kinda steep, keep your weight back." I do all those things and find myself triumphant, rubber side down at the bottom of a steep hill. I used to think that I rode better with Shari because her fearlessness gave me courage. While that may still be true, I realized that having her ride ahead of me gave me something to focus on that wasn't coming at me at warp speed 3 feet in front of my bike. When rocks, roots, turns are coming at you that fast, you can only react hastily to them in a right brain sort of way. When obstacles are seen at a distance and anticipated, one can smoothly flow over them in a left brain way. Is this a key to racing from the heart?
I was reminded to bend my elbows and not lock my arms, bend at the waist, and keep my feet level. "Instead of bracing yourself for the bumps, just absorb them."Jon said. My hands hurt alot less on that second day. Bending at the waist, I found that I could get my weight back and better balance on the bike. I also relearned that my tendency to unclip and dab with my left foot only gets me into trouble. I'm better off with both feet on the pedals. Another lesson revisited was that a lapse in focus, just one second of inattention will land me shiny side down.
My lesson comes too quickly to an end and I meet up with Kevin who has spent the morning on black diamond trails. We spend our lunch regalling each other with bike tales, punctuating our stories with hand gestures that don't do our descents or turns any justice.
The next day I awoke with a full blown chest cold and fever. After overmedicating myself with antihistamines, decongestants, and ibuprofen, I rallied for at least one last run. I must have been dehydrated because some of the single track looked like 2 trails. I aimed my bike for the middle and hoped that "line" wouldn't plummet me into a ravine. The 7 year old kid in me just didn't want to miss out on one last day to play with my pal, Kevin in the dirt.
I loathe to use mountain biking as an allegory for life like so many surfers or mountaineers do in pseudo-intellectual, quasi-zen publications. However, I will say that I did learn to/that:
1. Look ahead
2. Lean and counterbalance
3. Relax...it keeps you from getting beat up.
4. When the mind goes down, the ass goes to ground.

Musselman Race Report

The week before the race presented a couple of road bumps. First, I got acute capsulitis of my left 2nd MTP joint--a nagging pain in the ball of my foot that felt like a fold in my sock that developed into a sharp pain upon any weight bearing. I took 3 days completely off, went to my podiatrist for the diagnosis, and was pain free on 4 days after the initial insult. I asked my podiatrist if I could run on it (answer: yes, if I'm not in pain) and if I was running on it during Mussel and it started to hurt, could I continue to run on it without causing some permanent foot deformity (answer: yes, again).
Second, I found a painful lump in my breast. I had a feeling it was a cyst and was going to deal with it after the race, but the damned thing hurt so bad I had my friend (and gynecologist) to stick a needle in it and drain it. She tried 3 times with no result. Ugh! Having this painful mass bouncing around in my sports bra for 13 miles was unacceptable. So I had another friend (and radiologist) drain it under ultrasound. There was one cyst (successfully drained!) and one adjacent funny mass that I had to proceed with right to mammogram for my pin cushion boob to be squished. I'd had enough of my own medical drama! I just hoped for no pain from either the breast or the foot during the race.
Thank goodness the Fosters, Marian & Rolando showed up at our house that night! I was really looking forward to their stay with us. Kevin, Mike, and I were racing. We all agreed that we were undertrained and hoped for the best.

"The sea was angry that day, my friend..."
While I'm not a great swimmer, I have been swimming open water/triathlons for 8 years. I have swum in murky, cold, rough waters of the Pacific NW so the chop in Seneca Lake didn't worry me at all. I started right up front hoping for pair of feet on which to draft. Within 300 yards, I felt like the collar of my wetsuit was choking me and unzipped my wetsuit half way down. At the first buoy there was a wad of seaweed the size of a couch that I swam right into it. When I later told Marian about it, she said I should've flipped on my back like an otter and started breaking clams with rocks on my belly. I wished I would've thought of that during the swim because it would've really helped me from not spiraling into lethal pissed-offed-ness. After the first turn, I swam to the wrong buoy. A guy on a jet ski pointed me to the right buoy that was about 10 miles away. I swam hard to catch up to my wave only to go off course AGAIN. WFT? Now, I'm swimming even harder to catch up. At one point I stood up (and cut my toe on a zebra mussel) and asked a volunteer on a kayak,"Where the hell am I supposed to go?" She pointed in nearly the opposite direction I had been swimming. I'd never been so pissed off in the water. By the time I got out of the water (20 min faster than my IMLP swim split!), I knew my extremely hopeful goal of breaking 5:40 was gone. If I really hammered for the bike and run, I might achieve my easy goal of breaking 6 hours.

The glaucoma test...
For the first part of the bike, I stuck to my plan of being on the lower end of my wattage range. There seemed to be a headwind, but I wasn't going to dwell upon it as I knew it wouldn't improve my already foul mood from the swim. The one good thing about being one of the last people to come out of the water is that no one passed me on the bike. Absolutely no one. I had a sour stomach for the first hour that didn't go away until mile 7 of the run. As a result, I didn't take in my planned amount of nutrition. By mile 40, the inconsistency of my training since April became very apparent. I was hurting quite a bit trying to put out the necessary watts. The thunderstorm had started; and the rainfall went from steady to quite heavy. A few stray raindrops hit my eyeballs and it felt like that air puff test for glaucoma that you get at an eye exam. I dropped my chain and about 8 people I had passed went zooming by me. I quickly passed them again, but by mile 50 I hoped that the run would be cancelled due to thunder and lightning. That easy goal of breaking 6 hours was gone and I shifted to the super easy goal of breaking my Mussel time in 2006. My Ergomo screen said "low battery" (and I charged that stupid thing!) so I had no idea how many watts I was putting out. I thought about the Tour de France riders in a breakway going under the 10K banner with the peloton bearing down upon them and rode with everything I had left.

