Big Training Block (Part 3) My First Century Ride

A couple of days after I got back from Blowing Rock, my A/C unit was dead. I checked the electrical box, the furnace circuit breaker was tripped and I couldn't reset it. I called an electrician and found out that it was tripped because of the A/C unit. I scheduled another appointment with a heating and cooling company. The verdict was I needed a new one. The compressor was broken. For an 11 year old unit, it wasn't worth it to replace the compressor, may as well get a new one. The timing for a broken A/C was never right. The temperature was creeping up and it was impossible to stay in the house, so I stayed in Rebecca's house in the mean time. Work was busy, scheduling different companies to come to give an estimate, keeping up with mid week training were hard. Oh yeah! Forgot to mention that I had a century ride on Saturday and an 18 mile run on Sunday.

The only good news this week was the weather on the weekend was super awesome. High 60's and mid 80's. Couldn't ask for a better forecast. The century ride that we were going to do was Jackson County Brevet. I heard about this ride from a couple of co-workers, Doug and Carlos. They loved the course. Susan, Sarah and Eric were doing it too, they also did this ride last year. Riding 100 miles wasn't too terrifying especially after riding 84 miles in the mountain. It would took me the same amount of time for that distance. I knew what it was like sitting on the bike for 6+ hours.

I drove up to the ride by myself. I left a little too early from home and got to the start a little before 6AM. The ride started at 7AM. Even though I had 8 hours of sleep, I was a little tired when I got there. I went to a nearby gas station and bought a 5 hour energy drink. A dose of caffeine was perfect. It seemed taking a long time but finally we wheeled down. One thing that I didn't like about an organized ride was the start. Imagine hundreds of cyclists rode 1-2 feet apart for the first 10 miles or so. It drove me crazy. I had to go around people and couldn't keep my eyes off from the people in front of me, just in case they were slowing or stopping.

Finally after the first water stop, I had a little more room. We wanted to stop no more than twice. The first stop we made was at Mile 38. The theme of the water stop was Hula. A couple of male volunteers wore  hula skirts and coconut bras. The rest of the volunteers had a lei around their neck. After a bathroom break and refilling the bottles, we were off again. The terrain was rolling with just a few steep hills. One time I looked at my Garmin, it was 67 miles. I thought to myself, my ride was done, had we signed up for a metric century. We made another stop at Mile 70. They had watermelon. It was perfect for a warm day.

The last 10 miles of the ride, we were heading back to town. The traffic picked up a little bit. I got stopped behind a red light. Susan, Sarah and Eric were ahead. A few miles before the finish, I saw Susan on the side of the street. She was waiting for me. How nice! Eric and Sarah were ahead but they stopped and we all finished together. They said since it was my first century ride, they wanted to finish with me. They were so sweet.

The last few miles

Final Turn

The next day I ran 18 miles. Honestly I didn't know how I got through it. I was putting a foot in front of the other. The last mile I picked up my pace and ran sub 9 min pace. I guess I was sandbagging a bit. After the run, I met up with Eric, Sarah and Susan at Sarah's neighborhood pool. They ran at the park. We went to to Moxie, a burger joint that was pretty hip. I had an Angus burger with fried green tomatoes with pimento cheese. Dessert was King Pop's chocolate sea salt. Well deserved meal!

Big Training Block (Part 2) Blowing Rock Tri Camp

The view during the ride

Before I knew it, it was time to leave for the triathlon camp in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Mary first mentioned about the camp back in January. I was looking forward to it. Karen always talked about the epic weekend. She thought it was awesome. She went with the Iron team last year. The camp started on Thursday. Katie and I drove up on Wednesday. Leaving at 10AM from here was a great idea. It gave us time to eat lunch, relax a bit and get ready for 4 days of multiple workouts. We arrived at Zap Fitness around 3PM. The drive was pretty easy. Blue Ridge Mountain was pretty. The weather was pretty cool, around 60F. I wasn't going to bring a jacket but I was glad I did. We were the first ones to arrive. A couple of hours later, Karen, Lauren, Mary and Mike came. I had no idea how long we were going to ride tomorrow. Mary wouldn't tell me. I was begging a bit since I messed up on nutrition last week, so I needed to know exactly how many bottles, gel and solid I had to prepare. The goal for tomorrow's ride was to nail the nutrition. It wasn't a great feeling when the only thing that you could think of was, when this ride was going to end, while you still had 30 miles to go. Katie told me they rode 6 hours last year, so I was mixing my bottles with 6 hours in mind. That meant I had to consume at least 1200-1300 calories.

