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My name is Diana…I am a triathlete
It’s official! I can by all rights call my self a triathlete. What started off as “cross-training” by adding in a few other things like swim and bike has grown into a newbie triathlete a full blown athlete! My E-team sisters came out to race and spectate!
It’s all about having fun!!
My first triathlon was 3 days ago. Location: Auburn, California. Distance: Sprint (aka Mini). Terrain: HILLS HILLS and just because there wasn’t enough…MORE HILLS!!!
The distance was called a mini or what some would refer to as a sprint triathlon distance. The first discipline is the swim. The distance for the swim for the mini is 500 meters or .30 miles. For those that need a further breakdown that’s 1640 feet or 19,685 inches…impressive! Here I am in the swim:
I’m in there somewhere…for real!
The swim was great. I know a lot of folks out there get nervous. I was a little bit but just the normal nerves one gets before any race really. I knew what I’d want to do in the swim portion. I knew what it’d feel like, what I’d experience, I was prepared because I had done this over and over in my mind well before race day! I knew there was a rolling start so I knew I would plant myself at the back of the group and take my time starting. I ended up back in the group and passing by some. Was great. Outside of the girl that was having extremely hard time sighting on the last stretch…she was zig zagging across me. I was told it’s ok to gently nudge her aside or simply sprint past but she looked stressed out and hey, I wasn’t in a rush really. I was enjoying the experience! Here is me exiting the swim and getting ready to head to T1:
Because everyone should strut out of swim…just sayin’
As we exited the swim, the first of the hills (oh my legs quiver with memories) was to run up the boat ramp then take a sharp right up a rocky technical dirt path to a parking lot to T1. I thought I’d be a hot shot and start the “jog” on up, felt the incline on my legs, and said “nope save it for the bike”. I’m very smart! I transitioned (I thought pretty good for a virgin triathlete) and prepared to ride the bike leg of the race.
Please don’t be backwards…please don’t be backwards…
Off and riding on the bike. This is my before pic…poor legs, they have no idea what’s about to go down.
The legs don’t know what they are in for yet…
The bike course is beautiful!! It is a hilly course and a technical course. The distance is a mere 13 kilometers or 8 miles. Short, right? But it was HILLY!! Some as steep as a 12% grade in ascent. Tough and challenging. I learned how to handle shifting and climbing. My only fear was that on the steep climbs I would either fall or walk or both. I am extremely proud to report I did neither!! I did what I thought was best on the course and finished in the time I had anticipated based on my training and current skill set. I survived a tough bike course!
I am finished with the bike leg. I’m so excited to see my teammates!! And to be done…
I was so excited to see my teammates and close friends the Baughs (who took the above awesome pic!)…and I was happy to be riding into T2. I was much faster on T2 I think and now I entered into my comfort zone…the run! I took off my riding gear, put on my shoes, race belt, tighter things up…and began to run out of T2!! Yes…Now on to the run!!
I know I can run well. I didn’t even think about the course because it is only 4 kilometers or 2.4 miles. Guess what? There were HILLS on the run!! What?!? I can run hills, I’m not afraid of hills; however, I just had my fill of hills on the ride and now I have to run them? Bring it on!! I fly downhill on a rocky trail out of T2 area to the wooded area behind the finish line. Down the trail, up the trail, back down a trail hill then a sharp right. After that it’s really a blur but I can tell you there were several quad killer climbs and runs down hills. There were switchbacks and great volunteers cheering us on. There was a beautiful canal that flowed with crisp cold water that I was positive would be great if I could just stop and stand in the flow…my mind wandered…ahem, I snapped back to reality and saw my teammate Brynda up ahead. Time to catch her and bring us across the finish! We motivated each other to finish the race because it was the longest by far the longest 2.4 miles I ever ran…seriously. Those HILLS!! But here I am…ready to finish the entire race:
Approaching the finish…finally done with those hills.
The race was over! I did it! I completed and survived with a smile my first triathlon!
Happy smiles…we are done! Brynda did amazing!
I am happy with my overall time. It was right around where I thought’d I would be but I was handed a nice surprise…I placed 2nd in my Age Group!! What?!? That can’t be?? I double checked and triple checked. It’s true! Although there were only 4 of us in the AG, I placed 2nd and I’ll take it thank you very much!
Me and Ms. 1st place. She was so happy!!
