CHESAPEAKEMAN BIKE; NUTRITION

Hey, everyone, Nancy has posted a great report about this event. Everything she wrote, I went, Yeah! Yeah, me too! Yeah, it was just like that!

Except I didn't throw up.

And it took me two tries to find the Special Needs stop. Maybe Nancy noticed it on her first trip past it because after I missed it they started advertising themselves via bullhorn :-)

And although I didn't see Nancy's unsportsmanlike guy riding side-by-side with his Dear Whoever in the van, I had to put on my brakes when a driver pulled out of a string of about 5 cars to pass the rest of them, with me coming along in her oncoming lane. Did she pull back into line? No, she just kept coming at me. There was no shoulder. I hit the brakes and slowed down. I didn't have to get off the bike, though.

Nancy's food discoveries always make me want to try them. Uncrustables, hmmm. So, are they more durable and/or less ooze-y than just home-assembled PB&J on Wonder Bread? I'm all for the cheapest option.

I don't think I included, in my somewhat-vague description of my bike ride, that all-important information on my nutrition and hydration that everyone always wants to know. At least I do.

I had set my watch to beep every 10 minutes for a drink, with a longer beep every half-hour for food or a salt capsule. Food was a mixture of Starburst jelly beans, Wal-Mart Great Value Fruit Smiles, Wal-Mart Great Value Fruit Slice Candies, cheese Combos, and string cheese. I had 68 oz of Gatorade Endurance in my Camelbak, and 2 24-oz water bottles in my frame cages. I loved my food mix. The jelly beans were a little too sweet; I'll probably skip them next time.

First half-hour, all I took was water.

After that, every 10 minutes I took 4 long swallows of Gatorade from my Camelback; every half-hour a handful of my weird party mix, and every hour a salt capsule, at which time I drank water rather than Gatorade.

I was counting on the Gatorade to do double-duty for both fluid and calories/carbs.

Last year I loved it when the half-hour beeper went off, because it helped mark nice big milestones of time; I often thought, "Wow, food time again already?" This year the long beeps seemed to come even sooner. I loved it. I was flying! I must have started my timer on the 2nd of the 3 10-minute intervals instead of the first, because the half-hour beeps weren't always coming on the half-hour, sometimes 40 minutes or something. This confused me a little, especially late in the ride, when I forgot whether it was salt time or not, and whether I had eaten anything at the last beep (I got off schedule when I was hungry before a beep and then skipped eating on the beep)..... I'd be pedaling like mad, watching out for bumps in the road and fighting the wind, and "Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep...." OK, what am I supposed to do? Did I take salt on the last beep or the one before that? What's it time for, and is it time for it already???

I wonder if they make a talking watch, like blind people often have, that you can program with a robot issuing audible messages: "Eat. Something. Now." "Take. Salt. Now." "Drink. Water. Now." "Breathe. In. Breathe. Out."

Later, when I was clearing off all my watch splits and resetting it, I disovered that I had set it for TWO 10-minute intervals, not three, and it had been beeping to eat or take salt every 20 minutes. And here I thought the time was flying because I was having fun. Obviously, I was confused before I ever got on the bike.

My coach, while tickled with my overall performance and my time, yelled at me for not taking in enough fluid. She was sort of appalled when I said I didn't pee during the bike ride. (I had peed about a gallon and a half after the swim, though; probably took my kidneys awhile to start catching up again.) As a matter of fact, after I did the math (68 oz Gatorade from Camelbak; 24 oz water; about 4 oz Coke, which was a bad idea and which I traded in at an aid stop for Gatorade, drank about half of that) I discovered my total intake had been about 108 oz. for 8.5 hours of swimming and hard biking, about 12.7 oz/hr. She said I needed to aim for at least 20 and preferably 30, if I wanted to be hydrated enough to run a marathon after getting off the bike.

After I got home, I counted out how many swigs it takes from my Camelback to consume 8 oz of water. I need 10 swigs every 10 minutes to equal 20-30oz/hour. This will mean a stop to refill my Camelbak, which can be a little time-consuming, as it's hard to screw the lid back on when it's full to the gills.

So I have ordered an aero bottle. And I have read on some forums (fora? What's the plural of "forum"?) that on bumps they can splash right through the scubbie-poufie-thingie and get Gatorade all over you which of course dries sticky, so it's best just to put water in your aero bottle.

So if I do that, I will have to recalculate my calories and carbs. Might have to go back to using gel. Or honey homebrew, like Nancy.... Or I might just get extravagant and spring for a keg of HammerGel.

TIRED

Wow. Now I'm tired. It always hits me sort of as a delayed reaction.

Oh, I forgot.... I didn't report on my post-AquaVelo run. Yeah. I decided on 3 hours, which I figured would be about 15 miles and quite reasonable and appropriate after doing IM-length swim and run the day before. I ran out for 1:30 and then turned around. Equal splits despite a headwind on the return trip. When I left Nancy's to start home, I measured my distance with the truck and my turnaround was at exactly 7.5 miles, so it worked out perfectly.

Followed by a 4-hour drive home. I got really sleepy after about half an hour and stopped for coffee, a Coke, an ice cream cone, and got some Boost and some more water for the rest of the trip.

Yesterday was a rest day (except for work.) Today was an optional short easy bike-run brick: 45-minute easy bike, 20-minute easy run.

I didn't do the brick.

I intended to, after buying a few groceries, after work. But I nearly fell asleep over my grocery cart. Came home, put the groceries away, watched a movie, and I'm going to bed now at 7:30p.m. I am really, really tired. Like, really fatigued.

I feel as if I'd finished my Ironman, mentally and physically. It felt pretty easy at the time, well, not easy, but not like I was killing myself -- pleasantly strenuous. But now, mentally or physically, I don't feel inclined to go out there and keep training. Feels like I ought to be resting on my laurels, not still working at it.

The next 3 days (if I train as scheduled for this, my final peak week) are going to be hard. An hour and 15-minute swim tomorrow; 75-mile bike Thursday; 20/13 bike/run brick Friday. Then a couple rest days and then I start my taper.

I don't want to think about training right now. I'm going to bed with the sun to get a good long rest before getting up at 5:30 tomorrow for swimming before work.

Gad, I feel tired.

CHESAPEAKEMAN AQUAVELO Part 3

Subtitle: Snags, Snafus, and Sniggles

Here I am leaving the Special Needs stop at mile 65, ready to start the second loop of the bike course.

I'm happy in this picture because I finally found the Special Needs station.

I knew it was at the high school at the end of the first loop of the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. I remembered it from last year, a guy in a tent with a mike calling out numbers, talking to me (over the mike) as I sorted out my Special Needs bag, asking me what was in it, and what on earth was written all over my shorts??? I had written, in silver Sharpie, every good wish from my friends and husband (who contributed, "Against The Wind"), all over my shorts. I explained this to the guy and told him a few. He said into the mike, "So, anyone who wants to read Ellie's shorts, see her after the race!"

No such guy this year. No such tent. I was looking for it. I passed the RD with a mike and he said, "Lookin' good for Lap 2, Ellie!!" I yelled, "Where's Special Needs?" He said, into the mike, "Back there! You missed it!" "Can I go back???" He directed me, through the mike, to circle back through the parking lot, which you see over my right shoulder. So I did, and found Special Needs, which I had seen way back by that blue section of the high school behind me, just a few people with a bunch of gear bags, but I had seen gear bags ahead where I thought Special Needs would be, and I had headed for that. These folks said, "We called out your number.... we thought you didn't need anything when you went breezing by." I said, "People at every aid station have been calling my number and yelling for me! You guys need a sign or something. You got a "special-needs" athlete here anyway." So they gave me my bag and I got what I needed and before I left the station a guy had acquired a bullhorn and was yelling to approaching bikers, "Special Needs! Number 175, Special Needs Bags Here!" So at least they listened and changed their approach. One of the women said, "I wonder if that's why so many people didn't stop?"

So in this picture I'm all refilled and on my way, blissfully unaware that the wind has increased twofold since the first lap.

Back to the first lap. I looked forward to seeing more wildlife in the wildlife refuge than last year, when all I saw was roadkill. The first wildlife I saw now was two black buzzards (only a hair more aesthetically attractive than turkey buzzards) picking at the remains of something on the road. They did not want to give it up for another one of these bikers they had apparently gotten accustomed to, and waited till the last minute to fly off, practically in my face. Whatever they were finishing off, there didn't seem to be any pieces of metal surrounding it, so I guessed that it was not a biker.

Remember "Washboard Road" from last year? They haven't resurfaced it. Five miles of serious bumps. This year, however, I did not have a pre-existing saddle inflammation/injury, so it should not have any effect on any of my husband's "whatnot" expectations. My main fear was that my bike was going to fall apart, or that my gumdrops and jellybeans would fly out of my bento box. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Gack, this section of road is not good when you're on a road bike.

After Washboard Road, there was the house where, last year, a Chesapeake Retriever up to no good had been zeroing in on me. Either he was not outside this year, or he doesn't live there anymore, or I had the wrong house. Anyway, I did not meet up with him this year on either lap.

Oooooh, a marsh full of snowy egrets, I tried to count them but couldn't. And they took flight. Now that's gorgeous. As was the blue sky with its cumulus and stratus clouds, the golden, blowing marsh grasses, the rivulets and tidepools, the mixed hardwood and evergreen forest, the smell of pine and salt water. I pulled the band off my ponytail for the joy of feeling the below-helmet length of my hair blowing in the wind. There were fishermen on bridges. Seagulls on buoys. Athletes on bikes.

