Journal for triathlon training

2011-11-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

This was part of our race crew! Awesome!!!!

2011-11-07T22:55:00.001-05:00

November 5th was a pretty perfect day....starting with waking up to my wonderful husband who was doing Ironman Florida with me and ending with ME announcing finishers crossing the line after I became an Ironman for the 3rd time a few hours before with a PR time! If that's a good enough race report for you, stop here. If not, below are the details :)

After training and preparing for Ironman Louisville last year without Dustin, I was very thankful he was by my side this year as we drove to Panama City on Wednesday night. Hilary was nice enough to let us stay in her condo one night because we were sitting on a fundraising panel for the Ironman Foundation for raising money for Challenged Athletes Foundation on Thursday morning. Through this, we got to meet Michellie Jones, 2 time Ironman Hawaii Champion, so that was a pretty good start to our Ironman experience. My parents drove down from Missouri and they watched us answer some questions and raise awareness for our causes, along with a few other athletes. That morning, we met Wolf and his family and a few other club members for a swim and it was a bit rough for the gulf, but glad we did it! We made it through athlete check in with no problems and my parents were nice enough to wait in the long line at the store while we got some crepes and threw some Powerbar bean bags (highlight of the weekend, I made 4 in a row and kicked Dustin's butt :).

We were lucky enough to score some VIP passes through our fundraising for the Welcome Dinner, so we didn't have to wait in line and we got to sit up front which was kind of nice! The presentations took a bit long, but Dustin and I got up on stage for being husband and wife racing together, along with a few other couples. The athlete race meeting seemed to drag on forever, but our good friend, Andre did well with the run portion (both in speaking and directing during race day!) Most of the Hammerhead Triathlon Club members doing the race were able to get together for a picture after and then we went back to the condo (Laketown Wharf, less than half a mile walk and highly recommended with full kitchen and sleeps 6).

On Friday morning, Hilary, Dustin and I went for a 20 minute bike (brrrrrr, glad my new arm warmers made the trip), and then 10 minute run and we were all feeling pretty good! We walked our bikes and gear bags down to transition and dropped them off with ease. We scoped out where our parents were going to watch from and see us in different spots, and we absolutely loved running into other Hammerheads all over the place in Panama City! We went to Panera for lunch and picked up Dustin's Mom, Becky at the airport and then drove part of the bike course where our parents were going to cheer around mile 53 and 60.

We got back to the condo and prepared for the Hammerheads and their families and friends to come over for dinner and to hang out. Our parents made pasta and garlic bread and we had some salads and dips and a little wine and beer! All of the parents/friends got to meet eachother and all the racers got to ask each other last minute questions. It reminded me of the college parties I used to throw, in a tiny place with around 40 people there and it was absolutely AWESOME to have that commradery! Susan gave us all our Hammerhead shirts and we posed for some more pictures and then tried to get to bed soon after that, but with all the good luck emails, phone calls, texts, and facebook messages, it was hard!

Warning, warning.....the next sentence might be TMI.........I wanted as much family there to cheer as possible, but I did NOT invite Aunt FLO, if you know what I mean......but she made an appearance! Why in the hell did I have to start the NIGHT before Ironman....really??!!!!! I usually get pretty bad back cramps, so I was a little worried, but I tried to ingore it and went to sleep.

Saturday, we woke up at 4:30 AM, and I showered like I always do to loosen everything up and did a little stretch and ate my almond butter and jelly sandwich and sipped on some Ironman Perform drink. Before we knew it, we were in transition, setting up our bottles on our bikes and walking our special needs bags down to the trucks. We started to head to the beach in the massive crowd and realized we had to go back into transition to drop off our morning clothes bags.....ugggg, that sucked to get back through there, but we did it and then met our families and friends on the beach by the Hammerhead flag and hugged and wished eachother luck!

Dustin and I gave eachother one last kiss as we started right in the middle of the 2800 people, pretty close to the front and I was really nervous about doing that, but I think it was the right decision! Yes, I got kicked in the face and in the stomach, and hit on the arms and head numerous times, but I kept thinking of Al with his shoulder injury, and Giselle with her arm injury, and I just kept pushing it! The 2.4 mile swim really seemed to go by fast with the two loops and I saw my parents because they were holding the huge umbrella (a must do if you want to see your spectators and them see you!). The swim was weird because at times, I would feel like no one was near me, and then there would be 20 people wrestling with me; it was actually fun! Way more fun than swimming in a pool with a black line (maybe that's why I only swam less than once a week in training, and glad I didn't "waste" my time with any more than that because I ended up with a 1:12:46 and I was happy with that! Dustin's time was 1:15:52 and he was happy with that and I was happy I beat him! :)

After an 8:50 transition (Dustin's was 10:50.....Angie 2, Dustin 0), we were off for our 112 mile bike ride and boy, the winds were not in our favor for the first half AT all! I tried to keep positive and hoping that my average on the 2nd half would be better! I had to pee pretty bad from mile 30 on, so I finally stopped on the side of the road behind a fence just before mile 50 when we were going to see our parents! I wanted to be able to smile and enjoy seeing them, instead of worrying about a portapotty! They were there along with Michael and Melanie with their signs and noisemakers and it was great to see them. Then we hit the most annoying part of the bike course with huge bumps every 2 seconds that jarred everything on my bike and in my body! I kept thinking of Jessica who was competing out there with a broken pubic bone and I was hoping she would make it through that part okay. We headed out to a turnaround and the special needs bags where I grabbed my 2nd water bottle (only had 2 on my bike at a time, decreasing the weight tremendously and I think that helped in the wind!). I saw Dustin and knew he was right behind me, so I didn't stop long. I was trying to hold him off as long as possible! I saw our supporters again and their smiles and cheers fueled me for the majority of the miles. I couldn't wait to see them at the finish of the bike! I had my Garmin set to go off every 10 minutes so I would drink my EFS and I just kept sipping water and taking a TON of Power Bar energy blasts (Cola and Raspberry) and a few Gu's here and there. My lower back was hurting pretty bad at times, but kept thinking of Brian, a fellow Hammerhead with a herniated disc, who was competing out there and I just had to suck it up! When we made the turn back towards the beach, the winds had shifted and were BACK in our face! Lovely! I just tried to keep my heart rate down in the last portion and was hoping Dustin wasn't going to catch me! I finished the bike in 5:57:31 with an average of 18.8 mph, so again, extremely happy with that, especially with those winds! Dustin finished strong with a 5:59:17 (Angie 3, Dustin 0) and we saw our parents as we came through into transition. Dustin finally scored with a faster transition (5:42 vs 7:05 but I'm blaming that on womanly problems :).....(Angie 3, Dustin 1)

I was SOOOOO happy to be on that marathon course and off that bike seat. My shark hat was getting people to cheer for me so loudly and I was LOVING it! I saw Jo, Owen, Katie, Annie, Michael and Melanie and of course smiled for pictures! It was amazing how well everyone was spread out throughout the course and it helped so much!!! Julie and Blaine, Freddy, then a little bit further Kathy and Maggie and their energetic crew giving us stats, a little further Shawn Burke handing me "lucky" cola, the energetic Heather Davenport running around everywhere, and then a little bit further at the entrance and exit of the state park, were Scott's parents, Craig and Cyndie giving me stats on how far Dustin was behind me! Then seeing all those same people on the way back for the second loop was awesome, and I knew Dustin was gaining on me!

I all of a sudden needed to hit a portapotty NOW, so I pulled on a door that was locked and I heard, "ANG!!!!"....it was Dustin coming behind me.....so glad I didn't get into that portapotty or we might have missed eachother. Instead, I sucked it up and tried to keep running with him, even if it was for a few steps. A few steps turned into longer and then he had to hit the portapotty too, so we did a side by side stop....it was pretty funny, I asked him, "everything coming out alright?" and he said, "yes, but go ahead when you get out, I'll catch ya" so that's what I did and I saw our parents shortly after and then got the special needs run bag where I grabbed Tylenol for my back cramps and vaseline for my chafing on my arms. Then I slowed down a little bit because I wanted to be running together when we saw Jo, Owen, Michael and Melanie and they were able to get a good video and pic of us! I tried to keep up, but my heart rate was getting too high, so I told him to go ahead, after we awkwardly kissed with those shark hats on top of our heads....that got some laughs from the people lining the streets. They were great though with all their costumes and funny signs. It kept us entertained! It was also great to see all the other Hammerheads out there, some feeling great, some not, but as my hips started to complain, I thought of Elizabeth with her torn labrum, who would be kicking our butts if she was healthy, and I sucked it up! All those first timers with guts enough to compete with those injuries really inpsired me!

Your mind starts to wonder during this long day, and during the hard times, I would think of those who we were raising money for through Challenged Athletes Foundation and their determination in life and I used that energy to my advantage to keep pushing forward. I saw the same supporters from Jax on the way out on the second loop and I just kept wondering when I was going to slow down, but I never did. I just kept running from one group to the next, wanting to make sure I was smiling when I saw everyone. One of the funniest moments was when this woman said to me, "Go, go, you are almost half way done!" and I said back to her, "NO, I am almost DONE!!!!!" She must have thought a silly person with a shark hat on their head couldn't be very fast! :) I averaged 9:13 miles with walking most water stations and the portapotty stop and I very rarely looked at my watch except to check my heart rate. I had no idea how well I was doing until Kathy did some math for me (I wasn't capable at that point) and I had a chance to break 4 hours on the marathon and possibly get a marathon PR (my best ever marathon by itself was 3:58), so I started trying to push it a little more, but I also wanted to enjoy myself and remember the moment. I was going as fast as my body would possibly let me, when I saw Jo and Owen on the sidelines and they were so surprised to see me! Jo started running along the sidelines with me and almost tripped, so that was hilarious! I was running faster than Jo Shott for once! I pushed it all the way into the finish line and saw our parents right at the end in the VIP section as I crossed the finish line with a HUGE smile! 11:26:42 and I would have never thought I would have been able to go that fast! Although I was 32 seconds over a 4 hour marathon, I was very proud that I left it all out on the course and I finished with a true smile on my face and saw Dustin right after as we posed for finish line pics together. Dustin ROCKED the marathon with a PR (best marathon before that was 3:50 and he ran a 3:47!)....(Angie 3, Dustin 2) and finished in 11:18:55 (Angie 3, Dustin 3!) I'll take the tie.....just kidding, he beat me, I can say it, but I am so happy we both had our perfect races!

Then we got pizza and a margarita and met up with our awesome supporters who got our bikes and gear bags (thanks Jo and Owen) and took them back to the hotel for us! We got massages and sat inside to warm up a little (never cold on the course except for after we finished). We were able to see quite a few Hammerheads after their amazing finishes and hear their stories, but we felt bad that we missed a few people crossing the finish line! Sorry Hilary, didn't know you were going to be that fast! We got our second wind and then we went back out to cheer (and eat dinner at the VIP tent). We finished before 630 PM and didn't leave the finish line until after 11 PM. They had an open mic portion on the announcer microphone for finishers at 15 hours, so my Dad announced some finishers and I did too and it was amazing to call out to first timers, YOU ARE AN IRONMAN! Wow, that was a highlight of the day, as I danced and had the crowd doing some raise the roof moves! The day was perfect from start to finish and ended with the most inspiring finish.......Jessica had to walk the whole marathon portion because of a broken bone, but she ran in the finish line shoot with tears streaming down her face and we were so excited for her to complete her first Ironman after a bike accident at the end of September. Wow! That's what Ironman is about.....pushing yourself and not knowing how it will turn out but being willing to do it anyway! It was a pleasure to share in this race experience with all 13 Hammerheads, especially my husband (and fastest Hammerhead of the day)!!!! Thanks to everyone who helped along the way and who followed us online during the race! I feel like retiring after that (kind of like Tony Larussa....going out on top), but that damn 32 seconds on the marathon portion might bring me back...........

2010-12-05T20:49:00.007-05:00

In the triathlon world, we give "race reports" but I thought we should start this in other facets of life too, so this is my Lasik Eye Surgery report since many of you have been asking for specifics.

I have worn glasses since 4th grade and got contacts in 7th grade. As an adult, I barely have ever worn my glasses, sleeping for months at a time in my contacts, which I knew wasn't good for my eyes and posed risks for infection and other complications, so I started looking at laser eye surgery. I got a few recommendations for who to see here in Jacksonville and decided to go with Dr. Bowden (off of Philips Hwy and JTB). He is the Jaguars team doctor for all their eye surgeries, etc, so he has to be good, right? He was also covered on my insurance for routine visits, but lasik is not covered by insurance. I was told on my initial appointment (where they did many tests and figured out that I have different size pupils, high pressure, and astigmatism) that it would be somewhere between $2100-$2900 PER EYE minus the $150 fee for the consultation. Because of my abnormalness (is that a word?), of course I would have to do the custom procedure which was $2900 per eye. An 8% discount was offered if you put it on a debit card. Also because of my abnormalities (yeah, that sounds better), I would have to do 4 different drops 3x/day, along with warm compresses, eye massage, and this scrub on my eyelids. All of this information was pretty overwhelming and I was very frustrated when I left their office, even though everyone was very polite, professional, and answered all of my questions.

At first, I decided I had wasted $150 and I didn't want to do it....it was just so much effort before and after to get the desired results. Then, while drinking wine one night with Dustin, we started comparing it to preparing for an Ironman Triathlon.....how many hours do we spend preparing for ONE day? How many things do we buy to help us get in better shape? This was no different, except for I wasn't preparing for ONE day, I was preparing for great vision for the rest of my life (of course this doesn't stop the need for reading glasses in your forties!) So, after that conversation, we decided to go for it! I diligiently did all of the above mentioned routine 3 times per day up until surgery, but I had to make a spreadsheet in order to keep up with it!

I had to go in for another pre op appointment where they gave me two more drops to do and then they only perform the laser surgeries on 1 day out of the month, the first Wednesday, so my date was set as December 1st (which I hated to miss the triathlon club holiday party that night!). I was told I wouldn't be able to sweat, or swim, or get any water in my eyes for two weeks afterwards. I was also told that I might have significant red spots on the whites of my eyes for up to a week afterwards....so much for wearing red at Dustin's ship's holiday party.

Thankfully, Dustin was able to take me in for the surgery. I could eat and drink normally the morning of, so I ate a big breakfast, because they told me they would be giving me Valuum, and I really don't respond well to drugs, so I figured I needed some calories in me. I got there at 7:15 and I was told it would be about 2 hour total process, but the lasers only take a few seconds. Dustin waited patiently outside for me. I was taken back to a big room with about 6 other people and we all sat in these uncomfortable chairs that were extremely upright as the nurse came around and put tons of eye drops in all of our eyes and gave us Valuum. I think I was the only one getting the custom lasik so they did me last. People kept coming out of the first room, being led by the nurses, with iodine all over their faces, squinting and walking really slow. It looked like a death march and I just had to keep watching it over and over! They took me across the hall to do some more tests on me. The girl was really nice and kept me calm by telling me about her lasik. She said that Dr. Bowden was a perfectionist and he wanted things done right the first time, so that's why they had to keep repeating these tests on me. Apparently, all of the screwed up surgeries end up being fixed by Dr. Bowden, so I was feeling confident about his abilities, but still a little nervous.

I insisted they only give me one 5 mg Valuum, even though everyone else around me was getting 10-20 mg. She kept asking me if I was relaxed and I really wasn't so I conceded to a second 5 mg Valuum that helped me relax a little bit more. I really never felt completely groggy like I thought I would though. I found it funny that they were explaining to a bunch of drugged up people all of the eye drops and how many times we had to do them. Thankfully they provided us written instructions too. They finally took me into the first room where they reclined me back and held one eye at a time open with these forcep thingies. This is where they were creating the flap, cutting into the cornea......it just felt like extreme pressure, like a suction cup pulling on my eyeball. The second one hurt a bit more than the first, but it was only for about 10 seconds or so, then they led me back to the main room and said that I could open my eyes if I wanted to, which scared me! I have a freakin cut open cornea here people! I sat there and waited for a long time and the nurse put more eye drops in my eyes. Then I was taken to the second room where Dr. Bowden pulled the flap open and that was weird. I had to keep staring at a red light and he kept pulling and pulling on it and then my vision went gray for a bit, then the laser lasted about 18 seconds, with little pulsations I could barely feel. Then he pulled the flap back into place, and smoothed it out and moved on to the left one. This one was a bit more stubborn, but practically the same thing. I came out of there and they said I could open the eyes if I wanted to, but I just tried to rest. Dr. Bowden came out one more time to look at my eyes through one of those machines to make sure the flap was back in place and then I could leave with these REALLY stylish goggles that I had to wear until I came back the next day for my follow up (and then continue to wear while sleeping for two weeks!). Something else they told me that day was that I couldn't wear eye make up for two weeks and I had to throw away all of my old eye make up and buy new stuff. Again, lovely for the upcoming holiday parties!

I was told to go home and sleep, not to watch TV, not to get on the computer and to avoid doing those things for very long in one sitting.....therefore why it has taken me this long to write this Lasik report! I had some pretty intense pressure behind my right eye at first in recovery and then the left and asked for some Tylenol, which they gave me and I think I took some more once I got home too. Dustin brought me home and I went to bed and he went back to work. I pretty much slept all day with no problem thanks to the Valuum. Dustin can fill in any blanks that I'm missing here.

The next morning, I woke up and I could see pretty well! I was impressed, but it was still a bit blurry, which was expected. I drove myself to my follow up appointment and they told me I was 20/20 in my right and 20/25 in my left, but that I had an extreme case of dryness and they gave me MORE drops to use. They said the bluriness and halos around the lights would go away eventually, but that I had to keep my eyes saturated at all times! Then when Dr. Bowden came in, he prescribed tear duct plugs...what!!? The girl said, "10 day plugs?" and he said, "no, she needs the 90 day plugs"......so then another guy proceeded to insert these little itsy bitsy cylindrical objects into my bottom eye lids where my tear ducts are. He said it wouldn't hurt and the first one I could feel it, but he was right, it didn't hurt. The second one (my lovely problem left eye) did hurt! He said, "this one's being stubborn, " and I was like NO SHIT....get it over with! No anesthesia or no numbing drops or anything, just another thing that sucked. But, they will dissolve in 90 days and keep it so that the moisture stays on my eyeball instead of draining out of the eye. Weird, I know. So, since Wednesday, this has been my routine: Refresh drops 1x/EVERY HOUR, Sooth XP drops 4-6x/day, Durezol drops 3x/day (steroid), Azasite drops 1x/day (antibiotic), Vigamox drops 3x/day (anti inflammatory), Nevanac drops 3x/day, and Restasis drops 2x/day, plus 1000mg flaxseed oil pill, and to not have any fans or wind blowing on me at all. Hmmmm, I sleep with a fan, I own a boat, a bicycle, I love to drive with the windows down and my AC blowing right in my face.....could this all have contributed to my dry eyes in the past!????

So, I will admit, I am very frustrated that I am not seeing perfectly already. I am an impatient person and I want it to be perfect right away, but from what I have heard from others, it will take a few weeks for the bluriness to go away. It always feels like what it used to at the end of a long day outside with the contacts, dry and a like a little buildup over the contacts, except for I don't have contacts now! I'm happy about that, and I'm sure I will eventually be happy with my eyes, but for now I am a bit frustrated that every single Christmas light I see is blurry! Hopefully by the 25th, they will be clear!

2010-09-03T19:11:00.013-04:00

I think most of the people that are interested in reading this are my close friends and family, those who have done this race before, and those who might be interested in doing this race in the future. If you like a difficult non wetsuit swim, a hot, hilly but fun bike course, and a HOT but flat run course, this is the race for you! It also helps if you are racing with others you know, you bring along 20-30 of your supporters and dress them up in matching tshirts and big hats, supply them with cowbells and noisemakers and signs, have your husband lead them all over the course to see you multiple times, and force yourself to wear something silly on the run so even the strangers cheer for you.

Brevity is not my strong suit, so I will start way back in January when I decided to do this race! (If you want to skip to race morning, scroll down, but you won't get the full story! :)......... Why Louisville, everyone asked? It fit within my timeline of when Dustin was going to be back, so that I could do my long training right before he got back, and it was a drivable distance and close to our midwest families. I decided I would have Wolfgang Guembel, a professional triathlete from Canada (and a friend) coach me to really hold me accountable for my training. I am so glad I did this, because even when I didn't want to go out on those hot summer days, I knew I had to do multiple 100 mile rides and multiple 3 hour runs to prepare for this. I also went to Masters swim twice a week pretty religously. I logged all of my miles through Training Peaks and got feedback from Wolf. I spent a good deal of time figuring out my nutrition and trying to take in 75 carbs per hour and 1000mg of sodium per hour during my long trainings and the race per Wolf. This took awhile for my body to adjust to this (or did it ever really??)

With Dustin deployed, it made it a little easier to roll out of bed most mornings at 5 AM and train on the bike with Bob's group or Hilary or go for a run with Jo. I never really trained too much with people who were doing the race, but I was so thankful that Hilary and Jo were willing to train with me and it kept me positive and motivated, along with seeing all the fast swimmers at Masters swim motivating me to improve.

Dustin and I left Wednesday morning for KY (many jokes were made using these two letters!) We packed up the car with Margarita (my bike), ALL of my crap, including a small fridge since our hotel didn't guarantee we would get one. Dustin insisted that we not take an empty fridge, so he loaded it with beer, and to our surprise, was still cold when we got the hotel outside of Louisville about 12 hours later!

My plan for Thursday was to get up and ride part of the bike course, but when we drove it on Wed night, it was a bit intimidating with no shoulder and tons of hills and I didn't really want to ride it alone, so we decided to go for a short run that morning instead. It was a cool morning and one of those runs where I felt like I could go forever; just what I needed mentally. Then, we headed into downtown to the Athlete Check In. Seeing the Ohio River and where transition would be set up always gives me woozies, but they were excited woozies! I checked in and got my number 70 and checked in at the Janus Charity Challenge.....$5090 total raised for ALS...that's why I got the low number....so people thought I was a pro who was really slow all weekend! We met Dustin's sister, husband and three kids for dinner at the Old Spaghetti factory walking distance from the downtown Marriott where we were staying. That was fun and then headed to the airport to pick up Dustin's Dad and step Mom (from TX) Mia (our friend from Baltimore also doing the race-her first!) Dustin went out for drinks with them as Mia and I chatted about our training and the race!

I slept like crap, but Friday still was upon us, so we headed to check Mia into the expo and ran into some Jville friends there too! We went to lunch on 4th street Live food court, then headed to the Louisville Slugger Museum which was cool. Dustin went on some cave tour with family while Mia and I unwound at the hotel for a little bit. Kat and Scott (from Cali!) met up with us and we hung out for a bit.Then, it was time for the Welcome Dinner and athlete meeting at the convention center. It was HUGE, one of the biggest in Ironman history they said, people were standing room only on the sides. Mike Reilly (so glad he came to ours instead of Canada!) MC'd and motivated us and we ate loads of pasta and salad. It was nice to hang out with Michael and his twin brother who were doing the race to celebrate them both being in remission from thyroid cancer; motivation in itself right there! We saw Skat's friends from St. Louis and gave them their team shirts and then listened carefully to the athlete meeting and each race director (swim, bike and run) gave us info (our favorite was Andre from Jville, race director for the run course!) Notice I said listened carefully......that will come in handy later. After the meeting we met at our hotel bar, where my parents showed up from MO, Dustin's Mom and friends from KS, and Jo and Shivella from Jville! I decided since before all of my good training sessions, I had a few glasses of wine, why should this weekend be any different, so I drank myself some Merlot. I always have a hard time leaving a party, but I knew I needed to try to sleep, so I tore myself away around 11 PM, but still didn't sleep!

Saturday morning was the practice swim and it was a bit crazy, long lines to even get in the water. Mia and I stayed together and Skat and Dustin watched our stuff (thanks guys). We swam for about 20 minutes, then got on our bikes for about 20 and then ran for about 20....(I remembered when that was all I could do when I did my first sprint, and now I was doing that the day before an Ironman, wow!) Dustin and Skat "ran" into an underwear run, so we had to go take pictures of that spectacle, then we went to Panera for lunch with my parents, and Walt. Jeff and Kendra showed up by then (from Cali) and they helped us (along with my parents)get our bikes and T1 and T2 bags checked in. The other crew members met up to discuss their plan for the morning with the swim start/exit/transition and figured it all out perfectly! Disclaimer: There was a LOT of walking before this race since it is downtown and there's not a lot of places to park.....it's just easier to walk, especially when you have a big group.

It was SO nice to get rid of my bike and not have to worry about it anymore! Then we headed back to the hotel and got our feet up for a little bit while visiting with everyone. Mia and I headed down to the lobby to fix our pasta, but they wouldn't let us use the microwave, so the front desk girl had to fix our pasta and she wasn't too thrilled about it. Oh well, we ended up eating our usual food which we wanted to do and met up for the spectator meeting at 5 PM. This is also where the HAT contest started and boy, was it a doozie! Everyone was so decked out and I was so excited! Dustin lectured about the points on the bike course and the plan and estimated times as they all ate pizza that we got delivered. Then, we went down to the pool, where I put my feet up some more and got on my laptop to see everyone's well wishes and to try to figure out my tracker that I was wearing to test from Art Perez. Skat's hat and J and Ks hat tied for first place and you gotta check out the pics on FB of how similarly creative they were. My Dad came in a close second with his horse hat! Kat and Kendra drug me away from the party around 9:30, but once again, I slept like crap!

RACE MORNING: Sunday, August 29, 2010

I wake up around 2 AM wondering if I had saved a power gel from my bags that I could take before the swim start and I dozed on and off until my alarm went off at 3:30 AM! I woke up with extreme nervousness that I was NOT ready for. I had to force down my two boosts and a almond butter and jelly sandwich. It took me longer to get everything together than I wanted, despite Skat, J and K, and Dustin's help. We met Mia, Shawn and her parents and walked to the transition together (about a mile) as they all carried my special needs bags (thanks guys!) We got there, pumped up our tires, put our bottles on our bikes, and turned in our bags, then another 15 or so minute walk to the swim start by Tumbleweeds restaurant. The site of everyone rushing was getting me more and more nervous. See, for this swim start, people start forming lines WAY early in the morning because we jump off the docks one at a time (instead of the normal mass start in all other full Ironmans). We were lucky enough to jump in with the St. Louis group who had been saving spots since earlier. I went to the portapotty 2 times and had some extreme nervous energy. In my first Ironman I was nervous leading up to it, and excited on the day of......this Ironman I was excited leading up to it and ready to puke nervous the morning of! It was really making me mad as I stood in a bathroom line and the swim line started moving forward! I hoped that I could still find Mia, Michael, and John to start with them! Dustin and Scott tried to calm me down, but I didn't feel better until I found them again. I downed my power gel and sipped on gatorade and water, and before we knew it, the line started moving more! They are screaming, "goggles on, goggles on!!!!" then you move further down the dock, "get your watches ready, watches ready!!!!!" I see our light blue crew with their crazy hats and I'm jumping up and down wasting all kinds of energy but I don't care! I hold my goggles as I jump in the water and I'm off at 7:04 AM......not too shabby.....4 minutes after the very first people in the water.

All we have to do is swim around an island, under a few bridges and we are out, right? WRONG! I got hit and kicked a lot during the swim, the Ohio River tasted awful, and I just felt tight! It took me 57 minutes to get all the way around the island and I wasn't feeling this current that I heard about. I was able to pee about 5 times during the swim, which was good and the site of the hot air balloons was prettty! But everything else was just causing me to question, "Why am I doing this again?" Once, I had something fairly big hit me on the very top of the head.....what the heck could it have been? A branch? A beaver? A dead body? I'm going with a branch. My new, old goggles (I couldn't find the ones I'd been training in for the last month that I loved, so I used old ones) were a bit too tight and they were giving me a headache, but I needed to pick up my pace big time, so I just dug in and pushed myself to get this swim over with. I've never wanted to get on my bike so bad in my life! I was wearing JC's speed suit, but it sure wasn't feeling speedy! I kicked a bit more at the end to get my legs ready for land and just kept envisioning our crew waiting for me on the sidelines! I came up the steps and up the chute and there they were yelling, snapping pics and video, and keeping me motivated to see them again soon! 1:19:50 (just 7 seconds better than Dustin's previous time! Yeah!)

I ran into transition and got my bag (I thought they were supposed to get it for you, but they weren't ready for me) and headed into the changing tent, but I didn't change clothes. I actually started putting on my race belt on top of the speed suit (can you tell I'm not used to wearing one?)....after a laugh from a few people, I got that off and showed off my USA Kswiss tri suit that I got printed "Hammerheads for ALS" down the side and "CRAWFORD" on the butt! Dustin snuck a note in my bag that said good luck and that was really sweet! I grabbed my helmet, bike shoes, bike gloves, sunglasses, salt tabs and had the lady spray me with SPF 80 spray that I brought which worked great! I had my nutrition already on my bike, so I was ready after I stopped in the bathroom one more time.

