Cadillac Triathlon

This was a great weekend.

Friday was my day off because the DQ's power was out and that meant that I did not have to work!

Swim

I woke up early for the 5:30 swim after staying up way too late Thursday night. For some reason, I was very energized and READY TO GO! It was probably because Tony had mentioned to me the other day that I needed to work on my turnover and if I just moved my arms a little faster, I'd be a little faster. Easy enough concept, so I figured I'd try it out. Conveniently enough, our workout was in 500 yd blocks so I had enough time during these continuous swims to work on my form. It was awesome. I pushed myself very hard to the point that I could actually feel myself sweating underwater. I left the pool feeling very accomplished and ready to race on Sunday.

Run

I came home from my swim and made the BEST breakfast ever. 2 eggs overeasy, toast, spinach, cantelope and coffee. I enjoyed it so much I took a picture! After breakfast I jumped on my treadmill in the basement. I have it positioned so I can watch my stride in the mirror as I run. I ran an easy 25 mins but really focused on higher cadence and striking on my forefoot rather than my heal. My newton running shoes and making me a better runner and I LOVE IT! They're worth the money, who needs money for groceries anyways?

Turbo Jam

After my run, I made myself and awesome wrap and called Caterina. If I'm lucky enough to call her before she already did her workout for the day than that means there's a chance that I could coerce her into doing Turbo Jam with me. Luck was on my side today. She was ready to turbo! We decided we should do Cardio Party 3. It's about45 minutes long and it KICKS YOUR ASS! I wore my weighted hand gloves for that extra push. I was soaking wet from sweat about 12 minutes into it. No joke. We had a blast though. Every time I finish a workout with her I just think about how great it is to have a friend like her. I often feel like I'm crazy for being this obsessed with fitness until I call up my best friend and realize that our idea of 'hanging out' is working out and we're pretty much guaranteed to laugh and smile more than if we had simply 'hung out'. Just because the rest of this country can't appreciate what it's like to feel good about yourself and care about your health doesn't mean we're crazy. It means we're smart and confident enough to be proud to follow our dreams and do the things we enjoy. Clearly I get very defensive...sorry.

Group Ride at Stony

A little later on in the day I met a whole bunch of Team Fraser members at Stony Creek for a group ride. Our workout plan said "heart rate zones 1-3" *Avoid 5. Translation=Easy Ride. Well, umm...sorry coach, but I definitely could not resist the urge to go fast, crazy fast. The plan was to ride with Andrea. I was with her for about 13 seconds before I unknowingly took off. When you ride in front of someone it's hard to know when you're breaking away from them. We just learned this weekend that the person in the back should say something like"falling back" or "fall back" if they are lagging behind. Makes sense. Andrea and I don't know this stuff because we're FAR from being knowledgable about biking etiquette. Anyways, this ride ended up being 2 hours and 15 mins. I rode mostly with Greg. He's a really nice guy and has taught me a lot since I've met him. I always appreciate a new friend, especially when I can learn from them. Not sure...but the fact that he's a teacher might have something to do with this... Also, he rides my pace. That's rare, considering my pace is "torture your body to gain speed" pace. The ride was about 45 miles and my body burned 2500 calories. I'd have to say that was a pretty good workout. We kept an average speed above 20 mph.

Swim-Open water

After biking, we all headed over to the beach area for an open water swim. We changed into our bathing suits in our cars and put our wetsuits on in the parking lot. We waddled down to the beach holding our swim caps and goggles all geared up in our batman-looking suits and at that moment I realized...we're scaring people. There were families having bbq's and people laying out on the beach trying to get some sun, and then there's Team Fraser- a bunch of scary people that look like they're going deep sea diving. Dirty looks aside, we jumped in and swam to the middle of the lake. The seaweed was EVERYWHERE and every stroke we took was like a struggle for survival against the arms of the seaweed monster. We stopped a few times and bobbed around in our wetsuits. Andrea shared an amazing story about the life of salmon and we headed back to the beach. Thought we were scary before? How about a group of people jogging out of the water while ripping their suits off with one quick pull on the zipper. That moment made me realize that we're far from average, but at least we have each other.

Saturday

I woke up saturday and realized that I had made a big mistake during my friday group ride. There was a good reason why Tony had written the workout as an "easy ride"...to save my legs for Sunday's race. Oops. I could hardly walk. I only have myself to blame for this one. I guess I just couldn't resist. After rolling around on the floor in agony for a few moments, I got a phone call from Mr.Sailor man James! He asked what I was doing and where I was....Uhhh...why do you want to know where I am? Well, the creeper was outside my side door! He had driven all the way from his naval base in Virginia to come see his friends and family here in Michigan. It was quite bittersweet seeing him because I really wanted to hang out with him but really wasn't going to be able to spend too much time with him because we were leaving for our camping adventure in Cadillac, MI at 5pm. I visited with him for a little while and decided to meet back up with him in a few hours. I spent the next 90 mins running frantically around the house packing my supplies and going over my USAT checklist about a hundred times. I just kept saying Swim...bike...run... then I would go over the steps in the process..I swim (goggles, swim cap, wetsuit tri-suit,...I bike (bike, aero bottle, shoes, helmet)...I run (newton running shoes, race belt, garmin). That was the easy part. The hardest part was trying to plan my on-the-road nutrition. I love the idea of someone driving me to a race but I hate the idea of not having control of where we're going, when we're going there and what I'm going to eat! I packed a good variety of snacks and carb-loaded foods to last me the 24 hours that we'd be gone. I made sure to bring a large supply of water to insure for proper pre-race hydration. After packing my life into a duffle bag, I met at Caterina's house because we had plans to go shopping. I said I'd be there at 1:40pm. I was 8 minutes late. :( James met us there and volunteered (actually, we made him) to drive us to the mall and run errands with us. Did I mention that he just recently purchased a shiny black BMW? It was a nice car, to say the least. We went to partridge creek where Caterina purchased a nice new Coach purse and a little wallet thingamajigger that goes around your wrist. I'm pretty sure it has a name, but I'm not hip enough to know the terminology. Ironically enough, after shopping at coach where the trendy salesperson was wearing more lipgloss than I own (*it was a man), we headed to Gander Mtn. and target to shop for my tent, camping chair, and gatorade. Yeah, Pam and Cat-best friends but from TWO DIFFERENT WORLDS. We've always been soooo different in many ways but have found even more ways to be the same and get along. It works. When our shopping trip was done, we headed back to Cat's house where we all went our seperate ways. I headed to CVS before the bike shop where I purchased some cheap hot pink placemats. Some see a placemat, I saw a new transition mat. I thought it was a good idea, and guess what, It definitely worked on Sunday.

