ironman

When You Miss A Goal

/ Amanda / Leave a comment

Today is the day!

At approximately 8:20am the 25-29 women’s age group began the swim in Jordan Lake for Ironman Raleigh 70.3.

And I wasn’t there.

And it sucks.

It sucks because I set a goal for myself and didn’t reach it. It sucks because I spent months training for it. It sucks because I spent what little extra money I have on it. It sucks because I won’t get that awesome race high/bling/post race euphoria.

But it’s ok.

It’s ok because I chose grad school over this one race. It’s ok because I can enjoy my vacation without feeling exhausted. It’s ok because I’m not going to injure myself by racing hard.

But most importantly it’s ok because this was just one race. There are so many more races I can do that will fit my schedule better right now. So, for the time being, I am putting my long distance triathlon dreams on hold. I can’t spend 8 hrs on a bike every Saturday because I have to spend those 8 hrs rebuilding a 3D printer. I can however, work on a new 5k PR, training for the USA Nationals Half Marathon in November, and improving my olympic distance triathlon PR.

 

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Not to mention I got a brag-worthy shirt and awesome backpack out of it too.

Ice Hurdling

/ Amanda / Leave a comment

Hi everyone!

As of today, I have completed 1 week of training for Raleigh 70.3 (cheers). Here’s a summary of what I did and how it felt.

  • Time Training- 7:08
  • Miles Run – 14.1 mi
  • Miles Biked – 47.8 mi
  • Yards Swam(Swum?) – 3312 yds
  • Trees Hurdled – 3 (6 if you count out and back)
  • Curse Words Invented – approx. 2
  • Netflix watched while on the trainer – ummmm like 9 episodes or something idk
  • Bugs accidentally swallowed – 0!
  • Times I have had to stop in the middle of swimming a lap because my contacts decided that the back of my eyeball was an ideal location – 10

Now let’s break it down by day! This go around, I’m tracking everything using Training Peaks This training plan is based on workout time rather than workout distance. So rather than saying to bike 10 miles, I need to bike for 40 min. Green blocks are planned workouts I’ve completed. The red blocks are mad at me.

week 1

Can you read that?? Neither can I

Lemme break it down for you

Monday –  Rest Day!! WooHoo!! Unfortunately this was like the only decent day to actually work out this entire week….boo.

Tuesday – I did 40 min on the trainer and ended up finishing 9 miles. This was a Z2 workout (Zone 2 of heart rate) so it’s not supposed to be fast. Gotta build endurance and stamina first! I was supposed to swim as well, but this was the first day of snow and the pool was closed.

Wednesday – Long run day. I ran on the snow dammit. Not gonna let a little snow stop me after my run in with the Jesus Geese! Was scheduled for 1:10 of running and got 7.5 miles in during that time. For a long run in the snow, it wasn’t a bad pace 🙂

Thursday – snOMG. Power out. Stuck at home. Decided this would be a good test of my mental fortitude on the bike trainer since Netflix was not available. Was slated for a 1:00 recovery ride. Did about 13.4 miles and read a book in the dark for entertainment. Swimming was obviously out. Stupid roads.

Friday – Run and Swim! Although in hindsight, maybe it’s best to do the swim first. Not that I’d know from personal experience or anything 😉 For my 40 min run, I was able to squeeze in 4.5 miles and then I made a mad dash to the pool and did 2000 yds in 1 hr. Most exciting part of this was NEW RUNNING SHOES!

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Here’s a super blurry pic. Yes they are pink/yellow tie-die. Total love. ❤

Saturday – Brick day. Basically long bike immediately followed by a run. I did 25.3 mi on the trainer in 1:40 and then walked out to the melty ice/snow to go for a run in the balmy 25 degree (Farenheit) weather.  Considering the terrifying conditions (i.e. icy greenway and 3 trees that had fallen in my way) I managed to hurdle all the trees without falling on either the tree or the ice and did 2.1 miles in 19 min. It’s the little successes.

Sunday – ‘k well I was supposed to run, but I also had a swim lesson so I decided to skip the run and just swim. Same thing right? I did 1200 meters in about 40 min with a lot of coaching breaks.

Well that’s about it for training this week! I’ll be sure to update the Gear page with my swimming and biking things.

 

 

Off With a Fizzle

/ Amanda / Leave a comment

Ironman Raleigh 70.3 training started this week! So did winter! These two things do not go together! So instead of starting training off with a bang, it’s been more of a fizzle. Oh well.

Mondays are off days. So I took full advantage of that and lazed.

Tuesday….I woke up and went down to the trainer to get a 40 min ride in

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It was supposed to be in Zone 2 (heart rate) so I kept it pretty slow and did about 9 miles. When I finished, I walked up to take a shower and saw this!

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Surprise snow! A quick check of the weather app said that the snow would stop by 9am so I decided to head in to school with stuff packed for an afternoon swim. This was a mistake. The roads were worse than when it iced!

This time, I wasn’t the only crazy grad student who showed up to work, Shake and David did too 🙂

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Grad school is waaaay more fun with friends, btw.

Since it didn’t stop snowing…

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and the roads were a mess, the afternoon swim was canceled and I went home to spend the rest of the day with Lisa, Steve and Indy.

Wednesday…aka today…is long run day. Luckily the GIANT SNOWSTORM OF RALEIGH isn’t supposed to start until later tonight, so I did 7.5 miles in 1:07 (the schedule said to run for 1:10)

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The swim tomorrow will likely be canceled and I plan to spend the day in warm and pleasant ways. We shall see what happens!

Life as of Late

/ Amanda / 1 Comment

Hi friends! How is your Thursday morning going?

Posts have been a little sparse this week since grad school has amped up. Right now I’m frantically trying to finish up 2 journal papers. One is bad enough, but two on completely different subjects is a whole ‘nother ball game! One paper is on some silver nanowire research (can you spot the nano?) and the other is on some thermoelectric and heat sink research (not very nano, but will be in the future).

A huge misconception about research is that we spend all day in lab coats/gas masks plotting to take over the world (MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

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While this is a major bonus to research, we actually don’t spend as much time in the lab as you would think. I made this handy chart to show how a typical day breaks down…

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A good portion of time is spent writing, reading, drinking coffee, or doing all three simultaneously. Obviously the drinking coffee and actual research parts are all the fun. As is playing on the spinny chairs in the lab (wheeeeeeeeee!)

In other news, I’ve starting increasing the amount I work out because…..my training for Ironman Raleigh 70.3 starts in less than 2 weeks! -insert freaking out- Here’s a pic of me and my mom (HI MOM) from right before the race last year.

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It was an ok race. I finished in 6:47 which isn’t horrible for a first time, but I felt like I was capable of more. I made a few newbie mistakes which will probably be talked about later, and overall I felt like the course ‘beat’ me. SO I signed up again, found a training plan more suited to my totes cray schedule and am ready to take it on again!

Today is more writing, more research, swimming lessons, and a hockey game! Should be fun!

Have you ever had a race that ‘beat’ you?