I saw our crew as I cruised out of transition and prepared to be with Margarita for 6-7 hours! The first 5 miles went down like nothing and I was averaging 20 so I knew I needed to slow down, but then I had to STOP! My back bike bag was almost all the way off, hanging from a thread with my tubes and CO2 in it and I couldn't afford to not have that or I would get a flat for sure, so I pulled off and fixed it. I envisioned people watching from home on my tracker seeing that I already stopped, so that motivated me to fix it quickly and hop back on, but my right quad seized up as I lifted it over the seat, so I had to take a minute to shake that off! Back on the bike and I tried to remember to spin it out so I wouldn't burn out my legs too soon. I really didn't feel like I was working too hard and before I knew it, I was at mile 23 where our crew was loudly cheering! It was so fun to see them and to know that I would hopefully be seeing them 4-5 more times according to Dustin's plan was very motivating (they took four packed cars to all these spots!) One of my favorite parts of the course was going through LaGrange, a small town that fills the streets behind barricades and yells their butts off for hours! I was in my aerobars, but able to make the "raise the roof" sign as I flew by and the crowds went crazy (on both loops! that was fun!) I gave out high fives to our family and friends constantly at miles 34, 50, 74, 80! The miles just kept cruising by as I thanked them for being out there with their ever changing signs cowbells, HUGE HATS, clappers, and even Dustin had the portable radio blaring for me up one hill "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn? That's okay, cause I like the way it hurts" which became my motto for the race in the last month! I thanked every volunteer, and every cop on the course holding up traffic for us. I stopped at special needs for my only pee break on the bike other than both transitions. I knew I had slowed down on the second loop, but I wasn't about to kill my legs before the marathon. The last 30 miles were the toughest after I left THE best spectating crew ever. It was getting hotter and cyclists were pulled over everywhere trying to hide in the shade. I was SO glad I listened at the athlete meeting and grabbed an extra water bottle at the third to last aid station because the second to last aid station, they were telling us they were out of water and I remembered them saying they were spaced far apart! Oh NO! I just kept yelling "WATER!" and the very last person had one more bottle that I took. The guy next to me grunted as he missed getting any fluids, so I offered him mine, but he refused (glad he did cause I needed every last bit of it!) I was trying to do nutrition every ten minutes when my watch would go off, first Accelorade, then Perform, then Water, with a gel on the hour, clif blocks on the fifteen minutes, and salt tabs on the half hour. It was hard to keep the timing with the hills, but Wolf had told me to take nutrition in on the uphills, so that's what I did! Down to 20 miles and I just kept getting slower and slower, despite being on the downhill section.....there was a headwind and I was TIRED! One of the St. Louis crew, Dana passed me and cheered for me and I swear, I was asleep until she did that! I looked down and I was going 13 mph, so I picked it back up to around 17 and cruised for downtown. I couldn't wait to see everyone and get off this bike seat! Margarita treated me well, but I was glad to see her go as I headed into transition 2. Bike time of 6 hours 26 minutes and I was happy about that. I had been averaging around 18 on flats in training, so I was hoping for anything over 17 and it was 17.4 mph average and I was ready for that run!

I saw the crew again as I entered and exited and gave Dustin a kiss as I started on the HOT marathon course. No one knew that I was ALSO going to representing Kentucky derby style with a huge white flower on top of my ALS cap. I planned to wear it only for a little bit, but so many strangers were screaming for me, that I ended up wearing it for the whole marathon! So, they torture us with an up and over a bridge right away, but it there was a little bit of a breeze and I liked the contour change, knowing it was flat from there on out. As I cruised down the bridge, it was fun to give high fives to our family as I rounded the corner to do two out and backs. It was HOT, but the sun kept hiding behind the clouds ever so often and every time it did, I would be SO thankful. Seeing the 11 people I knew out on the course throughout the day made it much more enjoyable. I was passing people left and right and felt thankful that I was able to stick with my nutrition plan througout the bike and the run. My stomach was a little sloshy, but I was thankful that I had absolutely NO aches and pains. I walked every aid station to get two cups of water and one cup of Perform, and a gel every thirty minutes and a salt tab (215 mg Sodium) every hour. I was wearing Zoot's cool sleeves which helped a lot as I grabbed ice cold sponges and rang them out over those and then stuck more in my shirt. When I was feeling hot again, I would ring them out again over the sleeves! I saw our crew at mile 13 and smiled and high fived a bit! They take you RIGHT up to the finish line where the FAST people are sprinting in before you turn to do one more out and back. Simply torturous! Dustin ran up a little ways to walk with me through the aid station. I thought everything was going well, until I tried to ingest a power gel, dry heaved on a little girl at the aid station, then projectile vomited three times, emptying EVERYTHING from my stomach! As puke was streaming from my mouth and my nose, I looked over at Dustin and said, "Did you get a picture of that?" Jeez, the one time he didn't have a camera! I wanted proof! Well, my stomach felt better, but it made me nervous that I was dehydrated now. Dustin decided he wasn't going to tell the parents about my mishap because all it would do was make them nervous and they'd be at the finish line regardless! After a few more miles, I had to use the porta potty in a bad way a few different times. My darn stomach....my body was feeling great, no blisters, no aches, but my digestion was having a hard time. I continued to walk the aid stations and was able to get a little more in me, and I stuck with my plan of running from aid station to aid station! Kat and Scott were absolute lifesavers for being at the far end of the course when I needed it most and they kept me going with some figuring of how slow I could do the last few miles and still make it under 13 hours! I kept saying good job to everyone I passed; so many people were walking the majority of the run course (and apparently I passed a lot of people in my age group on the run). I really wasn't in too good of a mood by about mile 18, but because I was wearing that damn flower on my head and people were smiling and laughing and yelling like crazy, I couldn't NOT smile! I highly recommend wearing something silly during long races. I contemplated it this time, thinking I was now a "serious triathlete" and wanted to look "serious" but it helped SO much and what was I thinking? I'm not a serious person anyway! Even as tired as I was, I kept walking the aid stations, but running between them and before I knew it, I was running back into downtown again. Scott put Dustin on the phone and I asked him "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn?" I was faking all the humor and smiles I could just to keep myself positive. I thanked every volunteer and slapped every kids hand that I could find. I started to hear the finish line jamming and I finally knew I could do it! I started picking up the pace, but not too fast to not be able to take it all in. Scott told me where Dustin and the crew were on the finishing chute. I have NO idea what song was playing as I came in (that's something that I had envisioned being, "tonight's gonna be a good night" over and over in my head during training) but the cheers were SO loud, I couldn't hear the music! I slowed down to give my crew high fives and a quick kiss to Dustin, who I was so glad the Navy cooperated with his schedule so he could be there! I crossed the finish line and tried to pause for a picture upright before I did the symbolic ALS roll in memory of John Blais.....I didn't think I would be able to get back up,but I did! The finish line pictures were awful, but hey, our crew got so many good ones along the way! A volunteer caught me and walked with me and Dustin came running around the corner. I was SO glad to hug him and then to see everyone else! 12 hours 48 minutes and 7 seconds. I was an Ironman....for the second time! I got 23rd in my age group out of 128 women and I was in the top 30% of finishers (that doesn't count the around 15% of people that dropped out either!) On a day where people were complaining that they were one and two hours over their previous times or goals, I crushed mine by almost an hour and a half and "totally dominated" Dustin's time too (now he wants to do another one....ughhh!)

Dustin had a Pepsi for me at the finish, and I got a hot dog at the corner stand, and hugged and kissed all our AWESOME crew! I did a TV interview with WLKY that aired on the 10:00 news; I was told I got more face time than the male and female winners of the race! Ha!

What made my fundraising experience even more worth it, was the fact that a man came up to me afterwards thanking me for doing the ALS roll and for raising money because his father lost his battle with ALS. Later, he came back and introduced his kids to me and I found out that he just lost his Dad on July 19th, five years after he had been a completely healthy man. There sure is more work to do in research about ALS and it's tie to those serving in the military.

But as for now, I was the one who needed Medical. I headed to the tent where SO many others were as well. It took forever for them to take my vitals because they were so busy (but very nice) and then they started my IV. I suddenly had to pee, so they walked me to the bathroom and as I stood up, my IV shot out of my arm and started spraying blood! This scared me, and I started breathing hard and freaking out! Then, I got the chills and couldn't "shake" them. They made me change my shirt and wrapped a blanket around me and gave me HOT chicken broth that burned my tongue it was so freakin hot! They said I didn't need any more fluids after taking my vitals and just wanted me to stay there until I got warm. My tongue was on fire for sure and was honestly the part of my body that hurt the worst in the days to come....no joke....closely followed by my quads, hammies, calves, shoulders, and low back! Absolutley NO blisters, which still amazes me after my feet hitting the ground 50,000 times and my knees bending over 70,000 times in just that one day. To say the least, I was SO thankful as I headed to the finish line with Mia (after her amazing first time finish of 14:10) and our crew to cheer on the last of the competitors coming in between 11PM and 12 AM. I really felt like going to the hotel room to shower, but I forced myself to support the other athletes after they had been out there for 17 hours. The finish line was jumpin and one person made it with 15 seconds to spare and a few came in just minutes after the cut off. Wow!

I am simply so thankful for my experience and all those I shared it with, both in person, and over the internet. Thanks for being part of my journey! Now, what's next? :)

2010-05-03T18:43:00.006-04:00

My travels started on April 22nd as I flew to Phoenix for Paul and Patty's wedding weekend, which was beautiful and fun! I am so lucky to have in-laws who I love so much, and want to go across country to see the extended family even when my link to them is deployed! It was a great weekend, and Dustin even made a suprise appearance by recorded video on the big screen to congratulate Paul and Patty and to say that he loved and missed me.....tears, yes, tears did flow.

Then, on the 22nd, I flew to San Fran to hang with Jeff and Kendra in their new home in Menlo Park....very cute! Went for a walk/run around "the dish" which was very hilly but overlooked San Fran. Then, we went to Muir Woods and hiked in the beautiful redwoods. Then, we went to a Giants Game which turned out to be VERY exciting (but the Phillies won). We then went to Thierry and Stef's for a yummy dinner and wine and met our friend Dave from Jax there too (he was in the city for work).

Thursday, after Kendra got off work, we drove to Monterey (about 1 hour 20 minutes) and it was beautiful! It was a bit cold, and very windy, but pretty! This is where Dustin might go to Naval Post Graduate school in the future. Then, we drove the "17 mile drive" which went through state parks along the coast and then into Pebble Beach. It was absolutely beautiful! We went to eat on Cannery Row at Louie Linguini's and it was super yummy! Then, we decided to drive inland to Salinas to get a little closer to the campground before the morning. We stayed at a Quality Inn an woke up the next morning for our true journey.......

The journey to Wildflower, about another hour and half was a beautiful scenic drive with mountainous but vegetative terrain, out in the middle of nowhere with no McDonalds, no grocery stores, not even a gas station close....we got into the campground and were immediately greated by free Avia visors and free gelato! Then, we drove around for way too long looking for a campsite! There were a lot reserved and then many people got there a few days before to pick out ones with picnic tables, but finally we found the perfect one and started setting up shop. Others started trickling in the campsites around us and the park was filled with triathlon campers! How cool! I figured that I would allow myself to drink on Friday, but not on Saturday, so I got started early as we played games and hung out with great friends.

Saturday morning, Jeff and I went on a short run around the campground and decided to go down to the start, where we had to make a brief stop for the National Anthem.......great moment. We ran down and up the big hill. Then later, we all hiked down the hill to the transition area. They had a free yoga class that we ladies did outside in the fresh air overlooking the beautiful hills. It was one of those priceless moments. We looked around at the amazing finish line with pizza places, gelato places, even eggroll places, just to name a few. I kept saying, tomorrow after the race, I want that....and that.....and that.....Kendra and I sat at the finish line and cheered people in for awhile. Later, Scott, Kat and I went on short bike ride to test out Sunshine (Kat's bike). She seemed to be working well. Then, we all made dinner (I was still able to make my pesto orzo on the gas stove Jen brought, but then Jeff and Kendra were also making these yummy looking steak kabobs. Now, I really haven't been eating much meet since January, and no red meat, but these looked so good! So, of course, I had 5 pieces! Prolly not a good idea...more about that later. I can't NOT mention that we started hearing cheering from afar and it was coming closer. We ran down to the road, and we saw around 30 naked guys and girls running through the campgroud! It was hilarious! After some more good conversation around the campfire, we retired into our comfy tents.....didn't sleep great, but pretty well considering it was tent camping!

Kendra and I woke up on Sunday morning, ready to go! We started biking down to the start, and somehow I realized that I didn't have my run number with me, so I had to go back and get it! We had to bike down the hill that we would later have to bike up right out of transition. My hands were burning from squeezing the brakes by the bottom of the hill. We set up our transitions and then just sat and waited as our waves didn't start til 10:25 and 10:30, so we waited and waited!

As my wave started, I got kicked in the face soon after the start, giving me goggle problems that I struggled with the whole swim. I wore my neoprene cap again which helped for the cold water around 60 degrees. But, you can't hear with those things on, so when the kayakers were trying to re-direct me, I couldn't hear them until they tapped me.....three times! Yes, the siting was horrible! I was siting off the buoys that were the ones coming back, but I was still on my way out! I swam way out of the way three different times. Plus, I was dry heaving in my mouth, from the food I ate the night before mixed with the rougher waters than expected. When I got out of the swim, I was hoping for under 30 minutes, but totally expected to see 45 on my watch due to all the problems, so when I saw 33, I was happy with that! T2 was probably the longest T2 ever; fine motor skills just wouldn't work correctly! So, I was pissed even before having to bike straight up Lynch Hill out of transition! Luckily, Sunshine wouldn't even go in her easiest gear (sense some sarcasm there?).....after having some aero bottle issues and issues getting my gus open, I had to laugh out loud at how much was going wrong in this race. Obviously, the gearing was the most bothersome, but I decided to laugh it off and have fun! As many people were walking their bikes up a few of the hills, I was going around 4 mph....smokin! I couldn't wait to get off the bike and onto the run! I saw our support crew a couple times on the bike, so that was really helpful!

As I started the run, I was passing people left and right. Hardly anyone was actually running up the hills because they were so steep, but I wanted to try to run the whole thing. Sometimes, I probably could've walked faster, but I stuck with my plan! I do believe only two people passed me the whole run! I sure wasn't flying, but it was SO hilly and SO hot....not humid though, thank goodness! I ended up averaging 8:53 miles, so I was happy with that.

At the end of the race, we had to run down the hill we biked up.....yuck....my knees did not like that, I would have rather ran up it! I ran into the finish line with a time of 3:15 on an extraordinarily hard course! Kat and Scott greeted me at the finish line and took pictures and got me some pizza as we waited for Kendra! After she finished, we got some gelato and called it a day! I was so thankful for my wonderful friends that day, but of course I missed Dustin. Kat kept him updated with emails though!

If you are a triathlete or a camper, or both, you HAVE to experience Wildflower SOMEday! I didn't wash my hair, body, or even face all weekend long.....no makeup, hardly any cell phones except to send an occasional pic to Dustin, and a connection to all the other people camping that I can't explain! It was a unique, fun experience that I will never forget! Now, onto that training for Ironman Louisville in August!

2010-03-29T15:20:00.005-04:00

I refused to set my alarm beginning with a 3 something, so I woke up at 4 AM sharp on March 27th, 2010! Usually I am not in a good mood anytime I have to wake up this early, but today was different! I was in Southern California with all my old friends, getting ready to embark on my first triathlon on the west coast! My early morning So-Cal supporters, Jeff, Kendra, and Kat and I left Tony and Sue's house at 4:30 to head about an hour north to Oceanside! They were extreme troopers getting up that early and helping me load my bike and all my goodies into the car! Thanks guys! We traveled up the 5 Hwy to Mission Avenue and drove toward the Oceanside Harbor where two days before Scott had taken me to the Expo. When I first saw the swim course buoys I got a little nervous, but it was unique in the fact that we were swimming inside a harbor with tons of boats around us! Scott suggested that we drive around the harbor to look at the swim course and I am so glad he did because it made me feel much better. For some reason in my head, I was imagining the freezing Pacific ocean with ice crystals and huge crashing surfable waves, but it was pretty sheltered! Scott took a video of me and the future swim course to send Dustin and I checked in and picked up my packet at the Expo. It was sponsored by Rhoto Eye Drops, so luckily they gave me two boxes of those.....yipeeeee (sense the sarcasm?) The back pack was cool and the shirt was a white dry fit with cool design. We also got a finishers hat so I liked all that! They also had a 10 minute repeating video of the race directors talking about specifics of each portion, so that made me feel more prepared as well. Anyway, back to the drive on race morning.......I was all calm, cool, and collected until we pulled in the parking lot and saw everyone with their bikes (yes, we took our bikes there on race morning, no bike check in before, which actually was nice). So, Kat not only let me borrow her bike "Sunshine" that she rode in Florida Ironman, but she also pumped up my (her) tires. (I did go on two bike rides after getting here on Wed on Sunshine before the race and she seemed to fit me perfectly even though we didn't even change one thing about her! Pretty crazy, I know! ) So, I saw some other racers riding their bikes toward transition so I just followed them, but no one seemed to know where they were going and it was dark, so I just kept following some other people who finally knew where they were going. We were cruising at slow speeds along this bike path and all of a sudden it turned sharp and there was a steep incline.....had to get off my bike and push it up....already! Wow, the race hadn't even started and I was pushing my bike up hills! Yikes! I set up my transition with the other 2300 people doing the race and immediately got in the bathroom line. I called Jiea (who had said she wasn't doing the race because she broke her foot about a month ago, but she tore off her cast and decided to do the race...guess that shows how good of race I was about to be a part of). We waited in the long *** bathroom line and caught up on our latest life happenings. Then, I turned around and saw a familiar face. I said, "Hey, I think I played basketball with you about five years ago when I lived here, what's your name?"....."Mistiza, oh yeah, Angie!" It was hilarious that we ran into each other there, then it turns out we were on the same bike rack, the same swim wave start, entered the water together, and I saw her on the bike and after the race. Long story short, we are now friends on Facebook.....small world! I saw Kat, Jeff, and Kendra before the race at the edge of transition and it took Jeff and Kat to get my wetsuit zipped up! I ate a bag of prunes and I was ready (not really, just posed with them to pretend.....that wouldn't have been a good nutrition plan.) However, my nutrition plan from Coach Wolf was 70-100 g of carbs per hour on bike with 1 liter/hour of liquids, plus 60-70 g of carbs per hour on the run, stopping at each aid station for 2 cups of gatorade and 1 cup of water, plus 2-3 salt tablets every hour on bike and run. This was TONS more than I have ever consumed before on races, but I decided to trust him since I am paying him to coach me and he's a pro so he probably knows more than I do (about triathlons anyway). Plus, this would be great practice for Ironman Louisville in August. So, we enter the water, and even though I borrowed the neoprene cap from Jiea, it was freezing *** cold! It was 58 degrees and I think my face went numb in two seconds! Nothing else really bothered me too much as I started to get into the groove. Then, everyone stopped! What the heck was the hold up? I couldn't hear anything with the neoprene cap. A guy on a surfboard was talking to the group but I couldn't hear him. I asked the girl next to me and she said he was warning us about rocks on our right side. I said, "so the race hasn't started yet?"....that got some laughs.....well I had no idea and that wasn't in any of the written material or the video. I have never done a tri that we didn't start the swim as soon as we hit the water. I was a little embarrassed, but I took out my frustration on the swim with a faster start than I have done before. I usually kind of wait back a little, but I decided to go for it when the gun sounded. I was feeling pretty good (trying to do my newly learned breathing on both sides....notice I said, TRYING....the majority I still breathed on my right....sorry coach!) When we turned around to swim back, I couldn't see a thing! The way the sun was hitting the water, I couldn't see buoys, people, nothing, so I just made sure I didn't hit the rocks on one side and the docks on the other. I got hit and kicked a little (actually, first time that I ever had my goggles readjusted by another swimmer). The swim finish snuck up on me, turned the corner and they helped me up the ramp 40:45....a PR for a half ironman swim without a current (Augusta was 29 minutes but I really don't count that). I was happy with that, but I'm not going to be happy with my pictures because I was trying to get the snot off my face (lovely getting a cold two days before the race). T1 was good except I couldn't get my sunscreen to spray, so I was pissed and threw it down. As I sped off on Sunshine, Kat and Jeff and Kendra were right there to snap pictures and cheer! It was great! Then, there were a lot of little windy turns but pretty flat for the first part, until we headed into Camp Pendelton, a few ups and downs (for us Florida people anyway, for Cali people it was still flat). I remembered I put a small packet of sunscreen in my bento box, so I got that out at about mile ten and put it on my face and shoulders at least because there was no shade on the course at all! It was such a beautiful ride, the ocean on one side and the huge green vegetative mountains on the other. It was probably the most scenic bike ride I have ever been on, but I also had to remember to focus on the road and the fact that I was "racing." I was feeling pretty good on the ride, sticking to my nutrition plan, and encouraging other riders as I passed them and as they passed me. Usually, I would pass them on the flats and then they would pass me on the uphills, then I would pass them on the downhills. I kept wondering when I was going to see the monster hill. Because most of the bike course was on a military base, no one could get on to ride it before the race, but I heard it was around mile 35. As I turned a corner and started heading into the wind, it was so beautiful! I was busy taking in the scenery and realized that holy ****, we had to go up that thing! I could see people pushing their bikes and I was still far from the peak of the hill. I told myself I would not push my bike up if at all possible. I was steadily making my way up, but realized that some people who were walking were sticking pretty close to my same speed, 4 mph! Yes, 4! I made it up the biggest hill I have ever biked with my heart rate racing, way steeper and longer than Sugarloaf in Clermont. We had to do two more similar hills, but they weren’t quite as steep. There was a downhill portion that had a no passing rule with a speed limit of 25 mph because it had some swirly turns in it. They also had barricades put up on one of the curves! Crazy! I could feel my stomach doing some weird things and I knew I would have to stop on the run if I didn’t on the bike, so I pulled over at one of the portapotties about 5 miles from the finish. I didn’t want to ruin possibly breaking 2 hours on the run, so I went then! As I approached transition, I could NOT wait to get on the run. I was looking forward to seeing all my friends and hearing them cheer! I had a pretty fast T2 and was able to get the sunscreen working thank goodness (again, no shade on the run). I started off the run at 8:30 pace, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain it. My goal was to do 9’s and stick to my nutrition. I walked every aid station to get a full cup of water and full cup of Gatorade each time, along with a gu, or some chomps, or some sports beans (which I decided I don’t like anymore) to add up to my 60 g of carbs per hour. We ran along the pacific ocean most of the time by the Oceanside Pier, 2 down and backs that were about 3 miles out and 3 miles back, with a couple of inclines, but pretty flat. The cool ocean breeze was blowing most of the time and I couldn’t help but think that I loved feeling this instead of the freakin hot/humid wind in Florida. Some racers were saying how hot it was, and all I could do was laugh! I don’t think it got over 75 degrees! My cheerleaders saw me just a little out of transition and then 3 more times! It was great they were out there to hold me accountable for my pace I was trying to keep! I guess I was going faster than they thought I would, because almost every time, I had to yell to them to get their attention! Susan even did a cartwheel and some kind of cheerleader jump for me! Kat was yelling loud and taking pics and video and sending them to Dustin! Amy was taking pics! Jeffrey was yelling and running up beside me over and over again to try to get a good pic! Jen Merlo was giving me high fives and looking cute as usual. Dave and Molly were out there yelling, but I only saw Dave once for a second. He still has to work on his cheering voice! J Kendra ran with me for just a little bit around mile 11 which I needed so badly! The mile before was a 9:30 and I felt I was slowing down a bit. She helped me to pick it up and then Jeff and Kat also were trying to run beside me to get pics toward the finish, but they couldn’t keep up with me because of the crowds of people. That was pretty funny, I felt like I was racing them! As I turned that last corner, I still wasn’t sure that I was making it under 2 hours on the run because I was pushing the lap button on my watch for every mile and I didn’t know how long I had been on the run course, so I picked it up a little bit. I really left it all out on the course and I even felt like puking after the finish , but I held it in! When I found out I had done 1:58 on the run, it was a great feeling! I got some pizza, soda, Gatorade, got a massage, picked my bike and my favorite blue seventy transition bag up, and we were on our way. Kat was nice enough to push the bike, and Susan carried my packed full bag and we were on our way to eat Mexican food and margaritas! I told them I couldn’t wait to be doing that race next year with all of them as fellow San Diego residents.

2009-11-15T19:11:00.004-05:00

Well, I guess this blog can turn into it's name again......after a couple bottles of wine the other night, I signed up for Ironman Louisville on August 29th, 2010. It was a bit of a crazy decision, but one I think I needed to do. I'm sure I could have kept myself busy when Dustin is deployed, but this will give me the extra motivation that I need. I am super excited and thank you to Amber, Stuart, Kat, Kendra, Dustin, and Wolf for helping me make the decision. Wolf is a friend who we met through another friend and he just so happens to be a professional triathlete. So, I think I'm actually going to have him coach me starting in January. I think I need that accountability since I won't have Dustin to train with this time. It will be a much different Ironman training experience, but one that I am looking forward to, so I'll keep you posted on my progress.

So, as far as dealing with being a Navy wife, well it sure is hard at times.....he's been gone, then here, then gone a LOT in the last few months. He left again November 2nd and I have hardly been able to talk on the phone with him at all this time, which has really sucked. He wasn't as much of a part of my Ironman decision as I would have liked and I think he felt a little left out, but what am I supposed to do.....wait for the Navy to make all my decisions and plans. I don't think so, or I would be waiting a long time. Their schedules change so much that it's always a hurry up and wait thing and I don't do well with that. Everyone knows I'm not a patient person, but I have been forced to get better with that in the last few months!

I am very much looking forward to Thanksgiving when Dustin's family comes in town, and then in mid December I am surprising Dustin with a trip before we DRIVE home for Christmas to Kansas and then Missouri, then coming home to host a New Years Eve/Dustin going away party! Then, he will be going to Rhode Island for three weeks while his ship leaves on deployment. So, yes, his ship will leave without him.....so I am going to travel up there with him and do a travel PT assignment for 3 weeks as long as everything gets transferred for my license, so that will be different. I've never done home health in the cold, good thing I just bought a real coat! Then, after that 3 weeks, the Navy will fly him out to the ship, either from RI or from here in Jax, so that's going to be a weird time because we won't know when he will leave and we might get a call last minute saying he has to leave. That's going to be hard, but I'm glad that I at least get a few more weeks with him.

So, I did a 1.5 hour bike and a quick 10 minute run on the beach yesterday. Now, I'm getting ready to go see a patient up in Fernadina Beach (where they have nice bike lanes and pretty scenary) so I'm taking my bike and all my gear and will ride after I see them. I am slow this week with patients, so I get to do some of this fun stuff in the middle of the week. My other goal this week is to actually ride to a patients house on my bike (I think when I get there, I'll just slip my scrubs over my bike shorts and walah (spelling???), cyclist turns Physical Therapist! I hope I don't sweat too much on the way over there. Then, I can just strip down the scrubs, put em in my backpack, along with my paperwork and ride back home......we will see if that happens or not. If I get busier with work, it won't be possible.

Okay, gotta actually go to work now. I will hopefully do better about writing in this. Angie

2009-02-20T14:45:00.003-05:00

Well, I finally ran an under four hour marathon! I've only been trying since 2001 and finally completed that goal on Feb 15th 2009. Now, I'm going to warn you because this is going to end up sounding like an acceptance speech because I'm going to thank so many people, but honestly, I REALLY could not have done it alone.

First of all, getting my butt in gear a few months ago was hard. I had to really stick with some tough runs on the weekdays and long runs on the weekends. In past years, I hadn't really pushed myself during the week like I should have and I think that helped this year. Beth, Martin, and Kathy were able to run most long runs with me while Dustin was out to sea and their constant enthusiasm and encouragement were what pulled me through 17, 18, 19, and 20 mile runs. That, and the fact that I had to run fast to keep up with their speedy legs so I woulnd't get lost!

Beth and I started to get excited about "dressing up" for the marathon in the weeks leading up to it. We went shopping a few times to find the perfect outfits. We finally found some shirts and proceeded to form our complete outfit around that with necklaces, hair bows for our pigtails, hats, high socks with pink and red hearts on them, letters to spell out our names, who we were running for and that "cancer sux." Then, we couldn't pass up the bright pink skirt we found on the sale rack (even though we already planned to wear our white skirts). Hmmmmmm, who could possibly where this? I know! Dustin! He was out to sea and he couldn't argue with us, so I bought it!

I really have no idea how I found such a supportive husband, but I truly am thankful for him. He honestly will do anything to make me happy and seeing him in that skirt kept a smile on my face from the first time I convinced him to put it on and run around the house, to that finish line photo! He was wearing his shirt he wore last year that said, "Dustin in Pink" on the front and "For Gramma" on the back. This year, the addition in white letters on the pink skirt was "SKIRT-NOT MY IDEA" He sure got a lot of attention for his ensemble, but deep down, he really loved it. It was hilarious to see him keep pulling the skirt up because it was falling down cause he's so skinny.

We saw so many people we knew that morning from past running groups and from the Hammerhead Triathlon Club. We were even on the local news with guess who getting all the talk time......yes, Dustin. He did talk about his grandma and it was very sweet.

For some reason, as we started the race and passed Tim and Donna, we were running kind of quick over the JTB bridge (maybe it was cause the weather looked like it was going to dump rain on us, but never even drizzled the whole day). When we got to mile 5, we were averaging under 8 minute miles-way too fast. We saw my parents at the entrance to the beach and then we saw them again and again and again....they were everywhere, they just kept hopping in their car and driving up, getting out, cheering, and repeating that! I really have no idea how I got such supportive parents as well, because all it took was one plea to them to wear our shark hats and they sported them all day!

We ran 2.5 miles on the sandy beach and we were SO glad to get that part over with. Beth, Dustin, and Catherine and I ducked behind two guys at the end of the beach to try to draft off of them and Dustin tried to block the wind from slowing me down (awwww, sweet!) I was still feeling great until about mile 11 (warning-yuckiness ahead), when I puked in my mouth! I tried to not let anyone know I was starting to feel bad and just kept running, but slowed down a bit.

Kathy Hunken was out on the course on her bike here and there, running around picking up our stuff we threw at her and refilling water bottles and cheering her butt off. She biked and ran a lot of miles that day and we are so thankful for her! We expect a lot out of her since she's a fellow St. Louisan who we met here. JC was also out there in a few places cheering us on, motivating me to keep smiling cause that's what I always tell her as she's running her 5 minute miles!

We saw so many other people on the sidelines and they really helped us along. We were slowing down, but still keeping a decent pace. Aaron Shady passed us, Millie Tanner passed us, Roberta Coltman passed us.....all great runners, but still, mentally having all these people start to pass us and my quads not wanting to stay with them was very challenging. I would have loved to keep up with those three, but couldn't. I was forced to walk a few times, but inside my head, was the voice of Kellie Smirnoff, saying "YOUARESOGONNABREAKFOURHOURSYOUCANDOIT!!!!" in her quick enthusiastic chant she had for me right before we started. Dustin and Beth were also trying to help with words of encouragement. Catherine was hanging on with us in a silent determination (this was her first marathon and she was kicking butt staying with us almost the whole time).

As we went past mile 20 where the Hammerhead Water stop was, it was so great to see familiar faces, but I was faking smiles, that is for sure. Then, we saw all our old Team in Training friends and ran by to give them all fives (again, fake smiles!)

Then, we saw our peeps from the new running store, Jacksonville Running Company. I begged Jo to run with me for a short time. Josh refilled water bottles with gatorade for us which we really needed cause there was some gross drink out on the course that wasn't good. They ran along with us telling me I could do it in under four hours, but I was majorly questioning myself by that time. I told Jo that it was my quads tightening up, that they'd never done that before and it sucked! She started massaging them AS we ran! It was hilarious but it felt good!

