It's been a while

I've been swamped with work and school and haven't written in a while. And now that I'm on vacation I feel like being highly introspective.

As 2010 comes to an end, I think back at how much LIFE was packed into this year.

1. Started the year with the Olympic Games! I've dreamt my whole life about the Olympics, I never thought I'd get to attend one, let alone the marquee women's figure skating free skate event. I'm glad I got to share the experience with so many great friends. We had a wonderful place to stay thanks to my real estate agent, ate delicious food and generally had a really fun time. We even went to Two Parrots, a place that holds many memories for me over the years. I'll never forget how excited Kathy and I were together that evening of the free skate -we ran through the gates once they scanned our tickets. Mostly because we thought they were fake. I probably laughed more that night than I ever had before. Overall a wonderful trip that I'll cherish for a very long time.

2. Friends. This past year has told me more about people than I'll probably learn in the rest of my years combined. I have a second family filled with people who love me and want the best for me. People who are there through the good and the bad, people who cry with you when you cry, laugh with you when you laugh, and snap you back into reality when you need it. These people who are in my life now will be in my life forever, I know it. I value each of them and hope I enrich their life to the extent they enrich mine.

3. Paris with my Father. He's loved me forever and I wanted to see Paris for the first time with him. No matter what our lives have in store for us, I'll always cherish walking the streets of this beautiful city with my dad and standing atop the Eiffel Tower with him. For those few days it felt like there were no health problems, no scary things, just time with my father in Paris. No matter how old I get, how many times I go back or who I go with, it will always be our city.

4. The Marathon & TNT. I grew up thinking I was the world's worst runner. I hated running, my lungs would close up, I felt like someone was standing on my chest, and then little stars would start to twinkle in front of my eyes. Early this year, around March, I decided to make a commitment to changing that. I signed up for the Seattle Marathon and was going to train for it by myself. Turns out, that kind of sucks. A bunch of my friends had done TNT in the past, and well I never did it because I felt guilty about raising money for a disease other than my dad's. Even though my dad is a cancer research scientist and his company works with the LLS, I had a hard time reconciling those feelings. I wished I could run for my dad. Run to help him feel better. Only after a number of TNT sessions did I begin to really settle into it. I have to admit I started doing it for selfish reasons, I wanted to run a marathon and I knew it would be more fun if I did it with a team. I wasn't really thinking about helping further cancer research, though it was a nice goal to have. As the weeks went on this changed as I began to make friends with seemingly ordinary people on my team who had tremendous stories to tell. Stories that are told over miles and miles of running together, stories that otherwise might be hard to relate to started to feel raw and close to home. I felt honored to be training with people who understood life's worth in ways which most of us don't. I wanted to run for these people, and help them get better. On 10/10/10 we had the opportunity to put it all together over 26.2 miles. I wouldn't have been able to do it without the support of these tremendously courageous people, endlessly dedicated coaches, and people who loved me and cheered me on from the sidelines. It was an incredible life experience to do something that seemed so many worlds away. So far removed from what I thought I could ever do.

5. Austin. I'll try not to embarrass him too much here. I'll say this, he makes me feel more than whole. He makes me believe in the good in people, helps me puts things into perspective, makes me laugh, is there when I cry, and turns me into complete putty when he wraps his arms around me. He's the boy of my dreams and I love him more than I can ever ever say.

So, as this year comes to a close, I'm looking forward to 2011. I have no idea what it will bring other than an amazing Hawaiian TNT triathlon and an UW MBA. A blank slate full of potential, exciting!

Oh and yeah about Lavaman, I'm doing bricks. Lots of bricks. Increasing my cadence running and loving the spinning classes. I'll make a decision on a new bike when I get into town. See, exciting already :D

Thanksgiving + More Training

Thanksgiving + Run Practice 12/1

Things to Improve: Come to terms with my inhaler
Things I did well: 8:39 "easy" intervals
Nutrition: Vanilla Gu

Thanksgiving vacation was still athletic, we got a good workout in during the Turkey Trot - a 5 mile run. It was different running in the heat and humidity, I'm going to try to run as much as I can when I'm in LA for Christmas to get myself used to that kind of weather. Not sure it will physically make a difference in Kona but at least I'll know I can power through mentally.

After I got back into town I decided to go on a 45min swim at the Proclub which landed me with a sinus infection. I need to stop gulping and inhaling water. Catching this on Sunday night prevented me from going to swim practice on Monday so that was a bummer. I'm still recovering so hopefully it's all gone by next Monday.

I've also been on the Engine 2 diet this week, it's plant-strong with no dairy, meat or added oils. I like how I feel on it and it was awesome to give it a real try for a full week. Though I do think I'll go back to eating meat and dairy (because it's delicious and I'll probably die young anyway), I'll also be more conscious of eating lots of plants and not adding extra oil and other gross things to my diet without reason.