I kept my gears in that sweet spot where pedaling in the 80's was effortless, and kept passing and passing and passing people. Passing them, like, fast. And, mean girl that I am, going "Heh, heh, heh..." inside when the person I passed was a guy with an age in his 20's, 30's or 40's written on his leg, because I knew that when I got in front of him he'd see that my leg said 55. But I didn't have a marathon I had to save something for, as nearly everyone else on the course did. So I was throwing caution to the wind, which, at God knows what velocity, was blowing it far away. Still, I couldn't stop that self-satisfied feeling every time I knew that the younger person (especially male) could see how old I was.

Oddities:

Starting at the pre-race meeting, people Nancy did not know asked her if she was Nancy and said they'd read her blog. She had no idea who they were.

At the swim start, a young couple approached me and asked, "Are you Ellie from Accident?" They were from Cumberland, MD, about 50 miles from Accident. (Yes, Accident, in case you haven't encountered that yet in my blog.) I said, "Yes, do I know you?" "No," they said, "but we know you.... you wrote a report on this race last year." OK, so they must have done a search on ChesapeakeMan and my blog report came up. What I want to know is how they picked me out of a crowd of 200+ black wetsuits at a triathlon swim start. I was wearing my cap already, so it wasn't my hair. My current profile picture is too small for any stranger to identify my face. My previous one, I had a glass of beer in front of my face. There was an older one for a while, in my wetsuit without my cap on... maybe that one tipped them off. But it was strange.

I asked Nancy about this when we were on our way home, and she said that she had told people just to look for the two old ladies hanging around together. I called her a nasty name. We're good friends; she can take it.

And there was this dumbhead who got his just desserts:

Nancy and I were taking our bikes to my truck when all of a sudden there was a biker in the last 30 yards of the course lying face-down, motionless, on the road, his bike lying several feet from him. Paramedics swarmed over. The nurse in me wanted to go pitch in but he had medics there and I minded my own business. When we got done with our bikes, the guy was gone. An older man, maybe 60's, street clothes, not a racer, was sitting on the curb hugging his leg. Report was, that was the guy the biker hit. We learned later that the man reported having seen the biker coming, "didn't think he was coming that fast," and thought he had time to step out and cross the road. In front of a biker hell-bent on the approaching transition/finish line in a race. Word was that the old guy ended up getting sent to the hospital. I'm not usually vindictive but I felt like, SERVED HIM RIGHT. Sheesh. "You can make it, that train's not coming fast." They said the biker had finally gotten back on his bike. No idea who he was, if he was running the marathon leg, or if he was, whether he was able to finish it. Gack, there are some stupid people in the world. Stepping out in front of a racing biker in his last few yards.

Uh-oh. My resolution to cut back on my loquaciousness has lagged. Shorter documentary next time. Maybe.

ChesapeakMan AquaVelo Part 2

OK, where did I leave off? I guess I just kind of gave a quick overall. Maybe that's all that's needed :-) I can get so wordy, I'm sure a lot of people who go to my blog glance at the latest post and say, "Forget it." I gotta learn to cut down.

More on the swim: I found that when I repeated a mental mantra of "Glide, glide, glide," and emphasized the glide more than the stroke, I apparently swam better, because it was during those times that I gained on and even passed a few people. I also abandoned my bilateral breathing, and breathed to the left, my natural breathing side, every 4th stroke. After a while I tried switching to breathing to the right, to equalize the muscle effort, and after a minute or so discovered it had resulted in my turning 90 degrees to starboard from the course, so I gave up on that and breathed only to the left. It was comfortable and I didn't have to think about it.

Bike strategy: Coach Mary had recommended going nice and easy the first 30 miles, then bumping it up to about 65% effort till 90 miles, then, if I felt good, going for it and starting to aim at people to pick off.

Well, the way I accomplished this was, start out by selecting gears in which I could easily spin an effortless cadence in the 80's. And as a matter of fact, this is what I did the whole time, even though somehow I did pick up the pace after 30 miles and again later on. In fact, by about 55 miles, I was whizzing along passing a lot of people and hardly being passed by anyone. And I was thinking, uh-oh, I wonder if I've gone too hard too early; I wonder if I can keep this up for another loop.

Especially when the wind picked up on the second loop.

But I kept it up. When I started pushing my pedals hard and feeling leg effort and my cadence dropped to 78 or so, I shifted down to get back to effortless 80's. When it got to 90, I didn't want to move my legs that fast and shifted up to get back to easy 80's. And that is what I did the whole time. There's a "sweet spot" I like wherein it feels like the bike is going by itself, and the pedals are going around because the bike is going, and my feet are going because they're on the pedals, with just the slightest suggestion of helping it along the least little bit. That's my sweet spot and that's where I like to ride, and on a flat course that's where I was able to stay.

I finished thinking I was glad I didn't have a marathon to run, but also knowing that if that had been on the schedule for the day, I could have done it. Which, I guess, was the perfect place to be at the end of an Iron-distance swim and bike with no run planned until next month when I do all three in the real deal.

Some details, snafus, and funny things coming in the next episode of my continuing saga. But this is enough for folks to read for now.

CHESAPEAKEMAN AQUAVELO Part 1

Whooo!

Short stats:
Swim: 1:56:47
Transition : 8:33 (sheesh) (Oh, yeah, forgot, part of that was peeing about a gallon)
Bike: 6:30:26
Total: 8:35:45

NOTE: 4 hours after firsts posting this, I just corrected it -- in my original post I reported my bike time as my total time!! Nope! Bike was 6:30, TOTAL was 8:35. Now that that's straightened out....

I felt GREAT, except for a slump of about 10 miles between about miles 65 and 75. Had just come out of Special Needs stop, so maybe it was the shock of getting going again, plus finding that while I was in SN, whoever is manning the wind fans up there must have given a signal: "OK, wind-fan personnel (angels? Deceased meterologists?) on the count of three: One, two, THREE!!" Because the second loop of the bike course was distinctly about twice as windy as the first. Like riding into the friggin' Santa Ana or something. I hunkered down low in my aeros, pulled my knees into the bike, and tried to make myself as small a package as possible. I saw people ahead of me looking like they were having trouble steering their bikes straight. It was a gale.

Swim -- well, my stroke has gotten bad the last couple months, I haven't diagnosed the problem yet; I expected about a 2-hr IM swim and that's what I got. However, I got it against incoming tide in the second half, plus an inadequately-marked course in the first half that kept me veerin out into the wild blue yonder and being redirected by course patrol ("It's over there..."), then with the tide, not only swimming a little upstream but continuously veering toward shore and having to re-orient to get back in line with the buoys (which were more visible and more frequent in the second half. Gotta talk to the RD about that.) Actually, given the currents and the way I've been disconsolate about my inefficiency and slowness, I was very happy with the 1:56.

In the transition tent, Nancy, our friend Melissa who is training for Kona, and I were all there together! Nancy had finished about 5 minutes ahead of me, and Melissa came in just a few minutes after me. We might all have had shorter transitions otherwise... we talked a little about the currents etc. as we got ready for the bike. But it was fun and heartwarming.

I am going out to run some now and will finish this later, when I get back "home" to VA. Nancy and I had planned 18 miles but Nancy is feeling sick with a sore throat and cold and is going back to bed. I don't know if I'll do 18 but I'm going out to do some. It's raining. I feel like I'd biked a hundred miles or something :-) Not sure how far I'll get. Think I'll do loops so I can bail. That's making provision for the flesh.... in other words, making tentative plans to be a weenie. But I've got a 4-hour drive home, too.

Off and running. Catch you later.

THANKS, FRIENDS!

Thanks for the wishes, friends! I will be OK. Things I worry about, so seldom actually happen.
And once I get my feet on the ground, I've been good at every job I've ever had.
Maybe the same with today's race and the IM: as soon as I get my feet on the ground, I'll be rolling!

Weather looks great, as Nancy posted. The tide, which I'd heard tell would be coming in against us, will actually be slack (in its resting period between going out and coming in) for most of the swim (lakelike, no current), beginning its influx only in our second half, and then gradually. So we shouldn't be like salmon swimming upstream. Sea nettles have gone to the bottom in response to recent rain and cooler temperatures. It should be a nice swim.

And once I get my feet on the ground, I'll be rolling.

Thanks so much to Nancy for her hospitality once again!

WHATEVER

~Sigh~

My bike is great. With recent repairs, it's gliding like I always imagined it should. It has never, ever felt this good. My old bike shop kept adjusting my gears for me, missing what was really wrong: rusted rear inner hub and bearings. New bike shop in VA went right to it, replaced it all, and I've got a quiet, smooth-running, silky-shifting machine. I took him a plate of cookies. And with the new tires, it's flying.

That's good because my swimming absolutely sucks. I've gone back probably two years worth in time and efficiency. I've apparently done something stupid to my stroke. Wish I could take it into a shop and get it fixed like my bike. Maybe I still can, in the month left before IMFL. Not before tomorrow's AquaVelo race, but after. There's a masters swim group here. Maybe they'll let me in and the coach can work with me.

I hope I make the swim cutoff tomorrow, 2.4 miles point-to-point against an incoming tide. If I can do that, my bike will make up for lost time.