I could NOT let all these people who helped me down and run even a second over four hours. Dustin suggested that I put my headphones in and that helped, the Fort Minor song, 50% Pain pumped me up a lot and Maroon 5, It's getting harder and harder to breathe was coming true! I had to take the headphones out when I saw Alicia and her three kids alongside the street! I couldn't believe she brought them out there to cheer and I so needed that then. I put the headphones back on to hear, "Move, Bitch, get out the way, get out the way bitch, get out the way" which is a funny song anyway, but when your husband is just ahead of you in a skirt, it becomes hilarious! Again, faking a smile to myself and telling myself that I could do this. Dustin and Beth kept encouraging me and there were so many people out there on the course the last 6 miles, but I don't remember very much and I don't remember what anyone said to me.

I just kept thinking that I couldn't be opening up the door to our party later that day and telling people that I didn't meet my goal. I wanted to have champagne in my hand celebrating! Somehow, we pushed through the last few miles on JTB and then we saw Kathy running back to get us over the bridge and it was so great to see her! As we turned onto San Pablo road, we could see the finish and I still wasn't sure we would make it! Dustin, Beth and I got closer and closer, saw my parents on the sidelines cheering and we held hands to cross the finish line in 3:58:15! Thank goodness! After crying and hugging them, there were so many others, Lisa and Samantha, and Martin at the finish to hug. I truly could not have done it without Dustin and Beth pulling me along at the finish, so thanks guys! I think the first thing I said was, "That sucked!" But, man, was it worth it to come in under 4 hours. Now I can be done with marathons.....maybe, unless they start with a 2.4 miles swim and 112 mile bike. :)

I also got so many good luck emails, phone calls (the best was right before we were falling asleep on Sat night, Jeff and Kendra called to wish us luck!), texts, and so many congratulatory emails, phone calls, texts, and facebook comments that I felt VERY loved and supported that day! It was great to have my parents there to share it and it was great to have good friends at the party afterwards. We were also celebrating that the Hammerheads made it to 3000 run miles in February thanks to the marathon and half marathon. We were "racing" 59 other clubs around the nation and we won, thanks to our efforts to enter everyone's miles in when we came home from the marathon. It was a very successful day.

2009-01-21T19:12:00.002-05:00

It's been awhile, sorry! So much has happened since September! As you can tell, I don't get much done when Dustin is around because we are out having fun! We have done so much since my last entry. I rode on his ship, we celebrated his return with a billion happy hours, had a few parties here and there, ran a half marathon in KC with Dustin's family in October, and I got to visit my neices for awhile then too. My tennis teammates from college came out for a fun visit! We ran another half marathon on Thanksgiving day, then had lunch and drove to NC to go skiing at Sugar Mountain for a couple days. We went home for Christmas to the midwest where it was very cold, then Dustin left again on January 4th and he will be gone for another week or so! I'm sure I missed a lot of things in there, but those were some of the highlights.

It's weird because on his two months of his deployment, because of our Curacao trip, we saw eachother about every month. It seemed to go by fast even though I missed him a lot. Well, THESE few weeks are going by really slowly and I think it all has to do with being prepared. We were prepared for the other ones and this one we thought it was so short it would fly by. But, it hasn't even though I've been super busy! My friends are keeping my very busy and training for this whole marathon thing again has been a big priority. I am also the data entry person for our triathlon club in this national club challenge. So, I enter over 90 members swim, bike, and run miles into this website for competition with other clubs throughout the nation. Right now, we are 3rd out of 56 teams. San Diego is kicking our butts, but that is about to change! Just to give you an idea of how many miles I am entering, we have 28,019.53 miles right now. I am not a huge contributor by any means, but I have logged 5.66 swim miles, 369 bike miles, and 160 run miles since Dec 1st. I would have more miles, but I have to spend so much time on the computer entering them in, that takes away from my training! :) No, for real though, I am really hoping to run the Breast Cancer Marathon on Feb 15th in under 4 hours and I think I can do it! With the help of a few close friends, we have been doing long runs while Dustin has been away and we have averaged around 8:45 miles for 18 miles. And, I gotta give props to my hubby, because he actually did a 17 miler and an 18 miler the next weekend on a treadmill on the ship! I don't think I could ever do that, but he said he was going to, so he did! Crazy! I can't wait for Feb 1st when we get to run 20 miles together along with some other people training for the same marathon!

I've also just been asked to be a race director for Girls on the Run. We volunteered for them a couple times, but nothing as big as race director, so I am hoping to team up with someone else to share the duties and then go for it. The race will be in May, and our next triathlon is May 9th, another half ironman in Panama City, so I will be a very busy bee until then if I say yes. It's hard for me to say no to things, so we will see.

I gotta share a story from this morning. I had an 8 AM appt at Nissan for my car cause it was making a rattling noise. I had decided last week that I would bike or run home from there and then use Dustin's car for work. However, I didn't plan on it being 27 degrees in Florida, so the bike was definitely out! But I thought to myself, "what the heck, I used to run in these temps all the time in St. Louis, even long runs!" So, I left the dealership off on my sidewalk trek home (you should have seen the looks on the service guys faces when I said I was going to run home!) It was pretty freaking cold with the wind, but I had a heavy jacket on, so I was sweating profusely by the time I got a mile down the road. It was only about 3 miles to home, but I added another mile, so I got four miles in! The crazy thing was that I had to dodge ice on the sidewalks a few times, yes ICE in FLORIDA! I was just laughing and couldn't wait to get home.....its crazy how used to warm weather a person can get. I haven't lived in the midwest in almost 7 years and I hate the weather when we go back for the holidays. I think I'm officially a warm state girl, although right now, we aren't considered warm. Well, maybe we are in comparison, say with Wisconsin and Minnesota.......feeling for you guys up there! Yikes!

Thanks for reading the blog and hope to keep in touch with everyone! Miss you all!
Well, I'm not promising anything for future entries, but

2008-09-29T20:17:00.003-04:00

I have been horrible about keeping up on this! Between posting pictures of everything I've been doing and emailing Dustin and everyone else in the family to keep them updated, I haven't had the energy at the end of the night to blog!

A little catching up: Had a bicycle wreck at the Watermelon 100 mile ride at the end and hurt my shoulder, hip, and hand, but they are healed now! I was so lucky! The next weekend was the Nations Tri which I coached for Team in Training. Thankfully I wasn't participating in it! All five of them completed the triathlon and did very well and I think they all had fun too! That was in DC the second week of September.

The third weekend was the MS 150 which was really a two day 172 mile ride between St. Augustine and Daytona and it was tons of fun! I rode with a great group of people and we partied too hard on Saturday night and then had to ride back the next day. I definitely want to do that again and now someone just told me there is another one from Miami to Key Largo in May! Hmmmmmmm.

After the MS ride, I REALLY wanted to talk to Dustin. It felt like I accomplished something and everything like that, he and I have shared over the last 7 years, so something was missing after we finished. He did not get to call. In fact, I didn't talk to him for over a week, until just the other day when he was finally able to call. It felt like forever, since I was spoiled with him calling every 3-4 days. Email was usually available, so that was good, but there's nothing like hearing his voice! He called me tonight also for the first time without a delay since seeing him in Curacao. It was weird because we still talked like we were expecting a delay! We are both getting very excited to see each other! This Friday, Dustin's Mom and I fly to Ft. Lauderdale and meet up with the ship. He was supposed to have duty so he wouldn't have been able to get off the ship, but his friend Mark took his duty for him so he could see us and also meet up with Ruben and Michelle. So, we will all go out for dinner and then we got a hotel that night. We then board the ship before 7 AM on Saturday and ride it back into Jacksonville! It's gonna be so much fun! I canNOT wait to see him!

I sent him some stuff in the mail (I won't say what because if he reads this he will find out), but I sent it before I went to Curacao and he STILL hasn't gotten it, so that means he won't get it until he sees me, so that kind of spoils it, but oh well. I just hope it gets to him sometime and didn't get lost in the mail!

So, the whole Navy wife thing isn't that bad. I do miss him a lot, but I have great friends here who have kept me so busy that I don't have time to miss him! Last weekend, I went kayaking and to a wine tasting on Saturday and met some friends to watch football on Sunday. I was planning on getting stuff ready for his arrival this weekend, but that didn't work out too well. So, I'm going to have a busy Tuesday-Friday until I leave! I have so much to do! Right now I'm making a shrimp and grits casserole that I have been meaning to make since he left, because he doesn't like grits! I made a scallops recipe that was really good the other night because he doesn't like scallops! I'm trying to get that all out before he comes back so all we will make are things we both like! I can't wait to sip wine and cook with him! I can't wait to run and bike with him, I can't wait to do absolutely nothing with him!

He gets back on Sunday and then on Monday, he starts a four week school from 7-4 everyday! He also may have duty every 3rd day, which means he will spend the night on the ship all of those nights! We will find that out soon. Because he's in the school, he shouldn't have to stand duty, but there are some jackasses on board that think they should have to. I sure hope not. That would mean that he would have duty on Monday, the first day. If he does, I'm gonna make him dinner and bring it to the ship for him. I will probably be doing that when he will have his normal duty days every 6th day for however long! They will be going out again in November but not for very long, thank goodness!

Okay, so I have so much to do that I can't even think, so I will try to update this once more before I see him, but I'm not making any promises.

2008-09-03T17:12:00.003-04:00

So, my trip to Curacao was amazing! I realized that not a lot of people know where Curacao is....heck, I didn't before I decided to fly there. It is a part of the Netherlands Antilles and it is considered the southern Carribean. It is part of the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao) and it is just north of South America. They say on a clear day, you can see Venezuela from where we were, but we never saw it. Even though it was perfect weather every day. I kept thinking it was going to be cloudy at least with all the storms out there, but it never was at our resort.

So, pretty much by day, we spent the day on the beach/at the pool and by night, went to the bars and danced! We went to Mambo Beach both Sunday night and Monday night. Sunday was crazy (all the locals were there-Monday, they weren't). I met a lot more of Dustin's friends from the ship. Somehow a dance contest broke out in the corner of this awesome bar on the beach. So, basically a bunch of Navy guys are going back and forth with a bunch of local 19 year olds Drumline/Bring it ON style, back and forth in the middle of this circle. It was hilarious. At times, I thought it was going to start fights, so I would step in and dance with Tim, but it never became hostile at all. There was a respect factor between the two different groups and it was just great entertainment. You have to see those pictures and others at www.angiedustin.shutterfly.com

After the dance contest, Dustin and I danced a lot and that was so much fun and we sweated our ***** off! Then, we decided we would get a burger and a hot dog from a stand inside this beach bar. BAD IDEA....can't even explain the consisitency of my burger but it was so gross. I wasn't hungry after that though. We were able to ride the Navy's taxi back to the ship and then they ended up taking us back to the Marriot for free also. We were able to hitch rides with these taxis to save us a bunch of money in taxi fare, so that was cool!

The next night, we went back to the same place, but a different beach bar called Hemingways which was very good. It was part of the resort Lions Dive and I would love to stay there if we ever went back. It is right where everything is happening instead of our resort (although nice, nothing is around it). Anyway, this is where the wetting down was. What, you ask? So, a navy tradition is when an officer gets a pay increase promotion, he has a free happy hour in the amount of his monthly pay raise! So, basically we had free drinks and free appetizers for 3 hours at this bar with a lot of the officers from the ship, including the XO and CO (Captain) of the ship. It was a lot of fun; I talked to the Captain a lot about our love for San Diego and how we all wanted to end up back there someday. Of course, there was a push up contest (and I had to join-I held my own for awhile, but coudln't cut it). Needless to say, everyone was feeling it pretty good by the end. I even somehow got the Captain to do a handstand with me (I'm not sure if that's classified information or not, but I'm sharing it!) Despite the conversation, I don't think I quite convinced him enough that Dustin should be able to spend his last night with me instead of reporting to the ship at midnight on Tuesday, but I did try!

On Tuesday morning, we were a little slow moving, but we went back to one of our favorite places, the pool bar/restaurant and we sat on the little stools in the water and ate some big burgers! Then, we snorkeled a bit (the water was so clear and there were a million fish just swimming right by us), and hung out in the pool while discussing Dustin's future navy career and how lucky we were to be in Curacao together like this and hoping that in future deployments, I can meet him in Europe somewhere. We walked up a path to explore a bit and it was so beautiful (see pics). We ended up going back there to watch the semi-sunset blocked by some clouds. I sure miss sunsets over the ocean!

After that, we went back to the room and got ready for dinner and Dustin packed. We ended up staying at the hotel and went to Portofino for Asian Wok night, which turned out to be the best meal we had while in Curacao! It was kind of like Mongolian BBQ where you pick your meats and veggies and have them in a bowl and then they wok them up with sauces! Of course, we had a glass of wine with dinner and enjoyed our last meal together until next month!

It sucked that Dustin had to leave me at the hotel about 11:15 PM to get back to the ship. I walked him up to the taxi and hugged and kissed him and they drove off. I went back to the room and started to pack. Our resort was nice enough that I felt safe by myself, until there was a knock on the door! Who the heck? It was Dustin returning with my ID he had taken with him by accident! Oh my gosh! It was awesome to see him for another second, but he didn't want to be late back to the ship, so he had to run back to the taxi! At least I got to see him for one more second!

I fell asleep to talk about the republican national convention and woke up at 5:30 to leave for the airport. I called the front desk for a taxi and she said, "for two?" I said, "no, just one" and then when I got to the taxi, he said, "By yourself?" I said, "yes" Dammit, I have to start saying "I" again instead of "we" like I'm used to! It's funny, because when I was first with Dustin, I was saying things like my, or I, but then got back to saying "we." Now, I have to switch it back.

When I got to the airport, there was a beautiful sunrise and the airport is RIGHT by the ocean. it was a beautiful ending to a beautiful place. I got into Miami at 11:00 and realized there was a flight out to Jax at 12:20 (mine was scheduled for 4:10), so I tried to rush through customs and through the HUGE miami airport to the gate and barely got on the earlier flight! My bags didn't make it though, but I am having them delivered here tonight for an extra $20. Beth picked me up from the airport after a last minute phone call and plea to many people, she got back to me the quickest, so that worked out well!

Since then, I've been putting pictures up and emailing everyone I am safe and now going to run with Amber and Stuart and she's making dinner for me! Yeah! It's sad to not have Dustin here, but I think it was perfect timing to have a visit one month after he left. Now, only 1 month to go and he will be back for awhile! I can't wait!

cabbie asking me about traveling alone? front desk for two?

2008-08-31T11:32:00.008-04:00

On Friday, Beth took me to the airport (thanks Beth) and got there in plenty of time for my flight to Miami. I took one of those small planes down to Miami and they had weather when we were getting ready to land, so we circled once and then came down-no big deal, but I was worried about later when I had to take off for Curacao, if there were going to be a bunch of delays because of weather. I tried to sit patiently in the airport reading magazines for 3 hours. I sat exactly where we sat when we were leaving on our sailboat cruise and got the same pizza hut cheese pizza that I got that day (well, hopefully it wasn't the SAME exact pizza!). I tried to watch the news with no sound about the hurricanes and about John McCain picking his running mate. I have email set up on my phone right now, so I was able to get emails from Dustin (they come through like text messages that I can type and respond to his email address). He told me they were there and safe and he was hoping to get off the ship around 2 PM. I was so wishing I was already there! He said he was going to check into our room (which he had to switch because of construction nearby and wet carpet smell). I finally boarded the 737 that took me to Curacao. I had a whole row to myself, so I layed down and took a nap the WHOLE flight....no magazines, nothing to drink, just slept! When I awoke, I found the customs info I had to fill out lying on my stomach!

So, I filled that out and we landed at about 7:30. It was dark and I couldn't tell much about Curacao yet. I realized when I went to turn my phone on, that Dustin didn't have his phone and I was just hoping he would be there when I came out, or I didn't know what I would do. I went through customs (first time to do that by myself), got my luggage, and went through another checkpoint and it filtered us straight outside! What the heck? All the taxi drivers were there and a bunch of people waiting, but I didn't see Dustin! Then, I turned the corner and there he was, cuter than ever! He was smiling really big and I ran up and gave him a huge hug and kiss. It was funny that being married over 4 years, and not seeing each other for 30 days, we reverted right back to that moment in October of 2001 when he visited me for the first time (after meeting in Dec of 1999). We were kind of awkwardly hugging and kissing, but so excited to be by each others sides. Being the sweet guy he is, he told me how beautiful I looked and that I looked skinnier than when he left (it's true because I've been eating less and drinking less wine without him around).

The cabbie that took Dustin to the airport, for some reason, wanted to stay around with him for over an hour before I arrived, so we took the same cab back to the hotel, got to call my Dad from his cell phone (that was nice) just to tell him I was safe. For some reason, in the 2 weeks with Tropical Storm Fay and me traveling alone, my Dad has turned into a worry wart! I love ya DAD!

We got to the Marriot and Dustin showed me our room that is RIGHT beside the pool. (I am sitting on our patio about 20 feet from the pool right now typing this, even though they said the wireless internet does not work in the rooms.) The pool looks right out over the ocean. We have a sliver of an ocean view from our room. The beach is nice and it curves around a bit around the resort. It's funny, because like Dustin said, we were so concentrated on being excited about seeing each other, we didn't really think about the fact that people plan for years to come to this resort on vacation, and we planned ours less than a month ago. We only had to pay for airfare for one also!

Oh my gosh, there are HUGE lizards here and one just came scurrying up the mulch by our patio and almost hopped right onto my feet! Yuck! I'm used the small ones in Jacksonville, but these are huge, some of them over a foot long!

We ate dinner when got back to the hotel at one of the hotel bars and had some yummy calamari and ahi tuna. We had our first glass of wine together in 30 days, so that was nice! We then hung out around the pool for awhile. We had so much to tell each other; we were cutting each other off left and right, and we were so happy there wasn't a delay in the communication like the phone calls have. We showed each other pictures from our cameras and he gave me a shot glass he bought in Panama and a really pretty real emerald necklace he bought me in Colombia. I felt pretty lame, but I gave him some new workout shorts that I bought him because he said he didn't have enough. I also brought him our old showerhead that he asked for at the last minute because he wants to replace the one on the ship! We went to bed around midnight that night.

Yesterday was really fun. We had an expensive breakfast buffet at Portofino, a restaurant at our resort. It was pretty good though. It felt weird eating a breakfast buffet with only two people at our table (it seemed as though we were waiting for Walt, Judy, Shelley, Alan, Travis, and Robin to join us like it was on our sailboat cruise!)

We then went to get towels and head for the beach for awhile, when we ran into a few of Dustin's shipmates. That was funny to see them. We picked an awesome spot on the beach where the breeze was strong (otherwise it is HOT!!!) We had ocean on three sides of us and it was beautiful. We hung out there for awhile and took pictures (we'll send them when we get back). Dustin signed up for his diving and then we got a drink at this cute hut bar called the Boardroom where we sat on a double swing. Then, we came back and headed for the pool. We were tring to get in some shade in the water when somebody tried swimming through Dustin's legs......the same shipmates we saw before. So, we hung out with them in the pool while they told me drunken stories (of the past, but they could have been drunk telling them also). We swam up to the bar where the barstools were under the water and got another drink. I LOVE those kind of bars! Then, we went to the hotel casino and played blackjack for awhile (like Vegas, you get free drinks while you play). Those ended up being expensive drinks, because our luck was not with us YET!

As we were exiting the casino, we ran into Dustin's captain and XO (the two most important people on his ship). They came over to us and welcomed me; they are both really nice. They invited us to a wetting down which means somebody on the ship made rank (got a promotion), so that person has to buy the other shipmates drinks for three hours. We will probably go there tomorrow evening. I'm planning on asking them if Dustin can stay the last night with me in the hotel instead of having to report back on the ship at midnight the last night we can spend together! We'll see how it goes; I'll have to practice batting my eyelashes.....maybe I'll get fake eyelashes! Just kidding!

Anyway, this is getting long, hopefully none of you have anything to do but read this blog.....last night Dustin made a reservation at a Brazilian place where they come serve you ungodly amounts of meat and there's a buffet of other side foods. We had been to one in Jville and it was awesome, but this wasn't so much. It pretty much sucked! I'm not a huge meat person anyway, but wanted to go because Dustin wanted to go. He agreed it sucked! The meat was not tender at all and there wasn't even any filet mignon! Basically, I paid $28 for very good potato salad! We also ordered a bottle of B and G Merlot, so that was cool! Speaking of cool, that's exactly what the surroundings were NOT! We were sweating profusely the whole time we were eating because it was outside and there was no breeze where we were sitting!

After dinner, we walked to his ship and took some pictures and then took a free shuttle for the sailors back to the Marriot. We wanted to go out dancing, but our stomachs were so full of nasty meat that we just fell asleep watching TV. Pretty lame, I know, but the rest of the day was packed full of fun, so we were tired.

Ok, so I waited to finish this blog until Dustin was back from diving and he is safely back and had fun. He went on one with a bunch of cars that fell off of a ferry along time ago. He said it was cool and he saw a lot of stuff. After his return, we had lunch at the Boardroom and drank some margaritas with some of his shipmates. We got in the water a little bit and now we are back at the room deciding what to do next. We think we are gonna head to a happy hour at Mambo beach with some of his shipmates. They are all a lot of fun.

Happy Anniversary today to Travis and Robin, Jeff and Kendra, and Tony and Asta! We are having a toast for you guys tonight! I think all you guys were married on the same exact day in 2002, so that's awesome! Also, I waited to publish this blog and send the email until Dustin was safely back from diving because I knew some of you would worry. (Becky and my Dad) We love you guys and our thoughts are with those of you worrying about Gustav and Hanna storms. We have no worries out there though; no rain in days according to the locals despite all the Carribean storms. They say here in the southern Carribean, we are safe from the hurricane belt! We miss you all and thanks for reading my blog.

2008-08-28T10:58:00.004-04:00

I'm off tomorrow to see Dustin and I canNOT wait! I'm getting ready to go to bed soon if I can sleep! We've been following Gustav, the tropical storm and we are clear of it. We'll see what tropical storm Hanna has in store for Florida. Hopefully I will time my travel perfectly and not hit any of it. I've become a weather channel addict though; even tracking longitude and latitude on our map!!! I talked to my parents tonight and they sounded worried, but it's all going to be fine. They don't like that I am traveling alone to a small island like that.

Half of my suitcase is Dustin's stuff that I am bringing for him, like more workout clothes, sunscreen, more phone cards, dress clothes, and TOILET PAPER! He's a girl like that and needs nice soft toilet paper :)

I got done with Team in Training practice, came home, ran some leftovers over to Amber and Stuart, came back and ate dinner, showered, did my paperwork and put it in the mail to four different offices, caught up on emails, and now I'm gonna do some dumbell work before I go to bed to tire myself out!

I will try to update this if we have internet access in Curacao!

2008-08-24T14:53:00.002-04:00

So, Tropical Storm Fay has finally left us! It was pretty bad on Thursday with high winds and LOTS of rain! A bunch of places in Jacksonville flooded, but we were lucky where we are. A lot of people were without electricity, but thankfully, ours just flickered a few times. I don't know what I would have done if I wouldn't have been able to use the computer or watch the Olympics! I saw a few patients each day (wed-fri it was raining constantly), but I still was going stir crazy, because I couldn't get outside to run, bike, or even walk! Yesterday on Saturday was the first time I saw sunshine since Tuesday! My body was definitely Vit D depleted! It felt good to get out and run yesterday and then I went to our friends poker party to raise more money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. On Friday night, Amber and Stuart and I went bowling at Beach Bowl, where Richard and Beth were bartending, so that was fun!

So, while Tropical Storm Fay was coming our way, Dustin was still out on his Colombian ship with no email or phone. I just had to forget all about him, or I would worry about him. Apparently he was worrying about me though, because the Colombians let him use their emergency phone on Wed night to call me to make sure I was okay, but we were only able to talk for 2 minutes! The storm wasn't that bad yet at that time. Then, he called me on Thursday evening to tell me he was back on the US ship-thank goodness! It was good to hear his voice and know that he was safe. I still don't really understand why he went, but it's over now. He told me he rode in a helicopter down pretty close the water (glad I didn't know that ahead of time) and that he got to see how a different navy operated and brushed up on his Spanish. I guess he will be sending an email soon with pictures from that excursion.

He sent me this one about his schedule:
My schedule is like this. We are 4 section and there are 5 watches. 7am-12pm, 12pm—5pm, 5pm-10pm, 10pm-2am, 2am-7amSunday the 2-7 is actually 3-8 because breakfast is later. So tonight I have the 3-8 then tomorrow evening I have the 10pm-2am. Then the next day is 5pm-10pm and so forth. That will be hard to get used to. I was the conning officer today and we practiced man overboard drills so that was cool. They throw a human size dummy overboard and we have to bring the ship around as fast as possible and pull up real close and stop. It’s harder than it sounds, but pretty fun. Ok, gotta go to sleep. We’re back on your time zone now. It’s 9:14 so I’ll only get about 4 and a ½ hours of sleep. I will try to call you tomorrow. The phones were still not working today when I tried, but that was before dinner, so I’m hoping tomorrow it will be fine or else there will be a lot of people complaining.

He did get to call me earlier today and told me that they were doing a swim call, where they get to jump in the ocean for 10 minutes and swim around, so he was excited about that. Then, they are having a poker tournament to raise money for something tonight. So, it sounds like he is being entertained!

Also, I'm going to meet up with him next Friday and I can't wait. He did get leave approved for the whole time I am there, but the bad thing is that he has to be back on the ship at midnight the night before I leave, so that sucks! Maybe when I get there, I can sweet talk the captain into letting Dustin spend the night with me instead of on the ship! We'll see! We don't really have any plans for the trip yet, but there is a casino in the hotel, so I'm sure we will be hitting that! We will also be sharing a lot of pictures with each other that we have been taking over the last month. I'm hoping they have wireless internet in the hotel, so I can put a little update on this blog and check my email and all that.

Ok, gotta go watch the last day of Olympics now! I can't believe they are already over. I don't know what I'm gonna do with myself now! Hopefully I'll get to write in the blog more.

2008-08-13T21:20:00.002-04:00

So, most of you have been getting Dustin's emails with his pictures of his Carribean cruise and his excursions! He is heading off on another "excursion" that I'm not that excited about. He tells me that it is an awesome experience and that others have done it and suggested it to him. So, basically, he is boarding a Columbian war ship for over a week! He gets to see how other countries operate and I guess it's more laid back than the US! The bad thing is that he will probably not have any access to phone or email. I am used to him emailing me short emails everyday and calling me every couple of days. I guess I am spoiled because that's usually not what happens on deployments. But, I have been happy to know that he is safe everyday and now I will not know that, so that sucks!

I will be keeping super busy with work, trainings, going out, kayaking, BBQs, Jaguar Games, and fundraisers (and that only takes me through Sunday), so hopefully I won't have too much time to worry about him. I'm not usually a worrier, so I think I'll be okay. I just hope he has fun and learns something (like how he needs to be on a ship with email).

Okay, well, gotta go watch the Olympics now! I am recording them during the day and staying up late watching the prime time coverage and it's tiring me out! I sure wish I would have been able to qualify for the olympics in something! That would be so awesome!

2008-08-05T21:39:00.003-04:00

I had another great day today! I've been keeping so busy, but I love it! However, yesterday was not so great of a day.....it was "all technology fails Angie" day and it started early in the morning. I got up for a run around the neighborhood and I turned the computer on first thing because I wanted to see if Dustin emailed me (I'm constantly checking it like a little girl with her very first boyfriend). My gmail account was not working; it wouldn't pull up the emails. What was really frustrating was that I could see that I had emails from him, but when I would click on my Inbox, it just kept saying "redirecting." I thought it was a server problem because all the other websites I clicked on were fine, so I decided it would take a little time and be fine. So, I went on my run around the neighborhood (a pretty hard workout with sprint intervals-but only 3 miles). When I got back, still no luck with the gmail, so I called Amber and asked if she could try logging into my email on her computer to see if it was just my computer. So, she did and she got in no problem, so I ran over to her house like a little girl again and checked my email. Then, I came back and lifted some weights and got ready for work and figured I would try to access it again. Still no luck. Now, I was mad! I was mad at myself for not being able to figure it out. I was mad at myself for possibly doing something that screwed it up. I was mad at myself that I was this freakin addicted to email (I do use it a lot for communication with Team in Training and planning social events too). I seriously couldn't function without it; it was weird. So, I pushed my patients back and I called my computer nerd friend, Tony. He talked me through a bunch of stuff and none of it worked. He finally told me to try to go to Tools and Internet Options, and to delete my temporary internet files and that worked! I was so happy; I had my life back....how awful is that? :)

Then, I got in my car to go see patients and my navigation system wouldn't work; it didn't like me either. Apparently my computer told it to conspire against me. I figured out my way to this new patients house and did just fine......it ended up working later in the day.

I saw a few patients and then had to rush home for a conference call about Nations Triathlon so I could inform my participants about changes. That lasted for about an hour and suprisingly, my phone worked the whole time! Then, I decided at the last minute to go to a spin class (run by this older woman with a raspy voice and she kicked my butt-it was hard!) After lifting some weights afterwards, soaking in the hot tub, lying in the sauna, and showering in the spa like shower (this is a new YMCA in our area that is the bomb!), I drove to Melting Pot.

It was supposed to be girls night with a few girls, but no one was able to make it except for Kathy, which I'm so glad she didn't ditch me! It was a lot of fun though; we talked mainly about triathlons (she's doing Ironman Florida in Nov-her first IM) and about Dustin and her boyfriend Andre who works for Ironman. She also told me that she grew up with Sarah Haskins who is competing in the olympics in triathlon on August17th at 10 PM, so mark your calendars. Did I mention that Kathy and Sarah are both from St. Louis! How cool is that? She said that Sarah used to tell people as a little girl that she was going to the Olympics and now she really is. I was already excited about the Olympics starting on the 8th, but now I am super excited!

We had an awesome fondue dinner and I was stuffed when I returned home, so all I wanted to do was lie on the couch and watch TV (something I've been limiting myself from doing too much of). I turn on the TV, and apparently, the computer and my navigation system invited the TV to conspire against me as well! The volume would not work and I didn't do anything differently, the mute button was not on. The volume wouldn't work for the speaker or the TV. It tried changing the channel, turning everything off and on. Finally, I guess I turned everything off and on in the correct order because it blasted me out! I was glad I somehow fixed it, but I was ready for the technology difficulties to be over. Man!