Making lemonade...
As I entered T2, I asked Mary, "Are we really running in this lightning?" She answered through the bullhorn,"Yes, Boon you are running in this lightning unless you have metal in your shoes." I knew I wasn't even going to make my super easy goal and resigned myself to the run. At that point, my bad mood lifted. I figured that there wasn't any point in hurting myself on this run and that I may as well make some race friends. I gave salt tablets to a fellow runner who stopped from a leg cramp. A mile later he flew by me cramp free and looked to be running at least 7 min/miles. I drank coke and water at every aid station and thanked every volunteer I saw. At mile 7, the rain was torrential. I laughed with my fellow triathletes as we agreed that we wouldn't need to shower or wash our race clothes at this point. I ran the last 6 miles with a guy named Chris and a young girl (22 years old) who would utterly fly down hills then slow to a walk on the way up (which is were I'd catch up with her). We mugged for the photographers taking our race photos. Alot of race friends found me on the other side of the finish line and we exchanged many congratulatory hugs.

What I learned today...
1. That I don't need as many calories as I thought I did on the bike. 200 Cal/hour is enough. 330 Cal/hour is too much.
2. That while I may not have made tremendous advancements in my running pace, I did make an enormous improvement in my attitude about running >13 miles. It's just not the dreadful, daunting specter it used to be.
3. When time expectations and race goals are in the toilet, you can still have a wonderful time making race friends.

ID#

Because of the culture of my family and ethnicity, I am no stranger to numbers that identify, rank, and assign one's place in some scheme of worthiness. In the work place and many social circles, I've been sized up by my GPA, SAT/MCAT scores, dress size, annual income, net worth, and square footage of my home. Triathlon is no different. In my group of tri pals and training friends, we all have some idea of each others running E-pace, T-time for the 100 yard swim, bike splits, FTP, and most recent Ironman results. For some of us, prestige and one-upmanship is assigned to these numbers. I'm not talking about some friendly competition at the local sprint or using a slightly faster training partner as a benchmark for progress. I'm talking about people who actually think they're better than someone else based solely on how high their Vdot is or how many watts they average on the bike.

As a MOP'er on a good day and BOP'er on an average day, I don't hang much of my self-worth or identity on these numbers. While I get alot of satisfaction from improvements that I make in my training, my frail ego can't be held up by my athletic statistics. Mind you, I'm far from swimming for the sheer and absolute joy of swimming. I do love running for the sake of running; and I can't think of a truly bad day on a bicycle (even spiraling into the depths of heat stroke at Eagleman). I truly enjoy tracking my training progress quantitatively. Bring on those numbers, graphs, and charts--I love them all! However, I am no more my FTP than I am the dollar amount of my bank account.

That being said, I have revisited my reason to do IMLP again. Since mile 18 on the run of my first IMLP, I vowed to return because I knew I would fall quite short of my time expectations. Even with No-friggin-way-I'm-doing-this-again sentiments swirling around my head at the finish line and the following 48 hours, I felt that I had to come back to Ironman to try and get a faster finish time. I felt that my finish time did not reflect my fitness, my ability, or my hard work. After a year of looking back, dissecting, and over analyzing, I know that my finish time IS a reflection of tactical errors including overeating on the bike, taking too much time during transition, and being unprepared mentally and emotionally to handle truly dark moments. I want to return to Ironman to "make it right."

Make it right?! As if it wasn't enough to toe the line at the start without an injury and finish without a visit to the medical tent? Apparently, not. I do not want to be identified by a 15:30:02 Ironman finish time. So everything I pontificated 2 paragraphs ago has gone out the window! Must be that I'm satisfied with my FTP, net worth, square footage of my home, even my lowly Vdot...but not with my IMLP time. Hrrhmph!

Is that reason enough to suffer through another Ironman? Perhaps, I'm asking the question in wrong way...In order to commit to the training that may or may not result in me moving myself forward for 140.6 miles in less than 15 and 1/2 hours, am I willing to do it just for a result, an arbitrary number upon which I have hinged my athletic self-worth? Or should I want to move myself forward for 140.6 miles on that glorious day, be grateful for the priviledge to do it, and enjoy the sweet and fleeting moments of peak fitness? Or do I want another chance to get my nutrition right, to pace the bike and run better, to overcome my own doubts and negative thoughts?
Those are all valid reasons. Depending on where my mind is during training or the race itself, I'll remind myself of each of those reasons. However, I think the 1# reason is that I like the training. To quote Gordo: Training is fun, racing is tough. For the most part, I found training for that first Ironman to be quite enjoyable. What wasn't fun was the anxiety surrounding the actual race. I was afraid to DNF my first Ironman. I remember thinking that I would like do second Ironman and train without the anxiety of finishing a first one. So why can't I just train: swim, bike, run just to do it? I'm quite sure that I wouldn't train if I didn't have a race. So triathlon for me isn't just about good health (training to the edge to injury, mental and physical fatigue far exceeds the requirements for health) or the love of running and cycling (and a slight tolerance to swimming). It's wrapped up in a finishing time, a ranking in an age group--numbers that I give weight to defining a part of my identity.
See you at the sign up line on Monday morning!