The countdown

Holy H&%$, S@#%, F*&^,

Yep, my mind is a sailor these days! How are you guys feeling?! Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote anything, but this summer has been crazy/really kind of awesome. But I can't wait until this beast is over and my life doesn't revolve around adapting my day to accomodate exercise. Lots of exercise. And perfect timing, too...teachers go back to school on the 30th so we have a 6 a.m. flight home. Think I can hide under my desk?

TAPER feels good. Although I was an idiot yesterday and after the run and swim, I stood up ALL day in the kitchen cooking/baking. What came over me? I don't know, but I was standing in the kitchen from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m....didn't sit down one time after the 1:40 run and 3000 swim. And my legs were killing me last night, man did they hurt! Which makes me nervous...I'm going to be using them a lot longer than that in 6 days. %^&%&**(

So here's the Wolfe plan: Jake, his dad, and I are driving down to Kentucky. We're leaving Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. and it will take about 12 hours (less than driving to Ohio!). So we'll get there by Wednesday night. Jake's dad has a hotel room so we're staying there W and Th. night. When are you guys coming in? I know Catherine comes in Thursday evening? Shef...Friday?? It looks like we should do our bike on Friday and then we can check our bikes. THere is a swim available on Saturday a.m. from 8-10 in the river that would be nice to check out before we take the brutal plunge on Sunday. So we'll meet up in Louisville, do the race debriefing, get our gear taken care of, and then shit our pants together. Who's bringing the butt cream?

PACKING. I want to get some of this packing done today and I'm completely overwhelmed. (Also, I can't pack tomorrow because I have an eye appt and then coaching from 3-6 and the eye appt is actually a follow-up from one I had on Saturday...apparently I had ulcers on my eyes?! No wonder they hurt. I'm not supposed to wear contacts for like a month. I said, "umm, but I'm doing this race..." so she said I can wear them on the bike. I won't see much on the run. :) )Anyway, PACKING?! I'm just going to bring a whole crapload of stuff and then can we sit down together and figure out what to put in to all the different "bags" we get?? Fantastic.

how are you guys feeling?

jboo

p.s. - Ashley - I'm so sorry to hear about your injury! That's awful! And I read your blog post twice...thank you so much for all the tips and we'll be thinking about you next week!

p.p.s. - Beth...taper starts soon for you, too! Less than a month away! But if you change your mind and want to try and sneak in in Kentucky, I'd love to see you again. :)

Out...

Hey guys, I didn't get to post on here a whole lot, and don't really know any of you guys besides Shef, but wanted to pass on my good lucks to you guys. I have a partially torn quad as of last week and therefore am now out for Louisville. It sucks, but I know its not smart to push my body to try and race when it is not completely healed, this is something I want to do for the rest of my life, not just a few more weeks.

I did get to go down to Louisville and do a half iron right before I got injured and it covered a lot of the course for the full, so wanted to pass along some tid bits. It is probably going to be hot, very hot, it was the day of the half. You won't notice it much on the bike because you have the cool breeze from you zipping through the hills :-) Just make sure you are drinking, a lot, on the bike to prepare for the run. The electrolyte tablets are great too for helping with this. They are something you should be able to use without pre-training with them all that much, so maybe give them a shot on a few rides and see what you think. The hills really aren't that bad out there. There is one nasty hill on an out and back portion (like ride 1694 or something). Enjoy the downhill, get into aero and go, because you will turn around and go right back up it! Use your gears smart (a lot of people were trying to push through in a high gear and it wasn't going well, I was close to granny gear, but passed over 10 people on the ascent just because my legs were actually moving). Enjoy the scenery- oh my gosh is it beautiful out there. There are a ton of horse farms with acres and acres of land. There was one point on the ride where I was riding and there was this beautiful Thoroughbred galloping along side me in his pasture, I had to slow down and just be at peace for a minute at some of God's beautiful creations. As for the run- just keep moving forward. Less than 1% of first time ironmaners run the whole marathon, so just keep moving, whether its a shuffle or a walk, just keep MOVING!

Alright, I think thats all for now. Oh yeah, the swim - use the current!!! But you guys are all swimmers so I don't think that will be much of a problem for you. Just remember it is a river so the current is the strongest in the middle - use this to your advantage, if you are swimming against the current stay towards the edge, if you're swimming with it, move more towards the middle.

I will be thinking of all of you, trying not to be bummed about not being there racing too, good luck and most importantly, HAVE FUN!!!

Alrighty so here goes it! I started school last week and got dumped on! I did manage to get up at 5 every morning (well mon-thur) to workout before going to school.....wow was that hard with very little sleep (ave. 3-5hours). School is a lot of work but tons of fun and just recruited one of my friends to spin class tonight so I might have another training partner!