So, as far as Dustin news.....most of you who would be reading this blog got an email from him with pictures attached of the ship and the rainbow, so that was cool. He also talked about how he survived the pepper spray, but his wakeboarding tshirt was ruined, so that sucked. He tried calling me on Saturday night and I must have been in the bathroom of the restaurant and didn't hear it, so that was sad. He said he tried calling later but couldn't get a line out from the ship. He did call yesterday though and there was a delay again, so that was frustrating, but he sounded good.

Here's an excerpt from one of his emails:
Last night I had Italian Sausage with grilled onions and peppers and a crabcake….yeah I know, a weird combo. I pretty much get to pick from 2 entrees and a few sides, and usually soup. So it’s usually random shit that ends up on my plate. I try to have a salad most of the time, but I found out right away that there was more fat in Balsamic Vinaigrette than in Ranch! What the fuck, I knew it tasted too good, so I’ve switched to Fat Free Italian when it’s available. The other day we had a steel beach picnic. That’s where we pull the grill out on the flight deck and grill up. I will send pics in the mass email. I also went fishing off the fantail (the back), but no one caught anything. There were about 15 poles in the water for a few hours and no bites or anything.

He also told me about how they sent some stuff out in the ocean and blew it up with a bunch of guns. He was way more technical than that and he was way more impressed with it than I am. I kind of think it's a waste sometimes, but again, that's why I'm not in the Navy. I will support him in everything he does though (at least I will try).

So, I guess I haven't written in here about my for sure plans to fly to Curacao to meet him at the end of the month! I'm so excited! Then, in October, right before they pull in to Jax, they are stopping in Port Everglades and Becky, Ken, and I are going to board the ship, spend the night and ride it into Jacksonville the next day! How exciting! So, this Navy stuff really isn't that bad. It was funny on Friday when my friends had a "pity party" for me because they were saying things like, wow! you GET to go to Curacao, you GET to ride on the Navy ship, you GET to see him in less than a month; needless to say, there wasn't much pitying going on and that's fine, because I didn't need it anyway, but I did need a fun night out and that's what they gave me! Thanks guys!

Well, this was a long one, but hopefully it caught me up for a few days anyway.

2008-07-31T21:52:00.002-04:00

Today was another good day and I actually already had dinner and it's before 10 PM! I made my favorite meal of apricot glazed salmon and I'm so proud of myself, because I cooked it on the grill. Now, I know this sounds lame, but I don't think I have ever cooked anything on the grill by myself. My Dad would cook on it growing up, my uncles, my grandpa, and then for the last 7 years, Dustin.......it's just a man's thing I guess. Well, NOT anymore....I think I did a pretty good job, but not quite as good as Dustin! I fixed fresh asparagus on the side for a wonderfully healthy meal!

I also biked 20 miles this morning and ran 5 this evening, so I'm feeling good!

I heard from Dustin by email a few times today, nothing new on his end. He said he took some pictures of the "take downs" they performed in class and he will try to send them.

So, this is the first official day in 7 years that I haven't heard his voice. Now, I miss him, don't get me wrong, but it seems like I was just talking to him (which I was last night).

I hired a person to cut, mow, and edge our lawn today, so I'm excited about that. He does a bunch of other lawns in our neighborhood and was referred to me by some neighbors, so I thought, what the heck, so he mowed our lawn today and it looks great and he only charges $25, so I thought that was pretty good. I could mow the lawn, but the edging and weed eating I do not want to do!

Well, I'm gonna relax a little by watching the movie Vanilla Sky from Netflix that somebody told me was good. Tom Cruise is in it, so it can't be too bad. I have a really busy day tomorrow and I probably won't get to write in the blog, but I will sometime this weekend. I expect a call from Dustin on Saturday afternoon/evening after he survives the pepper spray-just for him to let me know he is okay after that silly ordeal they are making them go through!

Good night!

2008-07-30T21:05:00.003-04:00

Again, I've fallen behind with updating this, but I promise to be better. I will keep the name of this blog the same, despite me contemplating whether I should change it to "journal of a real navy wife." Dustin left on Tuesday on his ship for a deployment of over 2 months. It was a pretty cool site to see with all the sailors manning (and womaning) the rails on the way out to the ocean. Amber (our neighbor and good friend) went with me and it helped a lot! I only cried once when I hugged him for the last time. We stood outside the fences looking in for about an hour and a half, taking pictures and still being able to text and call on our cell phones to each other. Then, Amber and I drove to the beach and climbed up on the jetty of rocks to give them one last wave goodbye! It was a great site and he was able to call me as they were passing and we spotted eachother. We stayed on the beach for awhile watching them get further and further away and took some more pictures. I felt bad leaving when we could still see the ship, but I couldn't stay out there all day-I had patients to see and things to do-thank goodness I can keep myself pretty busy. That's why I am doing so good right now and hopefully I will keep busy. Of course I miss him, but I'm just fine right now, getting back into my independent woman groove that I had 7 years ago BD (Before Dustin). I have worked out every day (swimming, running, lifting weights, and did Pilates class tonight) and I won a membership to a spa down the road at a silent auction last weekend, so I went there today too!

I feel like I have a lot of jobs while he is gone. 1. To be a good wife and email him a lot 2. To be a good to my inlaws and rest of the family and keep them updated with everything 3. To do my regular five different physical therapy jobs 4. To coach the triathlon team-harder without Dustin here to help 5. To be a good friend to those I've been ignoring in the past due to my wanting to spend time with Dustin 6. Housekeeper 7. Housing maintenance person 8. Yard worker (although I think I am hiring someone to do that 9. Bookeeper of our finances (which Dustin loves to do and I hate to do) 10. Chef (no fun cooking for one by myself) 11. Dieter (I want to look better for him when he returns

I think those shall keep me pretty busy! So, I feel like a dork because I keep the computer on all day and night and keep checking my email to see if he emailed me! I get so freakin excited when I get an email from him! He's been able to email 3 short emails just saying that he is safe, so that's good! He said he ran 3.5 miles on the treadmill and lifted weights this morning! Also, I sent him pictures of all the family and close friends and snuck them into his bag, so he found them yesterday and loved them. I also snuck a little checklist for every day that he is gone reminding him to do things like take his vitamins, floss, check his daily reminders on his laptop, workout, email me, etc. He liked that too and said he stuck the pictures and the list above his head in his rack so when he wakes up, he sees those first!

So, this is really ironic, but I was just getting ready to write that this is the first day in the last 7 years that I didn't hear Dustin's voice, when, guess what!? He called! It showed up as a 757 number and it was really delayed so we kept cutting each other off for 29 minutes! The $20 phone cards that I got him get him about 250 minutes of talk time. Here's the jist of info I got from him:

He was calling from the ward room and a good time to make phone calls is 8-10 PM. Since we are on the same time zone, that makes it easier! He is really busy all during the day, he's taking a class right now that deals with fighting people off with batons and taking them to the ground. Then here's the part that makes me mad......on Saturday, they spray them in the eyes with pepper spray and they have to find their weapons and do the same maneuvers they have been practicing with their sight. Why such torture of pepper spray to the eyes!!! I think that's stupid, but I guess that's why I'm not in the military. Dustin said since he has to do it, he's just going to be positive towards it, but I think it sucks! He also said that they have to report to the front of the ship at 7 AM every morning and that the sunrise looks pretty cool. He also said that he stood conning officer today (which means he's telling people how fast to drive the ship and in what direction to head). He seemed pretty proud that he was already doing that after only 2 days aboard the Farragut. He sounded really good, but a little tired. He said he will be trying for 10 bed time and waking up at 4:45 to work out and get to breakfast by 6:00 AM and then starting work at 7 AM. Dinner is at 6 PM and he said it's a bit hard to try to eat healthy, but he's trying.

So, I guess that's it other than I might fly to Curacao to see him at the end of August, so that would be really cool...we are still working out the details for that, so I'll let you know. It's 10:14 now, so I guess I better eat some dinner! Yikes!

2008-05-11T22:55:00.002-04:00

It's not been almost 4 months since I have written, so I'm not keeping up too well. Just an update: finished the Breast Cancer Marathon in 4:37 (way over my goal, but it was an extremely HOT day and I had a bunch of minor problems, but Dustin and I had a lot of fun and it was for a great cause).

We also finished the St. Louis Half Marathon with our group of 18 others, Team Will Power! It was so awesome and we are so proud of everyone, especially our parents for completing the event with smiles on their faces! It was fun to cross the finish line with them this time!

Dustin just graduated from JU and got commissioned last weekend, so that's a BIG deal and I am so very proud of him. So are the 22 people who came into town to help him celebrate. We had a great weekend, so thanks to everyone for all your support!

Now, attention shifts to a very important part of my life, Team in Training again. This time, I am coaching the triathlon group and preparing them for the Nations Tri on Sept. 14th. I am so excited that I got this oppurtunity and I hope that I can help others to achieve and exceed their goals for fundraising and training! I will be updating every once in awhile on how the training is going, but I will be busy, so I'm not making any promises!

2008-01-22T22:15:00.001-05:00

It's been over 3 months since I have written in this, but it's about time I start again. We are now training for 26.2 with Donna on February 17th. This will hopefully be my last marathon if I can run it in under 4 hours! Then, on April 6th, we are doing the St. Louis Half Marathon with a bunch of friends and family, including our Moms and my Dad, so we are extremely excited about them doing it and they are taking the training pretty seriously. April 27th is St. Anthony's Triathlon which is a .9 mile swim, 25 mile bike and 6.2 mile run, so we are also training for that one. We are currently doing a challenge with our Hammerhead Triathlon Club called the Brickfest. You have to pick seven consecutive days to do 7 bricks (meaning doing two disciplines, either swimming, biking, or running) at least 30 minutes each. I am on Day 6 and Dustin is on Day 5. We have until the end of February to complete it, but we want to get it "out of the way" before our heavy marathon training comes up. Like, say this weekend when we run 18 miles! I went to Yoga tonight for the first time in a long time and it felt good. Then, went for sushi with Megan and it was great to visit. Dustin is playing poker tonight with the guys.

We are doing well, trying to prepare for his possible departure in May....kinda scary. We are not taking our time together for granted and we've been doing a lot of fun things. Also, we are trying to stay much more informed this year about politics and so we are watching almost all of the debates (some of which are very frustrating). My goal is to not watch American Idol this year and to put that time into the being more informed on the issues and who is for what and who (and what) I should vote for!

I'm going to try to write in this more often, but I don't think it will be anything like it was during Ironman training. We often refer to "back when we were Ironman Training......" and most of the time, I'm glad I am NOT doing that right now, but I'm able to get a little bit more BALANCE in my life, which is good.

Our goal right now is to try to lift weights more and get a little more defined before our sailing trip in March! That is going to be so fun!

2007-09-24T16:11:00.000-04:00

It's almost been a month since we completed the Ironman, and sorry to say that I haven't kept this updated. We were getting back in the swing of things. We met with our Team in Training group the Wednesday after and shared our medals and pictures with them. We had a "Return to Lazy Football Sundays" party the Sunday afterward which was a lot of fun. We kind of had an "open house" from 1 PM when the games started until 11 PM when the games ended. I had barely had a drink of alcohol since the last weekend in July, and decided I needed to catch up in one day I guess. It was pretty cool though, because people dropped by all day and night to tell us congrats and hear our stories. Many of them wanted to toast with a glass of wine, so I couldn't turn them down, could I? It was a fun evening!

The day before that was a 5 mile beach run that we were talked into doing. I envisioned it as being a nice little jog on the beach with Dustin and about 2000 other people. Well, then Dustin got competitive with some of our other friends and they took off! I, of course, couldn't keep up with them, but then I couldn't go "slow" either! Now, I had to "race" a little. I stayed with a couple girls for almost the whole race. My legs felt extremely heavy and my foot hurt a little on the last mile (running on sand isn't the greatest idea 6 days post Ironman). Of course, Dustin and I were wearing our Ironman shirts and hats, and when I finished just behind the girl I was trying to keep up with, I walked over to her and thanked her for pushing me, that she was awesome. She looked at me and and then down at my shirt, and said, "NO, you are awesome!" I wasn't sure if she realized I did do the Ironman so recently, but either way, it was neat to get that respect. I ended up getting 12th in my age group out of 80 something, so that wasn't too bad. The best part of the whole thing was they had free Carrabba's food (and beer for Dustin) afterwards.

Not really much else to mention on the working out front, other than I lifted weights a few times, did Yoga a couple times, the elliptical once, and we ran 5 miles the other day, then a couple days later went to spin class. I was having a nice time relaxing and not feeling like I HAD to do a certain workout. But then came along my wonderful husband's grand idea! He somehow talked me into doing a half ironman distance triathlon October 20th in Clermont (hilly).

So, we did a 40 mile bike and 4 mile run yesterday morning (so much for our return to lazy football sundays!) We were home in time for football though. We really should be swimming or doing something tonight, but Dustin is studying and I am getting other things done.

I guess I decided that I could do the half ironman tri the other night at spin class when Bob's music was jamming away. I remembered how it used to feel when we were pretending we were going up awful hills. I would imagine how the Ironman bike course would feel and I always had positive images. Now, the other night was different; I now knew how it felt out there on the bike course and was able to envision myself back on those hills with everyone screaming my name. I actually had a huge smile on my face in the middle of spin class, pretending I was back on the Ironman course! Then, Bob said, jokingly in his microphone, "You are an Ironman!" and that was awesome! I was re-living the experience, an experience that I always envisioned as being awesome, but not knowing that it was going to go beyond that.

What was crazy about my visions was how true they ended up being. I wrote out my "perfect race" in my journal on the plane ride to Wisconsin. I wrote a lot! I wrote many details and it was probably over 300 lines long. Of those 300 lines, about 290 ended up being true! That is crazy! I would definitely recommend doing that!

We also watched the video (Travis' version) and it was awesome and we re-lived the day. Of course, it seemed so short on video-we wanted it to last longer! It was funny to see what our family went through in trying to find us after coming out of the swim. A couple times, they thought they saw me and shouted and shouted, but it wasn't me!

I know I keep saying this, but we cannot believe how much support we had through this whole process. We owe everyone BIG time! We truly could not have done this without all of our family and friends (and each other). I am not afraid to ask people for help when I think I can't do something on my own. That's why we needed all of you from day one. We honestly couldn't have made it through this "process" without you, so thanks! You know who you are, you training buddies, instructors, and friends, you text messagers, phone messagers, and email messagers for good lucks and congrats, party attendees, those who followed us on the website on race day, and of course, those who literally followed us around on race day in Wisconsin. We will never forget your support and we owe ya!

Now, on to what I am so excited about! I was hoping that our Ironman experience would inspire some of our family to start exercising more and it has! I sent out an email shortly after trying to convince many of our friends and family to do a half marathon in St. Louis in April. It worked! My Mom and Dad have already signed up! Becky, Dustin's Mom has already started her training and recruiting others, and Kendra, her Mom, Susan, and many others have shown interest! I am calling it a family fitness weekend and I am going to organize a pasta party and order shirts for us to do the race in and it's gonna be a blast! So, thank you Ironman for giving all of us the gift of inspiration and motivation!

2007-09-15T11:01:00.000-04:00

UPDATED ENTRY with Angie, Dustin, and Kendra's renditions (in that order) of Ironman Wisconsin. We did it!

ANGIE'S RENDITION

We have been going non stop since we got back from Wisconsin and I know a lot of you are awaiting to hear how the weekend went, so here goes. If you only want to know about the actual race, go down to RACE REPORT below. However, the recipe for the most positive, fun, energetic Ironman includes the days before also!

We left Jacksonville on Thursday around 5 PM and flew to Minneapolis. Dustin slept on the plane ride (he had an awful week of having to get up at 5 everyday for the Navy), and I wrote out in my journal what my perfect race day would be like. It just so happens that Dustin's brother, Travis, and his family live in Minneapolis so he made a trip over to the airport with Dustin's Mom and sister and her three kids to visit with us during our layover. They were already holding huge, bright green signs for us in the airport, so we knew we were in for a fun weekend! We ended up not getting out of Minneapolis on time and didn't get into Milwaukee until about 2 AM. Jeff picked us up with a sign, "Welcome IM athletes and fans" and we hurried home to get to sleep.

We were going to wake up early on Friday and get to Madison, but we figured we could use some extra sleep. Kendra made us some oatmeal and waffles (two days before is the huge carbo loading day!) so we didn't leave until after 11 AM for the hour drive to Madison. We got there and completed the registration process quickly (they told us the rush is always in the morning when they first open). We got our swim caps, chips for our ankles, race numbers, and transition bags and went through the expo. Dustin and I also checked in at the Janus Charity Challenge tent and got our jerseys. We ended up raising about $5700 and Janus should be adding to that $1500 more for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, so we were proud of that! We then went back to the hotel (15 minutes away) to check in and then back to Ironman Village for the Pasta Party. I had two plates of pasta, salad, and baked potatoes and a lot of gatorade and water. We happened to sit with a funny guy named Tomas who is a friend of one of our fellow Hammerheads here in Jacksonville-small world! We watched some motivational videos and listened to Mike Reilly's statistics. Then the race directors told us about the cut off times and things not to do and that really is the only time I was really nervous the whole weekend.....just the way they talked, I thought the motivational stuff should have come at the end instead of ending on that! Dustin and I were able to catch Frank Farrar outside of the bathroom to snap a picture with him. He is 78 years old and has done many Ironmans, always finishing just before midnight! We returned to the hotel and found my parents next door walking out of Denny's as we pulled up! They had just driven in from south of St. Louis. We went up to our rooms and started arranging our transition bags, special needs bags, and warm clothes (pre/post race clothes) bags. We had already organized our things at home in zip lock bags, so all we had to do was transfer them over, and that was really nice! My mom got the job of figuring out the inspirational cards and having the others write theirs and she did a great job! We ended up going to bed after midnight that night also, which was later than we planned, but we were preparing the whole time!

Saturday morning, Dustin and I had to pick up our bikes at TriBike Transport near Ironman Village. We brought them our pedals and they put them on for us and we rode them awhile so we could make sure all the gears were working. Mine needed to be tweaked a little bit, but then Frenchie (Kendra named my bike the last time we were in Wisconsin) seemed ready. We met my parents and Dave back at the parking lot and took our bikes to transition to drop them off. We got there just a little before 10 and there were about 10 people in line, so we got right in and racked our bikes. We then turned in our transition 1 and 2 bags inside in two different rooms organized by race numbers. Then we went to the Janus Inspiration station to make signs that would be out on the run course. Dave, my parents, and Dustin left in my parents car to go pick up Ken (Dustin's step Dad flew his own plane into Madison). Kendra and I went to the grocery store for last minute Luna Bars, Naked Juice-green machine-yummy, PB and J, bread, and water, beer, and snacks for the spectators.

We then headed to our lunch date at Panera Bread to meet up with the rest of Dustin's family and Nikki and her family. We gave out the cute yellow tshirts with "You WILL do this" on the front and on the back was "I watched Dustin, Angie, and Kendra do the Wisconsin Ironman and all I got was this lousy tshirt!" We also gave out the binders of info and maps that Kendra made everyone. We got to visit a little bit and then headed back to the hotel for a short nap. We met back in the board room of the hotel at 3:30 for a TEAM meeting with Kendra's family and friends added to the mix. We gave them all kinds of info and wishes and told them what we would be wearing and gave them back packs and swim caps I hoped they would wear for cheering for the swim! Then we went up to our room and microwaved the pasta Kendra had prepared for us back in Milwaukee. We took it down to poolside while the kids played in the pool. We ate goldfish crackers and sipped on more Gatorade and water. Kendra gave us both inner strength coins to have with us on the run and we gave her a "BELIEVE" card. The spectator crew went to TGI Friday's for dinner while we hung out in the hotel room and winded down around 9 PM. Dave and Jeff went out to the bar to watch the Badger football game, while Kendra read "The Little Engine that Could" to us by candlelight. Her sister had snuck the book under her pillow, how sweet! She ruffled the covers after she was done reading and that blew the candle out. That was a sign we needed to get to sleep. The 3:30 AM wake up call was going to come soon. I had an awful time getting to sleep, but once I got there, I slept well.

I got up after a snooze and hopped in the shower to warm up my muscles. I felt better after that shower than I have felt in a month. I had been telling myself I was going to feel healthy and 100% the morning of, but I didn't actually believe that my body would agree to that. We ate our PB and J's and I drank my Naked Juice and took my multivitamin and iron pill. We prepared our water bottles, gatorade, and perpetuem/sustained energy mix and got ice from the ice machine. We wanted to leave about 4:30 but didn't pull away from the hotel until about 5:00 with my Dad up already taking pictures of us! We parked close and walked to the special needs drop off boxes close to the capitol building. Then we walked (with Jeff, Dave, and Jen) to the body marking area and volunteers wrote our numbers on our arms and leg. It was a little chilly, so we left our warm clothes on for a little longer and headed inside to add our inspirational cards to our T2 bags. We then used the bathroom and sat in the lobby for a little bit and put suncreen on.

RACE REPORT: We met up with our Ironcrew (25 with tshirts and over 20 others who would be there at various parts of the day). They all looked so cute in their tshirts, especially the kids! They watched us as we pulled our wetsuits on and body glided our necks, with the lake in the background. We hugged them all goodbye and the three of us walked down the helix. We stopped towards the end to zip up our wetsuits for each other and did our Gus. Then, we turned in our warm clothes bags and started into the water with the mass of swimmers with blue caps (women) and white caps (men). We saw my Dad's huge umbrella with our names on it and poked our way through the crowd to get closer to them as they are snapping hundreds of pictures already! Glad we have digital cameras nowadays! We were all smiles from the start while those around us were nervous; it helped having two of my best friends getting ready to take on this challenge with me, stepping into the 75 degree water with me! I thought we were getting in the water a little late, but it turned out to be perfect, about 10 minutes before and we stayed close to the shore where we didn't have to tread water. We embraced as Kendra said a prayer for us and we got a little closer to the start line. The cannon fired and I remembered to start my watch. I kept Dustin in my sights for about 10 strokes and then he was off. I was pretty much swimming in my own water for awhile, with not too many bumps because I was off to the outside. I would highly recommend this; it was so much better than I thought it would be. I was gliding effortlessly through the water, sometimes drafting off of other swimmers right in front of me, like Susan Wallis said we should in the swim. The temperature was perfect and my arms never got cold in the sleeveless wetsuit. I did the first lap in 40 minutes; faster than I thought, so I was pumped! The second lap was a little slower, but not by much and I got out of the water at 1:29. I didn't have any neck chafing, and I really wasn't even tired as I sat down for the wetsuit strippers to yank my wetsuit off in one second. I then saw the umbrella and our crew cheering and jumping up and down. I ran bare-footed all the way up the helix and into transition (that was the most my feet hurt the whole day).

This transition area is inside the building and they call it the "get naked room." They have males and females separated and the volunteers wait on you hand and foot. They will completely redress you if you want. However, I left the same shorts and tri top on and just added my Hammerhead shirt and had the volunteer put my number strap on my back. I loaded up my pockets with goodies, strapped the bike shoes on and helmet and then ran out of the building outside to get my bike at the very end of the racks. My T1 time was almost 10 minutes. They handed Frenchie to me and I was right at the exit pointing down the helix, round and round with a slight breeze. I couldn't believe I was on the bike already and heading out of town. There were people everywhere along the bike course, strangers cheering us on. One bad thing was that there were a lot of little bumps (you shouldn't have loose water bottles that could fly off, which wasn't a problem for me, but it apparently was for others as we had to dodge many fallen water bottles etc along the way). The energy I had was amazing and found myself averaging 16 mph, trying to get to where our family was, on various hilly spots on the course. We were able to see the different groups at 9 different spots on the course, one group who went to miles 45 and 87, and another who trapsed around all day to go to 28, 48, 70, AND 90!!!! It felt like the Tour de France going up the hills with spectators lining the sides, enough room for only your bike to go through, some of our supporters running up the hills with us! They really made it easy for us! The corn fields, barns, cow maneur, and cheeseheads in Packers and Badgers gear were in abundance! The bike cruised along until the end when the winds picked up a bit. My neck started hurting with about 30 miles left, but not bad enough to apply biofreeze. After I hit mile 100, the last 12 were brutal with spectators becoming more and more rare. The bottoms of my feet hurt badly in the last 30 miles and every bump, I groaned! We had to bike back up the helix around and around (a little slower this time) and the volunteer took my bike. Frenchie had been good to me but I was glad to see her go! My bike time was 7 hours and 24 minutes.

I was so psyched to run a marathon; I was ready to get the damn bike shoes off and into my running shoes. I was ready to see our group cheering us on. I took almost 7 minutes in T2 getting my watch reset with my footpod, and reloading my pockets with food and the inspirational cards. I put the Team in Training hat on (gotta give props to where this all started) and put my wonderfully odd shark visor on top of that. I saw Jeff and Dave at the very beginning of the run, and then Erika was just a little bit up from them. Dustin apparently took a little longer in transition so I found out from them that I was only a few minutes behind him. I was feeling good, but not ready to go try to catch him. I already had to urinate (which is good) and I made a deal with myself that I was going to walk the aid stations. I saw him at a few turnaround spots and the crowd "awwwwed" as the two crazy shark hat people hugged and kissed and wished each other luck. I knew early that I wasn't going to catch him unless he had some major problems and I sure didn't want that to happen. I saw our cheering squad at miles 6, 11, 13, and 19 and fed off of their energy and enthusiasm. I ran my own race, did a GU about every hour, with gatorade and water and a few pretzels and drank a cup of chicken broth (past Ironmans finishers swear by it). The problem was that I think I drank somewhere between 10-15 cups of it within the first 15 miles, so I had to use the bathroom in a hurry at about mile 20. When I stepped out of the portapotty, my left foot twinged where the plantar fascitis had been so bad before this day. It hurt for about a mile and then I think my adrenaline kicked in, because it didn't hurt me at all after that. Throughout the whole course, fellow athletes, fans, volunteers screamed so loud for the shark hat and Dustin and I were able to pass messages through random people that we loved each other from one shark hat to the other! Some people thought we were silly for wearing them, but I bet I had a more substantial and lasting smile than they have ever had because of the recognition that my shark visor got me! Towards the end of the run, I was slowing a bit and was able to get out the inspirational cards that I really needed at that time. We had a bunch of people write on business size cards sayings, quotes, lyrics, even jokes to help us through. In the dark, I would have to wait for a light to read them and they each gave me a little more energy. Other athletes commented on what a good idea that was and I even read them to some who were running beside me. I ran over the mat at mile 21 and read the message Dustin had typed in for me at the Ford Motivational Mile. The Janus signs that we made also ligned the run course out there where spectators were not. As I began to try to calculate (something I hadn't done all day and really didn't want to do then), I realized I would have to pick up the pace a bit to finish in under 14 hours (14 hours? wow! My goal was to finish under 15). I chose to relax and have fun and to take it all in; I'm pretty sure I acknowledged every single person that cheered for me on that course all day with a smile or a wave and they appreciated that! My name was called out more than any other time in my life in that 140.6 miles and that felt really awesome to know I was doing something that was admired.

When I neared the capitol building, I could hear the finish line. I could imagine our cheering squad and Dustin there waiting for me. I ran down the long shoot giving five to all the spectators I could! I spotted our crew in their yellow shirts and got teary eyed. I removed my shark visor and swung it around in my hand as I crossed the finish line with my arms held high! 14 hours and 15 minutes! Dustin was right there waiting for me and got to put the medal around my neck and we hugged, kissed, and congratulated each other (all up on the big screen and on the live video feed on the internet). He had waited there for me all that time (he finished in 13 hours 35 minutes) and hadn't even seen our families yet just to wait for me; what a sweetie!

Oh my gosh! What a perfect day in every way and an inexplicable experience! We keep getting asked if we will do it again and for now we say no, because we don't want to mess with a good thing. I really don't think it could've been any more perfect! We found our families and hugs, kisses, and tears were everywhere! We took so many pictures with different people, it felt like our wedding again! We got some pizza and soda and came back to the stands to watch Kendra with the cow still perched atop her head come in at 15 hours and 18 minutes, far surpassing her expectations. We all agreed it was the best race ever and we thought we were the three most positive people out on the course with the help of our headwear and cheering squad.

We turned our bikes into TriBike Transport and then came back to the finish line to watch Kendra's Uncle Gary cross the finish line at about 11:45 PM (12 midnight is the cutoff). He had the flu and hadn't eaten for two days and had only gatorade the whole race! Wow!!!!! Then, the whole place was awaiting Frank Farrar's finish, hoping that he would make it before midnight (he missed it by 2 minutes last year). As he ran in, the crowd errupted and he finished with less than 4 minutes to spare! Crazy!

We weren't done yet, we had to celebrate a little bit back at the hotel in my parent's room where some of Kendra's family joined us until about 2:30 AM when we finally started to get tired! Boy did we sleep well after that accomplishment!

We woke up early on Monday though to spend time with our families before they left. We socialized in the lobby and shared pictures on various laptops. We reaffirmed by looking at pictures that we all three had the best day ever!

This Ironman weekend was the best weekend I have had since that one weekend back in Kansas in June of 2004 :) We probably took just as many pictures too! Ironman has taught me that the cliche of "you can do anything if you put your mind to it" is actually true! It has taught me that if you stay positive and keep a smile on your face, that everything else just comes along easily! It has taught me that if you surround yourself with people who believe in you, that's the way you can achieve your dreams and goals. I feel like I can do anything in the world right now and I will use what I have learned from Ironman in all apsects of my life. That is why Ironman is so powerful!
Angie

DUSTIN'S RENDITION

Dustin Crawford, You Are An IRONMAN!

That's what I heard on the evening of September 9th as I crossed the finish line of the Wisconsin Ironman..... but if you know me, you know I can't shorten a story to just that, so I'll take it back a little to recap on my experience.

In late July of 1977 I was born..... ok I won't take it back that far.

In January of this year we started our training. There, that's better. For the last 9 months we have given up our weekends (and many of our weekdays) in hopes of completing the Wisconsin Ironman. Our training went really well, the only setback that I thought I would have was my two big toenails that were black from non-training related incidents. I feared losing these toenails close to or during the race, which would be quite painful. Believe it or not, they are still black and still on my toes.

