2011 Stats

Now I've tallied up 2011 from a workout perspective.

Total Workouts: 285

Total Miles: 2002 (almost twice as much as last year)

Total Time: 324 hours: 47 minutes

116 Runs

440 Miles

8.5 miles/week

114 Rides

1387 Miles

27 miles/week

The major increase in miles compared to 2010 is because of the great proportion of cycling. I'm really happy that I was so close to the same ballpark in terms of exercise schedule between years 2011 and 2010. Considering what I've been dealing with since July, I suppose it reflects how much I get out of the running & riding. It does feel like that was the only thing keeping me sane.

New Year Blues

I haven't written in a while because my husband, Kurt, died in July.

I wish it weren't true.
Nothing can describe what this is like, but if you want to know you can ask me and I"ll do my best. Here, of course I usually talk about running and riding bikes and swimming and other fun stuff. So I'm going to continue to do that, but I couldn't ignore that this has happened.

Kurt's death has had a particular impact on the sports-related part of my life because I shared a lot of that with Kurt. Even when I was riding or running without him, I always knew that he was a big influence in getting me started in much of that. He was there when I bought my first road bike. He taught me how to do intervals and encouraged me to sign up for my first triathlon, in June of 2000. He has since cheered me on at countless races, running almost a half-marathon himself when I did my first half-ironman to clap for me at the different aid stations. His support was unconditional, no matter what type of torturous adventure I was going to be doing: riding around in a van with 11 other runners for 36 hours or mountain biking all night long in January.

Kurt's death has left me dealing with grief, new responsibilities, paperwork, strange social foibles, all manner of struggles. However, getting my exercise hasn't really been one of them. First, this is because Kurt died while riding his bike and I know that he was happy doing that and would always want everyone to keep doing what they loved. Second, I had a revelation about exercise.

I was feeling crummy one day and didn't want to get off of the couch, but I convinced myself to do that and do at least 20 minutes of a kickboxing DVD. I got to this part where we were throwing punches and we were told to exhale loudly as we punched. I did that, but I found so much more than air coming out. I collapsed on the floor, releasing pent up tears and anger. It felt cathartic, and when I'd calmed down, I stood up, and continued the workout, finishing the DVD. Afterwards, I felt like a different person. My mood was so much better and I was motivated to go run errands and walk the dogs instead of laying on the couch. It was the first time I'd experienced such a dramatic impact on my attitude from exercise, and I've made it part of my mental health routine, not just my physical health routine.

Since I wrote my stats up last year, I'm going to do it again this year. Stay tuned to the next post to see how I did in 2011, with and without Kurt.

SOAR Highlands

Last weekend, Jenn & I got around to doing a race we've been meaning to do for a while- the Special Operations Adventure Race in scenic Highlands, NC. Jenn is from Highlands so she knows the area & we have a free place to stay so it is a complete Win- Win- Win! Note, however, that the word 'scenic' is often code for 'hilly' in describing races. I'm just gonna toss that out there...

Jenn & I did the 12 hour 'elite' race, while Brian & his friend Rob hit up the sprint distance ~6 hour race. Kurt was going to be risking life & limb by riding his road bike on the crazy mountain roads filled with crazy-fearless mountain drivers!
The race raises money for the Special Operations Wounded Warrior Foundation, which gives money to families of special operations soldiers who've been wounded. It is a great cause, and during the race brief, they introduced a man whose son was a Special Operations solider and had died in battle. The man and his wife now work to raise money for the fund etc. You feel all touched about him & his commitment to helping other families in his position. Then he tells a story of threatening to stab a fellow passenger on an airplane with a pen to the neck. You are not as touched.
The 'elite' (ha!) race started at 7 am on bike from downtown. There was a lovely rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, and a police escort as we bombed downhill along a busy highway. No chance of missing the turn, because there were volunteers and flashing lights indicating where to go. In fact, several sections of the race were marked, which bums out us since navigation is where we usually make up a little time on other teams. It is certainly not on say- going fast!Fortunately Jenn was smart enough to think about punching CP9 from the O-Course early on the way down the Blue Ridge Escarpment, instead of waiting till later in the race when we'd have to hike way up the escarpment to get it. We biked to the trailhead for Rabun Bald, then did the 8.4 mile round trip hike without many problems. However, we were already pretty fatigued & totally killed our quads with that descent. We joked that we could have made money on the soundtrack created from our satisfied groans during a stretch break. We saw Rob & Brian looking ready to conquer the world on the way up Rabun Bald.Next we had lots of biking, most of it with no nav (you couldn't even nav if you wanted to since the roads weren't on the map). Finally we started the rest of the "O-course" which wasn't much of an o-course, since all the CPs were on a trail (except one). Of course that one, totally beat us. CP12-- 'the swamp'. We see the swamp clearly as we ride to it, but don't find the 'trailhead' where we are supposed to park our bikes. We are confident we are in the correct location though, so head to the swamp to find it.

