A story of a girl, some new boobs, and an ironman journey...all in one year: February 2015

Sunday, February 22, 2015

zone training and a book review...so...random

Hi friends!
So it's only been like 2 weeks since my last update...I'm getting better...slowly but surely. But truly in this season some days really just come down to...

Sooooo how was your Valentine's day? Hubs and I don't typically do Valentines Day so ours was blessedly low key after our whirlwind week the week prior coming back from vacation, going to Austin for my cousin's wedding, going to Dallas to celebrate my brother in law's engagement to his fabulous new fiancé (so.pumped.for.them!) and getting back to work and adding working out on top of all that.

After all our travel and work and such I was truly exhausted and it definitely reflected in my training. My heart rate was up and my times were down with major fatigue and just general weakness across the board. My coach definitely took note and gave me a "recovery" week two weeks ago. My reaction upon opening up my workout schedule for that week (keeping in mind "recovery" week is still like 12 hours of workouts)...

Then things have been ramping up for sure. I'm going to do a half ironman (The Tall Texan Tri) in the metropolis of Boerne, TX in 5 weeks as a "tune up" race so we are definitely on a 7 day training schedule now people! It's intense! Pretty much every day during the week is at least 2-3 hours with 4-6 hours on the weekend. I ended up pretty much riding solo this weekend since hubs was in Austin for a race and it was head and cross wind and rainy the whole.time. Dedication people. It's real. So is training hunger. I just want to eat all the things.

And I ordered by race kit from Baylor...yep I'm sporting the green and gold full force. I am so. excited. Tell me this isn't the coolest kit on the road....just try.

My coach also started my really doing heart rate zone training. This is a new thing for me and pretty much all I am getting out of it major'ly is 1) I am a lot slower when my heart rate has to stay super low for a super long time and 2) I really hope this gets me to the freaking finish line.

I'm also starting 5am workouts...ummm....ya...

And not to be shown up or anything - but my super amazing bike racer husband totally dominated and got 3rd place in his race in Pace Bend this weekend. He amazes me. Congrats hubs! So proud of you!

So let's get to this book review. Between everything I finally finished the Legend series. I posted a long time ago that I was reading it and I finally finished it. In short its a total young adult novel series in the post apocalyptic'ish. It's completely predictable and the characters are fairly developed but I was just not drawn in by the characters or their developments through the trilogy. It felt very "fluffed" up and overly extended and pretty much just kept reading it to finish what I started. That being said it was somewhat entertaining and a super easy read - I give it a 4/10. Decent beach read if you're into that kind of genre...and like 19. Or almost 30 and just looking for something easy and mindless to read...

On a second book review - my amazing Aunt Phylis (Phylis Caskey) wrote and has published her first book Skinny Dipping in Cane River. I just started reading my copy and am so excited to get a first glimpse into her introductory novel. It's available through amazon so be sure to pick up a copy too! Here's the link in case you need help :-)

http://www.amazon.com/Skinny-Dipping-River-Phylis-Caskey/dp/0692362711

Ok I think that's it - lets ramp this thing up! Have a great week everyone!

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

100 days...

So I suck at updating this...sorry guys. But just to update you...

100 days...for reals...100 days until I drag my hiney 140.6 miles around The Woodlands, Texas. It's real. I mean in the same time as it would take an unrelentless collections agent to call me about some unpaid bill - I'm doing the Ironman. Woah.

So since I am...shall way say less-than-consistent lately on updating this lovely little bloggy blog - here's the workout highlights.

- My coach changed for reasons outside of my control. So that's been a transition but a good one so far!

- workouts are 6-7 days/week for at least 1-2'ish hours/day during the week and typically 3-4'ish hours/day on the weekend.

- max ride distance has been 62 miles w/ a short run after; max run has been 9 miles with a swim afterwards. However - have been warned that up to this point workouts have been a cake walk and now that we are sub-100 - that everything really seems to ramp up! I'm ready (I think...gulp)

- workouts are some compilation of speed work, endurance work, strength circuits, bike/swim bricks, run/bike bricks, and run/swim bricks

- diet is going well and long workout nutrition is still being "tweaked" to keep me from retaining a lot of fluid/gaining major weight during my long workouts - so there's that.

In summation...

For reals - if you train for this - as you approach this mark and training continues to ramp up - be prepared. This becomes the thing at or very near the top of the daily priority list. For me - life is literally hubster/family>work>working out>fun times with friends>sleep. Sooo....ya...I'm sorry to all my family and friends. I am officially entering MIA land. See ya in May!

In other fun news - in between all the lift and workout craziness -I got to go to Baylor University (may awesome alma mater) to lecture to their graduate students. That was pretty awesomely awesome. I really went into it anticipating their response to be something like:

To inspire the next generation of speech pathologists to be all that they can be

But I'm pretty sure their impression was something more like

But all in all it really went well and I was very pleased and think the students got a lot out of it.

Then we went skiing this week (to add to the reasons I was MIA). Someone please just move me to the mountains. Now. For reals. We went to ski Park City and The Canyons, Utah and both resorts were amazing, the weather was lovely and I followed the best ski advice ever given.