Hub City Hustle Triathlon 2014

There I was, 5:30am, taking a shower to prepare for my 4th year on this course. Even though the name had changed this year, it was the same swim, bike, and (slightly different but) same area run. I woke up before anyone else in my house, got dressed, ate breakfast, and then began to mentally prepare myself for the race. I had written down times that I wanted to be at each turn on the bike. They were motivation points to push myself harder to attain my goal of 16.5 miles in 55 minutes. My swim was going to be close, but if I could just get to transition by 12 minutes, I was happy. On my run, I just wanted to run the whole thing. I tried not to worry too much on my actual time for this portion, but I wanted to do the entire race without stopping...and...I DID! Check me out before we started:

Here is the breakdown of my race:
Swim: 12:15 (average pace of 2:06 per 100 yards, and that is a 1:03 per 50 yards, which is faster than my average in the pool)
Transition 1: 1:46 
Bike: 56:29 (average pace of 17.4 miles per hour)
Transition 2: 1:09
Run: 33:21 (average pace of 11:04 per mile)
Total time: 1:45:02 (you can view my route here).

My goals were as follows:
Finish swim in 12 minutes, total transition time under 4 minutes, bike 16.5 in 55 minutes, don't stop running, and finish in 1:45:00. 

I missed my swim by 15 seconds (not a big deal), I smoked the transition time by 1:05, I missed my bike time by 1:23, I DID NOT stop running, and I missed my over all time by 2 seconds! I WILL TAKE IT! Besides...look where I was in the standings...

I was super excited when I got done! I only showed a difference of 1 second from my watch to my actual time :) Here I am finishing! Figures they snap a photo and I'm preparing to hit stop!!

Annnnnnnnd, I won the Athena category! This is my first win, or placement for that matter, ever in a race as an adult! I was pumped!

Even Khloe got excited...she wanted to stand on the podium too and sing to the crowd!      

                               


Then, after she played a bit...I got to actually stand on the winners podium! *They actually called my name right when Khloe said, "Mommy I have to go to the bathroom". So, yeah...I asked her to hold it for a sec and went to get my trophy!

I was happy my parents got to come and see me! Khloe had a great time too!

I was very proud of myself after this race. I tried my best and didn't give up. I pushed through and kept telling myself I only had this much farther to go, I could do it! Through all of this training I have seen over and over one trend...we all are very good at talking ourselves out of victories or accomplishments. We are our own worst enemy. At mile 1 of the run a man passed me and said, "You are doing a great job young lady" to which I replied, "Thank you, I'm trying to do my best!" When he fully passed me I looked down at his age...he was 70! He smoked me in that run and you know what...it didn't matter. I only wanted to beat that girl that had done this race for the 4th time in a row now and had not run the whole run course yet. That was my goal, to beat her. To be better than that girl that had done this race for the previous 3 years! And you know what...for the most part I did! I was actually slower in my swim time by 2 seconds and only faster in my run from last year by 11 seconds, but it didn't matter I met my goal...I didn't walk. Check out my 4 years of this race course statistics:

                   2011                      2012                      2013                     2014             
Swim         11:48                    12:44                    12:13                      12:15
Tran 1        3:05                     2:11                       2:02                       1:46
Bike           1:27:08                1:05:00                59:05                     56:29
Tran 2       3:09                     0:59                      0:49                       1:09
Run           38:21                    35:51                    33:32                     33:21
Total         2:23:29                1:56:48                1:47:43                  1:45:02

As you can see, I have done significantly better than when I started...other than my swim!! I was in beast mode in that first year. I was so scared I was going to do bad, I trained 3 days a week for 6 months for that swim! And, it shows...it is still my best yet! I have gradually made improvements for my bike. First by purchasing a road bike after year 1! That mountain bike on that route was terrible! Then I recently got aerobars and they too have helped!

Remember, you can do whatever you put your mind to. Don't be scared of failure, it is our failures that help us in our successes. It gives us a point to start from. I am glad I have continued to compete against myself and look forward to beating myself again next time!