Jenn and I try to stay on higher ground at first, but find too much rhododendron. We head in to swamp & simultaneously find ourselves stuck up to our knees in muck. I spend the next 10 minutes panicking and trying to free my right leg from thigh-high mud. Jenn is probably annoyed at me for being such a wus while she searches for the CP. I have the map, but am trying to tell her where to look-- it should be on this side of the creek, etc. After freeing myself, I'm fairly grouchy, especially after belly crawling through the rhodo more. Finally, we declare defeat & retreat, not wanting to waste any more time on it. This reminds me that we should decide on a 'search for CPs time limit'.
The next several CPs were more fun, all near the flat bottom of Blue Valley. One was on an awesome waterfall that I just wanted to soak in, another near the base of this big overhanging rock outcrop. We ran into other teams that confirmed that the swamp CP was there, but it was on the other side of the creek from where we'd plotted it. We quickly nabbed it and then hustled to make it back to CP 7/13 before the 5pm cutoff. We managed to get there with 25 minutes to spare, but were handed 2 bonus CPs. Deciding that the canoe CPs (5) were worth more than the 2 extra bike ones, and not certain how long it would take us to push our bikes up the blue ridge escarpment, we decided to skip them. We were less than a mile away from that CP when a volunteer came by to let us know that they decided to cancel the rest of the paddle, because of thunderstorms. So, I guess we have time to get those bonus bike CPs after all!

I was kind of bummed about the paddle being canceled because while I'm not good at paddling, it generally involves less effort than pushing your bike up the blue ridge escarpment. Jenn was ecstatic. :) The larger bummer was that after pushing our bikes up the Blue Ridge Escarpment, we found out that the rappel was also canceled. After we wiped away our tears (ok, not really) we finished the mostly-uphill ride to the finish. We were almost at the end, riding over a rise in downtown Highlands when Jenn noted "Man, I used to think that town was pretty flat." We laughed about how the most modest of hills felt huge after a long day of up & down in the mountains.

We were the only all-female team at the race & I think there was only 1 other lady doing the 'elite' race with us. We were listening to thunder almost all afternoon, but didn't have a good feel for how far ahead some teams were & therefore how many of the faster teams got to canoe. Turns out not many, and Jenn & I were 4th overall, out of 11 teams. Way to go Team Will Race For Food!

Sun Intervals

So the summertime is not the best season for Adventure Racing-- at least in the southeast the temperatures mean that most races are in the spring, fall or winter. So that leaves me with a summer that is mostly full of training. There are a few shorter races I'm thinking of doing, but I'll mostly be trying to train through them to get ready for a 24 hour race at the end of August.
That's good. Too often I think I fall into the trap of going from race to race with inadequate preparation.
So, I'm gonna try to focus this summer & work on some of my deficiencies...
Meaning that I'm slow as $hite on my feet & wheels :)
Last week, on my first long run that was hot of the season, I realized that I was not exactly running slow & easy, I was doing "Sun Intervals". Basically, I would speed up on the sunny parts of my path, and slow down when I was under the shade of trees. At the end, I was practically crawling in the shady sections. It was ridiculous.
So I'm switching to try and get more of my workouts in in the mornings. I had a much better long run this week. I left around 8 am & I felt terrific when I finished.
My first 'training' race is this weekend actually: SOAR in Highlands, NC. I'm excited because this race has been on Jenn & my's list for quite a while & this is the first year we are getting to do it. However, previous reviews made it sound like there was minimal navigation & that most of the trails were marked. I hope that's not the case, because then we would have no advantage.

Regrouping...

