Today

Today, because I needed to, I rode my bike.

 

5.21

I did that run, ran for a bit over an hour, 5.21 slow, hilly miles.

 

Now my back is sore. Taking today off to rest up for tomorrows long bike ride

and Sundays long run.

Postponing

I'm writing this post so I can postpone my 1 hour run a bit longer.

 If I had started earlier on my run, I'd have been finished by now. Its 9:45am, my time limit to fuck around is until 10. I have no idea where I will run to, which direction to start out going or where I will end up. I don't want to run hills but if I want to get off this main road then hills are a must. I could drive somewhere to run, I guess. But I don't want to run on country roads I don't know well nor do I want to run on city streets where shitty drivers are texting and stinky exhaust truck blow past every 2 minutes.

The speed limit on my road is 45 but people blast past going 60 all the time. I've had to jump off the road many times because people veer toward me then think its OK and they didn't hurt me so they can just keep going.

GET OUT OF YOUR CAR, MOTHERFUCKER,

SO I CAN

KICK YOUR ASS.

I HATE inattentive drivers or people who are obviously texting. They scare the shit out of me and ruin an otherwise good run. Not that I enjoy running or kicking ass but if you veer toward me you deserve an ass kicking.

Cheating

I know a lot of triathletes, men and women, most of them are just like me, just going about their training and doing their best. Working out, training, getting better, signing up for more and more races.

And then there is one that has to do everything better than everyone else, has to be the best, wont take instruction, his way is always best and better than any other way. And this person cheats.

Dave did a Half Ironman distance race last week and after he did the turn around on his run and was heading back out for his last 6 miles, his back started hurting and he couldn't lift his left leg at all. He had to stop running and be driven back in to town.

But meanwhile, the generator back at the finish line was turned off and the timing mat turned off, so all the times were messed up. So what did the race people do? They took every ones first half times and just doubled them, giving everyone who had crossed the half way timing mat a finish time. Meaning, Dave got a finish time when he didn't even finish the race.

Usually I'd just laugh this off and say 'How funny' but this time, NO. He DNF'd and has no finish time and not only did he get this fake time but it qualifies him for Nationals. If he takes that spot then someone else who did deserve to go to nationals wont get the invite and that's total Bull Shit.

So I emailed the timing people and told then of my concern and I really hope they do something about it.

Makes you wonder how far he truly went on his Winterman miles, when he said he had finished 8 Ironman distances over the winter.

I DNF'd my second IMCDA but I FINISHED it and still I owned my DNF. Its on my FB page, right there for everyone to read. I'm honest.

Farm Sharing

Most people would think of FARM SHARING as me letting other people come here and utilize our farm for gardening or something but what I'm talking about is with the in-laws. They have 5 acres a couple miles away without any horses on it and I am running out of grass here, due to the super dry spring and summer we have had. So I asked if I could take all 4 horses over there for a month, until it rains and the grass has a chance to grow again. That way we wont have pastures of weeds here.

 

Here is there horse, Reign, in our front pasture.

They said sure, come over, we'll check out the fences. So off we go and what do we find? A total mess. No fence is complete or safe for horses, no water trough is clean or holding water, except one that is totally nasty but it could be cleaned and the pastures are all weeds. No grass is growing, its all weeds.

 

ALL WEEDS.

 

Our pastures hadn't been used in at least 2 years so they had plenty of grass when we moved in but also plenty of black berries. Lan spent a lot of time mowing them and now the horses have been grazing. The back pasture is bigger and has more stickers but less grass growing then the front pasture.

I'm thinking about buying some round bales to supplement the grass, just so they slow down a bit on the grazing. I'd love to have 10 tons stored in the barn before winter because I have a feeling this winter hay will be $500 per ton and I just can't do that.

 

All the dark spots are poop piles.

 

 

Poop and very weathered fencing.

 

 

I also want to take the tractor out there and scoop poop out of the front pasture. Lan and his dad think I can just drag it but horses don't eat around their poop so its got to be picked up.  I will do that later this week when its cooled off a bit and after I've done my daily workout, supposed to be only 75 in a couple days. Spreading composted poop is a whole other story, that's perfectly fine to do.

 

Last week we purchased 5 gallons of semi gloss white exterior paint and I'm going to repaint the porch rail and this fence. I wanted to pressure wash it first but with the sand in the well Lan said paint over the dirt if need be. Of course, I'll brush off what I can before I start.

 

I think the fencing will look pretty sharp when its finished.

Post 400

Welcome to my 400th blog post here. I know some of these have been downright bitchy and others boring but I think some of them have been pretty good too. I enjoy sharing my horses and triathlon stories so even though I've never gotten even one single comment, I'll continue to do this.

Tri news: I am tired, but then, I am always tired. Todays ride was 38 miles in 3:08 and it was hot outside.

Horsey news: They are all doing fine and Joey & Reign are happy to be together.

Napping ponies

Big Training Days

Tomorrow is a big training day for me.

3:30 bike

:50 run

:30 swim

On Monday we rode over 4 hours, 50 miles, 3338 Feet of elevation gain. Tomorrow I'm NOT going to ride hills, oh, there will be some but not that many.

Today I swam a mile in 44 minutes, there was a lot of 'Ewwwww' ing when we touched lake scum or came to plants. Yesterday I ran 6.25 miles with Suzie.

I'm already tired and haven't even done all of the workouts I'm supposed to get to.

