Running and biking and tris oh my...and waking up at 4AM, oh why???

You know, there's something to be said for sleeping. I like it a lot. I like to go to sleep early, and sleep until I can't sleep anymore. My bed is such a warm, down filled place, all 600 thread count softness of it. I love my bed. When my alarm clock screams at me at 4AM and disturbs my bed bonding time, I get a little angry.

I have been angry since Friday morning, and why you might ask? Were there hammer moments involved here once again? Naturally, story of my life!

Let's rewind a little *insert wavy dream sequence lines here*

I convinced a straight up running friend of mine she wanted to do a triathlon with me. She lives in the City and trains in Central Park, how cool is that, and I told her she could bike train there too. Her girls swim at one of those nifty roof top pools in Manhattan, I told her to get herself some swim lessons and we'd do the Pink Power. This was back in January before I understood my Iron aspiration. She registered and we were going to pop her tri cherry. I was happy to bring her over to the dark side.


I registered for all of my races in January with my husband. We were trying to be proactive and plan ahead hahahahahaha, PHEW *wipes tears from her eyes*. If you know us, you'll understand why that is a truly stupid statement. We had planned to do IMFL, but I hadn't even looked at a training plan at that point and I had no idea the volume of training we'd be churning out at this point in a plan.

So my friend braves I-95 on a Friday afternoon and gets here by 10 o'clock at night. That was good, because I had a 16 mile run with MTT on Sunday. But our race was on Sunday so I decided to run with some friends from MTT on Friday morning at 5:15am, hence my first angry morning of bed separation anxiety.

My husband is a giver, did I ever mention that? After our run on Friday he promptly signed us up for the Tour de Lions century ride on Saturday. "You need to do a Century this year, no time like the present Dee". But I don't wanna do it yet, wahhhhhh, my plan only called for 40 miles on the bike on Saturday, not 100. And I ran a really horrible run on Friday. I got sick in the middle of Thursday night due to being a gall bladderless wonder now. I never know what's going to bother my stomach, it's like playing food roulette I told my favorite training partner ever, Heather. This time, the dirty culprit was cous cous and veggies with a piece of lean pork that I grilled. Hooray for being sick at 1:00AM and for getting sick during the run. But ever the optimist, I told myself I was running in the Ironman, and here I was sick to my stomach. Could I continue? Of course! I'm not going all of that way to not finish dammit. So this crappy training run would be practice for the big show. I managed to muddle through almost 14 miles of the 16. Better then nothing.

Saturday morning I was really nervous to say the least. But I was angry AGAIN my friends. I was roused out of my soft, nest of a bed at 4am, AGAIN to go ride in beautiful Ashland and Hanover. Check out this awesome foursome getting ready to roll out (a very special thank you and hat tip to our newly made MD friends for taking our photo. You guys were great!)

I learned more from my training once again. I need more nutrition when I ride. Eat the WHOLE uncrustable, stop worrying about the calories you're taking in, you're not the fat kid anymore. But I digress. Here I am at mile 60, still looking pretty good I'd have to say....


At mile 88 maybe, I realize I am going to bonk. REALLY???? I dragged my now incredibly sore butt out of bed for a bonk on my bike? Thankfully one of the women I was riding with saw me struggle and asked what we could do. I managed to gulp down a gel, slurp up some Gatorade and muddle on. We were lucky the end of the ride was all twists and turns through picturesque suburbia. No straightaways where you feeling like a greyhound chasing that mechanical bunny with a full head of steam. We somehow missed a turn or something and came up a few miles short, whatevs. I was done as was my rump, I got awfully intimate with my Glide on this ride at each rest stop, but unless I was riding my warm, fluffy bed all that way I was bound to be sore. Ok, enough of that imagery~

Ca-ching!! An (almost)Century in my Ironman mileage bank.

I told my friend I wasn't doing the tri with her after all. I told her my legs were too trashed to even think about it but I would go and cheer her on. That way I figured although I'd have to get up early-ish it wouldn't be 4AM early. Well guess what happened without an alarm clock? Yes, my traitor of an internal clock woke me up, then made me get out of bed. I tested my legs, stiff as hell and feeling awfully wooden. What is going on, why on earth am I putting my RTC tri suit on?? Body stop, GO BACK TO BED NOW. Stop betraying yourself, you DON'T WANT TO RACE TODAY!!! But the toothbrush was in my mouth, my ponytail going up, legs moving mechanically down the stairs. Coffee and breakfast I am thinking, my wonderful husband fixed my aero bars, put my race wheels on and loaded my bike on the car for me already. How could I not go? Off to the race, with two of my biggest fans (my daughters) in tow. They knew Mommy would race and they wanted to see.

I won't go through what happened next, but I did finish the race. It was painful, and hurt and I dry heaved at mile 2.5 on the run, but I did it, and actually finished nearly a minute faster then last year. And of course I am really upset that I didn't do better. If I didn't stop to get my legs underneath me again on the run, I would have done better. And if I were in the 20-24 year old age group I would have been in 3rd place as opposed to 15th out of 77 in my age group. And if wishes were horses beggars would ride.

In case you're wondering, my friend Caryn totally rocked her first triathlon. She finished in 1:28. Awesome time girl, you were looking great too. I need to add a picture of her after she finished. That post race high is still on her face.