Whatever happens, happens.

~Sigh~ I am having my usual horrendous time getting into the swing of a new job. I always feel timid at first, which makes me hesitant to make any decisions (e.g. what to do), which becomes near-paralysis (physically and mentally), which necessitates asking someone all the time, "What do I do?" which makes me look incompetent and lacking intelligence, which puzzles my employers because in a general way I seem like such a smart person, which makes them think I'm either not trying or not interested, which makes them treat me in a condescending or abrupt or semi-angry way, which makes me feel bad, which further paralyzes me, which causes me to make mistakes, which further makes me look incompetent, etc., etc., etc. Anxiety makes me think about ramifications while something is being explained to me, with the result that I don't remember what was explained, and proceed to do it wrong the next time, which makes the person I asked say, "What did we talk about yesterday when this came up???", which makes my mind go blank, which makes everyone, including me, wonder if something is wrong with my brain.

Once I get on my feet and get over the fear, I am a good employee. I have gone through this in ever job I have ever had. I go through the entire first weeks, or months, or year, in constant fear of being canned for being stupid. Even though I am far from stupid. I graduated 3rd in my high school class; I maintained a 4.0 all through nursing school, and then left my first nursing job after 4 weeks on a medical leave for anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I never went back to that job; started over in a different hospital where I'd done my clinical training, told them up front I was scared shitless and needed help, and they pulled me through it in about 3 months. I don't have 3 months to get on my feet in this dumb campground job where the hardest part is figuring out what size rig can go in what size site. With the right electrical connections. And south-facing for their satellite dish. And away from the freeway to cut down on noise. And near the shower house. And next to a site where their friends can have a tent. And near the dog-walk field. You can't have everything. But I've failed someone if I don't come through with it all.

Yes, this is the same job where the girl arranged EVERYONE's fall schedule around my IM training and gave us 2 weeks off to go to my race. And she is the one who intimidates me more than any of the others. Maybe because I feel I owe her. Maybe because I'm afraid she resents my "special needs" and imagine she thinks I'm a pain in the neck.

Never mind. Whatever happens, happens.

Whatever.

I'm off to work (took 1/4 milligram of Xanax) and then off to St. Michaels, MD to pick up Nancy, then off to Cambridge for bike-inspection and racking and pre-race meeting, then back to Nancy's and off to bed, then off to the races.

I have a sore shoulder that I thought was from swimming but diagnosed a different cause: holding the phone against my ear with my shoulder while I write reservations.

~Sigh~ Even thought it's caused by the phone and not swimming, I didn't discover the cause in time and it still hurts a little and will hurt for the 2.4 miles tomorrow.

Whatever.

Packing for 2/3 of an Ironman

ChesapeakeMan AquaVelo, 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike.

Morning before leaving for race:
Imodium -- 2 tablets on empty stomach immediately on getting up
Pepcid Complete for after eating (keeps food from trying to flow up my esophagus during swimming)
Hairbrush and ponytail band
Bike shorts
Sport bra
Sweat shirt and pants
Flip flops
Food

Swim bag:
Wetsuit
Baby powder to help me get the wetsuit on (works better for me than Pam)
Goggles
Extra goggles
Anti-fog goggle spray
Vaseline for sea nettles on exposed skin (face, hands, feet)
Cap they give you
Timing chip and ankle strap

Bike bag:
Towel
Socks
Bike shoes
Sunscreen
Vinegar and washcloth for sea nettle stings
Camelback with 1/2 gal. Gatorade Endurance spiked with an Airborne tablet; in its pockets, a bottle with bouillon powder in case I get into a low-sodium bonk (will mix with water when needed); Epi-Pen in case of bee sting; extra contacts.
Jersery with salt capsules, Excedrin, Imodium, Pepcid Complete
Race belt with number

On Bike:
Helmet with number, holding gloves and sunglasses
In Bento Box: candy fruit slices, jelly beans, "fruit smiles", Combos, string cheese
On aerobars: Chapstick, with tape wrapped around only the cap so I can pull out the tube, put some on, and replace the tube in the secured cap, one-handed
2 water bottles
Hand pump

In seat bag:
2 tubes
4 CO2 canisters
Tire lever
Patch kit and tire boots
Duct tape
Kleenex in a baggie (for toilet paper in emergency)
Tire gauge
Extra shoe cleat and screws
Extra handlebar end cover

And with that, I should be ready to go.

I hope I learn to swim by Saturday. My swimming has deteriorated in the last few weeks. I'm doing something wrong. I bought the Total Immersion book and am going to skim through it tomorrow when I can. I couldn't find the DVD locally, and it's too late to order it online and have it ready to take to Nancy's place.

Oh, that's right.... I'm going down to Nancy's place for the race weekend. We'll go together to bike inspection/racking, the pre-race meeting, the race itself. And we hope to run together Sunday morning. It's so good to have a friend.

Bed. I'm going there.

New Tires.... and WOW!!!!!

Holy smoke. I decided I needed new tires before IMFL. My old ones, Bongrager Race-Lite Road tires, were starting to look ragged. So I got these, Michelin Pro Race Ironman, partly because of the description partly because of the price, and partly because of the color; the Ironman name was incidental. They came today, in time for the ChesapeakeMan AquaVelo (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, Nancy and I are doing it for training this Saturday). And took them for a one-hour spin.

HOLY COW!!! It felt like I had no tires at all. 18.8 miles in 1:04.... close to 4 mph faster than what I've been averaging over these same rolling roads into the same winds for the last couple weeks. And all summer, back home, for that matter.

They have no perceptible tread, at least not to the naked eye.... it better not rain! Also, they're 700 X 23 instead of 700 X 25 like my Bontragers.

Here's the online-catalog blurb from BikeTiresDirect.com:

Michelin Pro Race Ironman
The Ironman is designed specifically for Triathletes. Unlike many race tires, the Ironman does not compromise comfort and durability. It's not quite as light and fast as some race tires, but it's the perfect combination of performance characteristics for extended stretches in the saddle where performance is still key. Distinctive Ironman color combination. Black and Red,
Size 650x23 or 700x23 Weight 200/220g
MSRP: $59.95You Save 33%
Your Price:$39.95

If I make the swim cutoff :-( I'll be able to make up lost time on the bike!

ASTONISHING!!!

We've been at our new campground/job for a week now.

Not only have the owners given me the days off that I need for events (a local century ride this coming Sunday, Chesapeakeman AquaVelo Sept. 30, and a couple weeks for IMFL).... this is the astonishing thing:

The young woman who makes the schedules asked if she could see my training schedule, and SHE DESIGNED THE WHOLE STAFF'S ENTIRE SEPTEMBER WORK SCHEDULE AROUND MY TRAINING WORKOUTS, including the lap-swimming hours at the local pool.

Have you ever heard of such a thing????? I am mind-blown. And she wants me to give her my October training schedule as soon as I have it, since she does schedules 3 weeks ahead. I didn't know there were employers who would do something like that. She's about the age of our daughter-in-law, late 20's I guess. Has an 11-week-old baby that she brings to work, so baby-carrying goes with my job description when Selena's busy. No complaints from me there!

Sunday I worked till 1p.m., then got on the bike and rode back roads down to Shenandoah National Park and onto the Skyline Drive for 9 miles of steady gradual climbing. I didn't read until just now, looking for a link to include, that the National Park Service actually discourages biking on this road, although it is allowed. Oh, well. I had read another website that called it "very pleasant cycling with gradual grades." The climbing took me an hour and coming back down, well, I was afraid to look at my computer, afraid to look anywhere but at the road, because I went back down in about 5 minutes.

A highlight was the sighting of a doe and fawn who began running along the side of the road as I approached, never going onto the roadway but running with me. I pedaled faster and faster and they ran faster and faster. Finally the fawn had to stop, and the doe stopped to go back to him. I felt I'd gone to heaven.... biking Skyline Drive and racing with the deer.

Total ride was 85 rolling miles (except for the 9 of climbing.) It was so much easier than in the mountains at home, I wasn't even tired.

Home remedies etc.

Got this from my husband, forwarded from the RV-owners forum he's on.