This past week I've spent some time trying to plan my training for the rest of the summer. I feel like I sort of fell flat on my training for the Yuki-Bar race & the Smoky Mountain Relay, and I don't want that to happen again.
As part of that, I did a short 30 minute time trial on the bike yesterday to help determine my lactate threshold heart rate, ala Joe Friel. The last time I'd done something like this, Kurt was with me, so yesterday felt lonely & hard! However, I did encounter a couple of neighborhood kids biking, one of who exclaimed
"Dang, she's fast! Look how quick she snuck up on us!"
I got a kick out of that! If only that first part were true! :)
This week I've got a trip to Florida for work. I always have a hard time keeping up with training properly while on the road, so wish me luck!

Smoky Mountain Relay

This past weekend I spent 36+ hours in a minivan with 5 other sweaty, stinky runners.
Why on earth would anyone do this? you ask---
Well, we were one half of team Spread Thin, running the Smoky Mountain Relay, a 200-ish mile relay through the mountains of western NC.
12 people alternate running legs of between 3 & 9 miles, each running 3 times altogether during the day & a half.
We started at 6 am on Friday & finished around 6 or 7 pm on Saturday.
I was undertrained & had been sick, so I jumped on the grenade of doing the the easiest set of 3 legs available to Van 1 runners.
Every train needs a caboose, and I was ours. :)
I only did about 14 miles of flat to rolling hills terrain, all on pavement. This was supposed to be a trail relay, but that's not really how it shakes out-- only a handful of the 36 legs had trail, and a few more had gravel road/doubletrack. Fortunately, I got to run one leg at night which was a lot of fun & though it was supposed to be my hardest, it felt the best of the 3 I completed.

The Good:
1. Course was very scenic, challenging, and varied. OK, so I don't really have any other relay experience to compare it to, but it had plenty of 1000+ feet climbs to satisfy the hardest core of our runners, and some flatter stuff for the old-man-shufflers like myself. Exchange 24 was at an awesome location with lovely views!
2. The course finished at the Nantahala Outdoor Center & it was a great finish-party location. Tony had to be back in Kentucky that night so we didn't really hang around to enjoy it, but did stuff ourselves at the restaurant there. I saw several teams soaking tired feet & legs in the water, which was way enticing!
3. The weather was supreme. Only one scary thunderstorm really disrupted things. I think we'd all agree that we got lucky compared to what was forecasted.
4. I am in awe of some of my teammates. Some of the legs folks turned in were truly impressive feats.
The Bad:
1. I could have used more trail (well, any trail would have been nice). Certainly, I could have fought with my teammates for more of it, so this was partially my fault, but I don't know that there was enough to go around.
2. If you ever do this race, keep in mind that there will be zero cell service for most of it-- Therefore, zero communication between the 2 team vans. We lost about an hour waiting in the dark because we were early to an exchange and the other van wasn't there yet. Maybe start training some carrier pigeons?
The Ugly:
1. The race director, Jim Brendle, needs way more help with this event-- a lot of key organization tasks fell to the wayside. We weren't assigned a start time until Thursday-- the day before the race started! Course marking was inadequate to wrong in places. Some of the teams were absolutely rabid with anger because of the number of times folks got lost etc. Some of the exchange points weren't marked at all, the volunteers were woefully unprepared. Our team only got lost once for real, and that was doing WAY better than most of the folks out there, I think. (Nevermind that we lost about 2 hours because of our extra wanderings). We were saved by having a captain & teammates who knew how to read a map & took the time to plot the entire course on the Pisgah national forest maps ahead of time. That was a complete life saver.

All-in-all, I had a great time and think I would be willing to do something like this again. Emphasis on the 'think'.
Hopefully, next time I'll be better trained & not rocking a hacking cough the whole time.

A big thanks to our captain, Jenn Bauer, who did a stellar job of finding 12 folks crazy enough to do this from 4 different states, and keeping the disorganization from the event at tolerable levels. We had no serious snafus, and that was a real accomplishment considering how ripe for disaster this race was.
Stephen & Amanda, it was nice to meet you & we really appreciate your turn at volunteering. Too bad we didn't get to catch up with you during the race!
Tony Little came all the way from Kentucky with his Magical Mystery Van to do this. Thanks for putting up with us, suffering through a few scary-hard legs, & allowing us the luxury of the Chrysler Town & Country. I hope the stink goes away soon!
My 3 hour nap in Jenny & Lew's tent at the the Standing Indian campground was amazing! I have never been happier to lay down & sadder to wake up than at 1 am & 4 am on Saturday morning. I'm bummed we didn't get to spend more time w/ Van 2 folks, and you guys kicked butt & improved the average pace for the team.
Thanks to Chris, Judd, Tony, Anna & Jenn. You guys were a great group to be sore, physically exhausted & sleep-deprived with! I'd be happy to feed each other Laffy Taffy, fertilize christmas trees & use torture devices with any of you.
Even if I have to run during part of it.

