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July 21, 2006

Can Anyone Tell Me...

...why lemon-lime Gatorade is so tasty when you buy it as a pre-mixed ready-to-drink beverage, yet so awful when you buy it as a powder and mix it yourself?

The orange Gatorade powder doesn't have this problem, so what's up, lemon-lime?

Posted by Dawn at 08:10 PM | Comments (3)

Tour de Wow

Anyone out there watching the Tour de France coverage? Did you see yesterday's stage? Was that not the most amazing thing ever?

I've heard a few people say that they weren't too into following the Tour this year since most of the big names were out. Personally, that made it all the more interesting to me - this is only the second year I've really paid attention to it, and with no big names, it could be anybody's race. It would be an entirely different beast from last year.

If you haven't seen yesterday's stage yet, watch it. Take the 4 hours to watch it on your TiVo. Find highlights online. See if your neighbor taped it. Heck, if you ask nicely, I'll even send you a tape of it. To avoid spoilers for those of you that haven't watched it yet but plan to (do it now! What are you waiting for!), I'll put my full thoughts in the extended entry.

Now go! Watch it! And the rest of the race, too, while you're at it. It's just starting to get good. Some background: Going into Wednesday's stage, Floyd Landis was in the lead by a couple of minutes. Then, on the last climb of the day, he crashed and burned. Hard. He looked awful - he just had that glazed dead look on his face that people get when they just hit the wall. By the time the day was over, he was 8 minutes behind the overall lead. Out of the top 10.

I felt for the guy. We all know what it feels like to hit the wall like that in a training run. We all know what it feels like to do it in a race. But to do it in the biggest race of your life, in front of a worldwide audience? Duuuuude. I can't even imagine how he must have felt.

Wednesday morning, I saw a note from someone telling me to be sure and watch today's stage, because something amazing was underway. For that reason, I fired up the TiVo once I was home and ready to settle in - even though it was already 9 p.m. I was going to be up way, way past my bedtime. It was totally worth it.

By the time OLN jumped in with their live coverage, Landis had already gotten ahead of the main group, and was slowly making his way to the front of the race. I watched. I was riveted. I sat there for 4 hours willing him to hang on to that lead, to not lose it, to not crash like he'd done the day before. I crossed my fingers and held my breath and begged the cycling gods to give him one good day.

It was absolutely amazing. By the end of the day, he was back up in the top 3, and only 30 seconds out of the lead. 30 seconds. He could still totally win this thing.

To me, that's a huge part of what being an athlete is all about. Digging in and pulling out the performance of your life, even if everyone thinks you're toast. Maybe it's coming back from behind to win a big race, or maybe it's just dragging your aching self through the last 10K of a marathon when all you want to do is lie down on the side of the road. It's all the same. It's all inspiring, and it's all why we keep chugging on through the bad days - because when those amazing days happen, there's nothing in the world like it.

Seriously, if you haven't seen it yet, do it. That offer to send tapes out is 100% valid - just leave a comment and we'll work something out.

I can't wait to see how this race shakes out - it's still wide open, and anything could happen.

Posted by Dawn at 10:30 AM | Comments (4)

July 18, 2006

I'm Not Dead Yet!

I knew in the back of my mind that I'd been sort of neglecting this blog recently - work has been crazy busy, and I've been lucky if I've been able to keep up with my running, never mind blogging about it. However, I didn't realize just how bad it got until jeff IMed me this morning to make sure I was still breathing.

Oops. Work is still busy, but at least the general stress level has come down a bit. This does two things: firstly, it makes me a far more pleasant person to be around and secondly, it frees up some valuable mental energy and motivation to tend to my poor nelected blog. Hello, blog. I missed you! I did! It was The Evil Man who was keeping me from you lo these many days...

Anyhow, while I may still be alive and kicking, I cannot say the same for my beloved Forerunner. I turned it on and put it on the windowsill while I got ready for my 12-miler on Saturday morning. Usually by the time I'm ready to leave, its found a satellite signal. Saturday, however, it was asking me if it was indoors or not, since it was having trouble. Hmmm. I turned it off, then back on again once I got outside. Nothing. Nada. After a few minutes, it asked if it was still indoors. Grrrr. I went through the motions of confirming it wasn't indoors, I hadn't moved hundreds of miles since I last used it, and yes, today was the 15th of July. I figured I'd just start my run and it could pick up the signal later - I knew where my turnaround point was from previous runs, so at least I'd have an accurate time total.

A little over a mile from my apartment, it finally found a satellite signal and then commenced to do something best described as "freaking out." It logged an autolap (set to 1 mile) every 5 seconds. Umm... not quite. I stopped, turned it off and back on again. It picked up the signal OK, I started it and resumed running, and everything seemed to be OK. When I got to the lake (about a mile later), I looked down and saw that the display was totally blank. Huh? I tried turning it back on. Or off and on. Something. Anything. It seemed I had two display options: upside down and backwards, or completely blank. Eventually I just gave up - I knew where my turnaround point was and I had a vague idea of what time I left my house so I'd just finish the run and guesstimate the time. It'll be close enough.