Now let's fast forward to the good stuff. We flew into Wisconsin on Thursday, September 6th (delayed till about 2:00 in the morning, ugh) and Friday morning we drove over to Madison to complete our race registration. The next 24 hours was pretty hectic with filling our transition and special needs bags, friends and family coming into town, and trying to stay off our feet the best we could. Saturday afternoon, we gave out shirts that we had made, to all our friends and family that were going to cheer us on the next day. We also had a meeting in the board room of the hotel, hashing out all the logistics of our support crew that was growing to nearly 50 strong.

On race morning we woke up at 3:30 so that we could try to be at the transition area at 5:00 when it opened, but we were a little late. The weather was absolutely perfect, 65 at the start, 74 was the high, and the only winds we saw were the last 10-15 miles of the bike. We did last minute bike preps, got body markings completed, and lined up for the bathrooms. Our friends and family showed up in time to watch us struggle into our wetsuits and head down the helix towards the water. They wished us good luck and off we went. Kendra, Angie, and I entered the water at about 6:50 and did some last minute pumping up of each other as we waited for the cannon (which I might add was a lot closer and louder than I anticipated).

At 7:00, the cannon let loose and we were "Doing the Ironman." The swim went great, I stayed to the outside most of the way, probably adding a little distance, but staying clear of the pummel machine located around the buoys. I rounded the far end of the loop, that we were going to swim around twice, (meaning I was a quarter of the way through) and glanced at my watch, hoping to see something under 27 minutes or so, it said 19! I thought, Holy crap I might do this under 1 hour and 20 minutes at this pace. I didn't feel tired so I kept with it and sure enough I exited the swim and crossed the timing mat at 1 hour 19 minutes and 57 seconds. I breezed through Transition 1 and was on the bike in about 10 minutes.

I coasted down the helix and started pedaling, I would continue pedaling for the next 7 to 8 hours. At mile 2 of the bike course the guy in front of me hit a bump and lost something out of his pocket. Apparently it was important because he made a hard left in from of me as he hit the breaks and we only missed by a couple of inches. He had no idea I was there until we almost collided; he apologized as I flew by. I guess bikes have blind spots too. Over the next 3 miles, I saw over 5 flat tires and I wondered if I too would be sitting on the side of the road for 20 minutes watching people cruise past as I tried to change a flat in record time. Luckily my tires held up the whole race. At mile 28, I saw some friends and family for the first time. I wasn't sure if they were going to be there because of traffic, road closures, and what not, but they made it and their cheering was a great push to get me up the hill. I saw more friends and family at mile 45, 48, 70, 87, and 90! Talk about having some people on the course to keep you going. The hills were relentless, but I kept pushing on. On some of the downhills I hit 40 plus mph, which was a little scary yet fun. As I headed back into town, on the last 10-15 miles of the bike, the winds picked up a little and I was starting to lose feeling in my big toe. The only feelings I did get were of extreme pain; I guess the shoes were a little tight. I just hoped it wouldn't effect me on the run. As I biked up the last 100 yards or so, which consisted of looping UP the helix, I knew I had plenty of time to spare for the run if it didn't go well, because I had finished the bike in just over 7 hours.

I handed off my bike to a race volunteer and headed into Transition 2. I took my time, nursed my big toe, drank water, changed clothes, refilled my pockets with goodies, headed to the Port-O-Potty, stretched, and headed out on the run course. I knew I had taken a long break, but I wasn't really worried about it. Turns out everyone else was though, including the people that were watching my times online, wondering what I could be doing for 23 minutes in T2.

I started out on the run and felt great. People were cheering me on (mostly due to my shark hat) and I couldn't believe how many spectators there were. I saw friends and family at mile 1, 6, and 6.5 and Angie at 7 miles. She said she was doing great, I noticed she was only 4 minutes behind me, and I told her she had to try and catch me. My first half of the marathon was 2 hours 12 minutes. I was keeping just over a 10 minutes pace and was ecstatic that my legs were working that well. I saw more of our support crew at miles 13 and 19, then I headed into the dark for the last 7 miles. I was keeping a good pace and everything was working correctly. I couldn't believe I was about to finish the Ironman.

I had heard from other IM finishers that there would be many times that I would have to tell myself to keep going, many ups and downs, and some severe lows. I did have some ups and downs, but not once did I consider quitting or did I have to tell myself to keep going. My body just did it. Apparently I had trained well enough, had great weather, and a plethora of friends and family to push me along. It was truly an awesome experience the whole day. 13 hours and 35 minutes after I heard the cannon blast me into this journey, I heard "Dustin Crawford, You Are An Ironman!" I had done it, and not only that, I had crushed my anticipated time of 15 hours.

I got my medal, had a photo op, and decided to wait in the finish area so that I could be the first to congratulate Angie. When I saw her coming down towards the finish line, I told the volunteers to stand back. After she crossed, I gave her a big hug and kiss and put her medal around her neck.

It was definitely a life changing experience. After finishing the Ironman, I feel as though nothing is too tough to handle. You just have to take it one step at a time, don't forget to surround yourself with friends and family, and you can complete anything.

Dustin Crawford
Ironman

KENDRA'S RENDITION

I did it!!!
All of you have been so sweet in asking how the Ironman went on Sunday.....so I thought I'd send out a mass email to let everyone know that I did it.....and aside from marrying Jeff 5 years ago, the Ironman was easily the best day of my life. The whole experience was nothing like I imagined the Ironman to be. I thought that Ironman would be about having countless dig-deep moments of pain and despair that I'd have to push through to keep going, and really, truly it was nothing like that for me on Sunday. I can say with complete honesty that I never had a negative thought or a down moment. Doing the race was just the most fun I ever had.....every moment from the mass of arms and legs in the swim to dancing down the finisher's shoot in 15:18 was pure fun and joy. Here's the recap......

The weather was perfect on Sunday.....73 with clear skies and some light wind that picked up during the last 10-12 miles of the bike. The sun came up over Lake Monona a brillant pink and I found myself vascilating between trying to get motivated by thinking "This is the Ironman!!" and trying to calm myself down by telling myself that this was just another long training day. Angie, Dustin, and I said a quick prayer of thanks for our families and friends, our strong bodies, and the beautiful weather and then we were off in the mass of flying arms and legs. Hitting all those people and getting hit myself was just gnarly fun and it gave me lots of energy to make the first 2 turns and be able to see the Monona Terrace and the thousands of fans. I tried to pick up my pace at the end of the second loop because I didn't want a slow swim to be the reason why I didn't make the bike cut-off. I finished the swim in

As most of you know, the bike portion of the race was my biggest challenge because I am a little slow-poke. However, on Sunday, I just told myself over and over that I would not let a negative thought enter my head, and I focused on all the wonderful things around me. Angie, Dustin, and I had nearly 50 friends and family out there cheering and their support was INCREDIBLE!! They were lining both sides of the road during our 3rd big hill climb and it was completely exhilirating to see all of their happy faces and hear their shouts of encouragement. I remember telling Jeff that I was having the time of my life...and I meant it. A few miles after we got up the hill, another rider asked me how many people I had supporting me today. When I told him that nearly 50 family and friends were there, he said, "You know, every one of those people believes that you can do this." Awesome!!

The second 56 mile loop was a little more challenging than the first because the wind picked up a little and the fans and riders were thinning out since I'm slow and was at the end of the pack. I just kept focusing on positive thoughts....noticing the gorgeous scenery, thanking the volunteers, singing Baby Got Back in my head ...anything just to keep my mind busy and my thoughts positive. I kept thinking about my year of bike training....3.5 hours on a trainer in my basement over the winter, crying 3 times the first time I rode the IM course in April, my 100-mile ride that I did alone in August...it was all worth it as I made my way back to Madison and realized that I could still make the cut-off unless catastrophe happened. I got a little teared up at mile 111 when I saw the Monona Terrace and realized that I could carry my bike from there if I had to! A volunteer took my bike when I got to the Terrace and I jumped and cried all the way to the transition area! I made the bike cut-off with 45 minutes to spare.......1:34.....right where I hoped to be.

Now the fun part....the marathon!! A volunteer helped me change into my running clothes and I told her, "I can't believe I to run the marathon!!" She told me that I was the first person who wasn't saying "I can't believe I have to run a marathon now." Running the marathon felt like a privilege that I earned by making the bike cut-off and I definitely made the most of it. I can honestly say that the Ironman marathon was the easiest marathon I have ever run. I knew I had 7 hours to complete it by midnight, so I was completely relaxed and never looking at my watch to see how fast I was going. I ran the whole thing except for the aid stations and the hills. I ran it in 5:21, only 15 minutes slower than my previous slowest marathon, and only 45 minutes slower than my best marathon!! Who knew I had it in me??You should all know, that being a true Wisconsin girl, I wore a cow hat for the entire marathon, and I swear to you, that cow gave me more energy than all the gatorade I drank for 15 hours. I must have had 10,000 people comment on the cow hat, smile, cheer for me, and make jokes. Even the other competitors were talking and it gave me so much positive energy to have people talking to me the whole way. I never got passed from mile 13 to the finish and I was one of the only ones running by that point. I just kept plugging along with a huge smile on my face....thinking that I could not believe how much fun I was having.

Of course, our Ironcrew was there for mile 6,13,19, and the finish....and they were getting more and more excited as we made our way to the finish line. Aahhh....the finish line! I remember thinking that I would walk the finisher's chute and look each one of my family and friends in the eyes to say THANK YOU for getting me to that point. However, when I rounded the last corner, all rational thought left my head. I started jumping, dancing, and yelling, "I did it! I did it!" The crowd was going crazy (more for the cow than for me ) and I just remember feeling pure, electric joy. Mike Reilly, the Ironman announcer, announced that I was an Ironman and then commented on my hat....he said, "Only in Wisconsin!"

Every person that does Ironman has a story to tell, a lesson learned, a goal achieved. As I am reflecting on my experience in the last few days I just keep feeling like I was introduced to a whole new person on Sunday. A person that was strong, positive, motivated, optimistic, inspired....someone who would not let negative thoughts even enter the realm of possibility. I am amazed and proud that that person was me. I never knew I was capable of being that person and I'm glad she's here to stay. The other gift that Ironman gave me was feeling so loved and supported by all of you during the last year of training and during these final days leading up to the race. Thank you for all the emails and phone calls in the last couple weeks….each one gave me courage and energy. Thank you to those of you who schlepped around Madison, Mount Horeb, and Verona just to see bike or run by for 5 seconds every 3 hours…..you are all the best! The absolute best IronCrew there ever was!! You have each had a part in getting me here and helping me achieve this goal and I can never thank you enough for all the advice, support, encouragement, and love. I thought about each and every one of you during my 15 hour and 18 minute journey and I love you all so much.

Kendra

2007-09-11T10:32:00.000-04:00

We are officially an IronCouple! It was an unbelievably perfect day and I promise I will elaborate more when we get home. We will be moving slowly in the airport today for sure, but I think we have a good excuse! Thank you to so many people who supported us in Wisconsin and across the miles! We love you!

2007-09-08T20:49:00.000-04:00

It is Ironman eve and everything is going great! We are sitting here in our hotel room of Fairfield Inn and they have wireless internet in the rooms so I'm typing on my laptop. Dustin's shaving, Dave is drinking a beer, Jeff and Jen are being assigned duties, Paula, Kendra's sister is getting last minute tips for cheering from Kendra. Now Jeff, Jen, and Dave's pizza just got here.

Kendra, Dustin and I already ate our microwaved pasta about 6 PM, while we hung out by the indoor pool with some of the kids from our group. By group, I mean the best freakin cheer squad ever!!!! We had our lunch at Panera bread earlier at 12 and met up with most of Dustin's family and my parents old friends' Greg and Mary who they hadn't seen in 10 years and their daughter, Nikki who lives here in Madison who we grew up together! She is going to be a part of our cheering squad tomorrow along with Bill, Gwen, Jeff, Dave, Jen, Walt, Judy, Becky, Ken, Don, Carolyn, Shelley, Braxton, Keaton, Lexton, Travis, Robin, Kiona, Barb, Inez, Paula, Melissa, Ken, Marianne, Ken, Amanda, David, Ellie, Charlie, Carolyn, Wally, Brad, Mona, Erika, Sean, Rose, Maggie, Jeff, Erica, Cher (and Gary who is doing the race also!!!). Plus, Kendra and Jeff's other friends who are maybes--Hobber, Rose, John, Rebecca, Jim, Becca. So, we have an over 40 person team out there for us. 25 of those will be wearing bright yellow shirts with "You WILL do this" with the Ironman symbol on it and the backs say "I watched Dustin, Angie, and Kendra do the Wisconsin Ironman and all I got was this lousy tshirt!" We had a meeting earlier in the board room to give logistical info and the folders that Kendra made with all kinds of maps. We also gave them swim caps to wear before and during the swim, which is going to be hilarious!

We are ready and we feel great. We've been getting all kinds of text messages and we are so thankful we have such great supporters. I know I keep saying that, but I really really mean it. We sure hope to make you all proud! The weather is looking like it will be pretty good. Now, we are going to watch some DVDS on the laptop and hopefully fall asleep by 9:00 PM. We just called for a wake up call at 3:30 AM!!!! Yikes!!!!! That's early! We also set three other back up alarms just in case! Boy, it's gonna be a long, hard day, but the finish line will make it all worth it! We can't wait! I wrote out the whole race and exactly the way I wanted it to go (I wrote it on the plane) and now I'm going to read it to get my positive energy flowing! Hopefully the next time I write, I will be an Ironwoman!

2007-09-08T08:26:00.000-04:00

We are here in Madison getting ready to get some breakfast on Saturday morning. It's been awesome weather so far and Ironman Village is really cool. We are registered and we are turning our transition bags in today. My parents are here already and then all of Dustin's family will get here today for lunch. We are planning on trying to stay off of our feet today as much as possible. Everything is going well; we're feeling relatively relaxed and ready to go. We went to the Pasta Party last night hosted by Ford and Mike Reilly was the announcer. We had some good pasta and got pumped up. Then the race directors got up and scared the living **** out of us about making the bike cut off and people having wrecks and all that crap.

We have had such unbelievable support throughout this whole process, but we've been getting so many emails recently, like about 50 that we don't have time to respond to every one, but we want to. We want to say thank you for thinking of us! We want to say that hopefully we won't let down all of the people who are tracking us tomorrow! Yikes Tomorrow! Well, if for some reason there is a lapse in our tracking and you are wondering what is going on, you can call our friend Dave to find out what is going on 904-382-8258. He made the trip from Jacksonville to cheer us on and will hopefully be fairly informed on race day if he doesn't stop by too many bars along the way.

Anyway, gotta go, but thanks again for everyone's support. I can't believe how many people have said they are actually reading my blog. I might be able to write again before tomorrow, but we'll see. We'll be pretty busy when our family gets here. We are ready to rock this Ironman!

2007-09-06T13:40:00.000-04:00

Vacation? What defines a vacation? I had a meeting this morning at work and I told them I was going on "vacation" and they asked how a triathlon could be considered that? Well, I don't have to work for 6 days straight and I am flying on a plane somewhere to see friends and family, and hope to have an awesome time, so I think it's a vacation! with a little working out thrown in the middle!

We are getting ready to head out to the airport now. We don't get into Milwaukee until after 11 PM, so that sucks. Using "the secret" from the movie, I am visualizing that both legs of our flight will go smoothly and our luggage will arrive quickly and we will still get to bed at a reasonable time. I am really trying to stay positive in every single thing that I say or do. I thought I was a positive person before, but try it, it really is hard to do! But, we are getting positive things in return. I will elaborate more on that later after the race! I keep saying, "I want to feel 100% and be healthy" (you can't even say I don't want my feet to hurt or neck to hurt because that is talking about what you don't want). I keep visualizing myself crossing that finish line after having fun the whole time!

I rode the stationary bike for 20 minutes earlier and did a good full body stretch. That felt really good! I've still been doing neck stretches, calf stretches and icing my foot, as well as taking my turmeric and rubbing my lavender oil on my feet.

We went to the Hammerhead meeting last night and got a lot of good lucks, so thanks everyone for that. I have to leave for the airport now! We are so ready!

2007-09-03T17:54:00.000-04:00

I haven't been writing too much in this because there isn't too much to write about. I've pretty much been taking it easy since the car accident. My neck was still pretty sore until a couple days ago. We did volunteer at the HOT triathlon and it went well; it felt good to do a little something, but my feet were definitely hurting by the end of the two days. My neck was still stiff and felt very weak at about my C7-T2 area of my spine. On Tuesday, we swam for about 30 minutes in our pool and my neck was still stiff. I got a back massage from Monica at Massage Envy on Wednesday night and that helped loosen me up a bit. Thursday was my first real workout and we did Bob's double spin class for 2 hours 20 minutes. Then, Friday morning, we rode 40 miles at the beach (how did we get our bikes there, you ask? Amber and Stuart let us borrow their four runner and we put our bike rack and bikes on it-they let us borrow it the day before to get our bikes tuned up too-thanks guys!). After our 40 mile ride, we ran a mile to make sure our nutrition still worked. Normally, my neck hurts after about 60 miles, but it hurt after about 20 miles on our ride. I toughed it out though and I can tough it out for 112 miles on Sept 9th! We had to get that last ride in before Dustin took the bikes down (used Amber and Stuart's car again) to drop them off to TriBike Transport where they will drive them all in one piece to Madison so we can pick them up on Saturday before the race. Sunday morning, we ran five miles with Amber, Stuart and Bailey at Ed Austin park and it was hot! My feet felt pretty good while running, but hurt like hell afterwards. I've still been doing ice massage, calf stretches and strengthening, as well as taking an herb pill called turmeric and rubbing lavender oil on them (my Mom sent me an article about natural remedies with anti-inflammatory effects), so we will see if that helps any. I've also been doing a lot of back and neck stretches and we've been eating very healthy and getting all of our equipment, etc. prepared for Thursday when we fly out. So, I still feel like we are busy and doing a lot!

We also watched a movie called "The Secret" that my friend, Susan said we should watch. It was a very unique documentary that I think will help us mentally (and not just for the Ironman), but it's all about thinking positively and visualizing what you want in life, so we have been doing a lot of mental preparation too and that is helping also. I recommend watching it (our blockbuster didn't have it here, but the library did and pay per view did too). I'm gonna go now and pack some more and fix some yummy healthy dinner.

2007-08-25T10:17:00.000-04:00

Let me take you back a few days to when I only had one issue-my feet! That was Wednesday, when we met Roberta, Caulie, and Lisa at the beach and ran 3 miles and then did an ocean swim. My feet felt pretty good while running, but hurt while walking on the beach. We did better in our wetsuits this time because we pulled them up further, so it restricted our shoulders less, so that was good. We practiced swimming over and hitting and kicking each other in the water like it will be for the Ironman start. Then, we went to Carraba's with the group and had some good food and good conversation.

Then Thursday rolled around and I had a good day at work, came home and got a few things done, then Dustin and I got in my Nissan Murano and left for the Yates YMCA on Riverside for spin and swim class. Dustin was making a left hand turn on a solid green light. One lane of oncoming traffic was backed up so the guy stopped and waved us on, but there was another car in the far lane coming opposite us that Dustin didn't see. We turned left and almost made it out of their way. They hit us at a pretty good speed in the passenger side at the back wheel and sent us into a 180 degree spin. It jolted us pretty good, but thankfully we were both wearing our seatbelts and all the passenger side (not front) airbags deployed. I couldn't believe that we had actually been in an accident. I was crying and hyperventilating a bit and my right shoulder stung. Dustin was just yelling, "are you ok, are you ok?" and I said I thought I was, but I was just freaking out. He ran over to the other car and they were okay too, thankfully. I'm not sure what hurt my neck, the jolt of the car or the airbags, but I do know that my hat I had on my head ended up in the back seat behind Dustin's seat. The crazy thing about this is that the first thing that we both thought of was, "Can we still do the Ironman?" Like Dustin said, it is our baby right now, and if a baby was in the car with us, that would have been our first thought. We've just trained so long and hard for this; it IS our life right now.

I was pretty freaked out looking at the airbags and feeling so lucky that no one was seriously hurt. The other car was probably totaled, and we don't know about my poor Murano yet. It is at a repair shop waiting on the insurance people right now. I knew that Dustin was so incredibly sorry, but I also new that if I was driving, this wouldn't have happened because I saw the car and screamed for him to stop. It's hard to be mad at Dustin, so I forgive him, but my poor car and my poor neck. It's weird, because at times I feel sorry for myself, but then think about how incredibly lucky we are! My mom said that she was so glad Dustin was with me, but I said, "I'm not; this wouldn't have happened if he wasn't with me!" :)

So, I am training for a triathlon, yet I can't swim because of my neck, I can't bike because we don't have a car able to put our bike rack on, plus I don't want to be flexing my neck/back right now, and I can't run because of my feet! So, I'm just falling apart! Yesterday, I didn't work and just simply layed around ALL day not moving my neck too much! That sucked big time! I figured out that I am addict; I have an addiction to exercise!

So, this morning I had to get a fix..........something that wasn't going to make my neck hurt worse, so I headed over to our community center and did the recumbant bike for 30 minutes and at least worked up a sweat and got my heart rate up a bit. I felt better afterwards, but still kind of depressed because Dustin was out biking on his real bike for 30 miles in the rain. I wanted to be with him; I didn't care that it was raining!

The good news is that my feet are feeling better; maybe because I have this new neck pain, but they are a little better. I have been religiously keeping up with the routine of strengthening, stretching and ice massage to heal them as best as possible.

We are heading down to Camp Blanding soon to volunteer at the HOT olympic distance triathlon. I was supposed to do the run leg of a relay, but not anymore with my trainwreck of injuries! Dustin is still doing the run leg for another relay team though, so that should be fun for him! I am going to go crazy, seeing all these people exercising, but I will put all my efforts into cheering as loudly as I can with the headache that I have.

I am going to have so much pent up energy by the time September 9th rolls around, that I might just break the world record time for Ironman! I guess whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, right?

2007-08-19T15:21:00.000-04:00

Ok, well now it's 21 days left. I'm making it a habit of writing in this once a week and then I forget all we did during the week. Sorry about that. Allow me to be a little negative for a minute and then I'll try to finish with positivity. All of you know I'm not a very negative person usually.............but..................

I have plantar fascitis for sure! The bottoms of both of my feet are killing me! There are plenty of people who suffer from this, but in all my marathons and other shorter tri's, I've never had any problems, so why now, why when there are only 21 days left until the race of a lifetime, does it have to show up now?????? It hurts like hell and it started after our 18 mile run (not during it) and has gotten worse each day. I haven't really run on it because I was scared to, but yesterday after our 90 mile bike, we ran 5 miles. It hurt pretty bad for the first 2 miles and got better. This morning, Dustin and I ran with Joy (who is doing her first Ironman next weekend) and we did just over 9 miles. I put biofreeze on the bottoms of my feet and it felt weird, it helped, but only for a little bit. I've been doing everything I can to treat it. I've been massaging it with a golf ball (ouch!), doing ice massage with a big piece of ice straight on the bottom of my foot (not fun), bought insoles for my shoes, and today I tried emersing both my feet in a bunch of ice water. I simply could not handle the pain, I had to put just part of one foot in at a time. If anyone would like to try that at home, go ahead. Maybe I'm a wimp, but I just could not do it. That also pissed me off because I do not like knowing I can't do something, whatever it may be. I can't really walk barefooted right now at all on my left foot. I have to shower sitting down (how pitiful-I feel like one of my elderly patients). Dustin went to the ocean swim with the Hammerheads (tri club, not sharks hopefully) and I am stuck sitting here at the computer being negative! I didn't think that I could stand to walk on the beach in flip flops right now. So, I'm getting this negativity out of me right now! I'm just sick of this Ironman crap at this moment (I'm sure I will come around-don't worry). It totally takes over your life (lives in our case.) I couldn't sleep last night because I was having nightmares of the Ironman and it's still three weeks away! I am anal and I want to start packing now! Every spare moment I get, I'm calling or emailing people about our training or about the weekend coming up in Wisconsin. We make up lists upon lists of what we need. We watch videos on youtube about the Ironman. We watch triathlon stuff on TV all the time. We talk about every single possible scenario of how Dustin and I will "run into" eachother on the race course. We eat healthy, we drink protein shakes which I totally despise! I also have to ice my knees after biking! I am so worried about getting a cold or getting sick in the next few weeks or on the plane to Wisconsin with all the germs! I guess what it boils down to is that I am just plain worried about the whole thing and I'm not usually a worrier!

Okay, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, that felt good. I got it out. Now, for the positives. I am breathing. I am able to train my body to make it to the Ironman! I have a husband who is as into this Ironman stuff as I am (if not more!) and we get to bounce ideas off of each other all the time! We have wonderful families and wonderful friends all over the US who are supporting us in this endeavor. We are able to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society while we are training and have raised about $5000!! We have about 25 people in our cheering squad in Wisconsin that are going to watch us attempt this crazy thing! We have wonderful triathlon friends here and in Wisconsin who give us awesome advice and give us the confidence that we can do this. We had a dinner last night with Joy who is doing the Inagural Louisville Ironman, Jennifer who did Wisconsin last year and her husband Joey, and Susan, who has done 26 Ironmans! They gave us some very good advice on the ins and outs of Ironman and got us pumped up. Okay, I'm back, I'm okay. I'm listening to Eminem's "Lose Yourself" and he says "If you had one shot, one oppurtunity, to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment, would you capture it?" Uhhhhhhhh, hell yeah! Positive Angie is back!

2007-08-12T20:32:00.000-04:00

We did 100 mile ride today in the hills of Clermont. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life! It was close to 100 degrees, very little shade, no wind and a bunch of freakin hills! There is so much I can say about this ride, and during it, I have all these thoughts of what I'm going to write in my blog. I'm thankful that I have this blog because it actually makes me think more when I am out there training. Of course, some of those thoughts escape me by the time I get to the computer though. Some of what I remember is as follows:

It was hot. It was humid. Dustin was there. There were a lot of other bikers out there. We ran into 2 fellow Hammerhead Tri Club members, Teresa and Minya. We found a bike path and explored. It was hot there too. There was some shade. We were around a lot of pretty lakes. There were a lot of hills. I had a 70 mile bonk, but recovered about mile 75. My heart rate strap wasn't reading my heart rate. I was breathing very heavy at the end. We injested our nutrition as planned. I was nauseated at times. Dustin felt good most of the time. It was hot. Dustin almost got hit by a reckless cop who wasn't paying attention. We filed a complaint over the phone. We stopped for water a lot, because we were sweating like fools. At mile 97, I had a breakdown. I almost cried. I was overwhelmed at the support we are going to have in Wisconsin. There were no spectators out there today. We were alone. It was hot. We averaged 15.1 mph ride time. With breaks, it took us 7 hours and 25 minutes. We went to Taco Bell afterwards. We drove home the 2 hours and then ordered pizza. I had two pepsi's today and I deserved both of them. I am going to bed now. Bring it on Ironman in 28 days.

2007-08-05T20:42:00.000-04:00

Well, another productive day! We started running this morning at 6:30 AM from our house. Our intention was to run at least 16 miles. Dave came over to test Dustin's mountain bike out for his first tri next weekend. He was nice enough to take a backpack with him full of water, gatorade, gu, endurolytes, and bodyglide (all of which we used).

We wanted to do a long run today after doing a long workout yesterday, because we have heard it is similar to how your legs will feel during the Ironman. I don't know that it was that bad, but they were definitely fatiqued and sore and got more fatigued and more sore as the miles went on. We went up Girvin to Wonderwood to the bridge hills to practice for the Wisconsin hills. We ended up doing 18 miles and didn't feel too bad at all! It was hot and very humid. We were pretty much soaked from 10 minutes into it all the way until we were done 3 hours later. Dave on the bike as our "personal servant" worked out pretty well, that's for sure. We took a dip in the pool when we returned after stretching. Then, we took the boat out for awhile with the new wakeboard tower on it. Dustin loved it and Dave, Dustin and Stuart tried out the tower and made it look easy. We came back home after washing the boat out and I continued my productivity with mail, emails, and business stuff. Then, Dave continued his "personal servant" duties and cooked us some great spicy, garlic basil chicken stir fry with rice. Another productive day, which always puts me in a good mood. I'm so glad that we got that 18 mile run out of the way. We will be trying to do a 20 mile run in the next 2 weeks sometime and a 100 mile ride in Clermont next weekend to get in the massive hills there! We are getting excited already!

2007-08-04T18:03:00.000-04:00

Wednesday night, we went to another Hammerhead Triathlon meeting and learned some more stuff about running and mingled with fellow triathletes. It's great to be around people who are so supportive of what you are doing. We didn't have time to fit in a workout that night, so we decided to double up on Thursday.

Thursday, after work, we headed to the Yates YMCA for two straight spin classes for 2.5 hours and then went running over the bridges (hills in Jacksonville) downtown with our new friend, Martin. We kept a really good pace for the bridges (8:15 pace) for almost 5 miles. It was drizzling a bit, which actually really felt good. Our legs were pretty dead afterwards, but we felt good for working out for over 3 hours on a weeknight. We didn't get to eat dinner that night until after 10:30, but we fixed a great salmon and rice meal that was worth the wait!

Friday, as usual, was our day off, so after work, we picked up our boat with Dustin's new wakeboard tower on it, which he is really excited about. (We might take it out on Sunday).

So, now, as for TODAY! Wow, we entered the "ocean marathon" that our tri club puts on. It started at 8 AM and we basically swam in a straight line (well, supposed to be) from south to north 2.5 miles with a little bit of current helping us out. There were only about 50 or so people who swam that distance, and it spread out pretty fast. I pretty much felt like I was swimming alone in the ocean for 1 hour and 42 minutes! I do not like swimming in the ocean alone; I don't like swimming in the ocean with only Dustin; I have always needed a group to feel safe, and there was definitely NOT a group anywhere! I was swallowing all kinds of salt water, weaving left and right, and trying to block out the fact that I was swimming in a huge body of water with all kinds of creatures (I think I touched a jelly fish!). I truly have a fear of doing what I did this morning, and I feel so good that my mind was strong enough to overcome it. That gave me an enormous amount of confidence, even though the pains in my back, neck, and shoulders were not helping my confidence! Dustin did very well too and finished in 1 hour and 38 minutes. Oh yeah, and I won my age group for females 25-29. Now, I'm not going to tell you that I was the only person in my age group though! I guess it isn't the popular thing to do for 25 year old women on a Saturday morning. I got a cool goggle case for my prize, so I'm happy! Some thoughts going through my mind on the swim were, "why the heck am I doing this? And, I'm using our friend, Kellie's line of "because I can!" I had to keep telling myself that and keeping positive thoughts going through my mind to get the sharks and jellyfish thoughts out of my head!