1. Budweiser beer conditions the hair
2. Pam cooking spray will dry finger nail polish (my note -- so does a drop of baby oil)
3. Cool whip will condition your hair in 15 minutes
4. Mayonnaise will KILL LICE, it will also condition your hair
5. Elmer's Glue - paint on your face, allow it to dry, peel off and see the dead skin and blackheads if any
6. Shiny Hair - use brewed Lipton Tea
7. Sunburn - empty a large jar of Nestea into your bath water
8. Minor burn - Colgate or Crest toothpaste
9 Burn your tongue? Put sugar on it!
10. Arthritis? WD-40 Spray and rub in, kill insect! stings too
11 Bee stings - meat tenderizer
12. Chigger bite - Preparation H
13. Puffy eyes - Preparation H
14. Paper cut - crazy glue or chap stick (glue is used instead of sutures at most hospitals)
15. Stinky feet - Jell-O !
16. Athletes feet - cornstarch
17. Fungus on toenails or fingernails - Vicks vapor rub
18. Kool aid to clean dishwasher pipes. Just put in the detergent section and run a cycle, it will also clean a toilet. (Wow, and we drink this stuff)
19. Kool Aid can be used as a dye in paint also Kool Aid in Dannon plain yogurt as a finger paint, your kids will love it and it won't hurt them if they eat it!
20. Peanut butter - will get scratches out of CD's! Wipe off with a coffee filter paper
21. Sticking bicycle chain - Pam no-stick cooking spray (I've thought about this but been afraid to try)
22. Pam will also remove paint, and grease from your hands! Keep a can in your garage for your hubby
23. Peanut butter will remove ink from the face of dolls
24. When the doll clothes are hard to put on, sprinkle with corn starch and watch them slide on
24a. (My own) When wetsuit is hard to put on, put baby powder on your legs are arms. Works!
25. Heavy dandruff - pour on the vinegar !
26. Body paint - Crisco mixed with food coloring. Heat the Crisco in the microwave, pour in to an empty film container and mix with the food color of your choice!
27 Tie Dye T-shirt - mix a solution of Kool Aid in a container, tie a rubber band around a section of the T-shirt and soak
28. Preserving a newspaper clipping - large bottle of club soda and cup of milk of magnesia, soak for 20 min. and let dry, will last for many years!
29. A Slinky will hold toast and CD's!
30. To keep goggles and glasses from fogging, coat with Colgate toothpaste
31. Wine stains, pour on the Morton salt and watch it absorb into the salt. Also takes out stains from your coffee cup.
32. To remove wax - Take a paper towel and iron it over the wax stain, it will absorb into the towel. (This works on gum also).
33. Remove labels off glassware etc. rub with Peanut butter!
34. Baked on food - fill container with water, get a Bounce paper softener and the static from the towel will cause the baked on food to adhere to it. Soak overnight. Also; you can use 2 Efferdent tablets, soak overnight!
35. Crayon on the wall - Colgate toothpaste and brush it!
36. Dirty grout - Listerine
37. Stains on clothes - Colgate
38. Grass stains - Karo Syrup
39. Grease Stains - Coca Cola, it will also remove grease stains from the driveway overnight. We know it will take corrosion from car batteries!
40. Fleas in your carpet? 20 Mule Team Borax- sprinkle and let stand for 24 hours. Maybe this will work if you get them back again.
41. To keep FRESH FLOWERS longer Add a little Clorox , or 2 Bayer aspirin, or just use 7-up instead of water.
42. When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you "squeeze" for freshness or softness? Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week? Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are:
Monday = Blue
Tuesday = Green
Thursday = Red
Friday = White
Saturday = Yellow .

So if today was Thursday, you would want red twist tie; not white which is Fridays (almost a week old)! The colors go alphabetically by color Blue - Green - Red - White - Yellow, Monday through Saturday. Very easy to remember.

SWEET DEAL

I've been eyeing this red Camelback Dream at the bike store. Retails for $50, on sale this weekend for half price; I had a gift card with $14 left on it, so I paid $11. Sized and shaped for a woman's torso, 70 oz, plus storage pockets. (Webpage says 50 oz, but the tag says 70, and I measured.... 70.) Very sweet deal.

Daughter Val and her family are camping a few sites down from us for the weekend. They got in late last night. I was already asleep. During the night, I was awakened by a young, matter-of-fact, FYI, "oh, bummer" voice commenting, "I puked." Opened my eyes to see 8-yr-old Gracie sitting up beside me where my husband usually is, quietly and casually throwing up into her favorite quilt, which she held in front of her face like a bowl. I guess she was spending the night :-) After she was done puking, she went to the bathroom, I helped her rinse her mouth out, and she got back into bed beside me and went back to sleep. Nothing to it. No muss, no fuss. I puked. Goodnight. I opened the bedroom door and saw my husband sleeping on the sofa. Whatever. Plans change without notification in this family :-)

This was my last day working at the gym. Owner volunteered that he would be very pleased if I'd work for him next summer as well, if we're in the area. Tuesday, we leave for wild, wonderful Winchester, Virginia, a major Civil-War crossroads and hometown of one of my inspirations, country-music singer Patsy Cline. It's not your typical snowbird hotspot, but it will be slightly warmer there than here, and we have a job working for the campground there.

BIKING WITH BEARS!

Wish I'd been able to take this picture, but didn't have my camera along. A black bear with 2 cubs crossed the road not 100 yards in front of me while I was biking, and stopped maybe 50 feet off the side of the road. Since bears can sprint at 30mph, I didn't want to ride that close to a female with cubs, so I stopped. She looked at me. I looked at her. Finally I said, "Hi!" cordially but loudly, whereupon she turned and took her cubs off into the woods, and I rode on by.

They were so black and so beautiful. The cubs were not quite as big as Journey -- about the size of Springer spaniels. This year's cubs (they stay with the mother 2 years.) I feel so privileged to have seen them so close.

I saw lots of deer, too, including a doe with 2 fawns. This is always lovely to see but not unusual. The bear with cubs is less usual. I see a bear maybe once or twice a year here, or every year or two -- it's always special, especially the cubs.

It was a lovely ride. I started out tired but kept my gears easy, didn't push, took roads I haven't taken before, kept making up new loops.... I was scheduled for 75 miles but being tired hoped I'd manage 50; however, I kept feeling better with the easy spinning and had done 68 miles by the time I got home. I could easily have done the other 7 but it was getting dark. Spent too much time having lunch with my mother.

It was a beautiful, blustery early autumn day. Yes, early autumn... our trees start turning the end of July, and by the end of August there are a few yellow trees and quite a few leaves down on the back roads. It was overcast and alternately misting, drizzling, and sprinkling, 60*F and a little windy. I just had shorts and a short-sleeve jersey but as long as I kept pedaling I wasn't cold. A few people had their woodstoves going already, and the air smelled wonderful. Except when I got a whiff of the paper mill about 30 miles off... this indicates a weather front coming up from the south, which is Tropical Storm Ernesto.

Deer, bears, fallen leaves, wood smoke.... mmmmm.

This week's training so far:
Sunday: Biked 70 miles, 4:46 (total time 4:50, 4 minutes in stops.)
Tuesday: Ran 13, 2:20.
Wednesday: Swam 3900yds -- 2.2 miles -- 1:30.
Thursday: Biked 68 miles, 5:14 (total time 5:24, 10 minutes in stops, including watching the bears.)

A good week.

BAD "TIDINGS" FOR CHESAPEAKEMAN?

Looks like the tide will be INCOMING, that is, AGAINST the swimmers, for Chesapeakeman's point-to-point swim. Race start time is an hour after low tide... right about when it starts coming in.

We better start swimming now, Nancy....

I may change my blog name to AGAINST THE TIDE.


From the MD Dept. of Natural Resources Fisheries & Wildlife Tables:

Tides for Cambridge starting with September 30, 2006.

Day        High      Tide  Height   Sunrise            
           /Low      Time    Feet    Sunset                    
Sa  30      Low   5:45 AM     1.1   6:59 AM    
    30     High   9:57 AM     1.6   6:49 PM
    30      Low   3:41 PM     0.7
    30     High  10:47 PM     2.8

WHEN YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE TRAINING....

.... train anyway.

For some reason I'm still tired from Sunday's bike ride. I was scheduled for a 12-mile run today, put it off till mid-afternoon hoping I'd work up some kind of desire for it, which didn't happen. So I set out with heavy legs and a heavy heart. Thought about Commodore's thoughts on quitting. Visualized being 12 miles from the finish line in the run of IMFL, when surely I won't feel like running 12 miles. At mile 2, I started with the beer bottles: "10 bottles of beer on the wall, 10 bottles of beer...." Every mile, I took down another bottle of beer. And the miles ticked by.

I visualized running with a handful of people in the Ironman, all tired from the bike, all wishing we were done, all of us helping each other along. You can't bike together in the IM, but you can run together. I thought about walking through the aid stations, then saying to my group, "Come on, let's go," and the whole group limps off at a jog again.

8 bottles of beer on the wall.... 7 bottles of beer... come on, gang, we can run 7 miles, look how many times we've run 7 miles before.

I got a blood blister on my toe. It squished with every step. And eventually I got back home, the run was done, I didn't quit, I didn't bag it, and it's more miles in the bank and practice in being mentally tough.

I am going to do this Ironman.

Sunday

Here are my two sweet pets, Annie and Journey... thought you guys would like this.

I'm relaxing after a 70-mile bike ride... stats: 70.86 miles, moving time 4:46, total time 4:50 (read: almost NO stopping!!), average 14.8mph. My average speed has increased by about 1.5mph over the summer. I'm looking forward to some faster times on flat roads at ChesapeakeMan and IMFL. I did a favorite 20-mile loop twice and then my favorite 30-mile out-and-back. My lower back and my lateral quads hurt towards the end. After a plate of food and 3 aspirins, I'm feeling a lot better. It was a good ride. A really good ride. But I was glad not to have another 42 miles followed by a marathon.... thought lot about what Commodore said about quitting. I think that essay is going to keep me going a lot in the next 10 weeks. Even though I'm nowhere near quitting anymore, I still think about it, think about taking the shortcut home, wonder just like last year whether I'm up to this venture. Just because I did it last year doesn't mean I'm guaranteed to make it this year. But I will not quit. Not me.