The Adventure begins... I got to the shop and headed out with Tony in his big ol' Team Fraser Van to go pick up Dave, Nick and Andrea. The drive was about 4 hours of nothing but entertaining conversation. Put 5 triathletes in a van and you'd be surprised about the topics that come up. When we arrived at our campsite, we checked in, drove up to the site, jumped out of the van and assembled the tent in about 7 minutes and left. We headed over to the race start and met up with some of the 3Disciplines people. We jumped on our bikes and rode about 7 miles of the bike course because it was gettng dark. Afterwards we decided to eat at Burkes waterfront cafe. It was 9:50pm, they close at 10pm. We didn't realize this until the disgruntled waitress had already taken our drink orders. Oh, and not to mention, they Usually close at 9pm on Saturdays and they had Just changed it. Sorry Burkes! Dinner was interesting. I ordered some type of pasta dish with veggies. I was starving so I really didn't matter what I ate at this point. After dinner, we went back to the campsite, popped in the ipod earbuds and headed off into a deep sleep. We woke up around 5 am. Damn early risers...

Sunday RACE DAY

We arrived onsite early early early. We were the first ones there, like usual. Correction: The mosquitos were the first ones there. I was seriously SO irritated by those things. I wasn't in the mood to be donating my blood to those lil F#$%ers in exchange for an irritating bump. My forehead and my feet were target areas and I looked like a kid with chicken pox just 20 minutes into the day. We set up the Fraser Bicycle and Fitness tent then headed over to registration and packet pick-up. After getting our race numbers, we racked our bikes according to our numbers. Each rack holds about 7 bikes and you bike can be placed anywhere on that rack as long as it's within the race number range labeled at the front of it. When you're the first one there, you can grab the best spot (closest to the center). I'm yet to race and not have the best spot. :D I racked my bike then went back to the van where I prepared all of my things for transition. I made sure my Garmin was already turned on and had a satallite signal and set it to "Run" so it would be ready to pace me during the run portion. I set up Ruby and all my goodies and was ready to go!

Race Highlights
It turned out that the water was too warm for a wetsuit so I was going to have to swim without it for the first time open water! I was scared out of my mind but thank god for my coach. He sensed my fear and decided that a pre-race swim would probably help calm me down and put my mind at ease. We jumped in the water and swam to the first buoy. By the time I started swimming back it was just minutes from my race start. Andrea (who was volunteering at the race) waved to me and told me to just swim to the start area and join the other women in my wave. I was lucky that I got to swim to them because I knew that the walk out there was over many sharp rocks and I had skipped experiencing that. I also felt like I was at an advantage because I was warmed up and all the other athletes were shaking, freezing cold and blue! I sang the song that was playing over the speakers and soon enough it was...3..2..1.. GO! We swam the course and I felt great. I got out of the water and bolted for the transition area. Arriving at my bike it was a simple swoop to get my helmet on and I ran off with my (Ruby) my bicycle. (Did I mention I took off my swim cap and goggles...I think that goes without saying.) The bike course was flat. It wasn't the best pavement but I could handle it. As I was riding I passed everyone I saw. I wasn't passed by anyone (I rarely am). Eventually I saw Kellie, a main competitor of mine and I decided to push out everything I had and pass her. I never looked back and just pictured her on my wheel. I threw up a few times while riding because it seemed like everytime I took a sip from my aero bottle, it just came right back up onto the race numbers on my knee. Not a pretty site. I pushed on and finished the bike strong. I came FLYING into transition and dismounted while still traveling about 100 mph. I threw ruby on the rack, took my helmet off, put my shoes on, grabbed my race belt and ran for the RUN OUT. I started running and sure enough I was running toooooo fast. I looked at my pace and it was about 6:15. As much as I WISH that was my pace, it's nowhere near that. My goal was to run 8:15's but aim for a negative split. I paced myself pretty well. When I reached the turn around point I made sure to never be above 8:15's but if I was running faster...I didn't slow myself down. I had seen Kellie on the turn around and knew she was coming for me. I was really scared because from what I had heard, I was the first girl to be seen and that meant that I was in the lead! I knew Kellie was a stronger runner than me so I was just running as hard as possible and praying for a miracle. I crossed the finish line and guess what? A miracle. I won the race! It felt awesome and I was excited to know that I would be adding 1100 points to my series from my 1000 pt 1st place finish and the 100 pt prime I had earned for being 1st overall on the bike.

The weekend was great. I had a ton of fun camping and was glad to have all of the support. Happy to say that I have won a race!