As for the training.....swimming is going to be totaly fine.....biking --> i did my first century ride a few weekends ago with 5000ft of climbing in about 6 and a half hours (not including the fancy rest stops, it was an organized ride with unlimited beer afterwards!).....not horrible but my longest ride before that was maybe 60....as for the runs I haven't done anything long enough by any means :( I need to work on that. This weekend though my tri team is going out to hagg lake, close to portland, and we are going to do some open water swimming and of course some biking and running afterwards! I'm also doing an olympic triathlon next weekend at the same place....pretty hilly course so we shall see how that goes. Anywho I wouldn't reccomend trying to work, go to grad school and train for an ironman at the same time (I'm sure Beth know's how hellish it is) it sucks.

Jill you asked all these questions where are your answers to them all?

hope all is well and relax and have a few beers this weekend to celebrate the 4th! I'm drinking one right now when I'm supposed to be reading for class! woops

cheers,
Catherine

Update me

Hey ladies,

A little over 8 weeks until Louisville, and Beth...10? The end is in sight and it looks like we just have to survive a couple weeks of hellish training before TAPER. Boy, doesn't it feel good to see that word again? Anyway, I want to hear how things (yes, including training!) are going for you guys. Are you all healthy/un-injured? What's the longest ride you've been out on so far this season? Who has done some open water swimming? How do runs go? Spill the deets. I miss you guys.

xoxo

Questions

Why hello my lovely ladies!

First...I apologize for being M.I.A. School ended with kids TODAY and I expect to have a life again (albeit with IM training) so Catherine - I'll call you back! :) And can we get a nice blog shout-out to Beth on her ENGAGEMENT!!!! So...spill all the juicy details!
I've been working out and all was well until this weekend when I attended the Denison 5 year reunion. I did my workout (with Amanda!) and it was alright, but then I came home (after puking outside of Shorney?) and my motivation has been on the down slope. I'm muscling through it, but it's harder. So here comes my questions:
1) Long run this weekend and I'm wondering if you guys are training your long runs with "walks' built in? You know dang well we'll have some walk breaks in the marathon so I'm wondering if I should train with them, too. I did the Flying Pig marathon a couple of years ago and our plan was run 10, walk 1 (minute) and that's how we trained the whole time. So I haven't done any walking yet on my runs, but I'm thinking maybe anything over 2 hours I should build some in?
2) Crap. I swear I had more questions. (I also puked in a subway bag in Greg Haar's car on my 14 hour drive home on Sunday). So, I'll let you know when I remember my tri questions.

Hope you guys are doing well and have a great weekend!!!
Jill :)

3) I remembered a question: HILLS. This week's bike said 5 X 5 min. hills. Where the heck do you find a hill that takes 5 minutes to get up?? I live in MN. We don't have mountains over here. What to do?

4) Love you guys.

Hello!!!!

Hi guys! Thanks so much Jill for adding me in, I'm excited to be able to post now! So- my name is Ashley and I am training with Shefali here in North Carolina. I have been keeping up with all of the posts and share everyone's fear, sometimes lack of motivation and frustration.

It seems like I am exhausted all the time, and can't eat enough to keep my body moving. None the less, though, we have to remember what we are doing, and how amazing crossing the finish line is going to feel, whether its on 2 feet or on hands and knees :-)

One thing that I did last week was watch a race recap from Ironman Louisville 2009. It scared me to death, but trust me - I didn't miss any workouts last week! haha. Try finding a motivational video, they are pretty awesome. I will try and find the one I watched last week again and post a link to it.

I can't wait to meet all of you, I've heard so much about you guys from Shef!

Have a great day and happy training!

Scared Shitless

So Shef I almost started crying because of that and I think because I'm so god damn scared of this thing that we are doing. As you guys know I have a coach but of course he isn't there for everything that I am 'supposed' to be doing......I have been doing an OK that is only and ok job on keeping up on my week day workouts but you all know me I like to have my fun on my weekends and I have been traveling a lot so that doesn't leave too much time for a 3 hour bike ride :( I need some push from somewhere to get my ass to stay on a bike for 3 hours at the moment. Anyway the other weekend I did do a mini tri with my tri team and we went out to a place called Hagg Lake.....water was 53 (f'ing cold) but I managed to borrow my coaches wetsuit (man's wetsuit=big) and another guys sleeve top (very big) needless to say I could barely move my arms and got some mad rashes but a good experience. Glad I don't have to wear one in the race come August. Anyway after that we did a bike in gorgeous weather but i got my ass kicked so really my biking needs to be picked up but the run felt pretty good aftewards....only 3 miles but up and down a hill.

Alright that's all I got but still I'm super scared and need some push from any of you! miss you all and very excited to see you soonish!

betty