Today's ride finally took me out of Colorado into Kansas, in my fantasy "Tour d'Amerique." Click on the link in my sidebar to see my map so far! Judging by how straight the road has become, it's flatland, which is no doubt a distinct relief -- maybe I can start making better time now :-)

I'm watching "Hondo" on TCM. I've been waiting probably 2 years for it to air sometime. John Wayne is the star. It was made in 1953 and, unlike a lot of movies of that era, has real scenery, not painted backdrops and fake shrubbery. I'm recording it. TCM does not have commercials, which makes it even better."Hondo" was Western author Louis L'Amour's first full-length novel. I LOVE Louis L'Amour. Stories of journeys, adventure, suspense, survival, courage, and honor, people pulling together and making it on their own, living on coffee, beans, bacon and wild game. Hokey as hell -- the good guys always win, the bad guys always get what's coming to them, the women are either virtuous and strong, or ladies of the evening, Indians are mostly savage heathens -- but I love 'em.

2.4 hours?

A couple people have commented that 2.4 hours seems like a lot to spend in meditation, prayer, or whatever.

I think so too. In fact, my doc and I laughed about it and decided 10% of waking hours was a better goal to shoot for. And even that, something to shoot for, not something to expect to achieve immediately. A goal to train for.

Even that seems like a lot.

Maybe you do it like athletic training... increase by 10% a week.

However, I easily spend 3 or 4 hours a day on email, blogging, mapping my running routes, looking up sports nutrition and athletic injuries and training programs on the internet. My athletic training and goals could easily be a religion.

Nancy asked about multi-tasking.... meditating while swimming, etc.

We're on the right track here. Except when I'm swimming I think, one, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. Running: One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Biking: One, two, three, four. And so on.

Sometimes while I'm running, a song with the rhythm of my cadence will play itself in my head: "Now there's RED-haired BLUE-ticks all O-ver the SOUTH; LOVE got me IN here and LOVE got me OUT." That's a good one... Big Red the hound dog, trained by a prisoner, who used the dog to escape. Good song. But I could be ruminating on a Psalm as well as a redbone country song. But the Psalms don't have that catchy rhythm.

2.4 hours.

Why not 24? Why not 100%? In everything give thanks. Pray without ceasing. Offer your body as a living sacrifice.

Make every moment of life a prayer.

Why not?

Is it possible?

IT ADDS UP

I've just been looking at my training totals so far for this year.

In 2006 I have covered:
Swim: 50,536yds = 28.7 miles (45.9km)
Bike: 1689.7 miles (2705km)
Run: 510.1 miles (820.9km)

This is the equivalent of 11.9 Ironman triathlons (geez, within a tenth of a mile of finishing my 12th) plus 3 century rides plus 7.5 free-standing marathons, and another 47.9 bike miles.

And I'm not even approaching the mileage some of the rest of you have been putting in.

We are awesome, gang.

AWESOME DAY

This is long; I've highlighted the main points in different colors, which will give you the short version if you want it.

This has been such a good day.

Started out with doing some research online for godly counsel on a question of theology/scripture/personal morals/faithfulness that's been bugging me. I found the results of this search very reassuring and comforting. Last night I was talking to my psychiatrist (yeah, I see a psychiatist a few times a year, take some meds) about why I feel spiritually dead lately, and he suggested that it wouldn't hurt to "tithe" 10% of my time to God. I asked... "You mean 10% of 24 hours or 10% of my WAKING hours?" He just laughed. This is like asking, "10% of my gross income or 10% of my bring-home?" Right now I'm going with waking hours. But he and I both hit on the fact that 10% of 24 hours is 2.4 hours, a number which has great significance to me right now, and we pondered whether that means something. Probably not. I asked how I'm going to find roughly 1.6 hours in the schedule that's already coming out my ears and we both said at the same time: "Seek first the kingdom of God and all else shall be given unto you besides." Well, I was given a lot today.

Took both pets (Journey and kitty Annie) to the vet to update shots and the cost for both of them was HALF what I had been expecting.

Went to the bike/sport shop for new swim goggles and got great TYR race goggles for $10. I looked at streamlined red Camelbaks, asked the cashier if there's a layaway plan, and she said, "Actually those are going to be on sale Labor Day Weekend." Cool!!! I looked for red bike gloves but they didn't have any, only gray and black. Their Trek gloves were all $24.95.

Went for a swim in my wetsuit and new goggles, an hour and 10 minutes scheduled, but I kept going a little more, 3450 yards in 1:17 (1.96 miles), which if my calculations (including the length of the lake swim area) are correct, works out to 2:23/100 yds. My time is definitely coming down, even though the wind came up and I had to fight some chop, the kind that slaps you in the face, makes you take in a mouthful of water instead of air, makes you have to sight over the waves. I was thrilled with this swim.

While eating lunch, I looked on eBay for gloves. Holy smoke, there were the same brand-new red Trek gloves, size small, $5.95, auction ending in 2 hours 45 minutes, 1 bid so far. Are you serious??? I decided to wait; usually I wait till the last few minutes to bid. This way my bid doesn't just push the price up, and it helps me decide whether or not to jump in, since by then probably the other bidder(s) have gone as high as they're going, and if I decide to go that high I can easily outbid by a less than a dollar, and they won't have time to retaliate.

Since I felt so good and had a couple hours left for the gloves, I went for a bike ride. The ending auction gave me incentive to push a little to get back in time. I also had the chance to try out my latest homemade energy gel (recipe below). Bike ride stats: 20 miles, 1:14, average pace 16.3mph; 16 minutes faster than when I rode this route about 6 weeks ago. This day is going so incredibly well.

Back home, I had some supper while I watched the auction. No further action. So I put in my bid with 4 minutes to go and got the red Trek gloves, sold in the bike shop for $24.95, for $6.06. Totally unbelievable. The only possible catch is, they're coming from Great Britain, hope the shipping isn't out of sight. But this day is going so well, it can't go wrong. Even if shipping is $10, I've still saved $8 or $9 (with tax), and they didn't have any red ones in the store.

I can tell I've worked out but I'm still feeling good, and may even go out for a short run, making the day a triple. I can't believe how much difference it makes taking every other day off.

FOOD DISCOVERIES:

Dollar General Store has just about all the canned and packaged foods I buy, at about half what they cost at Wal-Mart. Brand-name cosmetics and toiletries cost next to nothing, too.

If you mix peanut butter with an equal amount of mashed garbanzo beans, it cuts the fat in half and still tastes like peanut butter.

NEW ENERGY GEL RECIPE:

• 3 tablespoons jelly (I used grape, $1 for quart jar at the Dollar Store
• 1/2 cup maltodextrin ($2 for a pound in the liquor store's "moonshining" section)
• About a teaspoon of vanilla
• 1/8 teaspoon salt (270mg sodium)
• 1 tablespoon liquid -- water, juice, Gatorade, whatever

Microwave the jelly 20-30 seconds to melt it. Stir in the liquid. Stir in salt and maltodextrin Yes, it will all fit in there. You can use Carbo-Pro but it's $20-$24 or so for, I think, a 2 or 3 pound can. Stir in vanilla. This made enough to just fill my 4.5oz gel flask. I didn't use the liquid, and after the jelly jelled back up, I couldn't squeeze the stuff out of my flask. By then I was on the ride. I stopped and squoze some Gatorade into it from my Camelback and shook it like crazy. That worked. So put in that extra tablespoon of liquid.

By my figures, this should have about 350 calories, as slightly less than 90 grams of carbohydrate. I couldn't find the exact calorie content of plain maltodextrin, but a product called Carbo Gain lists maltodextrin as just about its only ingredient, and states that 1/2 cup is 190 calories. Carbo-Pro gave information per oz or 28.5 grams, but I don't have any way to measure or translate ounces or grams.

To me it tastes really good, about the same texture as Power Gel but way better tasting, and look at my ride stats. I drank a quart of Gatorade as well, with 1/4 tsp. salt added (540 mg. sodium).

Now that I've sat for a while, I don't think I'll run after all. I did a long, fast (for me) swim and short intense ride (long hills), and now that that's all settling I do realize I'm tired. So I'm going to call it a day.

A very, very good day.

IS TRIATHLON EXPENSIVE?

Well, I've been looking and looking on Commodore's blog for the post discussing whether triathlon is a sport for the well-to-do, and I can't find it. Help me out here, Comm. Where is it?

I've been thinking about this ever since he posted it.

Is triathlon expensive? Definitely.
Is it a sport of the affluent? Not necessarily.

I'm anything but affluent but I hang in there in triathlon. I admit I'm a cheapskate. Not by choice but by necessity. We retired on not really enough of a nest egg, lost my nurse's income, and went from salary to pension for my husband. We get along. Sometimes we have to work, not so much to make ends meet as to have stuff. Satellite TV and computer, for instance. And so that I can pursue triathlon.

I wear DeSoto Sports tri suits, shorts and jerseys I've gotten on eBay. $25 for a $125 tri suit. $20 for a $60 pair of shorts. $11 for a $50 jersey.

My 70-oz Camelbak was $14.95 on eBay (a discontinued no-frills-no-bulk-and-no-external-fill model that used to retail for about $40.) I made pockets out of a calico bandana and sewed them on.

Bento Box, $10 on eBay. Gel-flask holder with flask, $4.95 on eBay. Set of 4 gel-flask replacement caps, $1.99 on eBay (no one else apparently needed any.)

I got a $400 X-Terra triathlon wetsuit on eBay for $150. Never worn.

