Registered!!!!! 70.3 Here I Come!!!!!!

I finally did it! It took a while and lots of encouragement to finally click that 'register' button...but I did it! I'm going to attempt to become a Half-Ironman at The Musselman Triathlon in July!!!!

1.2 mile swim/56 mile bike/13.1mile run!

I am excited & scared.  I am comfortable with the swim & run, but the bike scares me.  I'm still not sure I can make the bike cutoff.  I have a lot of work ahead of me.  Any tips, suggestions on how to bike faster are welcome! I need to bike 56 hilly miles in less than 4 hours as I project that my age group will be one of the last waves.  My longest ride has been 40 miles & that took me 2 hours 47 minutes.  Yes, I have some work cut out for me.

Ironically enough, today's Runners World Quote of the Day was:

"If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try"

So here I go!!!! 15 weeks to race day!

Oh & the funniest comment on my fb wall was from my mother who asked "what's involved in this marathon?"   She is so sweet. I love her!

Succumbing To The Treadmill Makes Me Feel Like A Failure...

After faking out most of the country for the weekend, Mother Nature must be laughing her A$$ off right now after bringing back sub-zero temperatures, high winds & yes, MORE SNOW.  I don't even know what to say anymore except that I am thinking of starting up a global warming fan club.

This week is week 11 of my Toronto Marathon training plan. It has been going well! Coach Heather has had me doing workouts that are harder and much more challenging than I would normally even consider.  Just knowing that she will check in on me is keeping me accountable and working hard.  Today I had speedwork intervals to run....like really speedy (for me). After a warmup I was supposed to run 3 x 1mile @ 5k (8:20) pace with 4-5 minutes easy in between sets for a total of 6-7 miles.  This was going to push me pretty hard and I wasn't even sure I could hit even close to that pace.  And then I opened my door and saw snow on the ground.  Sigh.  So I went to a work meeting (Yay, awesome day off).  After 4 hours of my life I will never get back, I walked out of work prepared to hit my workout and was immediately pummeled by 20mph gusts of wind in bitter cold.  Just the cold I can deal with, but the wind kills me.  I just could not face this workout in that kind of headwind.  So off to the gym I trundled, to get on the treadmill.  I nailed it, btw.  Even hit 8:13 pace on the last set!  But for some reason, the workout was really unsatisfactory...I just couldn't take much pleasure in it.  Does anyone else feel like this???? I even did some core and jumped in the pool for a quick 1050 yards.  But still less than satisfied.

I think there is something wrong with me.

I need some spring!

Is Garmin Making Anyone Else Crazy?????

So I'm not the fastest runner out there.  Heck, my children chuckle when I mention how 'fast' I ran on any particular run....'speedwork' - I'm trying but my fast is not many other people's fast. Nevertheless, I am a slave to my Garmin and in an effort to run 'fast' (for me), I have been following my coaches training plan and trying to execute each run like I'm supposed to.  I can feel that 4:20 within my grasp. I am proud of what I have been able to do so far.

So let me just say that when Garmin Connect 'updates' and 'improves' their site and it results in my hard-fought threshold workout (with some paces in the 8's!) showing up as an overall 18 (WTF?) minute pace, you can imagine how choked it makes me.  It turns out that Garmin is having 'a little issue' with moving pace versus elapsed pace.  You see, at the end of the meat of my run I stopped in at the gym to take part in a strength training class. I did that for an hour and then ran the mile home afterwards.  Of COURSE I restarted my Garmin for the mile run home! It's running. It counts.  But even though everything looks fine on my watch, it uploads as only elapsed time now.  IT IS MAKING ME NUTS!  I don't always stop my watch during my run, but I do occasionally hit a long red light or need a pit stop.  Maybe some of you keep your watches running, but i don't.  Am I cheating in some way? I didn't think so.

I hope they get this fixed.  I understand from the forums they are working on it.  In the meantime I have to edit any run that I didn't run continuously.  This is very frustrating.