Here's to the next workout...until then...

April 

October workouts

I cannot believe it is already October! I made sure to hit the ground running...literally! I will update this as I go this month. Here is what I have done:

October 1: I ran 1.51 miles in 13:25, which is an average of 8:53! WHAT?! Then, I did 80 reps in 6:45. You can view my run workout here, and my reps workout here.  The cool part is that you can see my heart rate. I have been trying to get a better reading of what "normal" is for me and it seems that I hover around the 167 to 171 range while working out. I hope to have a more realistic view of my maximum heart rate soon. Once I got done running this great run, I went inside and busted out 10 reps each of the following in this order:
Push-ups, switch lunges, plank wall with knee in, squat jumps, burpees, squats with a dumbbell swing (15lbs), straight up legs to straight up seated abs, and crunches with rotation to both knees.

You can see the difference in active, HIIT segments, and floor exercises. While ab workouts kill my mid-section, they do not increase my heart rate. This was a great workout though!!

October 2: Today, my goal was to take a spin class to wake these legs back up on a bike. I only have 2 more weeks until the Hub City Hustle! I got to class, waited 15 minutes and blah...I was the only one to show up so he called it. We,, now that it was 12:20 and I literally only had 20 minutes to get a max workout in before having to go back to work, I decided to run a quick 2 miles. Little did I know that this would in fact be a quick 2 miles! I ran 2.01 miles in 17:38, which is a pace of 8:48!! WOW OH WOW! I was ecstatic when I got done! I pushed, but not too hard and I ran with my knees high and focused on my hyperventilating. You can view my route here. I have not had these kinds of numbers in years! I was very proud of myself and only hope that what I am doing is helping my body to be healthier! 

October 3: I decided to get a run in after work today. It was a slight bit cooler than normal, but felt so good! I ran 2.25 miles in 20:47, which gave me an average pace of 9:14. You can view my route and heart rate here. I began to have a little trouble breathing through my nose and you guessed it, by morning I was sick! Not too bad, but enough to not workout most of the next week. 

October 8: I decided I needed to do something this week since I had been sick and not done anything! I took a spin class which lasted 41:21. You can view my heart rate here.  I did good staying within the endurance zones of 65% to 85%. I averaged 121 on my heart rate, which was right at 65% and maxed at 150, which was 81%. This is the fat burning zone and was a good seaway back into working out this week.

October 11: Today was Heart Walk 2014! I decided I was well enough to push Khloe for 3 miles. I was well enough, but that girl sure has grown! Man, she would lean over to look at the ground and I had to use most of my energy to keep her straight! But still, I ran the whole thing, 2.97 miles in 30:26 with an average pace of 10:16. Not too bad with pushing a 4 and a half year old who weighs 42 pounds plus the stroller! You can view our route here.  Check us out after the run!

October 15: Well, I tried to work out on Monday the 13th but the pool was closed! At this point, I have not swam in 12 days and I would not be able to workout Tuesday! So, I finally got to swim today and did a great 600 yard swim...only to find that once again my watch shut off and back on when I was almost done with the swim!! I even tried to shut off the GPS so it would not search while I swam. I guess I didn't save that correctly. My watch stopped at 10:59, right between 500 yards and 525 yards. Based on my 50 yard pace of 1:06 and where I was at the end of 500 yards when I hit lap the last time before it shut off then on, I determined that I finished 600 yards (12 laps) in 12:36. It doesn't even show my lap breakdown, so I will not connect this post to my workout. This gave me an average of 2:06 per 100, which was a great swim after no swimming in 2 weeks! I have the Hub City Hustle this Saturday and after today, i feel pretty good on my swim segment! Tomorrow I hope to get a good spin class in! Then Friday a final swim before Saturday! 

October 18: Hub City Hustle Triathlon, on a separate post.