I had to budget around all these items. Each of them meant a choice between having that and having or doing something else (except the small-change items like the flask caps and holder.) I saved for the wetsuit and then waited until one I wanted was up for auction, and crossed my fingers that I'd get it.

I get polyester/nylon/cotton (not much cotton) socks at Wal-Mart, something like $5 for 3 pairs. I get my bike gloves at Wal-Mart ($6.95 Bell's.) I get my sunglasses at Wal-Mart ($8.95 Panama Jack). I get my sport bras at Wal-Mart ($6.95 FOTL.) I get my swimsuits at Wal-Mart, or did, until my favorite Catalina one-piece came out this year with tacky molded-foam bra-cups. So I didn't get a new swimsuit this year. Oops, yes I did.... a zip-back Zoot trisuit/swimsuit with quick-dry fleece pad. $12 on eBay. Half the price of the Wal-Mart Catalina suit at that. Except for the ones I bought half-price at the end of the summer a couple years ago that I'm tossing one at a time as they wear out.

And of course my 100-lap Timex Ironman watch came from Wal-Mart, like everyone else's.

I do have retail Cat-1 road shoes. $99 from Performance Bike, on sale from $149. Big budget item. And a Giro helmet. And I do have a nice Trek 2100 Womens' Special Design road bike. That cost nearly what we saved last summer by working for our campsite.

And I do pay a coach. She gives me a senior discount. But I'm still a month behind.

There are things I want. Like, to do more tri's, probably Oly distance, but at $65-85 per event plus getting there, I don't do much of it. I used my whole last gym paycheck to register for the ChesapeakeMan AquaVelo that Nancy and I are doing Sept. 30 as training for IMFL. Steve commented that $185 was a lot to shell out for a training ride. But it's the only event I've done since the Arizona Senior Olympics tri in March. Oops, no, forgot the Hatfield-McCoy Marathon in June. That wasn't awfully expensive, $35, and the room cost $89 for the one night, and I had 2 roommates who shared the cost with me, and the pasta dinner was INCLUDED in the registration cost, so I had no food costs, took hand-to-mouth food with me in the car which I borrowed from our son to save the cost of driving 300 miles each way with our Ford 250 diesel truck. I didn't spend much on that marathon.

Twice this summer, most recently this past weekend, my bike has needed adjustment and/or parts plus labor that came to nearly $100. That meant doing without something else. Like a new red $50 Camelbak with a wide-mouth external-fill feature, quicker refill on the bike course at IMFL. Like a new pair of red Trek bike gloves ($24.95). Like an Ironman helmet ($50) and red Michelin Ironman triathlon tires ($50 each.) I will probably get new tires before IMFL and maybe I can find red ones, but they'll probably be $30 each and they won't say Ironman on them. I now have a shiny new rear cassette that doesn't cause my chain to skip in the outer gears, but I don't have some of the other things I was hoping to get. They'll have to wait.

And do I want all these new red accessories for IMFL, or do I want to save on the cost and have money to buy stuff at the humongous expo when I'm there?

Quite possibly everyone else has the same budget issues but doesn't dwell on them or post about them. But I've been thinking about it ever since Commodore's post, how much I'd like to spend on triathlon vs. how much I can spend and how much I actually spend.

Triathlon is definitely expensive.

But you don't have to spend a lot of money to do it. You just look for where you can cut a deal, and spread your deals out over time. And in between, you save for them.

BR_CK

That's a brick that's missing the middle part. My bike is in the shop getting some adjustments.

I swam for an hour (2400 yds) and then ran 8 miles (1:22, negative split by about 45 seconds).

I felt wonderful.

I can't believe how much difference it makes for me to train only every other day. And today's double workout came after 2 days off. I can go faster and farther than when I'm struggling to keep up with shorter ones 6 days a week.

It's not traditional for IM training; but it works better for this Ironwoman.

Suppose I do 2 hours, 2 or 3 days a week -- that's 4-6 hours. Add a 4-6-hour session once a week and that's 8 - 12 hours. It still comes out to an acceptable number of hours per week. Although I will say I've always been skeptical of the value of a certain number of hours or miles per week. I think the body covers distance based on how much can be done at a time, not how much is done in a week. This has always been what's worked for me with marathon-training, too. 3 runs a week including my long one is about my max. A 30-mile week is a rarity. But maybe that's just me.

Anyway, I'm feeling way better and training way better with a rest day every other day. Came home to a recovery meal of "Two all-soy patties, special sauce, tomatoes, salt, lettuce, onions on two whole-wheat buns." Not precisely a Big Mac but it hit the spot and had that supposedly-ideal 4/1 carb/protein ratio. Plus it tasted good.

I feel great.

IMFL ROLL CALL

OK.... who exactly is doing IMFL? Nancy, Commodore, Bolder, Shelley, Bev, me (you don't need a link for me, you're here already).... who else?

Since not everyone reads my blog, maybe you who do can put out an APB so that all the IMFL folks will get a heads-up and pop on over to sign in. Or you can just tell me they're doing it.

There is going to be a HUGE crowd of bloggers and emailers who know each other but haven't met yet. How are we going to recognize each other?

I'm posting this on the IMFL blog as well.

Chime in, folks! Thanks!

SWIM-BIKE BRICK!

Wow! What a great day. It's hard to believe that just a week ago I was so tired and discouraged I told my husband I was thinking of giving up on IMFL. Today's workout was a 40-minute swim followed by a 50-mile bike ride. As I got into the 74*F water for a warmup, I thought how actually the swim is a cool-down --- the swim pre-cooling me for the ride. I had ridden to the lake and didn't know how to handle my wetsuit getting there and then heading right out for the ride, so I didn't use it today.

Now, either I'm going crazy, or getting increasingly dyslexic, or the earth has moved. I always start my lake swims at the north end of the swim area, where the bottom is sandy, then start encountering rocks and boulders and reefs about halfway, which persist until the turnaround 75 yards later. Today, I saw rocks and boulders and reefs as soon as I started swimming, and they cleared as I approached the turnaround. Am I crazy? This is backwards. These boulders are too big to have been displaced by lake currents and transported 75 yards to the other end. But there they were. I swam over them (actually brushing some with my hands while stroking -- incentive to keep my stroke wide and shallow), exited at the now-sandy end, and decided to reverse my direction from usual to make my exit easier for transition. I observed, too, that my trip south-to-north was quicker and met less resistance than north-to-south -- also reversed from usual. Either I'm going crazy or the earth moved. Or maybe the wind changed, but that doesn't explain the repositioning of the reefs.

Warmup over, I did a beach start. 41 minutes netted me 1650 yards. Damn. If I'd been watching my laps instead of the time, and doing the math, I'd have gone one more lap to have just over a mile. But I was watching my time and it was time to get out.

Transition was 4:56, including carrying my bike across a couple hundred feet of grass and up a set of wooden stairs. I needed to pee but the bath house was too far away -- I could stop by the side of the road faster, and would.

I could tell as soon as I started biking that it was a good day. Took it easy, trying to keep my effort even (did not use HRM), didn't overexert myself, and had averaged 14.8mph by the turnaround at 25 miles, including a 1/2-mile downhill that I took maxing out at 43.8mph even squeezing my brakes intemittently. Of course, I had to go back up that hill, which I did in my granny gear. I used it for a few others, too. By the end of the day my average was 14.0, so obviously there was more downhill on the way out, and vice versa.I didn't take that pit stop till the turnaround. Kept just putting it off.

I had my watch set to beep every 10 minutes, when I drank Gatorade spiked with an Airborne tablet, with a longer beep every 30, when I took a salt capsule with water and ate something. Eating every half-hour was an experiment and I found I feel better eating half as much every half hour, than eating more every hour.

On the way up the monster hill, I got a sudden, strange, specific craving for turnip greens. ????? And, since I'm a redneck, I just happened to have some at home, which I included in my post-race meal -- canned, since although this is redneck country it's not turnip-green country, too far north. I ate them with cider vinegar; they would have been better with some bacon grease, but I'm not so much of a redneck as to have that on hand. Still, they were so good I ate the whole can, along with a breaded fried chicken breast (more redneck food) and rice with BUTTER. I deserved it.

The ride home was just as nice as the ride out, despite the increased uphills. With about 12 miles to go I got another craving, for the chicken bouillon broth I'd brought, so I stopped, fished it out of my Camelback pocket, and swilled that down. It hit the spot directly. I was taking no chances on sodium depletion today, even though it wasn't all that hot or humid, high 70's, clear, mostly-shaded roads. I kept being amazed at how I was able to go up hills with a nice cadence and relatively low effort on higher gears than earlier in the season (although, yes, I did use my grannies on about 3 of the hills. What the heck, I AM a granny.) I was feeling a little tired after about 35 miles but nothing serious.

Got home still feeling great; I had left my running shoes on the picnic bench for a quick transition in case I felt great enough to add a short run, but getting off my bike and looking at the running shoes I decided I didn't feel THAT great and scratched the thought of a run. It wasn't on the schedule custom-designed for me by my coach so it must not be in the stars.

So a pint of chocolate milk, put the chicken on to cook while I showered, sat down to the aforementioned chicken dinner, and I'm done.

