Trakkers Kits are In!

This weekend was an awesome weekend!

George and I headed out to Rainbow City, Alabama to ride the Foothills Spring Classic Century. It was the first year they have had it. It was a very small group, but the roads were just perfect, and the support was right on! I had my BEST ride of the training season! It was about 95 miles, and it was hot, hilly, and windy. There was one legit climb about 75 miles in up Chandler Mountain. Because I was alone for most of it (which was fine since the roads were great and I was out in the middle of nowhere--my favorite!), I got an escort descending the mountain by a police car. That meant that I didn't have to worry about any cars passing me and I could just bomb down the mountain. Awesome. I said to the cop, "I felt like a pro." and he said, "You look like a pro." Now, lets be honest. I look NOTHING like a pro. But I felt really good hearing that white lie :-) George finished the century WAY ahead of everyone else, of course. But the day was a truly wonderful lift for me. I felt like I could just keep on going at 95. That is exactly where I need to be right now!


Right now....is the taper! I, and most endurance athletes have a love hate relationship with the taper. But I will write more about that later. Right now, I have to get my bike turned in for Tribike Transport. The great people at All3 Sports are going to be awesome and help me get everything tuned up today. But last night, we did a big wheel swap so that I could ride in the race on our Oval wheels. This is what our living room looked like. Crazy!


And I got my Team Trakkers kit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That means I will be sporting this puppy in St. George. Right after binging on Easter Bunny Cake with my family, I did a crazy modeling session in our parking lot. Not my smartest move!
I love love love this kit!!!

This is as normal as I can be. No comments needed about how much I really don't look like a pro either!

Here's the back! Isn't this the coolest kit ever!?!?!?!?


George like the one of me looking simultaneously goofy and tough!


This is me pretending I am crossing the finish line in St. George!!!!!!!!!


And then I considered being a ballerina instead!


I promise I will limit myself modeling in the future. Clearly I am not made out for it, but I am really really excited to sport this kit in 12 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huge workout in in the books (and the legs!)

This is more of a workout report than a race report!

Laura, Mark, and I had a huge workout planned. Laura's husband John agreed to get in his canoe so that we would have open water swim support. I just had to take a picture of this insane car. My bike is in pieces in the back :-) Luckily, John has some wrenching skills, so he had it ready for me to ride post swim!

Starting at the beginning! I left my house at 7:30 am, and helped Laura and John pack up. Then, we all hopped in the car and picked up Mark. We drove up to Mary Alice Lake and hopped in the chilly water.

I can't wait to get my new wetsuit from TYR! Unfortunately, I was still sporting my old one that is huge, and holds a TON of water, I know it just slows me down! We swam with the current and wind, and then turned around and swam against it. I inhaled a few miserable gallons of water. However, it was over in 1.5 hours!

Then, we met one of Laura's friends, who took us on a ton of roads we didn't know, which was great! We rode for 5 hours ride time. At about 4:50, I had a little meltdown, and refused to ride a hard lap around Columns drive. I was D-O-N-E. Did I mention the INSANE wind in Georgia yesterday? It was tough! So the ride time was 5, but we were out there for more like 5.5 (stoplights and one gas station stop where I had a snickers :-) )

The weird thing about triathlon is that, well, then you have to run. I had to have a little self talk to get those running shoes on at Laura's house. It was seriously a mental drain to put them on when you are so tired. I made a deal with myself that if I ran 2 out of the three hours I was allowed to quit. You see, for the most part these deals are just to get yourself going. You are not going to quit, but you make these strange mental agreements to get yourself going.

We had a mini aid station set up, and we hit it twice. I saw some pretzels and I turned into cookie monster turned pretzel monster.

Seriously, I was shoving in pretzels, but was a little shaky, so only about 1 out of three was making it down the hatch! It was a little embarrassing! I do have nutrition plans, and they work, but at this point of a workout, you just take in whatever you can get down.

Look what I just found! I have a feeling that New Balance only makes them for kids. Maybe Avia will make them for me!

By the way, I made it all 3 hours, but it started to hurt in the way that Ironmans hurt. There is this really really deep ache throughout your legs that I have only felt when doing half ironmans or above.

So, I still have some workouts to do, but that was the biggie. That was the one on the calendar that I have been nervous about for a long time.

At this point, I am not as fit as I would like to be going into Ironman St. George. But you know what? I am healthy and have no injuries. I would trade that for any fitness level. Anyone who has dealt with running injuries can understand, I am sure. I am healthy, and I have the workout on the legs!

