Be careful what you eat!

Ok, I am a healthy person and is very careful what I eat, because of my sport. I love fruits and veggies! I think my downfall is, when I like something, I eat it in mass quantities. Not a good thing! There was a time when I would eat oatmeal every morning. Start my day right. Then I discovered this yummy tasting no calorie spray butter. I'd spray and spray even more of it on my oatmeal, then finally decided to just open the darn container and dump half the bottle out into my oatmeal. YUMMY! After many weeks of eating that delicious oatmeal every morning, I noticed my clothes weren't fitting anymore and my butt getting bigger. Hmmm... What the heck was I doing wrong? I was eating healthy, exercising too. Well, I started looking online on the calories and fat of all I would consume during the day. Looked up the zero calorie butter spray and OMG, reading the fine print, there were many calories and fat! What?!? It said ZERO calories in a spray. Well, that's one spray, not half the bottle. What reminded me of that time was that I recently discovered dried veggies as snacks. My favorite being dried green beans. What could possibly be fattening about that? Well, I've noticed this week that I am getting that "pudgy" look, which is so attractive in my swimsuit during my group swim workouts. I'm afraid to go on my run, because of the fire I might start with my thunder thighs. Anyhow, I decided to look up my wonderful and delicious green bean chips. What do you know, but they aren't as low cal and low fat as I originally thought. Serving Size 28 g, Calories 130, Calories from Fat 40, Total Fat 4.5 g, Saturated Fat 0 gm, Transfat 0 g, Cholesterol 0 mg, Sodium 160 mg, Total Carbohydrate 20 g, Dietary Fiber 4 g, Sugars 5 g, Protein 2 g

Darn it! Oh well, back to Subway for the next several weeks!

Training Camp Tallahassee 2010

When I heard that there was going to be a Snapple training camp this April up in Virginia, I wanted to go so bad, but I knew there was no way I could attend due to travel, kids, and work. After talking to a few of my training partners, we came up with a four day mini-camp here in town. Four days of nothing but swimming, cycling, and running. Sounds like fun, huh?

Day one: 4,000 yd swim and 60 min run.

Day one was pretty uneventful. We had 4 people show up for the 4k swim and it went by pretty quick. I’ve had the luxury of catching two different colds in the past ten days so I didn’t feel 100%. A couple hours after the swim 5 of my friends showed up at my house to do an hour run on the trails. One key to get through 4 solids days of training is to keep the intensity down some and we did just that on the run. Nice and steady.

Day two: 60 mile hilly bike and 20 minute brick run.

Only two other hearty souls showed up for today’s workout. Like most of the country, North Florida has had a cold and wet winter. That is why I was happy to see sunshine and temperatures in the upper 50’s/lower 60’s. I felt really good during the ride, and even had to back off some for the 2nd half knowing I had a long weekend ahead of training. The short brick run after the bike didn’t feel great, but wasn’t too bad either.

Later that evening I had a group of training friends show up to do some yoga. I have the Flexible Warrior DVD set of the Yoga for Traithletes. We all got a good laugh of how inflexible most of us were.

Day 3: Local 10k running race, 2-hr bike.

Now I’m starting to feel some of the milage in my legs from the past two day. Four of my training partners showed up for the 5k/10k race. It was cold for the start, in the mid 30’s. Since I was sick earlier in the week, I wasn’t able to do a 15 min run test that my coach wanted me to do. So I decided to run the 1st 15-minutes hard, then back off and cruise the rest of the run and help a training partner run a good time. Isn't it funny how running fast in a race seems so much easier, than having to run that same pace in a training run?

A few hours after the run we met up for the 2 hour ride. A friend was able to round up a few more recruits and we had about 10 people for the ride. Nutrition is not starting to play an important role in my ability to make if through the weekend. It was nice and sunny with temps in the low 60’s and was able to ride w/o leg warmers and get some sun on my white legs. We had some good head winds on some stretches and I was glad to get the ride over with.

The yoga the day before was a big hit and people wanted to do it again after the ride. With my living room full of people, we Downward Dog’ed it for 30 minutes.


Day 4: Judgment Day – 3,500yds, 60 mile bike, 10 min brick run

We had an interesting start to the swim. A group of us were waiting outside the pool to open at 10am. Finally a lifeguard pops out of the building about 10:15 saying that the locker rooms and bathrooms are closed, but the pool is open…..huh? I found out later that the head life guard was out the night before, drinking and partying and decided to have his friends over to the pool for a late night pool party. All good until the cops show up to the city pool at 3am with a bunch of drunk people having a party. One nice thing about Tallahassee is there are a good number of excellent pools available – so we decided to head over to the nicest pool facility that I’ve ever been to, the new Florida State University outdoor pool.

About 10 fools showed up for the workout and I got nice and tired by the end of the 3500. Up next was a 60 bike on flat road thru what we call the Dead Zone. The Dead Zone is this one road that is 14 miles long out in the middle of NOWHERE. It goes on and on and on. Half way through the ride the fatigue of the weekend is really starting to hit me. To top it off it seemed like we had a head or cross wind the entire ride. Not to mention my nose ran down my face the whole time! Ugh! Needless to say, I have mastered the "snot rocket!"

After the ride I wanted to bag the brick run. After lots of complaining and whining, my lovely fiancé made me do it. I ended up running pretty hard just to get it over with and honestly felt a lot better afterwards. Go figure?