Based on the beeps and boops coming from the 201, it sounded like that it was still functioning fine, although the display was dead. Hmmm. When I got home, I stopped the watch (I'd left it running) but left it turned on. My plan was to run the battery down, recharge it, and then see what happened. Sunday morning, I plugged it into the charger. When I checked on it again Sunday evening, the display was still out - no "Battery Charging Complete" message floating around as usual. I didn't even try to turn it on, but instead pronounced it dead.

I'm a little bummed out about it - in addition to feeling sort of lost without it (I'm pretty familiar with how far the landmarks on my routes are from my house, but it's just not the same!), I kind of miss it. My parents got the 201 for me almost 2 years ago, when I was training for the 2005 Disney half. That was the race that started this whole crazy running thing - I was undertrained going into it, it was a horrible, awful, painful thing, and I came out of it saying, "If I can be undertrained and finish a half, I bet I could totally do a full if I actually trained for it..." A small thought, simple enough, that somehow changed my entire life. My 201 has seen me go from someone who could barely string 2 or 3 miles together without a walk break into someone who can go out and knock out 5 or 10 miles without even thinking about it. We have a history, the 201 and I, and I'm sad to see it go.

Since the 201's way out of warranty, I'd have to pay Garmin to fix it. Ten minutes of online research showed me that for just $100 more than it would cost to fix the 201, I could buy a new 301. To be honest, I've been wanting a 301 for kind of a while now, but couldn't justify the purchase while I still had a perfectly good 201. Maybe this is the universe's way of telling me it's time to move on. The 201 was there for the beginning, to get me started, and now it's time for the next step. Really, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited about the prospect of a new gadget.

Until then, though, I'll be rocking it old-school - just me, a rough guess as to where my turnaround point is, and a plain old-fashioned watch to track my time. It's something that my mildly obsessive self finds a little unnerving (was it 5 miles? Or 5.25? Or 4.75? I need to know!), but I think it'll be good for me.

Posted by Dawn at 12:22 PM | Comments (4)

July 04, 2006

Return to the Pool

Yesterday was my return to the pool. I haven't been swimming in months - it's been so long that I have absolutely no idea when the last time I went swimming actually was, but according to my log it was on February 22. Definitely a long, long time. The first few laps were awful, and I had a moment of panic when I thought I'd lost all of the swimming fitness I'd developed over the winter. Then I realized that I'd apparently forgotten all of the technique I'd learned in those months, and I had defaulted to my old, inefficient, sloppy way of swimming.

I stopped and thought carefully about what I was doing. First, I starting holding my breath until just before I took more air in, rather than blowing it all out right away. Then, I slowed down. Then, I focused on my body position and rolling back and forth like I'd spent so many laps doing back in February. The less I worried about getting from one end of the pool to the other, the faster I got there. The less I thought about swimming as a means of locomotion and the more I thought about it as a simple series of body positions, the easier it got.

I only had a half hour, but I managed to get in a full 900 meters. I tried "sprinting" a couple of laps - seeing if I could go all out and keep my better form and habits at the same time. Surprisingly, I think I did OK.

Today had an easy 5-7 miles on the schedule. I set out, and my first thought was, "Damn, my legs are dead! I must have run that 5K hard if it took this much out of them." It didn't take me long to realize that while the 5K was probably a little hard on them, it was more likely the combination of the 5K on Sunday and the 16 miles I put in on the bike on Saturday. I wasn't sure how I felt about going the whole 7 miles, but I decided to wait and see how I felt at the 2.5 mile mark. If my legs were still feeling sluggish, I'd turn around and call it a day at 5. If not, I'd go further.

I wound up feeling just fine at 2.5, and at 3, and didn't turn around until the 3.5 mile mark - I was feeling OK, and going for the full 7. Unfortunately, around the 5.5 mile mark, I started feeling it in my butt and was wishing I'd turned around earlier than I did. Instead, I had to settle for taking it easy and a promise to do lots of stretching when I got back home. There will probably be some more stretching before I turn in for the evening, and hopefully there won't be too much lingering soreness by the time speedwork rolls around tomorrow night.

Posted by Dawn at 07:26 PM | Comments (2)

July 02, 2006

Race to Taste 5K

This morning was the Race to the Taste 5K - I'd been looking forward to this for a few weeks, as I was pretty confident that I'd do well. I was shooting for something right around 28 minutes, which would give me a new PR. It was going to be good.