We met up with Susan and Sarah at an Italian restaurant for dinner. The food was great. I was so hungry and ate a big plate of pasta and meatballs. Right after dinner, they hurried back to the cabin. They talked about Mary's brand new bike. I knew they were going to do something evil because they were giggling and looked so excited.

Marking Mary's brand new custom bike

On Thursday morning, I got up at 5AM. We had to be ride-ready by 6.30AM. From the cabin to the start of the ride was less than 5 miles away but the climb was steep and long. We decided to drive to the start. The plan for the day was to ride for 6 hours. From the start, all of us would ride to the south for 45 minutes, turn around and go back to the start, then ride to the north for 45 minutes, turn around and ride back to the start. Repeat. That summed up to 6 hours.

  

I enjoyed the ride. Pretty much I rode by myself almost the entire time. I rode with Susan the last loop.  Look at the view on the background. Gorgeous! Climbing the last hill after riding 80 plus miles was a torture. As I was climbing, there was a hiker that oddly stroke a conversation with us. He asked if I've done this ride before. I said no. He told me that I would be sore tomorrow. Thanks, bud! Had he known what Mary planned for us the next day

After the ride, we went back to Zap fitness and ate lunch. I tried to take a nap after that but didn't have enough time because it was time to swim. I brought Mio Energy with me, so I was drinking that the whole time. I needed an extra dose of caffeine. Mary and Mike took turn taking a video of us swimming. They would review them and gave us feedback the next day. We ended the day by going to dinner separately. I just wanted to go to bed. I didn't care about dinner. Since I was carpooling with 4 other people, I couldn't do that. We went to Mellow Mushrooms. It was good but their service was not fast. I finally went to bed around 10PM.

Day 2 was a long run. It was 3 hours long. The great thing was, after the run, we didn't have any other workout. Awesome. We drove to Cone Manor. It had a bunch of trails. Everybody was going separate ways. Some went up and some went down to Bass Lake. I was with the latter group. Again, I ran by myself the entire time. Running alone didn't bother me. I've been doing that since January. I had a bottle with me and left another one at the beginning of trail. The trail was quite, serene but it was rocky. I hate running on an uneven surface. Plus, there was a lot of horse manure on the trail. Apparently there was a horse barn and people would ride their horses on the running trail. Bass Lake was beautiful. I think that was the only area that was flat. Too bad the trail around the lake was only a mile or so. I wish it was longer. I ran on the maze and circled the lake a couple of times, then decided to run up. Even though I was very careful to watch where I was stepping, I mildly twisted both ankles. It wasn't bad but I was nervous. I got back to the top, went to bathroom and refilled my drink. Crap! I still had an hour. I had no choice besides running back to the Bass Lake to kill time. Running back to the top was awful. At this time, every incline was more painful than before. I had to walk several times. Finally I made it back to the parking lot. Half of the group were already there.

Cone Manor Park

After the run, I went to the creek by the place we stayed and soaked my legs in icy water. It was cold. I accompanied by Lauren, Scott and fish, that tried to eat our toes. We also had a stretching session that was led by Mary.

My hamstring... my poor hamstring...

In the afternoon, we had a one on one swim video review. Everybody had homework to do. Swimming was the biggest challenge for most of us. It didn't matter how good you were or how long you had been swimming. There was always room for improvement. Dinner at Zap Fitness was awesome. We had salmon with mustard sauce, green beans, red quinoa and rice and caramel raisin oatmeal cookies. Yum!

Day 3 schedule was 3 hour ride and 1 hour run in the morning and followed by 1 hour swim in the afternoon. Honestly it was like a ground hog day from day 1. The view was gorgeous. I rode by myself the whole time. You were either up or down. After the turn around, I decided to get off the bike and took some pictures.

At the via duct

After finished the run, I took a different trail to run. I ran to Flat Top mountain. It wasn't flat at all but the view was amazing. I could see the city of Boone or maybe Blowing Rock from the top.

I took less than an hour nap after I was done. It was so hard to get up but it was swim time. Instead of swimming for an hour, we did some dry land exercise for a good 15-20 minutes. Some planks, crunches, Superman, basically abs and back strengthening.

That night we went to dinner at a local restaurant. The food was good. Then, we got back to Zap Fitness and had wine and ice cream (these were left over from the previous night). To replace the amount of calories that we burnt, we did eat a lot.

Day 4 agenda was a one hour ride, packed up, drove to a lake in Tennessee and head home to Atlanta. The open water swim was my least favorite part because there was really no safe area to swim, too many boats and jet skis around. There were too many geese. You could tell from their poop on the beach. We still managed to swim continuously for 50 minutes. We said our goodbyes to other teammates and coaches. It's been a great training up in the mountains of North Carolina.