So, am I glad I trained that much in a short few days? Mmmm... yeah, I am. Would I do it again? Ask me next year. :-)

Krispy Kreme Challenge

Krispy Kreme Challenge
January 24th, 2010



I have always been curious about the Krispy Kreme Challenge run. How do they do it and do people actually participate in the eating the doughnuts and running? How is that possible?!? Well, in Tallahassee, FL, this was the 1st year that they put on this race. I just couldn’t resist going & yes, participate. Finding out more about what I needed to do to participate, you could be a slacker & only eat one doughnut midway in the 4 mile race or if your have a stomach of steel, you would eat a dozen doughnuts at the halfway point. Yep, I decided to play it safe and be a slacker. I was more interested in watching the fools that signed up for the challenge of eating a dozen doughnuts.
The gun goes off and everyone is running as fast as they would in a normal running race, knowing that once we get to the doughnut stop, it’s all downhill. We get to the mandatory stop, I see runners cramming doughnuts in their mouths, downing it with water. Some people flattening out the doughnuts in their hands to get as many doughnuts in their mouths as fast as they can. For me, they asked me how many doughnuts I would like to eat. Are you kidding me?!? I’ll take one, please. After painfully cramming that super sweet original doughnut down my throat, I started running again. Nothing like, choking on doughnut pieces while your just trying to get air in your aching lungs! Finally, I got to the finishline. Happy to be done with the craziness, but anxious to get back out on the course to see who all was going to be puking their guts out. Those Krispy Kreme Challengers didn’t let me down. The guy who ended up winning the race puked up that dozen doughnuts as soon as he crossed the finishline.
So, I was happy to experience The Krispy Kreme Challenge and ended up being the Overall Female Slacker. Yahoo! Who knows, maybe next year I will go for the real challenge of racing with a belly full of doughnuts.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! I do believe that 2010 is going to be an awesome one. After being a big, fat slacker, after my ironman, it's time to get serious. I'm happy to say that I participated in my local masters swim group annual 50- 100 meter swim today. Yep, that's right, 5000! I must say that I kept my paddles and pull buoys on for most of it, because they are all so dang fast, but it was great. I felt like I was training for ironman again. :-) Well, there are many things I'm looking forward for 2010. I am so very excited about my new triathlon team, Team Snapple. They are the best, but I do wish I lived closer to all of them in D.C.. I cannot forget the ongoing amazing support I get from my favorite and only running shoes, Spira. They have been incredibly supportive to me and I cannot thank them enough!!!! I love Spira!!!! Also, I am going to be doing the World Championship Ironman in Kona! Yahoo! Who wouldn't be excited about that?!? I am also getting married in Kona. Why not?!? It's beautiful and I'm marrying my best friend, my training partner, and the man of my dreams. All in all, I think 2010 will be a great year. Happy New Year!

World Championship 70.3

A week after my first ironman, I decided to drive down to Clearwater to support my awesome coach during his World Championship 70.3 race. I mean, he helped me qualify for Kona, so that's the least I could do! :-)

Now, Coach Dan and I hadn't ever met face-to-face, but I've talked to him enough and e-mailed him enough, I didn't think I'd have any problem picking him out of the thousands of participants.

The electricity that I felt in Panama City Beach for my ironman had moved down to Clearwater. What a cool thing it is to race the best of the best in the world! I did this race in 2007 and have many fond memories of that day.

This year, because the tropical storm had come through Florida, the race organizers felt it safer having the participants race in the bay across the street. It sounded pretty cool to me, because it would be a time trial start for the age groupers. I got to experience that once at St. Anthony's Triathlon this year. Certainly different, but difficult to know where your competitors were with time.

Watching the pros come flying out of the water was exciting. Thinking to myself, "Nope I wouldn't be coming out of the water yet." A few minutes later, "Still probably wouldn't be coming out of the water yet. Boy, I think I should concentrate on my swimming in the off season!"

Once the age groupers started coming out of the water, that's when I really had to pay attention. Looking for my coach. Several tall, fit guys went by me. They looked like they could be Dan, but no dice. Finally, as I watched the wetsuit strippers (or should I say peelers) yank wetsuits off people, I noticed a LifeSports Coaching tri suit (Hey- where's my tri suit?!?) Yep, no doubt that that was Coach Dan. Now I knew what he was wearing, I could track him during the race.

To watch everyone come in from the bike portion of the race, I knew I had to find the best spot. There was a bridge, that apparently everyone else thought of too, where I planted myself. I saw some great triathletes also there watching, like Luke Mackenzie and Miranda Carefrea (I know I mispelled their names. Sorry.)

It was too funny watching the mass packs of triathletes coming in on their bikes. No wonder many of them had faster bike times than some pro cyclists. I do know it was difficult to avoid those packs, just from my experience when I did the race.

Where I was standing was also where the Timex run bonus was. The fist pro to get to that point got some really great $$$$! I had a blast cheering on all my favorite pros like Greg and Laura Bennett, Michellie Jones, Ritchie Cunningham, and Matty Reed.

When I saw my coach, I screamed, "Go Coach Dan!" He looked at me a bit strange, like I was a LifeSport Coaching stalker. I think it was my head to toe in pink that clued him in on who I was.

Watching everyone finish reminded of how I felt just a week earlier in my ironman. The joy and feeling of accomplishment was on all of their faces. So very cool!

I am so proud of Coach Dan and all the other LifeSports Coaching athletes and coaches that competed. Hopefully, next year I'll be joining you.

Yep, One More Ironman Florida Picture

Ironman Florida Pictures