October 20: Today I decided to do my lap builder runs around campus. My goal was to do a half of a mile at a time and then drop down and do 20 reps of something...more than likely 10 push ups and then 10 of something else. I completed 2.59 miles in 29:13 and you can view my route here.  You will notice where I ran and stopped to do reps! It took me 5:12 to do all 100 of my reps, so it took me 24:01 to do the run portion of 2.51 miles, which is a pace of 9:34 on average. Here is what I did:

Ran 0.51 miles  4:15
10 push ups and 10 switch lunges    0:57
Ran 0.50    5:06
10 push ups and 10 squat jumps traveling   1:12
Ran 0.50   4:51
10 push ups and 20 mountain climbers   1:07
Ran 0.55   5:36
10 push ups and 10 tuck jumps   1:19
Ran 0.37   3:31
10 push ups   0:37
Ran 0.08   0:38

This was interesting because I was seeing new scenery around campus as I did this. I was experiencing interference, obstacles, traffic, and natural terrain. This helped me to better mimic an obstacle course. Next time, I think I will cut my run down to 0.25 segments and do more reps and see how far I can go! This one was fun today :) 

October 22: Today I decided to decrease my run length and increase the number of times I did reps. I didn't get a chance to run as far as I did on Monday, so I only needed up doing 10 more reps. But i think I did a good job! Here is what I did:

Ran 0.31 miles  3:09
10 push ups and 10 switch lunges    0:59
Ran 0.36    3:18
10 push ups and 20 mountain climbers  0:57
Ran 0.36   3:40
10 push ups and 10 squat jumps traveling  1:27
Ran 0.34   3:28
10 push ups and 10 tuck jumps   1:27
Ran 0.38   3:41
10 push ups and 10 switch lunges   1:31
Ran 0.42   4:12

I liked doing this around campus. It gives me obstacles to encounter and overcome, whether it be hills, acorns that hurt my hands when I do push-ups, cars, and so on. I ran a total of 2.17 miles in 21:28, which is a pace of 9:53. I did a total of 110 reps in 6:30. This really is a great workout to keep your body moving. You can view my route here. I am trying to do a better job of staying in my workout zones for my heart. I still don't think my target maximum heart rate is correct!

October 24: Today I changed it up a bit. I decided to run a mile inside on the treadmill then do my reps and then end with a mile. I did good staying close to my target heart rate for 85% of my max, which for me is about 168. I averaged 154 in this workout, but maxed at 181. I am still doing better at working out where I need to to build endurance. You can view my heart rate information here. Below is what I did today:

Ran a mile: 9:18

2 rounds of the following exercises:
   10 push-ups
   10 squats to the bench with a 15lb weight
   10 tuck jumps
   10 dumbbell push-ups in a squated position 15lb weight
   10 plank knee in/weight in then kick out 10lb weight left
   10 plank knee in/weight in then kick out 10lb weight right
120 reps total in 7:57

1 round of each:
   10 simultaneous seated dumbbell pres-ups straight then weight turned 5lb weight 20 total
   10 kick backs left 10lb weight
   10 kick backs right 10lb weight
   10 push-ups
50 total in 4:41

Ran a mile: 9:22

WOW! I am glad I have the weekend to recover! This was good though. I wish I had more time. These workouts are awesome!

October 28: Today was an easy does it run around campus. Nothing too strenuous, just a run. I did 2.01 miles in 19:55 with an average pace of 9:53 per mile. You can view my route here. Only 3 more days until the Dallas Spartan Beast! Ahhhh I am so excited and nervous for this!

October 29: I decided to get one last run in before the big race on Saturday. I ran 3.03 miles around campus at a very comfortable pace of 10:20 minutes per mile. I was just trying to keep my heart rate up, but not too high. You can view my route here. My average heart rate was  164, so I am doing better at staying at my 85%  (167) of my max rate (194). Then I walked 0.50 of a mile in 7:44, which is a pace of 15:36. I was not trying to walk super fast, but I was trying to maintain my heart rate, which averaged 147. You can view my route here. I just wanted to get one last workout in before the Dallas Spartan Beast that will be this Saturday!! I am super pumped for that one. I will post soon. Here's to the next workout/race! Until then...

April