10.30.2008

Gah

I'm trying to stay up until 10pm to get my clock back to PST.

Queenstown was awesome, although I now know I don't like ATVing. I like watching other people on ATVs, or be a passenger, but I don't like to drive one myself. Auckland was okay. LAX customs is not my favorite place to be for 30 minutes while they processes people. I am happy to be home with the animals. Happy to soon be sleeping in my own bed.

10.25.2008

Where in the World is Yas???

Yup, kids, if you've been paying any sort of attention to me or this blog, you know I'm in New Zealand. Here's a quick run down of what we've been up to.

Day 1: Auckland - Kinda crappy day because of the jet lag. Walked around our hotel. It's a clean big city, but still a big city. We'll be back here for a day and a half before we hop our flight back to the US.

Day 2: Driving to Waitomo Caves. Kinda freaky driving on the left side of the road. Luckily Jeremy drove us most of today. Our jetlag was completely gone. Went to the Bed and Breakfast (Waitomo Caves Lodge - awesome) checked in and met Janet, Colin and their dog Gypsy. Went for a short bush walk.

Day 3: The Black Abyss Caving Tour. This is what we came to Waitomo Caves for. I didn't completely read the description of the journey. It did mention a "challenging" course and "climbing waterfalls". They were short water falls, but my indoor rock climbing did come in handy. (pictures to come)

Day 4: Traveling to Queenstown - This morning at the Waitomo B&B we ran into people who just came up from Queenstown. In talking with them we decided to stay another day in Queenstown, because there is so much for us see and do. I know I'm selling Auckland short, but we're looking for more hiking and outdoorsy stuff. Maybe we should have stayed outside of Auckland for that, but such is life. Checked into this B&B 5 Star Lane. It's awesome as well! Go Yas for picking great places to stay.

Tomorrow is Jet boating with a helicopter ride to some white water rafting. Maybe I'll squeeze in some time to post.

10.20.2008

Game Day: Subaru Sprint Triathlon

I now have a new most fun race ever. Or at least a most fun race as a solo event ever. The Subaru Sprint Triathlon. All women, competitors and completers alike.

This race starts like all the rest, with me getting to transition early in the morning. We got there a bit before 5 and were the 3rd or 4th group in line at transition. Who was first? Jillian and Liz. They even worked some magic on the race director/officials. See, at the course talk the day before, the race director told us they pushed transition open back to 5:30am, but the website said 5am. She asked if they'd open it at 5am because that's what it said on the website, making no mention of the fact that we heard them say 5:30 am. They let us in about 5 after 5. Score!

I set up and got an end cap, the one closest to swim in, bike out and run out. Jillian got the one behind me. Set up and waited. Ate my uncrustable (peanut butter and honey on wheat bread) and waited some more. There were bathroom trips and pictures and me eating my gel.

Swim
This was my second in water start. My first truly in water start. See, we were pretty much in the water at Danskin, but we were standing in it, not treading water waiting for the horn.

The horn went off, we went vertical and I started bobbing and weaving through everyone trying to keep up. At one point the first yellow hat (the wave after mine) passed me. I could have sworn it was a fellow diva, and speedy swimmer, Rani, but I found out later it was not. My goal was a 20 min swim, came in bit faster. I hugged the buoys as tight as I could and sprinted in to the ramp for the finish.

T1
Slow. My wetsuit didn't want to come off, I stopped to put on my flip flops, when I should have just run without them. Lessons learned.

Bike
Here's where I deviated from my game plan. I left my Garmin at home and was trying to go on perceived effort. I didn't succeed in pushing myself as hard as I wanted to until Kara passed me.

See, at one point near the end of the first loop of Fiesta Island I had the thought that I might not be pushing myself as hard as I could be, but as long as Kara from Ladera doesn't pass me, I'm okay. Not a minute later (seriously it was 30-60 seconds after I had this thought) that I heard my fellow diva shouting encouragement. I didn't exactly return the comments in kind, but I know Kara knows I love her, and she'll leave anything I said on the course.

After that I pushed, trying to keep Kara in sight, passing everyone I could safely pass. Next thing I know, I'm off the Island and heading back into transition.

T2
Wobbly and here's where I think I messed up my run. See I'd drank my 190 calories of Cytomax on the bike, here I shot a Mocha Clif Shot (mostly for the caffeine) and set out on the run. I wanted to down the gel before the first aid station so I could wash it down with water. I think I took in too many calories in a short amount of time.

Run
First of all, I couldn't feel the last 3 toes on my right foot. I'm really going to look into getting new shoes. The numb toes act is getting old. Second, I developed a bad stitch in my side, see above hypothesis in T2 commentary. This all lead me to walking more than I wanted to on the run, but guess what, I still finished it in under 32 minutes. Which means if I'd had run the whole thing I'd have posted my fasted 5K to date. Not my fastest run time in a triathlon, my fastest 5K to date ever.

