Step Away From the Cake

and recovery week is over. I really pushed myself Sunday and I was sore and tired until yesterday. I had thought to swim this morning but sleep won out :) Last night I began picking out the rest of my races for the season. I have a couple I just have to do and a couple that I've wanted to do for a few years. Unfortunately they are all grouped together. Here's what it looks like: August 27: Rosie Wall 5k Sept. 17: Na Wahine Sprint Tri Sept 24: Century Ride Oct 1: Windward 1/2 marathon Oct. 8: Ko Olina Sprint Tri End of Oct: Haleiwa Sprint Tri The Rosie Wall 5k is just a fun run to raise money for charity. This will be viewed more like a training run. Na Wahine is my nemesis. Last year I freaked in the swim and the race took me 2:08. Based on my Tinman performance I should be able to do: 500m swim: 12 minutes 12 mile bike: 40 minutes 5k run: 30 minutes Total time: 1 hour 22 minutes. I can totally do that if I train hard. The Century Ride is something I've always wanted to do...

Tonight was my last stroke clinic and I'm bummed it's over. I've learned so much and come so far in 4 short weeks it's truly amazing. Tonight we did some interval training. We were going to do 8 x 50 on 2 minutes. The main idea was to keep the 50's consistent. Back in June (the last time I timed my 50s) I was doing them 1:04ish. Tonight they were :54. That is a huge improvement. 10 seconds per 50 is 20 per 100 and on and on. That's really great. The first night we did a stroke count. Mine was 28. Last week we did a stroke count and mine was 21. I was stoked. Tonight we did a stroke count/timed 50. I did 26 and 28 strokes for the 25. I was a little dismayed until the instructor explained: I'd given up some strokes in favor of speed. You can't have both, really low stroke count and speed. You have to sacrifice one for the other. That made it easier to bear. I do need to work on that though. I want to be fast but I don't want to work too hard at it ;P O...

May I introduce the 1 million dollar dog. She is also known as Nala. Nala was born with bad knees. When she was 1 year old we had to have her right knee cap anchored because it didn't track properly. At that time we were told she would probably need her other knee done in the near future. 7 years passed and there was no indication of problems with either knee. I thought we had lucked out. In January her left knee started bothering her. We were told she may have a partially ruptured ACL. A 10 day supply of Rimydal and she was her old self again. Life moved on. The weekend before July 4th she couldn't walk on her right leg. It was so bad and continued so we took her to the vet. $200 later we didn't know anything. Her knee cap is thickened indicating severe arthritis and there may be some ACL involvement on that side also. The recommendation; see the orthopedist. Last night was the orthopedist. He examined her thoroughly. Said there is lots of arthritis in both knees. Impossib...

After resting most of yesterday and going to bed early, I'm up way earlier than I planned on and have decided to get this race report out while it's all still fresh. PRE-RACE: Knowing my swim fears, I've been practicing some visualization techniques. I've also taken a thing from WW and anchored calmness to an item. For 2 weeks everytime I thought of the swim I'd touch the item and become calm then visualize myself doing the swim calmly and confidentely. Apparently it worked. So the night before I got all my gear ready and packed away in my car. I had eaten well all day and hydrated. I ate a light dinner and was in bed by 8:30. Of course I couldn't sleep and spent most of the night tossing and turning. 3:00 am came way tooo early. I got up and started the final preparations. Got my coffee, made myself something to eat, and got dressed. By 3:30 I was out the door. I arrived at Kapiolani Park at 4:05. I got there really early for a number of reasons. The...

My goal with this race was to handle the swim. No freaking, no stopping, just swimming. I did it. I could not believe how calm and in control I was the whole swim. WooooHoooo!!!!! Unfortunately I made a couple of mistakes. I was so focused on mastering the swim I let the run fall by the wayside. Also, I was so excited for having done so well on the swim that I went all out on the bike. I mean all out. By the time the run came around I had nothing left in me. Here it is by the numbers: Swim: 800m 19:37 (2:25 pace) T1: 4:24 Bike: 40 k 1:41 (17.7 mph) T2: 1:43 Run: 10 k 1:30 (14:36 mpm) As you can see I laid it all out for the swim and the bike. By the time it got to the run there was very little there. A much longer report to follow, I just had to get it out there though - I DID IT!!!!!!!