Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Waterfront coming up...

My goodness I have not blogged in forever. So I'll make my comeback on a day when I have so far not done a thing except stay up until 2:30 a.m. playing poker and then barely drag my butt out of bed for work. haha.

While I actually have gotten some pretty good workouts in past couple of weeks here and there, I am not getting too stressed out about much anything. The Chattanooga Waterfront Tri is Sunday. Olympic distance, and yes, it's gonna hurt like hell. And no, I'm not going to have a shot at placing in my age group...so we're going to TRI HARD and HAVE FUN! Here's how I look at it...I followed some pretty tough plans from Jan - May...improving my swim and getting ready for Memphis in May. And right around the corner is August. Which is when marathon training starts. Marathon...as in I must run a sub 4 this time kind of marathon. And immediately following that early December marathon (Hunstville or Memphis....still undecided) and a short recovery period, I am going to start training for the Gulf Coast Half Iron Tri in May. So even though we are right smack-dab in the middle of triathlon season, and I would have liked to have really rocked the Waterfront...I'm giving myself a bit of break right now. Because when August comes, and I post "Week 1, Day 1" of my newborn "yes baby, I can taste sub-4 Marathon Training Plan", there won't be room for any slack. No messing around. No staying up late. 16 to 18 weeks of focus on what it's going to take to cross the finish line after 26.2 miles and look down at my Garmin to see a big, fat "3:XX:XX" That's what I want. This is the year. There is nothing that conjures up motivation so much as previously coming up short of your goal. The taste of defeat. It lingers even when you cross other finish lines in victory.

I'm going to swim class tonight, finally. Yesterday I did a brick with Michele, and Don, Joe, Kelly and Holly joined us for the bike. Dude - it was a fast bike!! Don was back after crashing exactly a week ago on a seriously steep and curvy downhill on a 24 mile climbing route that I had picked out for a group of us to do. He banged up pretty good, but you can't keep a good man down. Although I hear from his wife that she's getting the raw end of that deal!!! During that ride, though, I have to mention that H climbed Lakeview!!! If you haven't ridden out in Normandy much I guess you don't have a clue what I a talking about, but it is a serious climb. And she didn't make it to the top the first time she tried about a month ago...but she got it this time. She was on top of the world!

In between all that J.T. and I took the boys camping for the week of July 4th. Good times. Catching fish, grilling out, riding bikes leisurely, jumping in the lake and swimming around...heck, even Mary Beth swam out to one of the buoys and back with me one day! Michele met out there me for a lake swim and a ride as well. The part I am most tickled about though is that Briar finally learned how to clip in and out of his clipless pedals on this trip. So we took a sweet little 6 mile mtb ride to celebrate. Oh, and speaking of my kids and bikes...gosh...Bo was really doing well riding his bike around without training wheels...and then his stupid chain came off going down hill towards the lake. Thus, his breaks didn't work (he's got the little Trek 16, it's got foot breaks). Meaning - I look up and he's riding a run-a-way bicycle screaming straight towards the lake!!!!! I'm screaming "FALL OVER!!!!" and he finally turns it over and takes the fall about 15 yards shy of water. Whew...never without adventure.





Note: No pics of the runaway bicycle. I didn't exactly take time to whip out the camera for that.

So like I said...I'm going to swim class tonight. Still uncertain about what tomorrow holds...but I promise I'll do something productive. Life is good. Soak it up.

6 comments:

Tri-Dummy said...

Alot to comment on here, Lana!

Have a good race at the olym. Push hard on the run and you COULD place!

Great pics!

Anonymous said...

Makes me tired just reading what you have planned for the next year. You'll do great.

Phil said...

I know you can get under 4; although I think you will need to start viewing the bike and swim as cross-training opportunities and focus more on your running. You've got the focus to complete the training, you've already got a solid aerobic base, now you just need to push up your LT a little and slowly edge up your mileage and you'll be seeing 3:4x:xx.

You can do it.

Brooke said...

Looks like a fun trip. I'm glad your back though.

Michele said...

Putting that schedule in black and white makes it so real.

We gotta pick our race and sign the dotted line soon.

Looking forward to this weekend. Save me a beer at the finish.

TriSonq said...

Gonna miss you guys in Chattanooga. Darn, I won't see your "game face"!?! Still here in sunny Destin.

I saw Michele's name for Cedars, You in?

You guys kick butt in Chatt!!