I loved this course, fast, pretty flat, all about you and your body.

I'm so happy that I shared it with the divas who started out with me in the Spring, as well as new and seasoned divas alike. I'm sad that it's over, but I'm already plotting out my running race season and trying to see how I can fit in more half marathons.

My name is Yasmin and I am a Triathlete.

10.18.2008

Yas Got Her Groove Back

Yes, I know you all didn't know it was lost, but it was. For the past 2 weeks, well let's be honest, probably the last 6 weeks, I really had no desire to train.

None.

I was going through the motions, working the plan, but it was easy to put off a training session for any reason. ANY. I mean grocery shopping and laundry, even cleaning the house jumped in front of my desire to train.

I didn't necessarily think I'd lost my groove. I just thought I was tired, over scheduled, etc. But that never stopped me before.

Somewhere on the streets of Irvine, whilst taking my morning break/walk (I have to get out of the office/cube sometime), I found it.

In the middle of the afore mentioned walk, I wanted to break out into a run. It was a desire so powerful I actual jogged a few yards. In my work clothes. Jeans, even and no one was chasing me. I wanted to run for the first time in at least 2 weeks, maybe even 6.

Luckily no one from work saw me do this, I'd never live it down.

I'm off to Subaru's all women triathlon in Mission Bay, San Diego, soon. For all of you doing Nike (+)'s Women's Marathon and 1/2, Good Luck!!!! And steal me a little sumfin' from Tiffany's if you can.

10.12.2008

Taper

Yes peeps, I went from recovery week to taper week. It's awesome! Well, it will be, once I get started on Taper Week training.

See this week I ran all of 3 miles and participated in another mockathlon (mock triathlon for those of you new to my blog). That's it. Well, there was some walking and attendance at Blizzcon where I saw this girl:And before you start talking about losers and dorks, et all, I just want you to know some of these people are uber talented in the costuming arena and I believe Hollywood and Broadway really need to pick a few of these up. The chick above, I think her name was Amanda, created a mechanical turtle that she rode on the stage. It was huge and the legs moved and everything! And look, her shoulders light up! She won the costume contest hands down.

I go to Blizzcon for the games (I got to play Diablo III and can not wait for it to come out) and to watch the people who have the balls to go up on stage and parade their costumes and dance like the characters in WOW. The winner of the dance contest must have been a belly dancer or a raver. She did the undead female trance dance like a pro.

Back to recovery week, I also walked the dogs a few days and went to the outlets in Carlsbad. It was a really hard week.

Next weekend is Subaru, then New Zealand. Yes, you all will be tortured with sheep pics, if I ever see any sheep.

10.07.2008

Rest

I like it. I'm getting caught up in Facebook and Word Challenge. I'm cleaning my house and walking my dogs.

I'll do some training tomorrow.

10.05.2008

Game Day: Bonelli Olympic Distance

This race starts before the race. Yes, I know we all say that. It's in the preparation, blah, blah, blah. But that's not what I mean.

See this race started, in my head, on Wednesday at about 6:30pm. This is when Martha tells me that people got lost on the run at Bonelli. Just what I need to hear. I'm all over the nutrition. I've got my bike in order and have good shoes. I'm bringing my wetsuit regardless. But getting lost? I don't want to get lost!

Fast forward to Saturday. I got in a slow speed accident backing out of a parking space. No damage to the car, but I could already feel my back tightening up. Then, if that hit wasn't enough, one of our accordion doors that enclose our washer and dryer decides that it no longer wants to stand up. Instead it wants to be laying down, on me. So I take a blow to the right side of my head (no damage) while trying to catch the door after it fell on me. Nice.

I can't sleep, and get up a few minutes before my alarm goes off. I've packed the night before so I'm off. At 4:30 am to get to the gate that opens at 5:30 am.

I sit at this gate until 5:25 when I realize no one is around me. (yes always the Diva, I'm earlier than the park opens). I drive around to the gate closest to the event. Yay! There are people here, but we're still not moving. About 5:45 I get out of my car and walk half way to the parking attendant booth, nobody home. I guess the park employees didn't get the memo about the park opening at 5:30 instead of at sunrise. Finally, about 6am we get in.

I unload my gear and head to where I think registration is, but find transition instead. I set up on an end cap 3 racks back from bike in/out (score!) and head out to find registration. I get all my stuff and then I wait.

Swim (48:32)
We're supposed to start at 8:00 am, with my wave being at 8:10, but this doesn't happen. We probably start closer to 8:10.

I meet a few women in my wave. With no other person there I know, I need to make a friend, if only to zip up my wetsuit. We line up with our Yellow Cap wave and we're off.

A mile is a long way. I've swam the distance before, multiple times. But usually in some sort of lap form so I know how much more I have to go. The first buoy looked like it would take forever to get to, but I did it, and noticed there were 2, no 3 opportunities for me to chick some of the male swimmers. One was even a red hat, meaning in the first wave! This gave me something more to focus on.