Oh yeah, then afterwards, we biked 60 miles to St. Augustine and back and did the Vilano bridge twice and some intervals too! Our new friend, Martin went with us, even though he is a faster biker than we are. He helped push us though. It was hard after the swim because my shoulders and neck hurt so bad!!! We ran a mile afterwards just to make sure our stomachs were okay and they were. Then, we hopped in the ocean to cool our muscles a bit. Now, we are home on the couch watching Scrubs. Tomorrow, we are gonna try to run 16 miles. We will see! Here we come Ironman; we are peaking with our workouts and hopefully we will feel completely ready soon!

A thought as you read this: if you have a fear of something, conquer that fear somehow. I did today and that is a most wonderful feeling to have that your mind is so powerful!

2007-08-02T15:52:00.000-04:00

We are back from Wisconsin and I have some catching up to do on this blog. However, I'm not going to go back and tell you everything. I will tell you that we feel a lot more ready for the Ironman now after our extended weekend trip. Besides getting to play in the very fun golf tournament that Jeff and Kendra throw with all of their friends, we got in some good training.

We got there on Thursday afternoon and our bikes had been shipped already. We got right to putting them together in case we had problems. All was going well at first (until I got frustrated that I'm just not meant to be a mechanic). So, basically Dustin did everything while I cleaned the bikes! Jen, Kendra, Jeff, Dustin and I ate a good spaghetti dinner and Jeff and his neighbor tried to diagnose my bike. After no success trying to figure out the gears, we decided to head to the bike shop. Problem was they closed at 8, not 9 and didn't open until 10 the next morning. So, we hung our heads as we entered at 7:55 while batting our eyelids to see if they could help me with my gears and Dustin with his brakes. They quickly took care of the problems and didn't even charge us! I bought some leg warmers from them (cause ya never know how cold Wisconsin may be in September and I want to be prepared!). We owe them big time!

On Saturday morning, we packed up the car with all our stuff and headed to Madison. We didn't get on the bikes until after 10, but it's not as big of a deal there, because it's not as hot or humid! It was awesome to see the course and Kendra showed us where to turn, plus we had directions taped to our handlebars. There are definitely a lot of hills and one big, long one (where they decided to put pea gravel all up and down it so we spun out a couple times). We did the two loops that we will be doing on September 9th and it was 85 miles. We took some breaks to refuel at gas stations and back at the car once. When we were riding, we averaged 14.5 mph, but that doesn't include our stops! So, we will need to step it up the day of the race! Making the bike cut off is going to be tough for all three of us, so in the next month, we are going to work on getting faster and stronger! After the ride, we ran 3 miles on the trails just to make sure our legs and stomachs were working okay. We all digested pretty well and did great overall.

We drove back to Madison and ate some good pizza and then went to our hotel (University Inn)on State Street. We met some of the rest of the golf crew at the Terrace and drank a few beers and hung out for awhile. I'm suprised we weren't more tired than we were!

Saturday morning, Kendra, Dustin and I woke up and headed down to Lake Minona (where we will be swimming our 2.4 miles on Sept. 9th). We wanted to try out our wetsuits in water temperatures where we wouldn't suffocate ourselves. We both had wetsuits with arms and figured out that we wanted them without arms for better movement, because the water really wasn't too cold at all and it can't get much colder by September, right? We didn't get to swim too much, because we just went off this random boat launch area down from where we will actually swim. Apparently, they don't clear that area out too much, because there was all kinds of grass/seaweed hitting my arms and feet the whole time! Now, if you know me, you know that I don't like things touching me in the water. I like to pretend that I'm the only thing in the water, even though I know that's not true. If I was hitting grass, living things like that grass and it was frankly freaking me out. I actually started to not be able to catch my breath, but Dustin and Kendra were able to calm me down. Thank God I had a wetsuit on though! We were able to test our wetsuits and the water though, so it was still productive! Plus, we got to see the terrace where the transition area will be and the helix things we have to run up and bike down and bike up!

Then, we went to the infamous Farmers Market at the Capital and it was awesome just like last year. We got cheese curds and beef jerkey and Kendra showed us where the finish line will be and we got really pumped! We couldn't stay long though because we had a golf outing to get to! Now, that's a "sport" that I am not good at-golf! I don't have the patience, but I got a little better after the 10th hole. I golfed with Jeff, Dustin, and Kendra, all good golfers, so I felt like I should have done better! Oh well, we had an awesome time so that's all that matters!

And of course, we attended the picnic afterwards and then went out after the golf outing and Amber (our neighbor across the street) and her friends suprised Dustin at the bar (one last bday suprise). So, fun was had by all!

Sunday, it was a bit harder to wake up and we barely made it out of the room by checkout at 12. We went to the Nitty Gritty and got some more cheese curds (got them on the golf course twice too). Then, we drove part of the run course and familiarized ourselves a bit with that and there are a good few hills in that too! I'm glad we saw it though so we will be prepared. There's only so much you can get from the elevation charts and maps on the website.

When we got back to Jeff and Kendra's, we had to break down our bikes and pack them back in the boxes because we were checking them as luggage on the plane. I am SOOOOO glad that we are doing Tri Bike Transport for the Ironman. That means that they will pick our bikes up in one piece at a local bike shop the week before and then, put them on a truck in one piece and drive them to Madison and we pick them up in Ironman Village on Friday or Saturday. Then, after the race, we drop them off in one piece and they arrive back in Jacksonville the next week. No breaking down, no putting back together, no nothing but convenience. Of course, we had to pay $225 for each bike though. Speaking of paying, we were supposed to be charged $65 for each bike on the plane ride, but we didn't get charged (I think because Dustin is in the military).

Ok, gotta go to spin class, but wanted to also say that we got to read a long blog about the course and the event last year that was scary, yet inspiring, so that also helped with our preparation. And, on Monday before we flew out, we ran about 5 miles with Jen and Kendra in the trails around Wauwautosa. Then, Tuesday, I swam 1.75 miles and Dustin swam 2 miles in 1 hour 8 minutes in the pool (the most we have swam so far).

Also, wanted to mention that my brother's wife, Melina's father, Dale has been suffering with a brain tumor for awhile now. He is in his late sixties and they don't expect him to make it much longer at all, so please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. I know we will be thinking about him and the rest of the family, hoping they will be okay.

2007-07-23T22:58:00.000-04:00

It's been way too long since I have written in this, but we have been so busy! All I have time to update on is the fact that Maw Maw went to the doctor today to find out the results of her scan and the tumors are all gone! She is cancer free, so that is exciting news. I can't believe it; I can't believe how effective the chemo was, despite the fact it didn't bother her 80 year old body too much. She does only weigh 96 pounds and her hair is thin, but she never got really sick from it or anything. They did find a different little nodule in her lung that they will be trying to biopsy if they can, so I will keep you updated on that. I just can't believe how much the research has helped treat people like Maw Maw effectively. In our fundraising, we always run across people who are skeptical and say that research isn't doing any good. Well, now I will really have a strong comeback story to tell them about Maw Maw.

We just had Dustin's surpise party this weekend for his 30th and tomorrow is his real birthday. Then, Thursday, we leave for Wisconsin for the golf outing on Saturday. We had our bikes broken down and shipped there, because we are doing 90 miles of the 112 mile bike course on Friday with Kendra while we are there. We are also hoping to swim with our wetsuits in the lake sometime and run part of the course. It's going to be a packed weekend, especially since Dustin will also want to enjoy plenty of beer and brats (for me CHEESE CURDS!)

2007-07-04T12:04:00.000-04:00

Happy Independence Day! We woke up today at 6 AM and ran 15 miles on Girvin and the hills of Wonderwood Expressway bridges. We had to get in the car and go put out 3 bottles of gatorade and water and some gus before hand, so we didn't get started until about 7:30 from our house. We both took Gus before hand also. It kind of sounds cocky, but I'll say it anyway, running 15 miles was not even hard today! That's pretty awesome! I told Dustin at the beginning when he started talking about time goals, that we needed to try to keep our heart rates under 150 and just have a nice steady run where we feel like we could go much further at the end. That's exactly what we did. With stops included, we ran it in 2:27 (9:48 pace), which is a lot slower than we are used to. But guess what? We aren't going to be sprinting the Ironman, ya know!??? It sprinkled on us in the beginning and then poured down rain with about 2 miles left. It was kind of refreshing at first, but I think it added a few pounds to our clothes and helped to solidify a few blisters on my toes!

I have to back up now to last Sunday, because I forgot to mention that I had a girls party and raised another $177 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

As I mentioned already, we were slacking because of my shoulder injury and now Dustin is having pain in his right shoulder too......pretty weird. Last Thursday, we did go to spin (Bob wasn't there, so we had Kellie) and then Dustin went to swim practice. I just did a little bit on my own (about 500 meters) before my shoulder starting flaring up, so I decided I should rest it more. Friday, we were off and Saturday was another big day!

We woke up at 4:30 AM on Saturday to make sure we got our PB and J sandwiches early enough. I also had a green machine Naked Juice (which I think gives me a lot of energy). We started our ride from Food Lion parking lot on McCormick and Monument at about 5:45 AM to make it to the ferry by the first boarding time of 6:20 AM. We rode the ferry across (and then stopped for a bathroom break, 1 of 3 for me for the whole ride). It was a perfect morning, not too hot, just a little breeze and we were riding right next the ocean! I kept thinking how lucky I was that last week, we biked 60 miles south right along the ocean and that this week we were biking 80 miles north right by the ocean! It truly was beautiful and I wasn't even thinking about biking for the first part because of the views and scenery. We took a right on Hecksher and went into Fernadina Beach and made a few loops up there into areas we had never been. It was kind of cool to do a little exploring! (It took me back to when I was a kid on my bike in the middle of nowhere in Missouri riding on gravel roads exploring, or hiking into the woods and exploring and sometimes getting lost). We didn't get lost on our bike ride though, thank goodness! We did stop at a gas station to get refills on gatorade and water though. And, I think that my refitting on my bike helped (I got a shorter stem) because I didn't have near as much tightness in my shoulders. Usually I have to use biofreeze after about 30 miles, but I didn't use it at all this time!

Now, I have previously mentioned about drafting, where in the triathlons, you can't be closer than 3 bike lengths behind the person in front of you because they break the wind for you, making it a lot easier for the person in back. Well, at about mile 60, I started to not feel well. My head was hurting, my outsides of the bottoms of my feet were hurting, and I was just plain tired. I wasn't really into the beautiful scenery at this time; I was about making it home! Dustin had the timing all figured out as to when we had to be back to catch the ferry (from 20 miles away, he knew it was only going to be a matter of a minute or two, so we had to keep our pace up). He told me to get in behind him and draft off of him to so we could make it in time. However, there is no ferry in the Ironman, there is no drafting in the Ironman, but I guarantee there will be times where I don't feel like keeping on going in the Ironman. So, I told him that I was not concerned with making the ferry; I wanted to get through this "hard time" on my own and know that I can make it through when I am alone out in the hills in Wisconsin. So, that's what we did, and about that time, my Gu kicked in that I had taken about 15 minutes before and I was able to push it again. Guess what? We made the ferry anyway (by under a minute)and I made it through my "hard time." I felt good about that! We biked back towards our car and had to go about 2 miles past our car to end up at 80 miles! Bikes up on the rack, grab some gatorade and water, and we were off running (did I mention that by this time, it was about 11:30 AM and plenty hot and humid-89 degrees). We were going to run about at least 1 mile to see how we felt after our nutrition on the bike, but we were both feeling pretty good (imagine that, both of us feeling good at the same time, well, that's new!). We ran around Ed Austin park (where I did a lot of my running earlier in the season), did the 2.5 mile loop 3 times, each time running back to the car for gatorade and water and gu and endurolytes, then added a little bit on the end to make 8 miles! That was our longest workout so far-from 5:45 AM to 12:45 PM.

We came home, took in some protein, took showers, and a 30 minute nap and were ready to go for our 8th Poker Party for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. We ended up raising $1363 more dollars, which puts us at about $4500 for the Janus Charity Challenge for the Ironman Race. We are proud of that, but we are not done. We still need everyone to donate who hasn't already! Thanks again to everyone for all their support.

2007-06-25T20:00:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday, we went to spin class and then I went to swim class while Dustin was doing his research job. Christine wasn't there, so I just did my own thing for an hour in the pool and I really did some sprints and pushed myself really hard. I swam a 50 in 45 seconds, so that's a lot better than I used to be (over a minute when I would try hard). Not that I really need to work on sprints, since we'll be swimming 2.4 miles for the race!

Friday, we were off and went to the Team in Training Pasta Party at Anheiser Busch Brewery which was really cool. All of our teammates, including those from Gainesville and Tallahassee were there and we met them, enjoyed some pasta and got inspired by a speaker who was in remission from Hodgkin's Lymphoma. We were ready to do the sprint and see many of our teammates who had never done a triathlon before, and some who had never swam in the ocean before!

On Saturday, we got to the race site about 6:15 AM for the 7:30 race. We were wearing our wristbands that said "Maw Maw" and kept her in our thoughts all day. There were many team in training tri suited athletes and their spectators, so the energy was high! It was fun standing at the starting line waiting to sprint into the ocean, because I was with some of the new girls and then some who got hooked on triathlons like we did last year. It was this exact race a year ago when we were the new ones just getting into the sport. It was perfect weather at the start with hardly any waves!

To make a long story short, Dustin and I both felt good and had our PRs (personal records) for this distance. Dustin did the 1/4 mile swim, 10 mile bike, and 3 mile run in 1:01:22 and I did it in 1:05:22. I have to say the most fun part of the day was cheering on all the fellow teammates, especially the ones who were completing a triathlon for the first time. I think I burned more calories (and definitely felt more light headed) from cheering rather than competing. I just love the team concept and for it to be for such a great cause is just awesome! Tina and Annee gave us our Team in Training medals and we packed our bikes and everything up. We almost forgot to stop by the awards to see if we won anything! I did end up getting third in my age group and many other TNTers got medals too, so it was a successful day! Then, we headed to the Victory Party at one of the Pavillions at the park and mingled with our teammates. We met some new friends, Nate and Naf who are from Gainesville and ended up hanging out on the beach with them afterwards, so that was fun! Everyone is always so hyped after doing a race; I know I am anyway, I just can't stop talking and bouncing off the walls!

That night, we went to a TNT fundraiser for the new tri team at Emily's. It was a Toga Party! It was fun, but we were tired and had to get up at 5 the next morning to train, so we weren't able to stay too long.

Sunday, we did wake up at 5 AM and then headed to the beach for our 60 mile ride down to St. Augustine and back. We both felt good on the ride and averaged 17.3 mph for the whole thing. When we got back to the car, it was a little after 11 AM, so it was HOT! We immediately ran 6 miles around a 9 minute mile pace. Dustin experimented a different way with his nutrition this time and it seemed to work. He had tons of energy, where as I was running low. I was starting to get stomach cramps toward the end, but Dustin never got them. I am so happy that he figured it out (at least for now). I did the same mix of all of my nutrition as I did in the half ironman. I'm hoping that will continue to work, but we will see when we get into the "long" distances.

Now, here comes the bad part; I have a shoulder injury. I'm not sure what it is but it started last Thursday after my swim and it is still bothering me. It didn't bother me in the sprint, but it bothered me Sunday and on Monday, I couldn't swim, bike, or run it hurt so bad. Today is better, but all I did was go to get my bike refitted because I am too extended in my aerobars. So, we will see if that helps it a bit. We are hoping to run tomorrow, but when I swing my arms, it hurts my shoulder. It's weird, because I have never had anything wrong with my arms before; it's always been lower extremity injuries; maybe my upper body is trying to catch up! It really sucks to be injured though; it's depressing, but it usually revives me in the end, because I realize how thankful I should be when I am not injured!

2007-06-18T16:37:00.000-04:00

Well, that bike ride in Clermont was the hardest thing I've ever done. It was actually harder than the half ironman, partially because of the heat. We didn't get started until after 9 AM and it was already hot. It got up to 96 degrees and there were NO clouds in the sky and no shade! We ended up doing 67 miles on and around a 12 mile hilly loop. We did the infamous "Sugarloaf" hill twice, which was the hardest, but also many other significant hills in between. We were going 4 mph on the way up and 42 mph on the way down the big hill. We were low on energy after 40 miles, but still managed to do 27 more, so that's pretty darn good and I am proud of us! Towards the end, after going up and down so many hills, we decided we needed to finish on some flats, but what is funny is that we couldn't find any! We drove all this way to find hills and then we couldn't find any flats! It was a bit ironic.

Dustin apparently still hasn't figured out his nutrition because he puked afterwards! I was a little worried about him towards the end of the bike because he wasn't feeling well, he could have been dehydrated, overheated, etc. We saw a lot of cyclists out there which was cool and we found the house at the top of sugarloaf that has coolers of ice cold water at the end of his driveway for everyone (that was helpful). Please look at the pictures on the other link of the hills so you can get an idea of what we were up against (I hope the pictures do it justice).

We also saw a lot of motorcycles. Three of them came around a curve and one of them didn't quite make the turn, went off the road, him and his bike started cartwheeling for about 150 feet, he flew about 10 feet up in the air, landed in a tree/bush and just missed a barbed wire fence. This all happened about 50 yards in front of us, so we raced up there to see if he was ok. Luckily he was conscious and not severely injured. It looked as though he had a fractured wrist and who knows if he had any internal injuries. Within a minute or so a guy in a car stopped and we had him call 911. We stuck around until the ambulance got there, then decided there was nothing else we could do so we continued on with our ride, after telling the police what happened. Hope he's ok, but boy, was that traumatic to see happen right in front of you. Then, we had to keep doing that loop over and over again and the scene kept running through my head. I even stopped to tighten my helmet after seeing that!

Despite it being very hard, we can't wait to go back. We will have to make multiple trips down there to prep for Wisconsin, hopefully every 3-4 weeks, we will endure the five hours in the car to get to hills!

Oh yeah, and today at lunchtime, Dustin and I met at the Riverside Y and swam 2500 meters straight in the pool and now we are heading out to go to a Suns Game (Triple A baseball); I got two free tickets for being a physical therapist and a free dinner too (they are trying to recruit, but I don't think I need a fifth job!)

2007-06-17T20:07:00.001-04:00

Once again, life has caught up with me and the blog has gotten the back burner. First of all, my grandma is done with all her chemo and now she has to wait over a month for another scan to see if the tumors are gone, so it’s just a waiting game now. She is in good spirits and she did VERY well with chemo, especially for being 80 years old. I am proud of her, and I know that sounds weird coming from a grandaughter to a grandmother, but I am proud of her strength and positive attitude and I could only hope that I would have the same if I ever was diagnosed of cancer. You know that is one of the most widely feared things in the US—getting cancer.
So, we haven’t been doing our training calendar 100%. As I said before, life intervened and we had other things to do with the business and with fundraising. We got our Medicare number finally after 216 days of waiting, so now we will actually be able to bill for our services that we have rendered since October. We were also "spring cleaning" getting ready for a garage sale we had Saturday. We raised $460 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society so that was awesome. Amber and Stuart donated some items and helped keep us company, so that was really nice!
As for our training, last week after we ran our 10 awful miles on Wednesday. On Thursday, we went to spin and swim and swam 2250 meters. Friday, we were off, and Saturday we had our first sprint tri of the season, the BFAST in Ponte Vedra. We did really well and both set our new P Rs (personal record). Dustin did the .25 mile swim, 10.5 mile bike and 3.1 mile run in 1 hour and 3 minutes and won the military division. I did the sprint distance in 1 hour and 7 minutes and came in 3rd in my age group, 25-29. I missed 2nd place by 20 seconds, so I will be trying even harder next time! We both got ceramic mugs that said 1st and 3rd on them. Later that evening, Dustin drank beer out of his while I drank milk (cause I’m a good girl). When we returned home after the sprint, we were extremely tired from getting up at 4:45 for the race, we had also downed Sticky Fingers BBQ (Dustin had four pulled pork sandwiches and 4 wings), plus it was over 90 degrees out and humid, but we still (thanks to my coaxing) ran 5 more miles in the heat for a total of 8.1 miles that day. See, we love the sprints, but we can’t let them take away from our Ironman training. 1 hour of training is not going to help us for a possible 17 hour race.
Sunday, we talked Amber and Stuart into coming to the beach with us to meet the Hammerheads for an ocean swim around the buoys. We swam about 600 yards, and Amber and Stuart practiced going to the buoys and they did very well (we are trying to prep them to do their first sprint this summer). Dustin and I got out of the water and took a 40 mile bike ride on A1A (our schedule said 60, but neither of us felt well and I was proud that we stuck the 40 out!). When we came back, we went to the jazz concert at the seawalk pavillion and then went to Carabba’s for dinner.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, sad to say were wasted days because of rain, the threat of storms (although we should have still ran and biked), and our need to get a bunch of other junk done! Thursday, we decided to play catch up (although that is not recommended). We woke up early about 6 AM and ran 12 miles. It was beautiful weather, not too hot yet and it even sprinkled a refreshing rain on us a couple times. We did three four mile out and backs and we both felt pretty good. We came back to our house twice for gu, water, and gatorade. It does take discipline to leave the house again to go on another run when all you want to do is crawl back in bed, but we did it!
After working a full day, we also went to spin and swim (so basically we did a backwards triathlon). We swam about 2750 in the pool, which is over a mile and a half, but we both did well. Dustin says he’s proud of how I have improved my swimming (I’m not too far behind him in the pool), so that makes me feel really good!
Friday, we were off and needed it for our sore muscles from the day before. After work, we went to Micheal’s (one of the team leaders for TNT) for a BBQ "send off" party for our TNT event (which is the sprint next Saturday at Little Talbot Island). We had a good time with our team members and got our TNT tri suits which are just too cute. Saturday morning, we did our garage sale and baked in the sun, and then went to our neighbors’, Ben and Gina’s for their daughter, Isabelle’s 5th birthday Luau party and ate all kinds of lumpia and pancet (Phillipino food). That probably wasn’t a great idea because we had a 5K race at 8 PM called Run for the Pies! We convinced Amber and Stuart to do it with us and we all did well. Guys have to run it in under 20 minutes to get a pie and girls have to run under 24 minutes. Dustin missed the cut off by 30 seconds because of side cramps, so he was disappointed even though that is a very fast 5K time and he should be proud (and a PR no less!). I made the cut off by 30 seconds, but they ran out of pies just before me, so that really sucked! The whole reason I wanted to do the race and I didn’t even get the freakin pie! I don’t really know why I wanted a pie so bad, I don’t even really like pie, but I guess it was just the concept. I also had a PR for adulthood (cause I’m not sure what I used to run cross country races in). We got free beer at the end (I gave mine to Dustin and Stuart), and free pizza. We met other TNTers there and everyone did really well. It’s so nice to have active friends and be able to visit with them at races; it’s like a whole different "happy hour." We also can’t forget to tell you that Amber ended up beating Stuart in the race (which I was betting on). I think Amber got the bug to compete, so that’s awesome (I can tell there is a really competitive girl lurking inside her waiting to get out and beat us all). We didn’t get home until almost 11 PM and didn’t get to bed until almost 12, but we still managed to get up just after 5 AM this morning.
Why, you ask? Because we are driving over 2 hours to get to some hills to practice biking on something that might be comparable to Wisconsin hills. We are in the car with 116 miles left to go at 7:10 AM and we are planning on biking 70 miles today! Hopefully it will all go well. We have never biked this infamous 10 mile loop before and we are going by ourselves, but some of our Hammerhead team emailed us maps and links, so I think we have it all figured out. Hopefully we won’t get lost and we are hoping the hills won’t disappoint us (meaning, we actually hope that they are really big hills!)

2007-06-06T23:44:00.000-04:00

The reason why I haven't been blogging is because we took a little dip in our training to recover from our race; it turned out to be longer than anticipated, but that's okay. I don't think we lost too much.

Besides, we had our awesome friends in town (first Jeff and Kendra and then Tony and Susan a few days later). We boated a lot (3 days in a row with Tony and Susan), ate out a LOT, even at Ruth's Chris for Susan's birthday, and spent a lot of time on the beach and had a few cocktails, so we took a needed break from training.

Last Tuesday, I did a 3.5 mile run and then Dustin and I did Yoga. Dustin had a sore throat and wasn't feeling like running.

We did do an ocean "swim" last Wed with TNT and Roberta helped us with entries and exits from the water. Then, we forgot our running shoes, so couldn't run with the group, but came home, and despite us wanting to lie on the couch and watch TV, we got our running shoes on and did 5 miles down Kernan.

On Thursday, we went to spin and swim and we were both very tired. Dustin had lifted arms two days before and I did leg presses right before spin. Not a good idea! We didn't get to sleep that night until after 1 AM and our plane left at 7 for Philly the next morning.

Tom took us on a whirlwind tour of Philly and we got some Philly Cheesesteaks. Then, my parents flew in and we drove to Tom's River, NJ where my Dad's Aunt Annie and Uncle Joe live. They were hilarious! We also went to my Dad's cousin's place, Kevin Kelly and Dustin enjoyed his kegorater. We drove around Union the next day where my Dad is from and met a random golf course guy who told us directions to see NY City without going into the city. It was beautiful...check out the pics on the link on our main page. We then rode to my Peaksgill, NY out in the middle of nowhere, but very beautiful but spooky ride, where the people at the motels were not very nice. There were no vacancies a few places, so we had to go out of our way to get a hotel in Fishgill, but it was a very nice Marriott Residence Inn. We then went to Aunt Lorraine's and Uncle Al's the next day and then drove to my Dad's cousin's, Beth, John, and Kaitlyn's house. Oh, who could forget the cat Oreo who stands on his hind legs! Beth, John, and Kaitlyn made us wonderful meals and icey drinks and desserts and also "forced" us to drink wine. We visited more with Aunt Lorraine and Uncle Al and shared pictures and memories about Nana (Aunt Lorraine's sister). It was such a good time, but very emotional at the same time. See Kaitlyn who is 11, calls Aunt Lorraine "Nana" and the relationship between those two reminded me so much of mine with my Nana. I just wish so much that she was still here. It's hard to think that she never knew our married life and didn't know us as the crazy triathletes that were are today either.

Speaking of Grandma's, Maw Maw is still doing well and keeping positive. She has her last chemo treatment this Thursday, so she's made it through that pretty well. We will have to see what is next.

Today was our first significant run since the race; we did 10 miles, depsite my sore throat and head cold. Dustin had side aches pretty much the whole time and I had digestion problems midway through our run up Girvin and into some of the shaded neighborhoods near Wonderwood. We averaged about a 9:15 mile running pace, but what I am really proud is that we didn't quit even though we wanted to; we just pushed through the extreme sweating and side aches, and finished our run, but I won't lie; it was not fun! We really needed the shade because it was about 95 degrees and we did our run at about 3:30. Not optimal time, but we had to go to the Hammerhead Triathlon meeting (Megan joined, Yeah!) and learn about getting faster on the bike. There was a lot of useful info there as usual, and just good to be with active club members who share our interests.

We have to keep our training up in the important weeks to come, so I will hopefully be better about updating this. Thanks to the very few of you who actually read this; email me to let me know that you do and give me suggestions about what you would like me to write more (or less) about! Have a good night!

2007-05-23T18:27:00.000-04:00

Friday, Dustin and I went for a 3 mile run just to loosen up our muscles, and we continued to pack all the essentials, which takes a really long time. My heart rate monitor got back from repair at the LAST minute on Saturday morning, before we packed up the car, so that relieved a lot of my stress.

Saturday, we packed my Murano to the max with all of our equipment, food, drinks, Jeff, Kendra, Dustin, myself, and oh yeah, don't forget to throw the bikes on the rack too! We drove a little over two hours and went straight to registration/expo and met Tim and his son, Carter there, and found Kendra's sister Paula and her friends Mandy, Brandon, and Chris (Mandy and Chris raced also). We got our bike helmet, bike frame, and shirt numbers, chips, got weighed, got our swim caps and our baggy of goodies, and then off to drop off our bikes for the night on the transition racks. I had a bad spot because it wasn't around anything noticable, so when you run into the transition area and there are 3000 bikes parked on the racks, it's hard to find. I had to count three back from the big tree and then towards the far end! We all walked down to the water and the temperature felt great, but it sure was windy! Time to go drive the 56 mile bike course.......a lot "hillier" than I thought, for Florida anyway with one big hill towards the middle of the course. Glad we did it, but it made me a little more nervous.

Then, Paula and her friends had a cabin at Fort Wilderness, so we went there and fixed spaghetti and garlic bread (Dustin did most of it) for the group. The cheerers had wine and beer, while we drank water, gatorade and milk. It was good and convenient, that's for sure. Then, off to check into our room at Shades of Green ( a military hotel about 2 miles away!). We prepared our race numbers on our shirts and layed everything out for the morning that we would need. Megan had to sleep on the pull out which she was too tall for (sorry Megan!).

RACE DAY:

Both Dustin and I coudln't get to sleep and didn't sleep well, so when the alarm went off at 4:15 AM, we didn't feel too rested, but we had to get up and get to the transition area before 6 AM when it closed. We repacked everything up, including Jeff, Kendra, and Megan and went to the parking lot to meet the bus that shuttles us over. It was completely dark with some random lights not shining in the right places in the transition area-making it hard to see what you were doing. Last minute bike check, aired up the tires, layed the towel out with the bike shoes, running shoes, hats, GU, snacks, heart rate chest strap, number strap, sunglasses, helmet, etc. Had to visually run through exactly what I would do on the transition from swim to bike and then later from bike to run. By the time Dustin and I got out of transition, it was after 6 AM, and we were some of the last people out. We went down by the water where we were body marked with our numbers, and then decided we needed a last minute bathroom break. The boys line was longer (finally!) so I told Dustin I would meet him down at the water. I applied my 60 SPF sunscreen, ate a last minute Gu, and drank some water. We met the supporters there too. I had to leave them earlier than Dustin did because my wave started at 6:55 AM and Dustin's didn't start until 7:15 (20 minute difference which was good because that would motivate him to try to catch me and me to try to run from him!). I put my neon green swim cap (Dustin's was PINK!), and got encouraging hugs from the supporters and a kiss from Dustin......