Ah last but not least, TNT run practice on Wednesday was wonderful. I ran with Vicki, who I adore, and we had a great chat while doing pretty strong 8:39 intervals. What's extra nice about this that I felt like I could have gone faster, so I know that I'm building up my speed overall. To be fair I also had my inhaler with me for the first time in 8 months so I'm sure that helped, but maybe the inhaler isn't such a bad thing. I used it because I was sick, but I'm sort of glad I reminded myself how great of a tool it can be when I want it. I'm still contemplating whether or not I want to train with it. I should probably decide that soon...

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, so excited to spend the Christmas season with all you wonderful people. It's my favorite time of year! :)

Swim Lesson + Run Practice 11/20

Things to Improve: Swim more often, ideally 3 times a week. Work on left arm.
Things I did well: Kept pushing hard on our trail run and ended up going faster than I did on Wednesday
Nutrition: Banana + Vanilla Gu = perfect, I think I'll be sticking to this.

I had my first swim lesson on Friday with Alice. Turns out I'm not that bad of a swimmer, I just need to learn how to swim for efficiency rather than self-preservation. I'm also a very right arm dominant swimmer, I'm trying to fix that but my left arm isn't a good listener. Alice is no nonsense and pushes me pretty hard, I like her a lot and will probably stick to her for a few more sessions. Swim is definitely my favorite part of training right now, then running, then biking. I wonder if that order will change as the season goes on.

The trail run on Saturday was tons of fun. I think I'm a faster runner on road and trail than I am on track, I felt quicker since I was able to keep up with the group which was a lot faster than me on the track last Wednesday. I also out ran my track running partner by quite a bit. Maybe there's hope yet.

Today is supposed to be another TNT swim but not sure if we'll have practice due to the start of the snowpocalypse. We'll be in TX the rest of the week, but are running the 5 mile Turkey Trot on Thursday so that should make for a good mid-week workout...if I don't counteract it by stuffing my little face with all things holiday delicious.

First Week of Lavaman

Saturday Bike 11/13

Things to improve on: Make sure I'm in the right gear. Buy warm gloves, shoe covers and a hat.

Things I did well: Tried to be a team player and cheered everyone even though I was really tired at some points during the ride.
Nutrition: Coffee and a Cliff fruit bar. 130 calories = not enough.

My time trial was at 40 mins, I think it could have been a lot less if I wasn't riding in the wrong gear. I kept pedaling so hard but went nowhere. I've never stayed in the wrong gear for so long before, not sure why I didn't check my gears or realize I was in the wrong gear for 8 miles. I'm curious to repeat the same time trial and see how I do.

I also need to learn how to stay entertained on the bike, don't have this problem with running but biking seems to be a really big mental game for me. I think maybe a bike computer will help, gives me something to look at and compete against. I don't really know what my baseline is either, so it would be fun to find out my average speed and work to improve it.

Monday Swim 11/15

Things to improve: Breathing to the side, stop taking gulps of pool water

Things I did well: Started to breathe calmy after Coach Cathy made us do the breathing drills. I was surprised how quickly I was able to change this up.
Nutrition: Apple. Worked well. Wasn't that taxing of a practice.

I decided to get some extra lessons at my gym because I really enjoyed the practice session and want to work on getting better. However I don't have the tools to do that right now, I don't know what I'm doing wrong, what I'm doing right and how to make myself a better swimmer. I want a jump start because I think it's going to take me a while to get to where I want to be. I also have this fear of deep water and big fish (maybe also of lots of small fish) which I think will be helped if I'm a stronger swimmer come March. I'm just going to do a couple of lessons and see how it goes. I really like being able to learn a specific new skill and work on improving it on my own, probably left over from my days of individual sports as a kid.

Wednesday Run 11/17

Things to improve: Pacing and using my arms to propel myself

Things I did well: Didn't need to do intervals
Nutrition: Kind Bar and Coffee and 1/2 Gu. The kind bar is high fat and takes a while to digest. Not a good pre-run bar. Probably will revert back to my cookie dough bar.

Tri run practices are really different from marathon practices. We did a ton of drills with Coach Cathy and Coach Fred. I really really like Cathy, I hope to be like her when I grow up! She's all business yet has this wonderfully warm personality, not to mention a great story of perseverance. I was running with Louisa's cousin when Coach Cathy came up to her to talk about using her arms more effectively. She said to think about doing a push motion backwards instead of forwards, I had never heard that before in all my days of marathon training. It worked wonders, looking forward to going on a run today and applying the technique again. I'm also contemplating using my inhaler again, my lungs just don't deal with the cold air very well. It might be worth buying a balaclava to see if that does the trick before I fall off the albuterol wagon (haven't taken a hit in over 8 months!). It would be nice to build up my lungs, the albuterol will inhibit that. It's a tradeoff between being faster in the short-term and having a bit stronger lungs in the long-term.