So what are all the little lessons in this race?? Well, there are too many to list and over time I’ll share. But for now I would just like to give a huge shout out to Coach Will from Enduworld and my wonderful Endurance Reno teammates that trained and raced along with me encouraging me the entire time. A shout out for a great race for Brynda and Andrea:
Brynda, Andrea, and me!
And to my husband, a great friend, and great coaching and athletic couple:
Corrine, my hubby Nick, Olivia, Sam, and the celebrity dogs Pebbles and Sunny Rae (little pom)
I have many more trainings, races, and lessons (hopefully more food posts too) to share in the future. But what I would love to hear about is YOU!! What is going on with you with your training and racing? Share share share….please?
Napa Marathon…the race…
There is a lot to be said about the amount of time, dedication, focus, and determination a runner goes through to race an endurance race distance. What is an endurance race distance? Well for some, it may be 13.1 miles half marathon or it may be the 26.2 miles full marathon. It may include distances beyond but for the sake of time and reference, we’ll just stick with the 26.2….
I love this because it’s true. We train and train and mostly in silence pounding out the miles in preparation to our race.
As I have posted before, training taught me a lot of life lessons. I shared some of those lessons with you in prior posts. I try to take up all that life offers in my life an apply what I feel are lessons. Training prepares the body and cardiovascular system to handle the distance; however, the race….oh yes, the race offers so much more in lessons If you are receptive.
So you know I survived my race, you know who was with me, and you know my finish time. I want to share with you what it was actually like to run the race itself. What I felt, saw, and learned about myself.
At the starting line, you could feel the nerves and excitement rise above the crowd waiting for the siren to start the race! I kept thinking to myself…”don’t go out too quick”. I repeated this over and over and over. Then the siren sounds…the race is on! I look down at my HRM watch and quickly realized it was not tracking the mileage!! WHAT?? I am about to run 26 POINT 2 miles and it won’t show on my HRM watch?? Jeesh! This is not a good sign. So I continue to run. Runners are passing me rapidly. Some are clustered in packs of friends and talking already about the next marathon they are signed up for. Some share historical data of marathons they ran before. Some are coaching and cheering on strangers already walking after mile 2 when our first hill approaches. Lots of discussions, laughter, and excitement passing me by as I continue to chant to myself “don’t go out too quick…don’t go out too quick”.
I am running along the course very disciplined and focused on running the tangents properly. CONFESSION: I just truly learned what they meant by running the tangents the night before the race…true story!. For those that may not know this either…you’re in great company because as I found out, there is a language to racing not just running. Tangents are those turns and curves in the road. If the road bends to the left…it would be less mileage on your feet equalling to a faster time if you take the inside narrow elbow of that left turn. Not the center or the outside of the turn. You can add time and mileage if you don’t take tangents. Make sense? Napa had a lot of tangents to tackle. I was focused and taking them like a near pro! Hugging to the left…passing runners as I moved side to side to take the tangents almost running on the gravel shoulder. Oh yah, like a boss! I would occasionally notify my target, ahem, I mean my fellow racer I was about ready to pass….”on your left” or “on your right”. Things were running (pun intended) smooth…GPS finally kicked in…now my minute/per/mile pace is showing…now I only have 23 miles to go. I can do this!
At around mile 4, everything changed. I made eye contact with my running sister Olivia! Remember that beautiful gal…to the left of me in this pic:
I have many nicknames for her because she is one that I have secretly (well it’s not a secret now) watched and mimicked her form, her methods, her badassness. That’s a word…google it. On hills…she’s a beast! Her nickname is billy-goat. She can take a hill and make it cry as she runs up and down it. I watch her running form, her cadence, how she handles running drills, and on some days that I am feeling super sassy, I try to pretend that I can catch her! She’s always ahead of me. On the track, her nickname is little rocket! She’s a little shorter than I so I can call her ‘little’…and it’s truly out of admiration because as I grow as an athlete…I want to be just like her! She’s fast and an amazing athlete, runner, and triathlete. So now that you know a little bit about Olivia imagine my surprise to see her at mile 4 in a marathon. She was waiting scoping me out. She says she needed me that day but I needed her so much more!