RACE STARTS:

I get over to the beach about 1 minute before my start, perfect timing so I didn't get too nervous; saw Mandy and stood with her as we waited for the horn to blow. I shook my arms a bit, waved to the supporters, put the goggles on and all of a sudden we were starting! I entered the water slowly as planned and got my rhythm down quickly. The water temperature was perfect and the sun was coming up on my right side and cast a pinkish hue on the water. It was actually relaxing.....so relaxing that I forgot to start my watch!!! So, I started it late (which I thought was about five minutes, but turned out to be two minutes late, so the WHOLE race, I didn't know what my real time was!) I've never been kicked and hit so much in a triathlon before; nothing that hurt, but constantly, I was right beside other swimmers, or other waves were overtaking us and coming up right on top of us. Instead of getting pissed off, I remembered Kendra talking about last year how she could feel the energy of the other waves, so I tried to keep that energy up in my stroke too! Rounding those buoys seems like an endless process, and I kept having to swim back to the left after sighting the buoys (I need to even out my stroke!) As I crept closer to shore, one other girl and myself fed off of eachother swimming inches away from eachother at the same exact speed and then I pulled away! I felt like I had a lot left and this was the only event I really had to work my arms, so I pushed it a little harder. I swam until my hand touched the bottom and then hopped up and ran out the water yelling "whooo hoooooo" at Tim, Dana, Kendra, Megan, and Jeff, giving high fives and smiling. One event down, two to go! 46 minutes and 22 seconds and Dustin swam it in 46 minutes and 41 seconds (we both felt really good, but he had a few problems with his goggles).

I ran up the shoot and into transition to the screams of supporters taking pictures and videoing me take WAY too long to get on the bike. I just had to make sure I had everything and then right before the "mount" line, we had to drag our bikes through sand. I started to mount my bike before the yellow line and then had to get back off and then back on again past the yellow line! Silly me! Then, I was off for the 56 mile ride with the wind at my back for the first part, then into the "hills." I was going about 19 mph for the first part, then slowed down to 8 mph on the biggest hill. My bike computer screwed up, so I didn't know for sure what my average speed was. I was going to be really happy if I averaged 17.5 for the whole thing, and I actually averaged 18.0 for 3 hours and 7 minutes. Dustin never caught me on the bike, but did average 18.7 mph for 2 hours and 59 minutes and 56 seconds (barely beat his goal of under 3 hours). So, he was slowly making up ground on me from our 20 minute difference on our starts.

The nutrition part of the triathlon is the fourth part, which is primarily in the bike since it's the longest sport. We used perpetuem, sustained energy, endurolytes, gu, gatorade, water and uncrustables (little round PB and J sandwiches). What I did was set up a separate watch on my bike to beep every ten minutes. The first ten minutes I drank four pretty good gulps of my mixture of perpetuem (2.5 scoops) and sustained energy(1.5 scoops). Next ten was gatorade, next ten was water with three endurolyte pills, then repeated that process, with the next water going along with the uncrustable on the first hour, Gu on the second and third hours. This ended up working for me, but everyone is different. I think Dustin tried to injest too much and wasn't drinking enough water to digest, because when he got on the run, he had horrible stomach cramps which slowed him down immensely.

As, I made the transition from bike to run, there was a very important thing I did, I put on this silly foam shark hat so that our supporters could see us coming. You have no idea how many people yelled for me because of that hat, other people in the race who complimented me. It really did keep me going throughout the whole 13.1 miles. Dustin also wore one (due to my begging), which worked out well, because we would tell random people along the sides "hey, my husband is wearing a hat just like this, tell him I love him" and then the same people would tell me that he said he loved me back! See, the course was a three loop run course, so we would see the same spectators many times and it was a lot of fun. We also ran a lot in grassy fields, which I loved because it took me back to high school cross country. Tim ran with us for awhile and Jeff also ran with us, so that helped to keep our spirits up. There were aid stations every mile where we could get soaked wet sponges, gatorade, water, coke, pretzels, bananas, oranges, sports gels, etc. I was mainly getting just water and gatorade at first and then it started getting hotter. I was starting out at 8:30 miles, but slowed down. Towards the end, I was getting chills, so I was grabbing the salty pretzels, and gatorade, and tried to keep myself running in the last two miles. I never walked except while going through aid stations so I could drink and eat without making a mess! It was hard, don't get me wrong, but I had a lot of fun. It sucked to know that Dustin wasn't having a good run though, but I knew he was okay through Jeff and Tim telling me, so that was comforting! As I came closer to the finish line, I saw Susan Wallis, who is the president of our tri club and has done tons of full ironmans, and it was just awesome to see her. Then, I saw Jeff and Kendra, and Megan, and Dana snapping pictures and videoing! I finished the run in 2:01:34 which I really wanted under two hours, but hey, my total time was 6:03:05 so I was more than happy with that. I felt like I pushed my body to it's limits and didn't leave anything out on the course, so it was a wonderful feeling getting that medal around my neck. I met a lot of my small goals too, so that was good. Then, we waited for Dustin to come across the finish line. He came through with his cute shark hat on too and I met him at the finish line. He was pretty tired and wanted to sit down, but I didn't let him until he walked a bit first. He ended up getting his Blood pressure checked in the medical tent, but I think all he really needed was some electrolytes in his system and then he felt better. Jeff was all about checking the boards to see the postings of the times and came back to us (while we were stuffing our faces with free pizza) to give us the report. We both finished in 6:03 something, but one of us beat the other one by 22 seconds! 6 hours of working out and we finished that close to each other.............I actually beat Dustin, which wasn't expected at all. Most of you know how competitive I am so I took pride in that. Especially since Dustin beats me at every single thing we do, so it was payback time in a big way :) He took it very well, and I only rub it in every once in awhile! We had an awesome time and couldn't have done it without our supporters, thanks guys!

2007-05-17T21:04:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, Jeff and Kendra got here! We picked them up from the airport with our boat in tow! It was so funny to pull that thing through the airport! Anyway, we went straight to the Arlington boat ramp and boated to downtown and ate at the River City Brewing Company for Kendra's birthday! Then, we boated north of Arlington and Dustin, Kendra, and Jeff skiied. I decided against it, knowing that I would end up getting hurt or something for this weekend.

Today, we took the ferry across and drove on the beach in Hugenot Park. We played some "yard" games on the beach and hung out, got in the ocean for just a bit. Then, tonight Dustin had a navy dinner to attend, but Jeff, Kendra, and I went to the Riverside Y for spin and swim. It was storming and the pool isn't grounded so lightning could hit us while we were swimming, so the pool was closed. Kendra and I did Bob's spin class while Jeff played basketball. Tomorrow, we are planning on running a few miles.

It felt good to sweat a bit today and get my heart rate up and get my legs moving. I've been nervous the last few days for some reason. For one, I don't have my heart rate monitor back from Polar after a repair they made on it. They were sending it back last Friday, so I should have gotten it by now. I am going to be so pissed if I don't have it for the race. It helps me judge if I'm going to fast/hard, tells me my pace, and just helps me communicate with my body better! I know it sounds weird, but I feel naked training without it. I might wear Kendra's, but it doesn't have all the functions that mine does, so I really want mine.

I've started to pack, and it just seems like too much to think about. I can't imagine how it will be for the full Ironman and packing for our whole trip to Wisconsin! Anyway, we need to focus on this race THIS weekend and get through that first! We have a bunch of rewards for certain time goals and things set up. Most of the rewards involve food that we haven't been eating because of our healthy eating while training; like for instance Dairy Queen blizzards, taco pizza's and macarroni and cheese!

I'm sure it will go just fine. This might be my last entry before the race; we'll see. If you are reading this, think positive thoughts for us on Sunday at 6:20 AM for our 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run! We will be half ironpeople afterwards hopefully! Oh yeah, and wish this nervousness away too!

2007-05-15T19:04:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday, we ran 7 miles on Girvin, and then went to TNT swim practice and swam 1850 meters. Felt good on both.

Thursday, we had a business meeting, so we weren't able to fit in a workout. Friday was our day off and we probably should have done something, but we didn't.

Saturday, we met the TNT group at the beach and swam in the ocean at 7 AM! We got pointers from Roberta on how to enter and exit the water efficiently. We swam without wet suits this time, so it was a bit chilly. Then, we rode 25 miles. We then went home, did some yard work, took showers, and welcomed Elizabeth's family, the Boyers for a quick visit (they were vacationing in St. Augustine, just south of here). We were able to hang out with Elizabeth and John a bit longer, and took them on a tour of Hecksher Drive out towards all the islands before taking them to the airport for their flight back to San Diego!

Sunday, we ran 6 miles down Girvin pretty quickly and sweated a lot! It wasn't even sunny, but just humid (we also ran at noon time-similar to the time we will be running this weekend at the end of our race).

Monday, we swam 1500 meters at Ponte Vedra Y while it was raining, but we both felt pretty good.

Today, Tuesday, we just got done with a 16 mile bike on Wonderwood and into Hannah Park; it was pretty windy on the way there and pretty tough!

Tomorrow, Jeff and Kendra get here from Wisconsin! We are so excited! Then, our race is Sunday in Orlando and then we come back here. Kendra leaves Monday, Jeff-Tuesday, then Tony and Susan come in on Thursday! We are just gonna have such a fun May with all of our best friends visiting us! We can't wait! Oh yeah, and we can't wait for the race either!

2007-05-07T21:26:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, I rode 16 miles with Megan and we did yoga afterwards. Then, we met up with Dave and Dustin and celebrated their end of finals by going to Cafe Carmon; my new favorite (but expensive) place in San Marco.

Wednesday, we went on an 11 mile run near Brooks Health off of Deerwood Pkwy, and down Southside. It was a pretty hot and tiring run, but we did it. Then, we went to the Hammerhead Tri Club meeting right afterwards at 7 PM and learned many more things about nutrition, etc.

Thursday, we missed spin class because of the stupid Mathews Bridge closure/switch of traffic patterns, but went to swim with Christine and took it easier than usual (1500 meters).

Friday, we were off and went to dinner with our neighbors, Amber and Stuart to celebrate her new job. She is now going to be teaching 1st grade right around the corner instead of 30+ minutes away. We went to the new restaurant, Cobblestones around the corner and it was good!

Saturday, we did a Hammer Jammer put on by the triathlon club. It's a practice triathlon where you just swim 15 minutes in the ocean, 45 minutes on the bike, and a 30 minute run. It was good though, because we were able to practice our transitions and get a few nerves out for our race in two weeks. Here is a list of things not to do while training for a triathlon:
1. Tear dead skin off the bottom of your foot to the point of pain.
2. Shift your weight the wrong way while getting off your bike and crash and hurt your knee.
3. Step in dog poop in your running shoes.
4. Forget one of your water bottles.
By the way, I was able to pull off all of the above in one morning. Despite all of these things, I still felt good after our workout. Then, we went to the Shrimp Festival in Fernadina and met Lisa and Dennis there and had a couple drinks for Cinco de Mayo and ate all kinds of shrimp-fried, boiled, shrimp pie, etc. Not exactly what you want to eat the day before a long workout. On top of that, add some ice cream, and then we had blueberry/strawberry pancakes for dinner. This was to keep with our themed weekend of doing irregular things that we don't normally do (however, we still had to train regularly).

Sunday, we got ourselves up early to bike 35 miles at the beach and then ran 10 miles right afterwards. We experimented more with our nutrition and with Perpetuem and Sustained Energy, Gu, and Gatorade and Endurolytes, and of course, water. It all went well with both of us and we felt good, hot, but tired.

Today, we decided we deserved a rest, so we cooked a good meal together; asian pork udon noodles which was really good!

2007-04-30T21:11:00.000-04:00

We did rest on Friday, and Saturday morning, we swam in the ocean at 7 AM with the Hammerhead Tri Club. I used Roberta's wetsuit and liked it more than my other one. Dustin used his regular one and realized he needs a tri wetsuit also; more expenses! The water was cold and it wasn't a great swim, but we were swimming about 50 feet from dolphins!!! They were really beautiful and it was so cool to be swimming near them, but at the same time freaky! After we got home, we decided to take the boat out and Amber, Stuart, and Judy came with us. We all skiied in the intracostal and it was a lot of fun. It was Judy's first time getting up and she did awesome! Then, we went to Lisa and Dennis' for a spaghetti dinner and hung out in their pool.

Sunday was another early morning, drove up near the airport to do the Tour de Forts bike ride with about 400 other people. Now, we have never biked with more than, say, 10 people in a group and we are never too close to eachother. But this was different; in cycling, you can draft; in triathloning, you cannot or you get penalized. In order to average 18.5 miles per hour over the entire 73 miles, we obviously had to do some drafting, but it was a lot of fun, very scenic and they had organized rest stops for us and there were a lot of people out there we knew. Good job to everyone! Dustin and I both felt really good after the ride and it was the first time we tried Perpetuem and Sustained Energy mixed with water, plus Gatorade, gu, uncrustables, cheez its, and endurolytes. It all worked very well, because our stomachs were great and our energy was high! We rewarded ourselves with a nap on the beach afterwards, and some O'Charley's after that. All in all, it was another great weekend!

Today, Monday, we went to Ponte Vedra Pool and I swam 2300 meters and Dustin swam 2500 in 50 minutes. We both had headaches and drainage problems, and Dustin's goggles are forever bothering him, but we did it. I also did a long abdominal routine and stretches and had a back massage too!

By the way, Maw Maw is still doing well. Her hair is thinning and she is wearing hats "so the wind won't blow more of my hair out," so she looks really cute in the pictures my brother pix messaged me. The chemotherapy is working; shrinking the tumors; however, she missed a treatment because her cough was so bad. She is staying as strong as she can right now and I respect her so much for that.

2007-04-26T22:12:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, we didn't end up going to swim practice; Dustin was studying and I had a bad headache. Then, Thursday, Jason Schuler, a submarine buddy of Dustin's came into Port Canaveral (a 2.5 hour drive), so we drove down there and had some good Thai food with him and had a couple drinks out on the beach, spent the night in his hotel room with an ocean view and then drove back the next morning in time for me to see my patients and Dustin to go to class. Friday, we were off, even though we should have made up some training that day!

Saturday, it was cool in the morning, so we decided to bike a little later at Baldwin Trail. Probably not a good idea, because we didn't get started until after 11 for a SIXTY mile bike ride, followed by a 6 mile run. We did an out and back, out and back (twice) for the bike and the run. That way, we could refill water bottles, and get more nutrition stuff. This was the first day that we experimented with nutrition and timing of intaking calories. We tried HEED (similar to Gatorade, but without simple sugars; made of complex carbs). We set our watches to beep every 10 minutes to drink, and then eat a bar at quarter after the hour, and take electrolytes at quarter to the hour. We felt really good on the bike, and it felt good to experiment with the nutrition and get a better handle on that. However, by the time we started to run, it was HOT and sunny with not as much wind, so we pretty much bonked. We still ran under a 9 minute mile for 6 miles, but we both felt completely exhausted (more than after any of the marathons we have run). So, the nutrition thing didn't work for us that time, but we also didn't take any of the more powerful products like Sustained Energy or Perpetuem. We just got our package delivered with all those good things in there, plus much more and free products too! So, this weekend, we will experiment more with those. They say to not mix these products with simple sugars, but we are finding out that many of our friends actually do to give them added energy. Maybe that's why we bonked, because we didn't have our Gatorade that we were used to.

Anyway, Dustin took about a 6 minute nap in the car on the way home (he was too tired to drive, so I did), but then I had to take a 10 minute nap on the floor as soon as we walked in the door. See, we didn't leave ourselves much time before we had to leave for Judy's suprise birthday party that her fiance, David was throwing for her! We pretty much had to nap, shower, and leave in a hurry. Who would have thought we would have been the last ones to leave the party that night after 2 AM!!!!!! Crazy, but we had a great time!

Sunday afternoon, we went to the Ponte Vedra Y to their outside pool and swam 2200 meters, our longest swim so far without stopping. Then, we ran over 4 miles on the Palm Valley Bridge and it was hot once again!

Monday, we did an 18 mile bike ride just before dark on Wonderwood bridges, because Tuesday, we had the Team in Training Honored Teammate Picnic at Metro Park, which was fun!

Yesterday, Wednesday, we went out to run 5 miles after work and ended up running 10! We figured we didn't want to run it later in the week, so we went ahead and did it yesterday down Girvin, out and back, then out and back again with a stop at the house for water, gatorade, and gu. Then, Dustin made a big ole steak for dinner on the grill (with portabello mushrooms) and I made asparagus and baked pototoes. It was a great meal, we sat outside on our lovely tiled patio and then layed on our hammock after that. We definitely needed the rest.

Tonight, on Thursday, we went to spin class, Greg was subsituting for Bob, but we still got a good workout. Then, on to swim class with Christine and she made us work hard as usual and we swam about 2400 meters tonight. Then, I told Dustin that if we worked really hard in both classes tonight, we could treat ourselves to Cafe Carmon in San Marco. I had been craving the baked brie since we went there last week. We just had bread, salad, and the brie and it was yummy! I think it's good to give yourself rewards like that every once in awhile!

This weekend is our 75 mile bike ride, called Tour de Forts on Sunday, and our ocean swim on Saturday morning! We get to rest tomorrow though! Yeah!

2007-04-17T23:26:00.000-04:00

Today, after work, I rode 30 miles by myself from the San Marco Y down on San Jose Blvd. I felt pretty good, used our new insulated water bottles for water and gatorade. Then, I went to Yoga. It was a nice evening, but smoky from the fires in Waycross, Georgia. It reminded me of the fires in San Diego when we lived there. Then, came home and had dinner with Dustin and I did more research on nutrition products, and just spent over $200 on stuff on the hammernutrition website. Crazy!

2007-04-16T22:39:00.000-04:00

Well, I tweaked our schedule a litte bit for this week, and we decided that we would run 13.1 miles today after work! It was sunny and really windy, but actually turned out to be a very nice run from Ed Austin Park, up to Fort Caroline Road to the right, and then back to the left, and then a couple more loops of the park. We layed out some gatorade and water at some of the turns so we had some every 1-3 miles along the run. I did 2 Gus and Dustin did 1. We started getting stiff towards the end, but ran it in 1:54, which we are both hoping to do under 2 hours for the run portion of the half ironman. I had some pain in the insertion of my hamstring muscle in the groin/butt area that wasn't too fun to deal with, but that bothered me when I was training for the Nike Women's marathon in 2005, so I hope that's not coming back. No problem with the knees, and Dustin's right calf was hurting a little, but all in all, a very good day for running. I am planning on biking 20 miles tomorrow and then going to Yoga. We will be for sure swimming on Thursday and then an ocean swim on Saturday morning. The water will still be cold, but I think we can handle it!!! Still doing research on nutrition today and getting lots of tips from past ironman participants.

2007-04-15T17:12:00.000-04:00

Well, realistically, we did NOT get much training done while Travis, Robin, and Kiona were here. However, we did have lots of fun! I sure don't know how people that have kids can train for long triathlons; it didn't seem like we had any time and we aren't even her parents! We did do a lot of walking around the neighborhood, at the Zoo, St. Augustine, St. John's Town Center. I did some workouts with weights and the ball, but that's about it. We did have a lot of fun, despite the record low temps.

Tuesday, after they left, I finally convinced Dustin to go to Yoga with me and he did really good despite his inflexibility. I told him if I swam with stingrays, he had to go to Yoga. I was just really hoping that he would like it because he needs definite work on his flexibility. However, it "just wasn't his thing" and "would rather do something else." So, I guess I can deal with that, but I would like to still keep going if I can fit it into our workout schedule.

Wednesday, I ran 9 miles, 4 of those with Dustin. Felt relatively good, but sore in the right knee and calves toward the end. Then, we went to TNT swim practice and swam about 1500 meters.

Thursday, we got to spin class late and sweated our ***** off as usual and then to swim class with Christine who pushed us hard as usual. We hadn't been to her class in a while and could tell! We swam about 2400 meters and were TIRED afterwards.

Friday, we were off and Saturday, Dustin had his sailing regatta where Jacksonville University placed 1st! Good job guys! Before going to cheer for them, I went to the Hammerhead Tri Clinic which was a good review of transitions, rules, etc which lasted over two hours and then some of us biked 10 miles and ran 3 miles (similar to the sprint distances). It was REALLY hot (85-90 degrees and sunny).

Sunday, we were going to ride 60 miles, however, we woke up to thunder, strong winds and tornado warnings in the area. We thought we could wait it out, so the thunderstorms rolled through, but now there are close to 30 mph winds, so we decided not to go. We know that it could be like that race day, but we also know that it is putting us in danger when we don't have to. We can get some longer rides in soon. Plus, we are getting a lot done today; Dustin is doing homework and papers and I am doing an ungodly amount of research on the internet about nutrition and equipment and bike transport (all of which means more $$$$$). Triathlons are definitely more expensive than marathons, but we love the sport so far!

2007-04-06T09:57:00.000-04:00

Monday, we ran 8 miles on Wonderwood with some hills. It actually wasn't too hard at all, which was suprising. That's the first time we ran the hills there. Tuesday, we tried to swim, but the pool was closed because the pH was too high. Wednesday, we went to our first Hammerhead Triathlon Club meeting and met a lot of great people with great advice about nutrition and mental toughness. The triathlon community is a unique one for sure and we are glad to be a part of it. We already learned a lot at one meeting and we look forward to more. Thursday morning, we rode 17 miles on Wonderwood before work and then picked up Dustin's brother, Travis, his wife, Robin, and their 11 month old, Kiona from the airport. We realistically won't get much training done this weekend, but we will try a little bit.

2007-04-01T20:55:00.000-04:00

Thursday, we were supposed to do spin and swim, but the pool was being refilled. So, Dustin did one spin class and I did two (which is about 35 miles on a bike going nowhere, but it's a good workout). Dustin was still getting over a head cold. Friday, we were off. Saturday morning, we ran 5 miles, and then Sunday morning, we met Megan and did Wonderwood Expy to the ferry and rode that across to Hecksher Drive and met Tim and rode out to Fernadina Beach. It was so beautiful riding by the ocean many times and the weather was perfect (except for it was windy on the way back). We rode a total of 56 miles (our race distance for May) and timed the departure of the ferry perfect both times! Then, Dustin and I ran 5 miles afterwards and felt pretty darn good. We drank a lot of gatorade, water, did gus, electrolyte pills, ate clif bars, so I think we did pretty good nutrition wise. However, the half race coming up in May will be 1.2 mile swim before, plus 8 more miles at the end, so I'm thinking I will need to ingest more calories for sure! I was hungry at the end. Then, we met Megan and the World of Nations event at Metro Park and had a lot of good food from different nations. Now, we are hopefully going to finally send out our email for the Janus Charity Challenge and try to get more people to donate to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

2007-03-29T00:04:00.000-04:00

Well, I ran 8 miles before my right knee wasn't feeling too good (it was that tiling, I know it, worse on your joints than marathoning). Dustin ran 4 of those with me, but he has a head cold, so that was all he could handle. Then, I went to TNT swim practice and swam 1700 meters. It felt good, but I was definitely tired. Our total from January until now are 30,150 meters for swimming, 605 miles of biking , and 152 miles of running. That should be more, but because of our break we took with the cruise, those numbers are "low." I just want to say if you are reading this and haven't been able to get into a good workout routine and healthy eating routine, you just have to set your mind to it. It was extremely hard getting back to our routine after that cruise, but finally, we just said, no more eating pizza and overeating unhealthy foods and we gotta start burning calories. Although most of you won't be going long distances, even running, walking, cycling, lifting weights for short periods still burns calories. So, get up off that couch and go for it. Print yourself out a schedule and stick to it. I know I feel so much better now after only two days of training after our break. Remember, there are no such things as unrealistic goals, just unrealistic time frames!

2007-03-28T13:00:00.000-04:00

Catching up: Wednesday, March 14, I ran 11 miles around Ed Austin Park and on Fort Caroline Road. Thursday, we went to spin class with Bob and then swam 2300 meters. We returned home to finish our packing for our cruise! We left on Friday to drive down to Miami and stayed at Ruben and Michelle's (even though they were in NY). You can even see the cruise ships from their condo, so that was awesome! Saturday, we left on the Carnival Imagination with Toni, Allie, and many soon to be other friends! (Most of them, because they were fellow Kansas basketball fans). We had a great time, went to Grand Cayman and swam with the stingrays! Yeah, I can't believe we did that either! And then we went to Jamaica and climbed Dunn's River Falls, which was a good workout and very fun! I have some pictures on the website, but more will be coming for the stingrays and the falls. Those two days were the only "workouts" we got in on our vacation, but we had a lot of fun and met some awesome people! We got home on Thursday night and then on Friday, started preparing to lay tile over the weekend. We were planning on doing a long bike on Sat or Sun, but laying tile was a bit more than we expected. Talk about a workout.......our quads, hamstrings and lower backs were screaming! Stuart helped us a bit, but Dustin and I figured out that we must have done about 2100 squats or hamstring lifts over the weekend! We were still too tired and not in the working out "mood" on Monday. It was harder than I thought getting back in the swing of things in doing our training, eating right and getting back into work and school! We did go on a 20 mile ride yesterday evening over the bridges of Wonderwood and into Hanna Park. Our legs were still sore and we went a little slower than usual (averaged 15.7 mph). It was fun exploring Hanna Park a little and riding our bikes up to the beach. It was perfect weather, just a little breezy on the way back (but the tailwind helped us). Dustin isn't feeling well today, so I will be running tonight while he is at sailing practice. Our schedule says 12 miles, but I don't think I will make it that far. Well, you are pretty much updated now. Don't forget to check out pictures of our cruise and our tile!

2007-03-13T21:57:00.000-04:00

Friday, we left for Salt Lake City, to ski with Thierry and Stef. Saturday and Sunday, we skiied all day. It was a lot of fun and none of us got injured, so that's good! We weren't even as sore as I thought we would be; probably because we had been biking so much, so our quads were in better shape than previous ski trips.

We got back on Monday night and slacked off until Wednesday, trying to catch up with life.

Wednesday, I ran 4 miles near our house and then we went to the TNT swim practice with Roberta and swam 1700 meters.

Thursday, we went to spin class with Bob, but skipped swim because Shawn and Mia were coming into town and we didn't want to overdue it before the Gate River Run. Friday was our day off.

Saturday, we ran the Gate River Run downtown; it's actually the National 15K championships. No, we didn't win, but we finished in the top 10%, so we got hats for that, which was very cool! Dustin finished the 9.3 miles in 1:08:54 (7:24 minute mile) and I finished in 1:15:08 (8:04 minute mile). We were happy with our times, especially despite the HEAT and no gatorade on the course! We had a TNT tailgate party afterwards and hung out with Shawn and Mia, and then took them to Clark's Fish Camp, which was fun!

Sunday, after Shawn and Mia left, we rode 35 miles from Atlantic Beach past Micklers and then ran over 3 miles on the beach. We felt pretty darn good for being sore from the Gate River Run.

Monday, we swam 2000 meters at the Riverside Y pool. I stepped it up a bit and decided to push myself a little bit. We swam 2000 meters straight and I averaged 1 minute, 3 seconds for a 50 meter lap and Dustin averaged 58 seconds. We are definitely getting faster in the pool, so that's promising! That's the distance of the 1/2 Ironman, so we are now more confident with that, although we weren't being kicked and punched and splashed by 1000's of other swimmers!

Tuesday, today, I am extremely sore. Where, you ask? Not the quads, hamstrings, calves, lower back, shoulders, neck (which have all hurt in the past). No, it's my fingers and thumbs!!! What???? Well, I had the hardest day of training so far this year, and it was because I had a flat tire and had to change it before riding today! I refused to have Dustin help me, because if that happens out on the course, we have to change it ourselves. It took me over 20 minutes, but I DID IT and I am extremely proud of that. You should have seen my hands and even legs......I looked like I had been a mechanic under cars all day with by black greasy hands! The hardest part is getting the tire back on, and I think I pretty much rubbed some of my skin off, so it's hurting to type right now!! We did ride 20 miles from the San Marco Y and then I went to Yoga afterwards. So, besides the frustrating experience of changing a tire, it was a good day with good weather and good company (love ya Dustin!)

2007-03-01T23:50:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, as Dustin was still studying in the morning, I went for a bike ride on Wonderwood Expressway bridges for 15 miles in the morning before work; once again, beautiful day! That night after work, I went to Yoga and had to warm up with 3 miles on the recumbant bike.

Wednesday, couldn't get myself out of bed in the morning, so I ran after work-9 miles a couple times around Ed Austin Park and down Monument to Fort Caroline and back, got some rolling hills in so that was good and was able to maintain around a 8:18 pace. After this, rushed home, ate dinner with Dustin and then went to the Team in Training Social

Tonight, Thursday, we were WAY too busy with LIFE to workout unfortunately. Tomorrow morning, we are on a plane to Salt Lake City to visit Thierry and Stef, so we had some shop to clean up with our business, with my other work paperwork, of course packing-which meant we had to find all of our ski stuff we haven't gotten out in forever, which took longer than expected. Plus, I had some team in training stuff to do, plus update this blog, and sad enough to say, also had to see the results of American Idol. Well, we should be getting some workouts in on the mountain this weekend; we are taking our heart rate monitors with us to see what our heart rate does when sliding down the side of the mountain! I know our legs are in better shape than they used to be, but we will be using different muscles, so we will probably be pretty sore after our adventure. Please email me if you read this blog and let me know that someone is actually reading this and getting something out of it. :)

2007-02-26T22:03:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday, we ran 9 miles in the morning at an 8:27 pace, burned 961 calories, then went off to work and a busy day. Then, Wed night, we went to our first TNT swim practice with Roberta who coached us very well; we swam about 1500 meters. We were pretty tired after running so far in the morning, and not getting done swimming until 8:30 at night. Then,

Thursday, we went to our spin class with Bob, and then masters swim class with Christine and she worked our ass off! I can't say it any other way; I've never been worked out like that in the pool. We swam a total of 2700 meters, the furthest we have ever swam in one pool session.

Friday, we were off and spent our night preparing for the poker party we were hosting for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! Saturday morning, we biked 50 miles!; the most we have ever done and it wasn't even really that hard. We averaged 16.8 mph and we biked along San Jose, up to the Riverside YMCA, over the Acosta Bridge and then back down San Jose and around Mandarin Road. It wasn't as windy as last week, so that was good; we didn't even need to wear jackets!! We burned 1940 calories, so rewarded ourselves with Firehouse Subs afterwards! Saturday night, we had an awesome party and raised $2395 with the support of our wonderful guests! Thanks again everybody!