My total bike time was only 10 minutes longer than my actual moving time. I'm whittling down my stops. I had a couple longish ones waiting for traffic, crossing the main road; one to see what noise my front wheel had started to make (I still don't know... sounds like katydids buzzing -- bearings?); one quick stand-up pee stop on the shoulder of the road (girls, you have got to master the stand-up no-mess pee technique); one to get my salt broth out of my Camelback and guzzle that down; and one a couple miles from home for 2 vehicles driven by tourons (a locally-coined word combining "tourist" and "moron"), one towing a boat, the other 2 jet-skis, trying to make a sharp left turn into the angled driveway of their vacation house. There was no shoulder where I could go around them (soft gravel and grass) and I couldn't go around to the left where they were turning. So I pulled my bike off the road (good move, the trailer with the jet-skis rolled back a couple yards to right where I'd been) and sat on the guard rail waiting for them to figure out what they were doing. I had been on a good roll for the upcoming incline but said touron vehicles were fooling around right on the incline, and when I ground to a stop I didn't downshift, so when the touron trucks finally got off the road, it was hard for me to get going again in the gears I was in. But I managed and was soon on my way again. I think IQ testing ought to be mandatory for tourists, but I don't seem to be able to get that program up and running.

So I'm back in the saddle after my bonk 10 days ago and some gun-shy hesitation to get back on the bike, cured fairly well by Sunday's 30 miles and completely by today's 50, enough sodium capsules and a squeeze-bottle of chicken bouillon.

No doubt only a few of you have actually read all this; it's as long as my ride was. But I had fun writing it.

MISBEHAVING

One day God was looking down at Earth and saw all of the rascally behavior
that was going on.
So he called one of His Angels and sent the Angel to Earth for a time.When he returned, he told God, "Yes, it is bad on Earth;
95% are misbehaving and only 5% are not." God thought for a moment and said,
"Maybe I had better send down a second Angel to get another opinion."
So God called another Angel and sent him to Earth for a time too.When the angel returned he went to God and said,
"Yes, it's true. The Earth is in decline; 95% are misbehaving, but 5% are being good."
God was not pleased. So He decided to email the 5% that were good,
because He wanted to encourage them, give them a little something to help them
keep going. Do you know what the e-mail said?




...Okay, just wondering; I didn't get one either...

COUNTY FAIR NO-WINS

Well, maybe it's just me, but I thought these two sleeping-child shots were beautiful.















I entered this in "Close-Ups."






















And this as an "Individual Person." There were a bunch of categories but you could only put one picture in each one, so some of them weren't ideal choices. There were a lot of good photos of individuals.

Maybe this just wasn't the right venue for these two pictures. Dare I wonder if it was suspected they might be professional and they were DQ'd from the amateur competition? They were displayed but I was surprised that they didn't win anything at all. I thought the baby one stood a chance of "Best in Show." However, see my next post, below, which you've probably already seen if you've gotten to this one :-)

COUNTY FAIR "HARDWARE"

AAAaaahhh! I was expecting ribbons and I got them. Although the Garrett County, MD county fair is a small, old-fashioned event that you can see in entirety in a couple hours, there are hundreds of photo entries, some very good photographers in this area, honest-to-goodness competition. Judges are professional photographers and entries are judged on composition and photographic technique. Still, of course, it's highly subjective.

Nevertheless!!

I got BEST IN SHOW for this one, which I entered on a whim, not my usual style at all, kind of bizarre. In addition to Best in Show, it won in the Digital Still Life category.















It's not a digitally-created composite; I used a sheet of background paper from a roll, something like shelf paper, for the backdrop, draped on the kitchen counter and up the wall so there'd be no visible joining of horizontal and vertical even though the peppers rested on the paper. I entered it as Digital because I did so much retouching -- darkened and sharpened the shadows, smoothed out a decaying spot in one of the peppers. None of this was explained in the entry but I had manipulated it enough that I thought I should classify it as "Digital."

Here are the rest:

















Blue ribbon, first in "Reflections" category.
























Blue ribbon, first in "Flowers" category -- I'm surprised it won, since it's not a flower, but they didn't have a "Mushrooms" class or even a generic "Nature" class.
























Blue ribbon, first in "Sun Effects" category. I shot this out a train window in Switzerland last spring. The window refracted the rays.



















Blue ribbon, first place in "Miscellaneous." I had pictures of Abbie in just about every category and had nothing left except Misc. for this one. Guess it was the best "miscellaneous" shot.

























Red ribbon, second in "Garrett County" class, supposed to capture the flavor, spirit, and general Gestalt of our area. This was taken at last year's County Fair. Look close -- she'd had her face painted like a kitty.

























Red ribbon, second in "Children." Abbie was jumping on a trampoline and flopped onto her back. Check the static in her bangs.






















White ribbon, third in "Water Scenes" (no "Lightning" or "Weather" or "Skies" category... there were plenty of good photos of water scenes, this was sort of off-topic.)

























Yellow ribbon, fourth or honorable mention or something, "Garrett County." Maybe it would have scored better in "Water Scenes." It's my grandson Collin at the locally famous Swallow Falls.

So I guess I'll keep my camera. I get a little bit of prize money.... not much -- I don't think they've changed the cash premiums since the fair's first year in 1956. "Best in Show" carries no additional premium, only what it already got for its blue-ribbon first-in-class win, plus the champion rosette ribbon and the recognition. But I'll be about $50 richer for my ribbons.

Blogger will apparently only let me post 10 photos. I entered 11 in the fair and got 9 ribbons, 6 of them blue, including the Best in Show. The two that got no recognition at all are in a separate post -- and here I thought they were pretty stunning. You just never know.

HE MADE IT!!

Here's my bike-trail buddy Ray on August 10 at the end of his trail. He had told me, while we were riding, that he was looking forward to having someone take his picture in front of the Capitol building.

Here's the email post he sent out to his cheering section:

Hi! Well I made it to the nation's capitol (see attachement for photo) this afternoon. After a 45 mile ride on the C&O Towpath trail I managed to ride through some of D.C.'s traffic to the safety of the National Mall where many monuments and memorials are located. Riding around the Lincoln Monument, past the World War II, Korean, and Viet Nam Memorials, and along side the Washington Mounument was quite a thrill. After riding some 4,000 miles across the country I was, to say the least, smiling ear to ear with a great sense of accomplishment. Knowing I had the support and well wishes from many friends and relatives helped me continue through the tougher times along the tour route. So thank you for your support, thoughts, and prayers. This was a bicycle tour that will be hard to duplicate, though I'm sure I'll try again in the future (read: southern tier route - CA to FL).

Read that last sentence again.... he just rode 4,000 miles and is already planning to do it again. Just like us goofy Ironmen who finish 140.6 miles and immediately sign up for another one.

Remember All in the Family? The episode where Mike and Gloria had their baby? And Gloria finally pushed the baby out and Michael was excited beyond sanity, yelling, "That was great! Did you see that? That was so great! Wow, honey, when do you want to have another one?"

To which Gloria replied, rolling her eyes, "Not now, Michael, I have a headache...."

A correction to my comments about Ray: It's not Landis, it's Lander. And that's not his last name; it's the name of his hometown. Oh, well, at least I noticed that he had something written on the placard on the back of his bike... some of you may be familiar with the email tagline I sometimes use: "I'm not totally lucid. Maybe I need sodium."

Anyway, you gals whose curiosity was piqued by my description of the man who took care of me and asked me to dinner, here he is. And I will be forever grateful to him for sticking with me when I was down. And the truth was, I was in fact down. I felt really, really crappy. Mildly scared. I was glad not to be alone.

It has taken me a whole week to get back on my bike. But I just finished a nice 30 miles. And I found that an easy, even effort, even here in the hills, netted me a better average speed -- 14.6 mph -- than when I try to push the hills and bust my backside on each one.

Another lesson learned.

Congratulations, Ray. And thank you.

I STILL HAVE TIME

I did some calculating. With 12 weeks left till IMFL, I have more time than I thought. I was thinking, September should be my peak month but is going to be complicated by the new job at the new campground in an area where I don't know where to bike or run or swim. And maybe it will be, but I figured out with a calendar what distance-increases I need to do, and it's doable. I had thought I had no time left: I was thinking, August is half over, September is shot, October is taper month, I've gone as far as I can go. But that's far from the way things are. September isn't shot; I just need to find out where to train. And it will be warmer longer in Winchester, VA than home here at Deep Creek Lake, MD. If I increase my long swim by 5 minutes a week, my long bike 10 miles every 2 weeks, my long run 2-3 miles every 2-3 weeks, I'll be ready to do the 2.4-mile/112-mile AquaVelo at ChesapeakeMan Sept. 30, rest from that, and still be able to do a 20-mile run a couple weeks later, 3 weeks before IMFL. I'll be ready. This is going to work out.

Ran yesterday, I'm working up my nerve to bike tomorrow, conservatively, a couple hours; today I swam. Couple-minute drive to the lake, easy laps in the swim area for an hour, 2250 yards. I'm not tired. Swimming easy doesn't tire me. It relaxes me. I wore my full wetsuit, although I didn't need to for the water temperature, but it was good to practice wearing it.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement. I get really down sometimes, as my friends all know. I think *jeanne* is right that I was still exhausted from whatever went wrong on my bike ride Sunday; Nancy is right that 25 hours of work and 15 hours of training add up to much more than 40 hours; everyone is right that I need more rest and need to trust myself more, and maybe respect myself more too.