I did end up passing all 3 of them, and swimming through LOTS of lake weed. So much that I couldn't put my face in the water because it was touching ALL of me. Gross. I'm pretty sure I had a mild panic attack here, thinking that some how, the lake weed was going to drag me under. So I swam a bit straight away from it, not necessarily towards the buoy.

Then I saw it, swim out. I threw myself into a sprint. I really wanted to finish the swim in 45 minutes, ended up out of the water and to the transition mat in 48. Good enough.

T1 (3:34)
Slow, 3 minutes! But I caught my breath, shoved down a gel and water, got on my bike gear and left.

Bike (1:55:37)
I don't want to talk about this one. The first loop I was getting my legs, the second was the best, even though my shot bloks jumped out of my bento box, the third, well, it was the third. By this time most of the Cops had left their posts. I had to stop for 30 seconds to 1 minute at a light because of this. Yes I know I could have ran it, risked my life (not really as time would tell) and a ticket, but I heard Linda's voice in the back of my head, "Safety first, Yasmin!" so I stopped. I also lost my momentum. I finished the bike thinking, maybe I can just skip the run, but no I trained for this, so what if it's not necessarily going as planned and you'll miss your aggressive goal (Finish in 3:45). Go for your original goal (4 at the most).

T2 (2:49)
There was no one left. Now I realize, the bulk of the people there were probably doing the sprint distance, but I've never seen transition so deserted when I got off the bike as I did here. Oh well, off with the bike stuff on with the run stuff (including my nutrition belt) and go. No wait, get the race belt, now go.

Run (1:10:22)
Started off a bit too fast. Aimed for a 10:30 -11 min/mile pace. Should have started at the 11-11:30. The run started on a paved trail, ran through dirt, a parking lot and finished with a sprint (or as much as I had left to give) through grass.

I start running and there isn't a soul around me on the trail. I wonder if I'm the last person on the course. I run through the first 3 miles or so and I see her. Ripe for the picking. I set off, not really deviating from my pace, and I pass her. Now I know I'm not alone and have another goal, not to let her pass me.

I run through a part of the trail that makes me wonder if Aragog (the giant spider in the Harry Potter Books) is going to come steal me for his children to eat. Or maybe I'm running on the bank of the river in Deliverance. But I get through this without seeing a spider or hearing banjos and continue on.

I see her next, in turquoise and black. She's my new target, I start closing in, and realize, wait, she=he. I didn't think any guys were left out here. I'm going to chick another guy and he'll stay chicked. (see, I chicked plenty of guys, maybe 5, on the bike, but I'm pretty sure most of them were on their 2nd or 3rd loop at the time). I run to the turn around and as I'm on my way back I realized some of the guys I chicked on the swim also stayed chicked. AWESOME.

So now I'm enjoying the run more than I thought I would whilst on the bike. I see the last aid station and it's abandoned. But they left the water! So I grab a cup and continue. It's all about continuing and not posting a DNF. Then I see him. The final guy/person I'll pass (I know this in retrospect). It takes the better part of a quarter mile, but I do it. Now I'm in the home stretch. People are telling me the finish line is right around the corner.

Then I saw it. In all it's inflated glory. Now you have to realize I'd pretty much convinced myself that it would be starting to droop, all deflated. The timing mats being the only thing left. Maybe one or 2 people with the timing company. But it was there, with mats and even some people left to watch!

I started my sprint as soon as I got on the grass. I was pretty sure, if my watch was any indication, that I'd missed my 4 hour goal already. Also, I didn't know what kind of gopher holes might be in the grass, so my sprint was slower than normal. The fact that I could even muster up anything was a surprise to myself.

"Here she comes, number 217. She's finishing strong. Yasmin Wood!" I love the announcer at this point. Then I adore him because he says, "here are some true athletes, people. These guys have been out here the longest and they're still strong!" I could have kissed him. Right at that time I was happy, but berating myself for not pushing more on the bike or the run or, heck, the swim, to get me to one of my goal times.

My overall time was 4:00:56. So I missed it by 56 seconds. That's in the margin of error, right?

Now I can say, I'm an Olympian. Watch out Phelps.

10.02.2008

Protein, Protein, Protein

Apparently I'm not eating enough. I talked about my elevated liver enzymes. Signs are now pointing towards my muscles breaking down and not being able to repair themselves.

Awesome.

So now I'm aiming to cram 100 grams of protein down my throat. It's harder than I thought.

First off, I feel full almost all the time. How are you supposed to get more protein in your stomach when it never tells you you're hungry?

Secondly, there is only so much meat I can eat. (have you finished giggling yet?) I'm working on getting down one and a half protein shakes. I'm also eating more nuts (stop with the giggling already) and a bit more dairy. Any other suggestions?