See Jane Run Half Marathon

I had high hopes to PR on this race, its mostly flat and the weather was expected to be perfect.

I had been told about the bottle necks at the out & backs but I wasn't prepared for parts where only 2 people could squeeze through IF they were going in the same direction so I had to slow down for a couple places like that.

Things were going great until I got to about mile 8 when my stomach started to feel icky. Used porta potty, barely went. Continued on but didn't feel better. Knew I needed to poop but even when I used next porta potty things weren't happening. Had to walk to keep discomfort level down. That was when I realized I forgot my Ninja Moves aka Ginger. I had planned on testing it out at a race and yesterday would have been perfect.

And I forgot my GPS so I didn't know my pace. I can't believe how fast I became dependent on a watch. I asked one lady her pace at mile 6, she said 12 something but I felt like I had been going faster than that. Then at mile 9 I asked another lady and she said 10:49 and that felt closer, even with the walking.

At mile 10 I started to speed it up, so I'd be done faster and could stop sooner but at mile 11

I SAW A LADYS LEG SNAP AND BREAK

right in front of me. She was running toward me, I heard a snap and she went down, I turned to assist and she had rolled onto her back, holding her leg and
even though there was no bone sticking out IT WAS BROKEN above the ankle, similar to this photo.

I realized in nanoseconds that it was beyond me so I yelled out 'Somebody call 911', people were converging on her, another girl was already calling 911 so I continued on to the turn around. It really freaked me out, I had to walk. What if I break my leg like that? She didn't trip, I thoroughly checked out the ground and there wasn't anything to trip over.

So anyway, my finish time was 2:39:15 and I had hoped to beat 2:24. Oh well, not all races go as planned and this was just another training day.

I was 40/66 in my age group, 542/767 total finishers, my pace was 12:10. I'm good with that.

At the end they gave us a great lunch and champagne and we got to keep our glasses.

Bike, Run, Bike

Lately I have been getting up early to start my days. After Lan gets ready for work but before he leaves, I am out of bed and ready to get going. Usually I just get dressed in my workout clothes because I have to do that first, no reason to change later.

 

Today I rode out at 7:30am and met Linda over at Banner Forest for a trail run.

It was a good warm up to ride first, leaving home was chilly but not cold at all. Its 6.6 miles to the parking area.

 

I'm getting pretty tan on my face, arms & mid thighs down to my ankles.

 

 

 

Once there, I stashed my bike in her van and we ran trails for 40 minutes, went about 2.73 miles. Look how dusty my legs got and my feet inside my shoes and socks weren't any cleaner.

 

After the run I continued my ride, went another 12 miles. Along the way I found a passport, some dude from Dominican Republic. There was an old Chevy pickup truck there & I'm sure it was his so I left it under his wiper blade.

 

After I got home I painted the bathroom and ironed a patch into my wetsuit.

 

Horsey News:

Lan suggested switching out horses so probably tomorrow Joey and Reign will come to the front pasture and the girls will go into the back pasture. We'll see how that works out for them.

My Own Ironman Training

Yesterday I put the 1000th mile on my tri bike since January when I started this ironman training.

 

 

It was 7:51am and I was just down the road from home and beginning my hour long ride around our block.

 

Many of these miles were done on the bike trainer and when I was just starting I'd only get 10-12 miles per hour of riding. Now I'l going outside and usually average 14-ish but its hilly around here so I'm OK with that. On the flats my average is a LOT higher.

I've been working on riding into the head winds as much as I can, its usually windy in Arizona and I don't want to be the one person who says I wasn't expecting winds. Duh! You're supposed to know your course.

 

You need to check out the elevation and know what its going to be like so there are no surprises. This might scare some people but its only 400 feet up over 19 miles and 300 of that over about 5 miles. Its not terribly steep.

But the winds can be pretty tough, last year there were 30-50 wind gusts. not only was it beating up the riders but it was also blowing tumble weeds into the road, causing a reported 600 flats.

 

The run is like this

I don't think its going to kill me either.

 

 

 

IMCDA 2015

I had two real live friends that I know and love and some facebook friends that I've never met do Ironman Coeur d'Alene last weekend. It was blazing hot, reports of up to 107* in some places, the asphalt was 140* and blistering feet out on the bike course, burning through the cycling shoes as they rode.

I felt for sure Windy would finish but she wasn't able to, the heat was too much and she was smart enough to stop before she got injured, at mile 82 of the bike. Connie stopped at mile 80 but she had that planned.

Steve did finish, at 10:48pm, with just barely 12 minutes to spare. 16:48:40

Jim did not finish, Vicki did. Jim reported that at a couple of the bike aid stations there was no water and ice. That is unacceptable. Ironman knew WEEKS ahead of time that it was going to be hot, unreasonably and unusually hot. There is no acceptable reason for them to have no water and ice for all these athletes who paid so much money to be put through this.

I've been at several half marathons where they ran out of water or cups but it wasn't nearly this hot and it wasn't a full distance Ironman.

Vicki had blisters from her cycling shoes so she hobbled the entire marathon with them, just like I did (but mine weren't from the heat).

Ironman isn't about being easy, there are supposed to be challenges and heat is just one, others being cold water, high winds, steep hills and anything else you can imagine. You know, train and plan for this but if your body cant do it then it cant do it.  I feel bad for every single person who DNF'd.