Tonight, Monday, Dustin had to study, but I rode the recumbent bike for 30 minutes and then ran 5 miles down Kernan. My goal was to keep my heart rate around 145, and I was still able to average 8:55 mile and I didn't really even feel like I was really working. It was perfect running weather, in the 60's with a little breeze; I loved it!

Spoke with Maw Maw when I got home; she has a blood clot in her leg, but is still staying upbeat, and not having any other side effects from the chemo, so that's good.

2007-02-20T21:14:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, I went to a Yoga class that I have been going to for a few weeks now. I really like it a lot, and flexibility is very important with all of our training. Dustin has class on Tuesdays, well only for two more weeks, so I am going to make him go with me after that. He is so inflexible, it's not even funny! Before the Yoga class, I warmed up on the recumbant bike for 3 miles while playing BINGO, yes, BINGO in the workout room for the people on the machines who wanted to play, weird, but different, and you know I like different. I didn't win though! Tomorrow morning, our plan is to run 9 miles and then go to TNT swim practice tomorrow night, oh yeah, and work all in between! Busy day ahead of us and we still need to watch American Idol tonight too! :)

2007-02-19T19:42:00.000-05:00

Much catching up to do, as usual. I can't believe how well Maw Maw is doing. She had her first chemo treatment on Thursday for six hours. She came home afterwards and has been feeling fine with no side effects to mention yet, which is unbelievable! I think she is more positive now than she was before this diagnosis. It is so good to hear her positive voice on the phone. I hope the treatments continue to go this well for her. It inspires us even more to hear her in such high spirits, despite what she has to go through.

As far as our training:
Sunday, we were lazy as far as training, but got a lot done for Team in Training, for our business, All Around Physical Therapy, and just odds and ends we had to catch up on.

Monday, we ran 4 miles at a 7:22 mile and then swam 1700 meters straight at the pool; the most we have ever swam with no rest breaks.

Tuesday morning, we got up early and did a 12 mile bike ride on Wonderwood bridges.

Wednesday, when I got off work, we quickly ran 8.5 miles before our Valentines Day dinner at the Brick. It was pretty windy, and we ran a loop, so we didn't have water, and the wind was really bad on Wonderwood, but other than that, it was a nice romantic run :)

Thursday, we went to Bob's spin class for an hour and then Christine's masters swim class. We did a bunch of drills to work on speed and it was super tiring! We swam a total of 2400 meters, the most we have done in one pool session, although we had points where we stopped, but we were swimming really fast in between!

Friday, we were off, but had a girls night which was fun while Dustin was working at Daytona for his ROTC unit.

Saturday, we ran 5.5 miles downtown, but didn't run over the bridges, just a nice relaxing jog, this time up and down the streets exploring downtown; it was different and fun! Before this, we went to Annie Wilson's Homecare Fair where we had a booth to promote our business. We really didn't feel like running after that, but I am proud that we did! We rewarded ourselves by going to a Thai restaurant called Lemongrass that was absolutely fabulous!

Sunday, it was cold and windy, so we waited until about 2:00 to do our ride. We rode 45 miles-the most we have done yet! We needed to up our mileage because we will be out of town a lot in March. We rode from the Yates Y, down San Jose Blvd, around to Mandarin rode and stopped in at Toni and Harold's to use the bathroom! The last ten miles were killer with the winds, but we hung in there and it really wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be. We both feel fine today with no aches or pains! We brought stuff to shower at the Y and then rushed to eat at Sushi Cafe and then see The Peking Acrobats perform at Florida Theater! It was awesome! I am always wanting to do different things and this definitely qualified. An overall great weekend!

Today, Monday, we had to meet with our accountant to do our taxes at 5 PM, so we decided to have another "lazy" night because we are swimming with Team in Training on Wed, and then at the Y on Thursday.

2007-02-11T13:10:00.000-05:00

First things first with Maw Maw. She is doing better and is ready for her treatment to begin. She goes to get a port in her chest tomorrow, and then starts her chemotherapy on Thursday. It will last 4-5 hours and then she will have to go in the next day for a shot. She is staying optimistic and they say the treatments are have been really effective. We think of her often during our training and are thankful for what we are able to do in her honor. We have raised $1176 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in just two weeks from our great supporters that we have emailed. Thanks again!

Now, I will go back to last week and catch you up:
Superbowl Sunday: We wanted to bike later in the day when it was warmer, but Megan insisted that we go in the morning, so we met her at 8 AM at Monument/McCormick and it was 42 degrees and windy! We biked the long, steep bridges on Wonderwood and were hardly moving with the wind. Our hands and feet were completely frozen, but we were making it. We biked down to the beach and got almost to Sneakers, when I had to make a bathroom stop. As I come out of the bathroom, I sadly find that Dustin and Megan were conspiring a plan to go back because they were cold. I was cold too, but wanted to keep going. I kept thinking of Rick and Dick Hoyt, Blazeman, etc who if they could, would love to be able to go for a bike ride, no matter the temperature. They weren't having my positive attitude, so we turned around. Megan's boyfriend was in from out of town, so I could see the point in her wanting to get back (because we were going slow because of the wind). However, Dustin was going to have to wait for me in the car anyway, so I continued to try to persuade him with my positive attitude. His poor, frozen feet weren't having that though, so his wimpy butt went back to the car and waited as I biked 10 more miles to total 35. I felt very accomplished afterwards, was proud that I continued on without them, but was very disappointed in Dustin. He is the reason I signed up for this Ironman so we could do it together before he is back at sea. I never thought that he would wimp out on me like that, and I hope he never does it again. Okay, got that off my chest, whooo! We went to Panera afterwards to defrost and then got ready for the Superbowl.

Monday, we went for a 5 mile run around Hickory Creek neighborhood (we were supposed to swim, but Dustin had stitches from a mole removal on his back).

Tuesday, Dustin had class, and I got consumed with business, and Team in Training stuff, so we skipped a day!

Wednesday, Dustin had sailing practice and an 8 mile run was on the schedule. Because of Team in Training, I have never run long distances by myself, but I was going to have to that day. I went up to Ed Austin park where they have a 1.7 mile loop that I ran 4 times plus some more. It sucked running alone, but I was proud of myself when I was done.

Thursday, we went to Bob's spin class and then to the Masters swim where we got all kinds of good advice from Christina and a good workout too! We swam 1800 meters.

Friday, we were off, Saturday, we met the new TNT group at Ballwin Trail and rode 30 miles (just Megan and Dustin and I did that many). We ran 2 miles afterwards. It was still cold, but not as cold as last week. I was pleased to say that Megan and Dustin didn't leave me this time. I think their feet hurting, hurt less than me talking about how they "broke the circle of trust" last week, so they were troopers this time! Thanks guys! I trust you again!

2007-02-03T13:49:00.000-05:00

Got some catching up to do. Last Friday, we were off. Saturday, we biked 25 miles with Nate downtown and onto San Jose. We immediately, ran the bridges (always hard) 2.5 miles afterwards. On Sunday, we did our own little triathlon in a way. We first ran 3.5 miles on the bridges downtown, then we swam at the Yates Y 1500 meters, then we went to a spin class for an hour (because my bike was in the shop adjusting the computer). It was tiring, but it seemed easy in comparison to the first few sprint tri's that we did (which were much shorter). We swam that day because Dustin was going under the knife on Monday, to get some sexy moles removed, and he's not supposed to swim for 2 weeks. Then, came the week of sickness. First I got the flu (the kind where you aren't sure if it's food poisoning or not :) and then gave it to Dustin. It was pretty bad, so we didn't train at all until I swam (by myself :( on Friday 1500 meters and then biked 10 miles to try to make up for some of what I missed. Then, this morning, Saturday, I ran with our old running group 8 miles and averaged a 8:28 pace. My quads were hurting pretty bad afterward, but I was proud that I stayed with the boys, and even prouder that I got up out of bed without Dustin at 6 AM!!! Tomorrow, we organized a 35 mile bike with some friends and then we will be watching the Superbowl! So, even though I was sick this week, I only missed a 4 mile run and a 5.5 mile run and Bob's spin class. So, figured I would update you on our totals for January: 10, 850 meters of swimming, 242 miles of biking and spinning, 57.5 miles of running. Now, if we stick to our training schedule, we should be increasing those numbers by a LOT each month. Hopefully I will be able to report to you that we will be doing just that.

2007-01-27T20:35:00.000-05:00

Thursday night, we went to a "marathon spin class" for 2 hours and 10 minutes on a bike going nowhere under the instruction of Bob and his great CD's of music. I won't lie, it was hard. I burned 1160 calories and sweated my *** off! Dustin and Megan also did it and we will definitely do it again for sure! I hope that while I'm biking the 112 miles of the Ironman, I will be able to think of that great music from spin class pushing me up those awful hills in Wisconsin!
(Dustin and I also swam 1200 meters afterwards while Megan started her drive to Savannah, crazy girl!)

Friday, we were off, but we took our bikes in to have some minor tuneups and then went to PF Changs for dinner!

Saturday, we went for a 25 mile bike with Nate downtown over the Acosta Bridge and down San Jose; it was a nice ride and nicer weather than we expected (in the low 60's). We averaged about 17 mph and burned 896 calories. Then, we were supposed to run for 15 minutes right afterwards, but we wanted to do some bridge running while we were down there, so we ran across the Acosta again and back, and that is never easy! We ended up running for about 25 minutes. It was a nice workout and then we came back and had leftover PF Changs!

We are doing pretty well with our training so far, so I'm proud of us. We are really busy with that and the starting of our business, so we weren't going to sign up for Team in Training for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society this season. However, my grandma in St. Louis (Maw Maw, I call her) just got diagnosed with non Hodgkins lymphoma, so we feel compelled to do an event in her honor. We will just be signing up for the sprint tri, but will be committing to raise over $3000 again. I think we can do it pretty easily though; we've got this fundraising thing figured out and we have unbelievable supporters all over the country. Maw Maw will be starting chemo soon, as long as she is well (she is in the hospital right now and she is anemic and weak, but staying positive). I wish that I could be there with her, but I know the rest of my family is supporting her well. My parents are constantly calling me to update us on her status. I will keep updating this blog with her status also. Our Team in Training website is www.angelfire.com/sports/marathon if you want to check out our involvement since 2001 with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

2007-01-23T20:20:00.000-05:00

This morning, I ran 7 miles and Dustin ran 4 (he ran 3 yesterday with his ROTC unit). It took me 56:21 which is right at an 8 minute mile! Yeah! I'm proud that I'm running that fast still. I don't think I have mentioned that we got our heart rate moniters either! What a dimention that has added to our training! It's fun to see heart rate, pace and distance (with a foot pod), calories burned, etc. and then it stores it in files that we can download to the polar website. My average heart rate for the run was 161 (a bit high, but I was working hard) and I burned 646 calories. When we biked on Saturday, I burned 1277 calories. What sucks is that Dustin is always burning more calories than me because of his height and weight, so of course he's gonna lose more weight! Unfortunately, we couldn't get the heart rate monitors to work in the pool, even though they claim they are able to. It's nice to get the workout done in the morning like today so I can get other stuff done in the evening. Good night!

2007-01-22T21:16:00.000-05:00

It's already Monday night again! Time flies! We tried to do some catching up last week, but with me not feeling well, Dustin was easily talked out of some of the workouts too! Last Tuesday morning, we ran 7 miles down to Girvin and back down Kernan with a stop at our house in between for Gatorade/Water. We ran at an 8:40 pace and felt pretty good. Wednesday, we slacked off and Thursday, we went to Bob's spin class and then swam 1500 meters. Friday, we were off and Saturday, we went to Baldwin Trail and rode 35 miles at an average of 17.3 mph, taking us 2 hours and 1 minute! That's our longest ride yet, and it wasn't that bad, my butt is finally getting used to my new seat! It was pretty darn windy and a little cold, but not bad. We celebrated a little that night with Dave and Erin, and didn't feel too great the next morning, but I talked us into running out at the beach by Sneakers for a five mile run at a 9:30 pace. Then, tonight, we swam another 1200 meters at the Yates YMCA, and now we are settling down for dinner at 9:21 and the Australian Open will entertain us!

2007-01-16T20:26:00.000-05:00

I've been bad.....not about training, but about keeping my blog updated. So, I'll give ya basic info on what we have done for the last week. Last Thursday, we did go to the spin class. We got there a little "early" for the 6:45 class, and come to find out, they were doing a "marathon" class that started at 5:30 and went to 7:45, so we came in about 6:30 and spun for 1 hour, 15 minutes of intense sweating!! Then, we went to the pool and swam 1200 meters. Megan joined us for the whole workout and hopefully she will be another training partner on Thursdays at least! We swam it in about 27 minutes and felt good, but tired afterwards!

Friday was our well needed rest day, and then Saturday we ran 4 miles near our house down Girvin at just over an 8 minute mile pace; it didn't feel that fast and we weren't too tired afterwards either. Of course, we had to relax on the couch and watch football and basketball though. We switched our Sat and Sun workouts because Megan could only bike on Sunday morning, so we met at Sneakers at the beach for a thirty mile ride to Mickler's Landing and past. Tim, Michael, and Emily also showed up so that was fun to chat with them as we were biking! We averaged 16.7 mph and had fun while doing it and walked on the beach afterwards for a little bit!

Monday night, our schedule said 4 mile run and 1500 meter swim. We totally intended on doing that until I realized I might have a UTI. I was in denial, so we went ahead and ran 3.5 miles before I was in more pain, and then headed to urgent care to get rid of this with antibiotics. I wasn't feeling too good after waiting for almost 2 hours. Needless to say, we didn't get the swim in last night. Dustin made me a really good salmon/rice dinner that made me feel better. We watched the KU/Mizzou game and I feel asleep. Still today, I feel really drained, but better. We got up this morning and did a 7 mile run in 59 minutes down Girvin and then down Kernan, so I must have been feeling better, but tonight, I'm drained again! Dustin's in class right now, and I went to a Team in Training meeting and spoke about the cause of raising funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's such a great cause; we were gonna take a season off, but I don't know if we can, cause it's such a good cause and good people! We'll see; we are pretty good at multitasking!

We need to try to get in a 10 mile bike and a 1500 swim to catch up, but the weather is supposed to get bad in the next few days. It was 80 today, so I say "bad" in relative terms; not anything compared to the ice/snow/sleet/cold that the midwest and all our families are dealing with right now. Glad I'm in Florida when I see the pics of all that on the news.

2007-01-10T19:24:00.001-05:00

Yesterday morning, we got up just before 7 to run. It was pretty cold for Florida, 41 degrees, and we are wimps, so we ran over to our community gym and ran on the treadmill for 5.5 miles. That was boring, but we watched the morning show and ran for about 50 minutes, about a 9 minute mile with no incline. We should start adding inclines every now and then if we are gonna run more on the treadmill, but I really don't prefer to. I also did abs and low back. Then I went to work and Dustin went to school. When I got home about 4:30, Dustin quickly fixed Bertoli pasta for dinner and then he went to his night class and I went to a Yoga class. I would really like to incorporate Yoga and/or Pilates into our training for flexibility. Many training experts for Ironman training say that is a good idea. By the way, we are following a training plan that one of the coaches for the San Diego Triathlon club formed. Kendra used this last year and then she tweeked it a bit and shared it with us! Thanks Kendra! So far, we have pretty much done exactly what the schedule has called for. We have it and other inspiring things on a new bulletin board in our laundry room and check off our training after it's done. Now, tonight we were supposed to run 6.5 miles but neither of us really wanted to. Dustin had a lot of homework and his achilles wasn't feeling great and didn't want to overdo it. Somehow, despite his valid excuses, I got my running clothes on and ran around our neighborhood circle 9 times plus some (.7mile circle) in 56 minutes. It was pretty cold and windy, but I couldn't take another treadmill run. I would wave to Dustin as I passed our window while he was in the office working diligently on his homework. I didn't have stomach cramps, but had to use the bathroom midway through! Good thing I was running right by our house 9 times! Now, we will be watching the KU game in a little bit and relaxing. Tomorrow, we have another swim day and may or may not do the spin class, depending on time.

2007-01-10T19:24:00.000-05:00

2007-01-08T22:50:00.000-05:00

Tonight, we went to the Yates Y to swim again. This time, 1550 meters in the pool, pretty much just a constant swim, with a few laps concentrating on arms, using a flotation device between our legs that prevents them from kicking so you work on your arms more. Rebecca (a new friend we met in spin class) also was there and gave us some helpful pointers. Now, we are watching the Gator game and getting some stuff done. We will run tomorrow morning.

2007-01-07T17:48:00.000-05:00

Friday was our rest day and we enjoyed it. Dustin made me a spaghetti dinner with vodka sauce! Yum! Saturday morning, we woke up at 5:45 AM to meet up with our "old group". Harold organized it and it was Toni, Chris, Rebecca, Cyndie, Kathryn, Joe, and our new running friend, Lauren too! It was good to see everyone! We were supposed to bike and then run, but we sacrificed for company of our running friends. We ran 4 miles (42:31-definitely conversation pace), (others ran 6) and then we jumped on the bike for 20 miles. (Lauren immediately went to a spinning class with her DAD, good job guys!) We biked down to Mandarin Road and then back onto San Jose for awhile. It is a pretty flat course, but had more ups and downs than I anticipated. I wasn't having the best day when biking; my feet were hurting and I was just tired. (During the run, I felt good). I took a gu and felt a little bit more energy. It took us 1 hour, 14 minutes for our 20 miles and averaged 16.3 mph. That's really not that fast for how tired our legs were, so we really hope to get faster througout the season. Then I ran for 15 minutes, 1.7 miles, at a 9 minute mile pace (Dustin only ran about 6 minutes before his achilles started to bother him). We've been good about eating peanuts right after our workouts to get protein to make sure our muscles rebuild quicker and I think it's working! Later that day, we are sorry to say we watched the Chiefs lose over at Matt and Shannon's. Besides the loss, it was fun. We just love Matt and Shannon and hope that they will bike with us sometimes this season!
They did the Disney olympic distance tri in the past, so we know they can do it!

This morning, Sunday, we slept in a little til almost 9 and then went for a 13 mile bike (46 minutes at a 16.7 mph average) on Wonderwood expressway with a tailwind on the way down, and a headwind on the way back. I am horrible at standing up on the bike when going up hills; hopefully something I will also get better at. Then, we ran at Ed Austin Park on the trails (Dustin 16 minutes, me 31 minutes). It was an okay run, averaged 9:15 mile with stomach cramps and it was hot (almost 80 degrees in January!). When we came home, we went to the pool and laid out for awhile. It was actually hot. Then, we got the guts enough to hop in the pool. I have never swam in water so cold. Dustin estimates that it was 55-60 degrees (and we know he's never wrong). We only swam for about 10 minutes, but we figured it was good for us to reduce inflammation in our muscles. I actually got sunburned too! We are also excited that (Dustin's brother) Travis, Robin, and Kiona are finally making plans to come visit in April! Now, we are watching the KU basketball game, drinking some wine, and getting ready to go to Amber and Stuarts for some kabobs for dinner. Exercise, family, friends, sports, and food, that's pretty much all we live for! And, because of all those things, we had a wonderful day.

2007-01-04T22:40:00.000-05:00

Tonight, we went to the Yates YMCA again for a spin class at 5:30 with Bob who we liked a lot. I have been to many different classes with different instructors and his was the best. We sweat a hell of a lot for an hour and then ran down to the pool. We were supposed to be meeting this "masters swim team" for a guided workout, but no one showed, so we did our own 1200 yard workout of ten 50's with every other one fast or easy. Then we did a 300 fast, a 200 easy, and then a 100 fast, with a 100 cool down. I think we will probably mix it up like that and do a long swim one night like we did on Tuesday, and then a workout similar to that on Thursday or whatever nights we end up swimming for sure. Tomorrow is our rest day, and I'm gonna love it. I'm not really that sore, just tired and ready for rest and this is only the first week! Yikes!

2007-01-03T22:53:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile and I won't bore you with too much catching up. We started our official Ironman training plan yesterday! When I got home from work, we rushed off to try to get in a 15 mile bike ride, but only got in 11 miles on a hilly and WINDY Wonderwood expressway in 43 minutes (it gets dark so early!). This was my first ride on my new bike. Because of the wind, I couldn't get a real feel for it, but I think I'm gonna love my aero bars (where I can put my forearms down instead of putting all the weight through my hands, which get really sore very easily). I also got new shoes which are TONS better; my old ones were too big and my feet moved around too much, making me inefficient in my pedal stroke! Later at 8:30 PM, we swam at the Yates YMCA pool 1200 meters (I swam it in 27:11 and Dustin swam it in 24:58). That was the longest swim we had done in awhile, and we both did well and felt pretty good afterwards.

Today, after I saw a couple patients, we drove to Melbourne, FL to meet Maureen, Shannon, Erin, and Amy (on vacation from St. Louis) for lunch at the beach and then for some beach games. It was fun to hang out with them in Florida! Then, we drove the 2.5 hours back and somehow motivated ourselves to workout when we got back at 8 PM. Because of Dustin's sore achilles, he wanted to just run on the treadmills at our neighborhood gym, so that if he needed to stop, he could easily and then I could keep going. This worked since he did 2 miles and then started feeling it and then he lifted arm weights while I finished my 5 mile (no hill) run in 46:11. We then did abs and low back and then came back and ate leftovers! Ah, what a day/night! Now, I'm sitting here watching LSU and Notre Dame, glad that I finally started writing in this again.

Tomorrow, our plan is to meet with the "Masters Swim Team" at the YMCA to get some more swimming in. We might do a spinning class before that if I get done with work in time.

2006-12-11T22:37:00.000-05:00

Without even doing any serious training yet, we sure have invested a lot of time on Ironman prep. Despite going to my work holiday party, running four miles and doing a lower body workout, we pretty much spent this past weekend going to 7 different bike shops in the area comparing bikes and prices. We also have been watching the recordings of all the Ironman races that happened earlier in the year. We are a bit motivated; we want to do the race tomorrow! Of course, we would probably die! We went for a short ride tonight after work, 15 miles on Wonderwood bridges (two big hills with other rolling hills). We were going 32 mph at one point down a hill and a heck of a lot slower going up.

One of the stories on Hawaii Ironman was about John Blaze who has ALS. That was truly a sad story. He barely completed the Ironman last year, and this year, he is already in a wheelchair, unable to walk. It is an even more progressive disease than I realized, and another reason to "seize the day"

2006-12-05T22:12:00.000-05:00

We thought we were sitting down to just relax and watch some college basketball. Boy, were we wrong! We were watching the tournament to benefit the Jimmy V foundation for cancer research. They showed his speech at the ESPY's in 1993 which I have never seen before. With all the involvement that we have had with Team in Training, and all the inspirational speeches from those who were affected by cancer, it just seems that now, this powerful speech meant too much to us now as we have a close friend who just lost her father to lung cancer. Jimmy V said a few things that I will restate. He said, in order to live a complete life, you should laugh, think, and show emotion every day. He said that cancer could not ever touch his heart, his sole, or his mind. And he said, "Don't give up, don't ever give up!" WOW!

2006-12-05T00:04:00.000-05:00

Another productive day; is it weird that I base my happiness on productivity? After the Sunday that I spent on the couch all day, I felt guilty, sluggish, unhappy. After today, which really was just a busy patient day, with paperwork, figuring out some more business stuff, lifting weights, finally going through mail, watching the KU basketball game, catching up on email, I feel relieved, productive, happy, and ready to go to bed and have some pleasant dreams! Good night!

2006-12-02T15:03:00.000-05:00

Self discipline, how does it work? Can you be taught self discipline? Is it an inherited trait? I had a lot of time to think about this and other in depth things as I biked 33 miles in the rain by myself most of the time. Dustin and Dave were running 20 miles in prep for the Jax marathon, and I definitely didn't want to run anywhere close to that mileage, but wanted to get a good workout in. I placed gatorade, water, and gus for the boys. Dave completed his longest run ever and I completed my longest ride ever. Dustin's achilles tendon was bothering him, so he "only" ran 18, but did well despite the pain. So, I hadn't been biking for awhile, but that was pretty hard, and we have to bike 79 more miles for the race in September. Pretty crazy! I did want to run a little after the bike, but I only ran 1.5 miles because my feet were cramping up so badly because they were wet and cold. (Although not as cold as it would have been biking in Kansas or Missouri after the awful snow/ice storms they had recently. My parents still don't have electricity, but I know they are okay, because they turned the generator on long enough to email.)

Tonight, we are going to a fundraiser for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society at Heather's. It should be a lot of fun, so we need to get some rest before the party.

2006-11-28T18:16:00.000-05:00

Well, obviously, haven't been updating this too often, but we've been busy. We hosted our first Thanksgiving at our house this year. Walt and Judy flew in from Corpus Christi, Texas. We waited for Amber and Stuart to get back from their honeymoon, so we had it on Sat. instead of Thursday. Lisa and Dennis came too, so we had a good, fun crowd. The food was great, the people were great and the entertainment was great (Catch Phrase and then Kansas University beating Florida in basketball)! We also took Walt and Judy on our boat downtown and ate at River City Brewing Company, went to Huguenot State Park and drove on the beach there, and went to the always entertatining and unique Clark's Fish Camp. Another huge happening they were able to witness was the picking of our first orange from our orange tree. We had a ceremonial sharing of the orange at Thanksgiving dinner. We had a fun time and were glad they visited.

Dustin also ran a half marathon when they were here on Thanksgiving morning. He ran a fast 1 hour, 36 minute half marathon (his PR-personal record). I don't think I ever mentioned his marathon time of 3:50:11 in DC (probably because I was jealous I never ran a sub 4 hour marathon). He is getting a little too fast for me, but I guess I'm used to him surpassing me in sports now. I still don't handle it very well, because I am very competitive, but I've somewhat accepted it now. Even though I don't beat his times, I've gotten more medals in triathlons than him because I place in my age group for females. That's what I have to tell myself to make me feel better when he crushed my times. We ran a Turkey Trot 5k on Nov. 18th and he came in first in his age group (20-29) for males, and I actually came in 1st out of all females in the race, so that was awesome. I got a trophy and he got a medal and we were pretty excited that we could compete in short races even though we've been training for more endurance.

We've been decorating for Christmas and I am now working on sending out a holiday greeting. It gets so hectic with the holidays, I figured I better do it now. It's hard to get in the holiday spirit with 80 degree temps. I was outside putting bows on the house today with flip flops, shorts, and a sleeveless shirt. I have to blare the Christmas music and make chocolate chip cookies to stay in the Christmas spirit. We are planning to leave for KC on the 20th and then fly to STL on the 24th and spend a few days there. Then, my parents are driving us back to Jacksonville! I know, kinda crazy; long story, but screw-ups with our plane tickets and pricing, plus my parents wanted to see our house decorated for Christmas. They will be here for New Years Eve and we are hosting a party again this year, so that should be fun. I really think the holidays are all about being with family and close friends and showing them how much they mean to you.

Another thing we have been thinking a lot about is our friend's dad who was diagnosed with lung cancer three weeks ago. Before that, he was a perfectly healthy 60 year old trying to help his wife recover from breast cancer. He came down with a cold, then went into the hospital, then the ICU, then passed away (way too quickly) this Saturday. We can't stop thinking about this and why something like this would happen to a great guy like this. We were lucky enough to meet him at Easter and he was just so full of life! It's hard to believe. I just hope that we can be there for her and her family. It's so hard to lose loved ones near the holidays especially. It just makes you think about how lucky you are to be on this earth every single day. I know I am not taking for granted my health or anyone else's, and I will always live life to the fullest!

2006-11-11T23:05:00.000-05:00

So, already, I'm not keeping up with this the way I wanted to. To summarize the last few days, I went to a Yoga class on Tuesday, we played tennis on Wed in San Marco with Tony, ran 4 miles on Thursday near our house and then lifted weights at our clubhouse (still sore), and Friday, we just walked. Saturday, I had a conference in Orlando about our business we are starting (exciting!) so I was gone from 6-6, so I didn't do any exercising today. However, Dustin ran over 9 miles this morning near our house to prepare for his upcoming marathon.

2006-11-07T14:13:00.000-05:00

So, I am brand new at this blogging thing, but have always had a journal that I write in every once in awhile. I thought I could keep this up to date more than my journal on real paper. Plus, my husband, Dustin and I are beginning our training for the Ironman Wisconsin, so it's also my log of our training to show how crazy this endeavor is. The "race" is September 9th of 2007 and it will be a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run. We are doing a half (half the distance) in May in Orlando. We just went to Panama City to watch our first Ironman, and boy, was it motivating! We just want to do it now, not have to wait 10 months, but we do need some time to work up to those distances! Of course, Dustin just completed the Marine Corps Marathon in DC and he's doing another marathon in Jacksonville on Dec 17th, so he's got his miles up for the marathon portion. After last year's Nike Marathon, I decided I wasn't doing any more for awhile (possibly never because of my knees), but I guess I have to do one at the end of the Ironman! How crazy is that??

As far as our training so far..........after watching the Ironman in Panama City, we woke up that next morning in our hotel and decided we needed to run/swim. We went for a five mile run and then tested the ocean water-it was a bit too cold, so we just swam for 15 minutes in the pool before hitting the road to go back to Jacksonville. We had to stop in Tallahassee and watch the Rams/Chiefs game (booooo, Dustin's Chief's beat us!). We will definately need to get a lot of swimming training in because the swim cut off time is 2 hours and 20 minutes; if you get out of the water after that time, they will not let you continue with the bike/run (we watched five people not make it in Panama City). It starts at 7 AM and you have to be finished by midnight to get a medal and be able to call yourself an Ironman. Some people come in with just minutes to spare and others don't make it. Hopefully that won't be us.

Yesterday, Dustin and I went to an hour long spin class which really made us sweat and then swam 600 meters in the pool. We are awaiting Kendra's training schedule that she is sharing with us for the half and the full. We will officially start training after Christmas, so I hope to get in some yoga/pilates classes, and a lot of tennis before then, so we won't get burnt out on just swimming/biking/running! Although, I will say that triathloning is so much more fun than marathoning in my opinion and you don't get as sore because you are working different muscles.

I thank Team in Training for introducing me to marathons and now triathlons. And I thank (well, we'll see how it goes) Kendra and Dustin for talking me into doing this Ironman. This is Dustin's last chance for awhile to train for something like this before he heads back out to sea (May of 2008) where he won't know his schedule or have enough time to put in the countless amount of training hours that it will take to complete an Ironman. Good luck to us!