Tri Training and the Tri Clinic

At my marathon last year, I ran a few miles with a fella and we talked about our dream races. I brought up that I had a five year goal of participating in a half-Ironman (70.3 miles), and he let out that he had just finished his first half-Ironman the previous spring. Talking about his experiences made me want to swim/bike/run one even more. At the time, I hadn't ridden a bike since I was about 8 and the only swimming I had done was doggy paddling with the kids. I did do an indoor triathlon in early 2012, but I did no real training for it and felt like I "winged it" rather than aced it. His advice to me was to stop thinking about it too much and just go for it. He said to sign up for a half-Ironman and the pressure of signing up for it would push me to train for it. I was not quite as ambitious as that, but I did look up triathlon races around Dallas later that day as I lay recovering from my first 26.2 run.

I raced in the McKinney Salty Dog Triathlon in June 2013, with very little training. I had swam a handful of times, and the longest bike ride I had done prior to the race was a 10 mile ride with friends the Monday before the Sunday race (and the longest before that had been about 5 miles....eek!). I was woefully undertrained, but still finished with a time of 2 hours, 12 minutes. My goal had been to finish in under 2.5 hours. And did I mention that I did the bike portion on a mountain bike?? And that there were "rollers" (which felt like freaking mountains on my mountain bike!).

Immediately following the triathlon, my running group ladies (who had cheered me on at the race) and I went out to breakfast at Spoons. It was there, eating a pimento cheese sandwich with bacon and jalepenos (seriously, it's delicious!!), that a group of us ladies decided to do our next triathlon. Seriously, I have a problem with signing up for races immediately following other races! So, on September 14 I will be competing in the Cooper Institute Fall Sprint Tri.

With September being only a few short months away, I decided to up my game a little with the tri training. One of my friends found a bike group that meets on Sundays for 18-25 mile rides. They let me borrow a bike so that I can test ride bikes and find one that suits my needs and I have been enjoying the comfort of a road bike. I'm seriously praying that by some miracle, I can afford one before race day. Doing another tri on a mountain bike will not be fun. It's seriously a lot harder! My other friend has offered to teach me swimming technique, and we've been able to get one lesson in so far. I've done a little training on my own, but still not as much as I'd like. This is all going on, of course, while I am at the beginning of my marathon training. Because that's how I roll :)

My friend Shannon discovered a triathlon training group called Tri Daily (the DFW Tri Club). Yesterday they had a triathlon clinic with workshops on running, biking, and swimming. All of which were free of charge and included childcare (which is awesome because Derek had to work). We went to the biking and running portion, and they totally worked us over!

The biking portion took place in the LA Fitness spin classroom. They talked about drills that you could do on the bike (one legged biking is the only one I can remember) and techniques for riding efficiently (feet parallel to the ground) and how to climb/come out of the saddle. I have a hard time with coming out of the saddle because I have very weak core muscles. I've been doing the 30 Day Shred DVD again two - three times a week, but I still feel pretty wimpy - especially trying to come out of the saddle on a road bike that weebly wobbly from my lack of being able to control it while I'm out of the saddle.

The run clinic focused on getting you to run on the ball of your feet rather than your heel. I know that I am a heel striker in running and walking. I have tried to correct this problem by trying to remind myself of correct form and aiming for more fore-foot strikes, but retraining yourself to run correctly is a hard task. And it hurts! By landing on your fore-foot rather than your heel, and pushing off more efficiently, you use a different set of muscles. Those muscles are often undertrained due to your continued improper form, and it can be a little painful/irritating at first while you relearn to run with the correct technique. The drills to help you accomplish a fore-foot strike, though, made all of us in attendance feel a little silly. The way that they had us running almost looked a little prance-y. Okay, we all kind of looked like tinkerbells :) Or at least felt like it! But after the drills, they had us run a few laps around the parking lot, and really I could tell a difference when I focused on the way my foot was hitting the ground.