I remember saying “What are you doing here at my pace!?!” She was battling a hip injury for the past few months. She trained through recovery and wasn’t sure it was going to hold out for Napa. This was her race to set a personal record (PR). This was her race! Napa would not relinquish anything for her this time. Napa fought back. At around mile 4 she felt the pain, she wasn’t sure she would continue. She knew there were a few of us in the middle and back of the pack that she may run with to see how much it would help if she slowed down. She wanted to test it out. I was her target…I had mixed feelings. I was scared because this elite badass runner was going to hang around me for the entire race. What if I wanted to walk, or stop, or I don’t know…anything. I felt scared and not sure why. hahaha. But that truly was a fleeting thought and a knee-jerk reaction. I quickly realized as we started running together that this was going to be a great journey and experience that I would cherish forever!
She paced me, coached me, and helped me through some dark moments of my race. She watched for me when I hit the physical wall, the emotional wall, and the mental wall. She asked me if I am good on nutrition, did I hydrate, how was this mile compared to last. She had me covered and under her wing. I asked her several times how she felt and she always responded with a positive answer…”it’s ok, doing better”. Well, she was not. She ran with me and pushed me through to the very last POINT FREAKIN 2 miles. The last stretch to cross this finish. She pushed me to finish and sprint strong. I did. I ran across the finish line in 4:22:19…tears in my eyes and joy in my heart! My first marathon done. I am a marathoner!
I turned to find her a literally a second behind me. I turned around, hugged her, and totally balled my eyes out on her shoulder!
The lessons I learned that day include: how to pee outside before the race starts when there is a huge line at the PP’s, that I should have taken my Immodium MUCH earlier the day before than I did, I held back out of uncertainty and could have pushed harder…and when you think you are alone, you are not. Just because you’re strong and independent, you always need someone (sometimes you don’t even know that you do). When the “wall” hits you…there is always a way through it. And finally, during the most intense, most impossible moments of your life when you think you cannot do it, you can! You just have to push through and do it. I had the honor of an awesome teammate, running superstar, badass rockstar, and now my marathon sister help me through a tough race and build a wonderful experience!
Who is your Olivia? What lessons did you learn during a race?
Obstacle course and lessons learned
It’s been almost 2 full months since the last entry. I know you might have been worried that maybe I got lost in the holiday shuffle or maybe I just decided not to continue on with training. Maybe I forgot or maybe life just got in the way. The truth is that my mind is always busy pondering a little bit of everything of every part of life. Based on my personality and ingrained traits, I am an analyst. I analyze almost everything in my path. Yes, it’s exhausting at times. No, I cannot shut it off. It is what I am. It is my superpower and yet my kryptonite.
Where does that leave me with a 2-month gap in blogs? For starters prepare for a long-ass blog. Second, I have an opportunity to share my growth and transformation in that time. This is a time to share what obstacles popped up and some challenges to my mental, physical, and emotional fortitude. Sharing my experiences and allowing you, the reader, to extrapolate what speaks to you. And to share a word and its definition that stood out as powerful to me and what triggered it to be on my radar…that word is OBSTACLE
I have learned that the sport of triathlon trains you for life. Now remember, I am the analyst and as such I can make a correlation of the similarities and identify patterns, processes, and such. With this in mind, I look for valuable data, data that I can extrapolate and use and apply.
Becoming a triathlete is not only tough working on three disciplines (especially when I only really knew how to do one of them…guess which one). 2014 is going to be an epic race year for me and I am realizing that being a triathlete is more than training. It involves all the gear needed to race successfully. There can be a steep start-up cost. No one really prepares you for this. As I become stressed about how in the world am I ever going to afford all this, a life experience pops up as an analogy. It’s like preparing for a baby! During pregnancy parents-to-be often are consumed and overwhelmed by the supplies that are needed and how much it’ll cost. But somehow most of us make it through, pulling out our creativity and awesome resources and in the end, we make it happen. This is my year of a lot of firsts! This is the year of my triathlon-pregnancy with the big prize being my Ironman Lake Tahoe Baby in September.
Another realization during the past few months as training has ramped up is that becoming a triathlete is not an easy journey. A tough journey especially when I went from couch spud (with deep roots and a long list of TV favorites) to an endurance athlete that would rather train than watch TV. There are a lot of growing pains, evolutionary stages, and what I like to simply refer to as “leveling-up”.
Such as in life!