Yuki Bar 24 Hour AR

This past weekend Marsha Hamilton & Stephanie Briggs attacked the Yuki-Bar race, put on by the Bushwack folks in the Pilot Mountain/Hanging Rock state park area of NC.

The race started Friday night at 7pm & I'd never done a 24 hour race w/ a nighttime start. Basically, it meant that you had to scramble more to get your gear together quicker, but we didn't have to find a place to sleep on Friday night . Sweet!

We began with a short trekking section, and deciding to be conservative, we skipped 2 points right away that were about a 1000 vertical feet up. That seemed like a lot of climbing from the get-go. Instead, we hit the ropes course first, which was pretty fun, though the checkerboard-plank crossing 40-feet in the air was a bit nerve wracking! CP 5 had the wrong coordinates, & it seemed that CP 4 was also not perfectly located. We decided to plot the next bike points while it was still light out on the trek course. At around 9 we headed out for Moores Spring.

I made one nav mistake here, and we missed a turn, but there was an alternative cut-through that worked fine, though it included a super-steep hill. We were one of the first teams to get to the single-track section. It was pretty fun in places, though some of the rock gardens were above our skill-level. Following the GPS trail map was challenging in some places, but we got all the points, though one that was probably misplaced took some extra time.

After leaving the trails, we started a road bike-a-thon. I'd hoped that we'd be able to shorten biking, but basically the route meant unless you wanted to skip the paddle (or the only single-track), you had to ride 60+ miles. And there was nothing flat. Not even a little bit. My quads were killing me and it was only 2am. Around that time we were startled to be approached by a pedestrian asking "What is good?". My pulse quickened, but then his staggering in the road & the wafts of pot coming from him indicated he was harmless, so we headed on our way. We had a good time picking up some of these CPs-- the waterwheel was cool.

We finally arrived at TA2 at 5am. I think we were the fourth or fifth team to get there and realize that it probably wasn't a good idea to try for the Yadkin river crossing. I was really tempted by the 200 points, but we were freezing & did not want to risk busting our butts only to not make it in time. I also had memories from the NGAR creek-crossing disaster that I didn't want to repeat.

Knowing that we could get the section 4 bike/trek CPs off the boat, I made a mistake of deciding to wait till getting to Rockford to plot the rest of our CPs. I was cold & hungry & tired, but that meant that several easy CPs got left behind. So we headed on the last biking to get to Rockford. There we plotted, (and realized that we'd been right on top of other CPs at TA2) & gobbled awesome country ham biscuits. We hit the water right after a coed 4 person team, and they were the only team we saw the whole paddle.


The paddle was uneventful, but just fast & rocky enough near the section 4 CPs to scare us out of stopping to get several checkpoints. We left probably 100+ points behind there. We got to enjoy the sight of a Bald eagle or two on the way to the take-out. We paused in the picnic shelter to do some route-planning, gobble some food & steel ourselves for more time on the frickin bikes.

We biked up & down, up & down, getting passed by a few teams on the way to Pilot Mountain. There we made a brief pit-stop to pick up the easiest CP (read lowest in elevation) & chatted with a friendly, chubby cub scout on the way back to the bike drop. Dan & Patrick tried to convince us to pick up some more CPs, since we had some time, but I was dreading the final bike & just wanted to get it over with. Too bad, because the trails & scenery would have probably been awesome. We finished with just shy of an hour and a half to spare & super hungry.
Finally, big thanks to Marsha for trying her first 24 hour race with me and doing such a kick-ass job of it! I'm still getting used to this overnight racing thing, but so far I like it! I think we rode 77 miles, paddled 18, but did only a few miles on foot.

Highlights: Three words: Country. Ham. Biscuit; the Friday-night start; Camp Hanes was a great location for a race; the ropes was a blast; all the race organizers & volunteers did an amazing job-- friendly & organized, the idea of crossing the river seemed cool, except for how cold it was;

We could live without: all the road biking (especially at the expense of the park trails that would have been more fun, but doing it all wasn't an option for slowpokes like us), some of the photo points in the dark were a little pointless, a big 'suck it' goes out to all the loose dogs that forced us into semi-sprints