Overall, the Tri Daily Tri Clinic was really enlightening. And it opened my eyes to the wide variety of people participating in triathlons. At the McKinney Salty Dog, it seemed like everyone there was a hard body and had perfect muscles, had completed a half or full Ironman with the tattoos to prove it, and looked like they had done hundreds of tri's before. My friend and I who competed both felt a little out of our league and were intimidated by the type of people we found at the race. However, at the tri clinic, there were people of all ages, shapes, sizes, and abilities. It was awesome! A lot of the people that were there were already members of the Tri Daily group, which is kind of like my running group, but focuses on multi-sport training rather than just running. And it's lead by trained coaches with focused workouts helping to create triathletes from the ground up. I'm really thinking about joining Tri Daily. At the Tri Clinic, they had a little expo, and they also had another group there - Triple Threat Tough. That group seemed to have a lot of workouts in The Colony (vs Tri Daily which was Grapevine, Dallas proper, Plano - and maybe someday soon even Allen and McKinney), though, which is a bit of a drive for me. I do admit, though, I liked the jerseys/trisuits of Triple Threat Tough better than Tri Daily (what? You don't pick your tri club based on the shirt design?? Oh, me neither).

I learned a lot yesterday, and feel ready to take on my triathlon in just a few short months. Right now, my biggest hurdle is tackling tri training while also marathon training. It's a tough combination and it's hard to know how far to run each week and still be able to cross-train in the other tri disciplines. I know I'll finish both races, and that is what really counts. It would be nice to go into them confident as well.

Big D 5k Race Recap

The Big D race takes place each year in April and is put on by Mellew Productions, a local race organization company. I had originally planned on doing the marathon, but after my December 31 marathon at the New Years Double and the 5k race the next day, I ended up with painful tendinitis and a bad attitude towards running. I actually disliked running for a few weeks. I had forgotten about how joyful and exhilirating running can be, and all I could focus on was how uncomfortable it was and how much pain I was in. It took almost a full month before my tendinitis subsided, and then took another couple of weeks to get back into the rhythm of running again. By February, I was thinking of running again, and started upping my mileage. I think the highest I got was 15 or 16 miles before it came time to do a taper for the Texas Independence Relay (someday, I'll get around to posting about that race haha). After the Texas Independence Relay, I really was just sore. My knees hurt. I was achy. I felt like a big baby. A big running baby. So I sucked it up and decided to run the 5k.

After deciding to run the 5k, I decided that I was going to run it fast. So I started really focusing on getting speed and tempo runs in. By the time the Big D came around, I felt prepared, but increasingly nervous. I had set a time goal of running a 5k in under 30 minutes and I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to make it. I was a nervous wreck. I know a 5k in under 30 minutes seems pretty "easy" to some runners, this would be a big deal for me - a self-described "slow" runner. Getting to a sub-30 5k was like a rite of passage to me. Proof that I was officially a runner.And really, it's funny because I consider anyone who runs - at ANY speed - a runner. But, I have always had trouble identifying myself as a runner. That will be a discussion for another day though. I guess that point that I want to get across was that I was nervous. Very nervous.

I got to the race and used the bathroom. It was a very long line since there was a marathon, half marathon, and a 5k all in the same day, with start times separating the full/half and the 5k by about 30 minutes. After a bathroom break in the ultra stinky, toilet paperless port o potty, I decided to do a quick warm up lap. I ended up running about a mile as a warm up. This was the first time that I had ever run a warm up lap. It felt great and helped me bypass those pre-race jitters. I got lined up towards the front (but not *too* close to the front to be in the way of faster runners), and got ready to start. The horn beeped, I hit start on my garmin, and off I went.