Injuries…oh yes, injuries. I have to say that I have been training extremely smart and cautious to avoid injuries. I worked on all things that I can control. These things include: stretching, foam rolling, chiropractic visits, massage therapy, and good old fashioned rest and sleep. I am very focused and passionate about these things. They help! BUT…what about the things you cannot control? Well, sometimes such things as a wrong foot strike in mid sprint can change up the mix and become the thing you cannot control. During a sprint drill I landed a bad foot strike (it happens) on my left and although I did not notice at the time, this incident would create a mental, emotional, and physical barrier…an inury! Enter tendonitis above the ankle…running along the tendons and the fascia intersection above my left ankle. No sprain…just a pain. Literally.
A decision must be made
Day 1: the first day of awareness. No inflammation yet, just a pain at the bottom of my toes under my foot. I thought I busted a toe and it’s no big deal.
Day 2: after logging mileage, inflammation now enters the equation with slight pain. Okay, it’s on the radar now. A little massage and some BioFreeze and it’s time for bed.
Day 3: after logging more miles, swelling spreads like a virus across the top of my ankle and now there is considerably noticeable pain. Hhmm…there is new data to process. After assessing what I see and compare it to what I know so far as an athlete, I continued to apply ice/heat, raise the ankle, keep rotation moving, apply BioFreeze, and take Tylenol if needed.
Day 6: as the day for my longest run scheduled for my highest mileage week ever in my life approaches, I continue on with my own therapy and continue to accumulate mileage. On the eve of my long run, I evaluate my ankle. More swelling and the pain continues, now up my shin a bit. At this point Napa Marathon is just 4 weeks out. I am at a critical decision point. Do I push through log 22 miles and reach both milestones which would bring me great joy and sense of accomplishment…OR…do I listen to what my body is saying and evaluate the data, the facts, and create a new strategy plan? Do I suffer now and risk the odds of creating a larger longer lasting injury or go hard and reach what once was impossible for me? Tough decision! Choice and consequence or action and reaction…a decision must be made. Such as in life!
After carefully evaluating the information and logically working it through my emotional, physical, and mental check points, I decided to hit pause and treat the injury with a bit more attention, respect, and re-evaluate in a few days. I chose to deploy all my resources 1) the sage wisdom and experience of my Coach that shares the secret tips and tricks to rapid healing 2) my chiropractor to re-aligning my ankle and body after the injury 3) massage therapist to keep the entire body in tune and work on specific points around the injured area 4) and my own knowledge and resources of treating my body as a whole and not only focusing on the point of injury. I focused on stretching, foam rolling, soaking, resting, icing, and making sure my nutrition and hydration were on track to aid in healing. And I had to dig deep to stay focused and balanced physically, mentally, and emotionally. This derailed me. I lost the wind in my sail. I was knocked down. It’s ok to be knocked down…just don’t stay down!
As I am blogging this to you…I am on day 21 post injury and I can tell you that it seems to have been so long ago and forever that I have been dealing with the ankle. This is where the mental and emotional strength pull ahead of physical strength. My total down time with the injury included 5 days of total rest and yes, that includes NO RUNNING or CYCLING! I did swim but used it as therapeutic time using the buoy for assistance while working upper body and stroke technique. Clever huh?
So how does this apply to life? How can a running injury become a positive element in my training and in life? I could have chosen to bring everything to a complete halt, treat the injury, drown in self sadness of not being able to train, and allow it to overwhelm my emotional and mental state of being. Or, I could analyze the data, formulate a strategy based logical decision making skills to achieve a successful outcome. I chose to use it to propel me forward and do what I can the best that I can while trying to maintain balance. Well, for me, the analyst, it was simple.
Now let’s look at the word that was a powerful word for me this morning and that I’d like to share with you! OBSTACLE
Merriam-Webster defines obstacle as “something that impedes progress or achievement” or “something that makes it difficult to do something” or “an object that you have to go around or over: something that blocks your path.”
Let that sit and marinate for a moment but first read this:
How you approach, address, and mitigate obstacles depends on how you perceive the worth of what it is your are trying to obtain. For me, I place a high value worth on my goals this year! I typically do not settle for less than giving my all and I certainly do not like to be told I cannot or should not do something. It’s worth fighting for!
How about you? How do you deal with your obstacles?
“Obstacle.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obstacle>.
Running the Miles 