Then last week happened. I spent the entire week overtired and overstressed. I got 2 out of 4 workouts in - and the two workouts I missed were my speed workouts. I haven't done any sort of real speedwork since the marathon, so I was excited about getting back to the track this week. Except work had other plans for me, keeping me late on Wednesday. I had a stride workout on the schedule for Friday, but by the time Friday rolled around, I was too fried to even think about running. Oh well. I gave some vague thought to trying to get in a semi-long run on Saturday, but after spending the morning running errands around town on the bike, I just wasn't up to it. I was tired and dehydrated, and it was just too damn hot. Whatever.

Then I didn't sleep well Saturday night. I don't know what the problem was, other than the fact that I never sleep well the night before a race, regardless of how big or small it is. So, instead, I read. I put away some laundry. I did the dishes. I think more cleaning gets done in my apartment on the eve of a race than any other time. Finally, I managed to get a few hours of sleep in before the alarm went off.

When I left my apartment, the weather reminded me of Madison, except with more cloud cover. I took a moment to be thankful that it was cloudy, and that I was only running a 5K today. I arrived at the race right on time, about an hour before the start. I picked up my chip, checked my gear, and walked around for a bit before setting off on an easy 25-minute jog around the park. I threw in a few strides to get the legs moving. I made it back to the start area about 15 minutes before Go Time.

I lined up about 1/3 of the way from the front - a place I thought was a bit too far forward, until the gun went off and I was stuck in what felt like a slow, slow crowd. The plan was to run just under a 9:00 pace for the first two miles, then hit the last mile hard. I felt like I was going so much slower, that I spent too much time trying to get around people, especially considering how slippery the road was in spots from the pre-race rainfall. However, I hit mile 1 at 8:54 - right on time.

I felt like I slowed a bit during the second mile - I was definitely feeling the 16 miles of biking I'd done the day before in my quads, and I was getting tired fast. When I hit the 2nd mile at 8:38, I understood why. Oops. A little too fast, especially considering we were now running right into the wind.

I tried to slow it down, to lock in a pace, but I just couldn't. Finally, I stopped to walk for a bit. I didn't want to, but I had to catch my breath and "reset" my internal pacer. I walked for a bit, then started jogging again for the last 3/4 mile or so. At that point, I gave up on trying to get a PR, and decided to settle for finishing strong. I'd cranked the speed up too far too soon, and figured I'd just file this race away under "educational experience."

Happily, the walk break did exactly what I was hoping it would. I was cruising along, feeling better, but having no idea how fast I was going. I thought I'd slowed down, because I felt better. When we made the last turn back onto Columbus with a half-mile or so to go, I picked up the pace a little bit - I was going to give the end of this race everything I had. When I hit the last turn at the 3 mile marker, the clock said 27:30. My PR was 28:32. If I could cover the last .1 mile in under a minute, I could still PR.

I couldn't believe it! I rounded the corner and turned on the sprint, only to find that it had rained again and the road was slick. OK. Stay off the paint, find a straight line to the finish and GO GO GO. I was hurting. I was feeling like crap. I was going to hang on and push it in to the finish as fast as I possibly could....

I crossed the line right around 28:15, and headed over to the chip retrieval station, where I played the superfun game of "Don't Barf on the Volunteers." I kept moving. I kept breathing. I grabbed a Gatorade and a banana, but passed on the bagel (a move I'd regret in about an hour when my appetite returned). Then, as I was exiting the finish chute, I saw what must have been a gift from heaven - a guy passing out freeze pops. Big, giant tubes of frozen sugar water. Genius! I thanked the guy profusely, only to realize that I had no way to open the darn thing. No matter! I had teeth, and I was going to use them. I was determined to get into that freeze pop, and nothing - not even vacuum-sealed plastic - was going to stop me. Ahhhh. Tasty. Lovely.

I spent the next 15 minutes or so walking and jogging back along the course, half looking for a friend of mine and half making a feeble attempt at cooling down. My coach had recommended a 1-2 mile jog as a cool-down post-race, and while I was all over that plan in theory, in practice? My legs were just done. I did jog more than I walked of the mile or so that I covered before I found my people, so I called it good.

I grabbed my stuff from the gear check, and we watched the kids races to kill time before the raffle. I'd heard that the prizes were worth sticking around for, and I couldn't use my free Taste tickets until it opened at 11, so what the heck. The prizes were indeed fantastic, although I didn't win any. At least I got to spend some quality time with Running Jayhawk, Out of Shape Guy, and Frank (Go CRU!).

Before the raffle started, I was able to get over to sneak a peak at the official results (yay technology!). My official chip time was 27:44, which was a 47 second PR, not to mention good enough for 685th place out of 1500 runners/walkers, and 62nd place out of 215 in my age group. Definitely a good end to a less-than-stellar week.

Posted by Dawn at 07:40 PM | Comments (4)