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Monday, December 19, 2011

2012 Race Calendar

It's time to start thinking about the 2012 Race Season. I already have quite a few races planned. I am not nearly ready for my first race (the PF Chang's full marathon), but my husband is "running" it with me so I think we will take it easy and walk/run the course to stay injury free).

January-PF Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Full Marathon
February-Ragnar Del Sol
March-Phoenix Half Marathon (I was going to do the full, but there's no full course in 2012)
March-Tri for the Cure? (I am hoping I can do this, but I have a conference at work that day, so we'll see)
April-Marquee Half Iron Triathlon
May-open
June-open
July-open
August-open
September-Nathan's Olympic Tri
October-Soma 1/2 Iron tri
November-Women's Half Marathon November-Ironman AZ!!!!!
December-Recover!!!

I am hoping to fill some of those open months with a full marathon and some shorter tri's. Here's to a year of racing and prepping for Ironman AZ!

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Meet Scott - aka "Fat Boy"

Hey everyone!  I wanted to introduce another fun Ironman in training.  Meet Scott!

I met Scott on BeginnerTriathlon website a couple years ago.  Debb, Scott, Leah, Kiri, Keeley and I trained for about a year gearing up for our Ironman races.  Debb and Scott took on Wisconsin this year while Leah and I tackled Ironman Arizona last year. 

Scott ran Ironman Wisconsin this year and fell short due to hydration issues.  He is going to give it another go next year with Debb.  His blog is listed below at http://trainfatboy.blogspot.com/  For the record, Scott has lost a lot of weight so I think Fatboy is a misleading name!

Go SCOTT Go!! 

Saturday, December 17, 2011

New Training Bike

Hubby and I bought a Lemond Fitness G-Force Upright Training bike today.  (Merry Christmas!)  I'm pretty excited about it.  It can be adjusted similarly to your road bike and has computerized training programs to help you work outs.  The bike can also track heart rate, watts, and all the other goodies.  The best part about it is that we bought the floor model and got a smokin' deal!

Home gym now has bike, nautilus free weight bench with pullies, jump rope, resistance bands and exercise ball!  We removed one giant shelving unit and took it over to my mom's place today.  She has a new home with a lot of extra space.  She was kind enough to let us put some stuff in her garage!  I'm going to move items over that we don't use alot but can't quite toss.  Once I do that I just need to rearrange and organize the shelves a bit.  It is looking good so far!  We also need to put in more mats, a TV and radio system.  I'd also like to paint and put in a big old fan too! 

It is exciting!  I'll post photos later. 

Friday, December 16, 2011

A rambling blog update

Hello ladies - Sorry I've been MIA.  Lots going on with Christmas and the new job.  Here is my update. 

Well, I've been at work for a few weeks and I LOVE my new job.  It is fun to use my brain in a different way and I am really enjoying the people.  I drive to work every morning thinking how lucky I am.  The only down side is that I am having a hard time figuring out a new schedule.  I was able to go for 1 run during work hours and it was beautiful.  I thought I'd be able to squeeze in more but it hasn't been easy to do.  There has been lots of holiday lunches that have taken up normal work time.  The Tribe has a rec center but I haven't made it over there yet b/c I'm trying to get things done quickly.  Hopefully it is a good gym with nice equipment.  I hear there is a shower there too. 

I know my big problem is that I'm a night owl.  I tend to stay up until midnight (sometimes later) and get up around 6:00 a.m.  I would love to get up early and try to get my workout done.  I know it is doable.  I did it this summer with Annette.  The early morning workout will be my best option if I want to meet my goals for the year. 

They say it takes 30 days to create a habit.  I need a good habit.  My goal is to get up at 5:00 a.m. and work out.  Luckily my husband wants to do it too.  We are going to fix up our 3rd car garage stall, add some equipment to go along with the nice weight bench already in there.  It will take some organizing and paint but it has potential to be nice.  I'm excited to take on this project with my honey. 

Oh, a friend gave me a Garmin to try out.  (310?)  It will be interesting to see how I like it.  I need to get ready for heart rate training with our Ironfit book.  I'm excited to try it.  People LOVE their garmins!

To be honest, I have been really disappointed with my 2011 work out season.  I have skipped races and have been pretty unmotivated.  In the first part of the year, it was b/c I burnt out from Ironman.  The second part of the year, I found excuse after excuse not to do things.  2012 has to be better right?  I did a 2011 overview and wrote some goals for 2012.  I'm sure I'll be expanding on these goals in the next couple of weeks. 




2011

PROS
New job
Family life is great
I feel good emotionally
Found Ironmoms
Weight is stable

CONS
Lost work out motiviation
Lost my #1 riding buddy to work/golf
Lost access to pool

2012

GOALS
Get more sleep
Develop a Morning work out routine
Eat less processed foods and more veggies
Improve all of my race time from past years (CA70.3, IMAZ)



Thursday, December 15, 2011

Las Vegas Half Marathon Recap

Kim and Stacey at the start
This is a long time coming, but I am finally recapping the Zappos.com Rock 'n' Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon that took place on Sunday, Dec. 4. 

The race was huge!!! Approximately 44,000 runners were there and about 38,000 of those were half marathoners.  I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be running a PR with a course that full.  The race took off in front of Mandalay Bay and continued down the strip, veering left at the Stratosphere and then looping by Fremont Street and back onto the strip to finish behind Mandalay Bay.  The best part of the course was that the lights on the Strip provided a great distraction from running.  Having said that, there were also some pretty significant drawbacks.  One, it was too crowded.  To give all runners the experience of running the strip at night, the marathoners started about an hour before the halfs and joined the halfs for their second half of the marathon.  Unfortunately, this meant that all 44,000 runners were on the course at the same time.  This meant that the course was crowded for the entire race.  I ran about .2 miles more than a 1/2, which I think can be attributed to running around people. 

Two, there weren't enough port a potties.  The starting line was crazy, so it was nearly impossible to get to the port a potties at the start.  I passed up the first set up port a potties assuming there'd be more soon.   I was wrong.  Nearly 3 miles later, there was a single port a potty, which I waited over 7 minutes to use.  That's a lot of down time for a race.

Three, the finish area was a mess.  I crossed the finish line in a pack of about 50 other runners.  It kind of ruined the fun of crossing the finish line.  Then, it took us nearly an hour to make it back to the car.  The whole area around the Strip was chaos--I felt bad for anyone who was vacationing in Vegas that didn't know about the race.

Fourth, I am not sure this was a negative, but it was odd--the race was at night and it was cold (really cold for Vegas standards and the finishers at the end were treated to some rain).  It was difficult to plan on what to eat all day and when due to the start time. 

Despite all of that, I finished in 2:28--not a PR, but if you subtract 7 minutes for the port a potties and a couple of minutes for the extra distance, it would have been!  That's surprising to me.  Overall, I am not sure I would run the race again, but I did have a great time in Vegas and was excited to see my friend Stacey and start the race with her!

After the race, we hopped in the car and took off for Phoenix--arriving home around 3:00 in the morning.  Then, I woke up the next morning and hopped on a plane to South Africa!  I had the good fortune of getting to present at a conference there and then  took a little side trip to Kruger Park.  While, I didn't get a lot of running in (I ended up being sick, the temps were high when I felt better, and I was a little afraid of crossing paths with a highly venomous snake running around Kruger), it was a great trip and I am getting back in the swing of training as of today!