Driving home

Training Day Motivation

Today I found this race day motivation on Linsey Corbin's blog (She's an American pro triathlete that just won IM 70.3 Honu)... It's really cute. This is what I need to listen to when I bike or run.

What I Am by Will.i.am
If what I am is what’s in me
Then I’ll stay strong - that’s who I’ll be
and I will always be the best
“me” that I can be.
There’s only one me, I am it
have a dream I’ll follow it
It’s up to me to try.
Oh! I’m a keep my head up high
Keep on reaching high
Never gonna quit
I’ll be getting stronger.
And nothing’s gonna bring me down (no!)
Never gonna stop, gotta go.
Because I know
I’ll keep getting stronger.
And what I am is thoughtful
what I am is musical
what I am is smart
and what I am is brave
what I am is helpful
what I am is special
There’s nothing I can’t achieve.
Because in myself I believe in oh…
Gonna keep our heads up high
Keep on reaching high
Never gonna quit
Just keep getting stronger.
And nothing’s gonna bring us down (no!)
Never give it up, gotta go.
Because I know
I’ll keep getting stronger.
What I am is super
what I am is proud
what I am is friendly
what I am is grouchy
what you are is magical
what you are is special
There’s nothing I can’t achieve.
Because in myself I believe in oh…
Gonna hold my head up high
Keep on reaching high
Never gonna stop
I’ll be getting stronger.
Nothing’s gonna bring me down (no!)
Never give it up gotta go, oh… yeah…
I’ll keep getting stronger.

Big training block (Part 1)

The way I get my workout schedule from my coach is through Training Peaks. It's a great tool. As an athlete, I see my schedule for the week. I enter the completion time and post activity comments to keep my coach in the loop. After last week's recovery week, the next training block is getting tougher. This weekend's long ride was 80 miles and long run was 17 miles. The following week we are going to the tri camp in Blowing Rock, NC. The following weekend is a century ride. My first one ever!

I was dreading the 80/17 workout, more so on the bike than the run. Biking is always a challenge for me because I'm not fast but I work hard at it. I did get better each year and especially this year since I started taking Will's Ultimate cycling class in Jan-March. We rode at Silk Sheets. There were quite a few people that joined us. Susan, Kevin and I were the only ones that rode 80. The rest were 50-60 miles. Ellen was so kind to SAG for us. I would say the first 40 miles were fine. I would like to stop less often but since we were in the group, we regroup 3 times in the first 40. That's a mistake for me. I don't like stopping that many times. I should have gone by myself. The second 40 were painful. The wind picked up. At times, I was scared to be on aero but the wind was gusty. Mentally it was so hard to talk myself into riding faster and picking up the cadence. I was so glad when it was finally over. It took almost 5 hours to ride 80. After I got home, I poured the excess fluid from my aero bottle. It turned out, after I counted, I only took 180 calories per hour. Way too low. I put my comment in Training Peaks. I looked at my notes from 2 weekends ago when I rode 70 and I felt much better and faster. It was 230 calories per hour. No wonder why the day went badly. Lesson learned. Mary caught on that too. She emailed me and asked to get the calorie intake to at least 200. I couldn't agree more.

First SAG stop

At Mile 60

I went home, took a shower and ate. I have not been taking an ice bath after a ride. I think rolling, stretching and drinking a lot fluid after a long ride help me more than ice bath. I was following IM 70.3 Honu. I was rooting for Linsey Corbin, an American pro, and she won. I didn't nap after the ride, I felt tired at 6PM. I decided to go to bed at 6.30PM. I didn't feel like eating dinner because I was still full from lunch.

I got up a couple of times and went back to sleep. I was finally up at 5.45AM. I went to Riverside Park around 7AM. The plan was to run the 8.5 mile loop twice. That way I could refill halfway. I turned on my Garmin and the battery was low. Crap! I thought I would have enough power from yesterday's ride. It was weird to run without a watch. I had no idea what my pace or HR were. I ran based on how I felt. My legs were fine. I just felt scared about how I would feel 10 miles from now. It was easy to talk myself down. Running by yourself for 17 miles. I started a little pity party, then I kicked myself in the butt. Stop it. You're healthy and can run. Today would be another great run. After 3 flat miles, I started running on Eves Rd which was hilly. It was up, up and up. Martins Landing was hilly too and the downhill part wasn't a pleasant downhill. It was the one that you had to keep your torso up and brake using your hamstring so you won't fall forward. The first loop was good. The second loop was hard on hills, which was expected. I walked a couple of minutes on the steepest hills. I wouldn't run this loop twice ever again. It hurt. The last few miles I found a second wind and picked up my pace.... or I think I picked up my pace.... The greatest moment was I saw my car. That's my finish line!