Now I'm going to get some photos ready to enter tomorrow in the great prestigious Garrett County Fair. Not exactly the Louvre but I expect some ribbons and I can use any validation that comes along right now. Because along with toying with giving up on IMFL, I've been considering selling my camera as well. Some kind of "what's-the-use"conspiracy against myself to abandon everything I care about.

So I'm staying in the game.... continuing my training, and putting pictures in the fair. Ribbons will make me decide to keep my camera and start taking pictures again.

BACKING OFF

I haven't bounced back from Sunday's crappy ride. Yesterday I was so tired and discouraged I was crying and saying I thought it would be a good idea to quit training and give up IMFL. I haven't looked at my bike since Sunday. Can't stand to think about getting on it. Yesterday I skipped my scheduled 13-mile run and called my coach. She said we'll back off for awhile. She rewrote my schedule for 3-4 day training weeks for a while. This isn't much for Ironman training but it's what I can tolerate. I have never been able, in marathon or triathlon training, to go over 3-4 days a week without breaking down physically, mentally or emotionally. I did my training for ChesapeakeMan 3-4 days a week last summer. My friend Dianne calls me the "Queen of Undertraining." I emphasize rest over training and it always gets me where I want to go.

Today I was scheduled for a 30-mile ride but I still can't look at my bike. So I did yesterday's 13-mile run. Very slow pace, jogging 11 minutes and walking 2, to simulate what I think I can do at IMFL, walking through the aid stations for a 6-hour marathon.

I really was serious about quitting yesterday, for a while. My life would be so much easier without the pressure of Ironman training.

Or.... my training would be so much easier without pressure from the rest of my life.

I don't understand why it can't work like Steve says: if I work 25 hours and train 15 hours, that's 40 hours a week, why is that less doable than a normal full-time job?

I don't know why it's not that simple. Anyone have a clue?

IF IT'S TOURIST SEASON WHY CAN'T WE SHOOT THEM?

Steve took this picture last week at one of the campsites here at the park. With all the signs, and all the verbal cautions, they're still doing it.

A beautiful bear lost its life last month because it was availing itself to the food left out by stupid campers. Some people called the bear "stubborn" and "dangerous" and "persistent" but all it was doing was making use of a consistent food source. Officials tried to take her away several times but she returned each time -- and why not? Relocated miles away, she had to forage for wild food; back in her familiar territory, she had a plentiful source of very attractive human food for herself and her cubs.

Like Rachel commented .... In so many human vs. animal situations, it's not the animals, it's the humans. The animals are behaving normally, looking out for themselves and their young. The humans are just being stupid.

CRAPPY RIDE

Well, I set out to do 85 miles, ended up doing 87, b/c I stopped in a little town to replenish my Gatorade and water and couldn't find my way back to the bike trail.

Yeah, bike trail. I decided, rather than brave the damn hills again for 85 miles, I'd drive 45 minutes to the, um, forget what it's called, Allegheny Alliance rail-trail or something. It's dirt but it's smooth and flat. I underestimated how much work dirt and flat would be and how hot it was going to get. I think I didn't take enough sodium. I should have known. I got converted to sodium last summer by Nancy. I just didn't think it was going to get that hot or that I'd be working that hard. I should have known, when I finished off my Gatorade after about 50 miles and had to get more. I ate plenty, drank plenty, but started feeling really crappy with about 20 miles to go. Got off the bike and sat on the ground. Then put my Camelback on the ground as a pillow and lay down. Still felt crappy. I was a little worried. My hands weren't swollen but I was sure it wasn't dehydration or low sugar, I'd been taking both food and Gatorade, just not enough of my Succeed Capsules, one an hour, when previously on a hot day I've taken 3 an hour. I just didn't think it was that hot. Or that I was working that hard. I took a capsule with just a swallow of water, and another 20 minutes later, and another 20 minutes after that, and started to feel much better.

The fun part was that when I started feeling sick I had been riding for about 8 miles w/ a guy who was on his way to Washington, D.C. from Seattle. This was totally cool. Before I started conking out I asked him a lot about it, since I want to do that some day. He asked me about Ironman and said he absolutely could not imagine doing such a thing.

When I had to get off the bike to rest he stayed with me. I think he was worried. Actually so was I. I really felt crappy. He stayed with me and we biked slowly to the next trailhead, a couple miles. Rested again. He asked me out to dinner. I couldn't eat and I really just wanted to go home. He bought me ice cream, which I couldn't eat. I wanted chips but the ice cream shack didn't have any. He looked like Kenny Rogers. His last name was Landis, which didn't click in my mind till I was in the truck on my way home. We had even talked about Floyd and doping and everything, and it still didn't kick in. He had his name on a "Caution" triangle on the back of his bike. I saw it but it never registered. After the ice cream we walked back across the parking lot and my HR went from 90 to 114 with that easy walk. I called my husband to try to get a ride home but I had the truck and he couldn't think of anyone who might be able to come get me. I called our son. He was working. Called our d-i-l... no answer. Night shift nurse, she was sleeping. So Kenny Rogers Landis and I got back on the bikes and rode slowly, another 9 miles to go before where I was parked. I got a flat tire. Whatever can go wrong, will. But after changing the flat I guess everything had kicked in and I felt pretty good, was able to ride normally again. It started to sprinkle. I asked Kenny if I could give him a lift to where he hoped to camp. He said only if I'd go to dinner with him. Damn. I would have liked to but I needed to get home. He stayed with me till I got to my truck. He gave me a hug. Damn. Eyes the color of your task bar. My age.

I got home without incident, had soup, a banana, a little bag of chips, Gatorade, an Airborne tablet, water, I'm peeing a normal color, just tired.

So tomorrow and the next day I'm working 7-4 and taking both days off training. That's good recovery time.

Lessons learned:

• Don't go out too fast.
• Don't underestimate the effort on a flat course. Especially a dirt/packed sand one. It wasn't real rough, definitely doable, but it wasn't asphalt either.
• Keep up with electrolytes, 2 capsules/hr on a cooler day, 3 when it's hot. (Found out it was high 80's.) I learned this last summer but got stupid. Must be the hair. I think IQ points adhere to gray roots and gradually grow out of your head.
• Finally: Don't get so nauseated I can't go out to dinner with a cool biker guy my age. We'd have had so much to talk about! Could have been the proverbial 2 ships passing in the night.

Next time I'll know better. I won't have a sodium bonk again.

Now you all can yell at me....
Ellie, well-chastened

HIATUS

I have too much going on. I can't blog for awhile. Unless something really amazing happens. (Except everything that happens, I think is really amazing.)

I'm going to keep my Garrett to Gulf and Ellie's Tour d'Amerique maps up to date (more or less.) For anyone who doesn't realize it, these are the maps showing my bike and run mileage as point-to-point trips: running from Deep Creek Lake in Maryland to Panama City Beach, FL, and biking from Florence, OR to Ocean City, MD. Check my sidebar for links.

I'm in a down time training-wise... discouraged and tired. Some injuries trying to happen in my feet and knees. I took yesterday off training, taking a nap instead of swimming, which was supposed to replace an 85-mile ride. Today I did the swim, in Deep Creek Lake, very choppy with wind and boat wakes. It felt good and up until an hour ago I though, hmm, I should do that every day -- but now I've got a crick in my neck and shoulder, can tell I was fighting "surf." Still, in an hour I did 2250 yds; three years ago I could only swim a mile (1760 yds) of freestyle in that time.

Tomorrow I'll do something for an hour or so, rest on Saturday, and then do a long bike on Sunday.

Seems I can't do the training AND live my life AND work AND blog about it all. Something has to give.

REMEMBER THE BEAR?

Many of you commented on my posts about the bears last month. Well, here's the very sad update. She had been trapped and relocated twice, but bears are like homing pigeons. This one, as the article explains, was starting to argue with human rivals (no doubt that's how she saw them), as I described in my Bear Hunt post. It's just normal behavior, really -- humans have food that's very attractive to bears, the bear tries to get it, the humans defend their food.... if it were another bear defending food, there'd be a fight. It's too bad the humans weren't more discreet about the stewardship of their food. But they haven't been, and the bear was becoming more than a nuisance, she was a potential threat. I hate this. The three cubs are old enough to forage but not really old enough to hunt. And guess where they've learned from their mother to forage? I see more trouble coming.

However....
The deer couple pictured in my last post have been nibbling greenery just outside my picture window for the last 5 minutes or so. I don't have another picture but I've been watching them. The buck is a nice 8-pointer, still in velvet. I'm not a hunter and I hate to think of him getting shot; my son, for example, would be thrilled with him, and he'd provide a great deal of nutritious, delicious meat. And it is a truth of nature that deer are so abundant in this area and the winters so long and severe that, if all the deer were allowed to enter it and compete for the available ramaining food, many would die a slow, miserable death before spring.

I have these conflicts: I love the deer but realize their utility to humans, and humans' utility in sparing the deer from starvation. I love the bears but realize their potential for causing human injury and death (and injury or death to my cat.) And although I'll catch a spider on a piece of paper and put it outside rather than kill it, I don't hesitate to kill wasps, because their sting makes my heart pound, and makes me itch and swell and breathe hard and get dizzy. Doc gave me an EpiPen but I'm not going to let a nearby wasp live, and hope the EpiPen works if I get stung.

Oops, there they both go, running "deer-like" through the meadow down the hill. Someone must have spooked them. How beautiful they are on the run.