Late last night, George and I got some takeout from Surin Thai food for me! Basil rolls (which I devoured before we even got home), and Broccoli Tofu with rice. I ate every bite of it too!

This morning, I spent a long time in my Recovery Pump. I love this thing.

One more long weekend of training next weekend, and then a very short taper and a race!

Whoops!

So, it was pointed out to me that I said that I ran 30 miles last week on Wednesday. I did not. I have run 30 miles before, and I can assure you that I did not get up and do an 80 mile climbing ride chasing my super fast husband the next day. I only ran 14 last Wednesday.

Feel better getting that off my spastic little shoulders!

I rode with a couple of friends yesterday, and I was S-L-O-W. After last week, hill repeats were......not great. I decided that I simply did not have it in my legs to go after that hill. Oh well. I just rode up and down it instead of really going for it. And my friends dropped me while riding to the hill. Man, it was not really my day. But I still got in almost 3 hours of riding on a Tuesday after work, so at least there's that.

Here I am as a hill slug:



Not particularly looking forward to running 8 today, because I know I am still carrying a lot of fatigue. I will get it done and then have some rest before this weekend's monster brick:
1.5 hours swimming
5 hours riding
3 hours running

9.5 hours. Seriously. Now we are watching the weather again and considering that Sunday looks better than Saturday! We already did one long workout in the rain, so it might be nice to do this one in sunshine!

I don't think I even mentioned George yet! At the Cheaha Challenge, they now have some road races too, which is why we went! George won 2nd in Cat3 and had a killer race! I am super proud of him! He is pretty close to moving up to Cat2 :-) Go George!

Back Home and Eating Clean!

Our trip to Asheville-my hometown-Piedmont was great. Really really great.

We ate so very well. We stayed at the Carolina B&B. It was amazing. It was our favorite B&B we have stayed in. I would recommend it to ANYONE going to Asheville. The house was beautiful, the food was outstanding, the hospitality was perfect, and the location was cycling friendly. What more could the Dardens ask for? If you are going to Asheville, I am sure you would love staying there! Every morning, we had amazing breakfasts, there were fantastic cookies in the jar (which came in my bento box for rides!), and wine and excellent snacks were out ever night!


We ate at some really great restaurants. Asheville has some great food for such a small little town!

We ate great pretzels at Lexington Avenue Brewery, giant mocajetes of amazing veggies at Salsas, liquid truffles at French Broad Chocolate, crazy good Indian at Mela Indian, and just perfect new southern food at Tupelo Honey. I mean, we ate really really well! There was more too :-) If anyone is going to Asheville, I have lots of suggestions!

After a week of that, I am pretty full. Even with all of that training. Thus, it's back to normal, and I am ok with that! Protien shakes, greek yogurt, apples, bananas, salads, tofu, brown rice, almonds, oatmeal, and natural nut butters--they all sound perfect now. And that is a really good place to be four weeks out from my race! I really want to survive this Ironman, and I need everything going my way for the next 3 weeks and 4 days (who's counting!?). I know a lot of my Trakkers folks are cleaning up their

I took yesterday off, even though I had a swim on my schedule. I got my Retul fitting done at All3Sports (again) yesterday. They have been awesome. My Kestrel didn't quite fit to get the right comfort/power. Fortunately, Kestrel and All3 are really awesome! They went ahead and got some great measurements out of the sessions so that when the next bike comes in, they can have it set up and ready to ride fast! That is really exciting! That means that I will not be sporting my 4000 at St. George, but I will be ok. It never was going to be my fastest anyway!

Long Time No Post

So it's time for me to actually write a blog! I am going to keep it short so that it is not intimidating for me :-)

So many good things have been going on!

That last workout I talked about was great--and super hard!

I recovered from it and travelled to asheville for the week. I had some amazing training!

Saturday: 10 mile run

Sunday: 50 hilly mile ride

Monday: 11 Mile Run

Tuesday: 22 mile ride with lots of climbing

Wednesday: 14 mile run

Thursday: Killer 80 mile rid

Friday: Rest and leave asheville

Saturday: Great 8 mile run with mom

Sunday: Cheaha Challenge! 102 mile ride that summits mount Cheaha twice!

So this is one more big week with a huge workout Saturday. Then one more big weekend, and I am doing my short 2 week taper before St. George!