I had already decided that I was going to run my 5k for my family. My first mile, I dedicated to my husband. He is cautious by nature and researchers products/items/actions extensively before making a major decision. Like him, I had read, reread, and analyzed blogs and running articles about the pitfalls of "going out too fast." So I was conservative with my first mile. I slowed down - even though I felt like I could sprint ahead. I conserved my energy and waited. This was probably a good thing because the first mile of a 5k race is when all the people that lined up ahead of you - and are actually slower runners or run/walkers - decide that they are going to either A) stop running with no warning directly in front of you (this happened to me and I almost collided with the person! I sometimes want to yell out, "Runners on the LEFT walkers on the RIGHT!" at races because people just don't seem to follow this rule and end up slowing others up or causing accidents), B) slow down and walk, or C) figure out that they went out too fast and are now huffing and puffing while you motor past them. This particular course zig-zagged through Fair Park in Dallas and the corners on some of the turns in the first mile were pretty sharp. I saw it causing a few accidents of runners colliding and I also saw people with jogging strollers getting held up because they couldn't make the tight turn. My watch dinged and I was off to mile 2.

Mile 2 I ran for my sweet daughter (who happened to be 2!). I ran for her during this mile because mile 2 of a 5k is always a little hard for me, and my sweet girl is always trying to run fast to keep up with her older brother. She has to use her energy and kick her legs to keep up and she is a determined little girl with a lot of spirit, and there is NO WAY she would let him run off without her trailing behind. I, too, wanted to kick it into overdrive and run with ambition and determination during mile 2 - to catch up to those that were ahead of me. I picked out female runners ahead of me and focused on passing them. I call this chasing ponytails because usually I'm just looking for a ponytail peaking out of someone's baseball cap to distinguish who I am "chasing." I chased ponytails and passed a few people. It felt good!

My watch beeped and I was at mile 3 and I was feeling great still. I dedicated mile 3 to my son, who runs with reckless abandon. Who loves to run and runs with joy and passion and absolute love. It's beautiful to watch him run because he is so happy and natural (and has GREAT natural form too). I picked up my pace at mile 3 because that's what Danny would've done. I picked a ponytail way in the distance and chased her. I chased her down hard too. We ran together, panting heavily for a good quarter mile, if not further. Finally, I broke free and ran ahead of her. It felt amazing to pass her - mainly because she put on such a great race. It felt like we were athletes and seriously competing with each other. Soon after I passed her, my watch beeped and I had only .1 miles left to go.

The last .1 miles, I dedicated to myself. I poured in all my hardwork, all of my training, my desire to win, and I just RAN for it. I sprinted. I used every glycogen store my body had left. And I finished in less than 30 minutes. I was so happy I wanted to hug everyone around me. The girl I had raced toward the end finished and I went over and chatted her up for a few minutes. We had a great conversation. She was a newer runner and had been running less than a year and had improved her 5k time by almost 8 minutes. Very impressive!

My final time? A PR of 27:40 and I was 4th in my age group!! I actually camped out in the results tent because I was pretty sure I had a chance at placing 3rd based on the previous year's results. However, I was almost a minute and a half slower than the 3rd place winner. I have already decided that this will be a race I do again next year for the 5k - with a goal of coming in 3rd or better. I do have to say, though, had I not been so close to "winning" this year, I would probably not be doing this race next year. Mellew Productions does quite a few races in Dallas, and I've attended a few of them now. My overall impression is that they are not very well organized and let details slip through the cracks. For instance, my friend ran the Big D Marathon, and the lead pace car ended up going an extra mile and a half or so...which made the marathoners run over 27 miles instead of 26.2. For those of you who have never attempted a marathon, even a step over the 26.2 mile marker feels horrendous. You are tired, hungry, and just ready for the race to be over. It is brutal. I can't imagine having to run the extra mile and a half with planning to only do a marathon! Mentally, that had to be horrendous. Mellew didn't really issue much in the way of an apology and really seemed to put the blame on the pace car and the runners. That doesn't settle well for me, personally (especially since this race was a Boston Qualifier and people were trying desperately to get their BQ). I, however, was happy with my PR and will forever hold this race special in my heart because of it.