(Not) Just Like the First Time: The Ironman Lake Placid Bike Course

As we drove north to Lake Placid last weekend, and the one-dimensional terrain of southern New Jersey gave way to the peaks of the Adirondacks, I could feel the flapping of those butterfly wings in my belly. It was a mixture of both excitement and anxiety as we returned to what I consider to be my “home” Ironman course. We were heading to Lake Placid for a long training weekend. John would be running Mt. Marcy in preparation for the VT100 on July 20. I would be joining the Fireman Ironman training camp for a swim-bike-run of the course in anticipation …

Simple But Not Easy: 2013 Bassman Triathlon Race Report

My race strategy for the 2013 Bassman Triathlon (half distance) was pretty simple really:  Swim hard. Bike hard. Run hard. Simple, but not easy. My coach Vince emailed me the day before the race, “Tear it up tomorrow!!  Stay warm.  Swim hard. Be strong on the bike and then try to hang on during the run… :).” Gone were the carefully planned watts targets, the heart rate zones of previous races. While I would be using my fancy gadgets, watts or heart rate would not be the primary focus. My racing orders were to go as hard as I could. …

Conquering Pain: Accept it. Don’t Ignore it.

When John was training for Ironman Cozumel, where he went on to qualify for Kona, he had a piece of paper that read: Pain cannot be ignored: It has to be conquered, and when it inevitably returns, it has to be conquered again. Find what you have and handle it.  Physical Mental Emotional Spiritual Now, I have this same piece of paper, hanging from a clip in front of my desk. It is a reminder of what is different about my training this year. It is a reminder that I have to learn how to conquer pain. Again. And again. …

Road Noise Vest Passes the 100 Mile Test

[Note: Road Noise provided  John and I with road noise vests for our review. We agreed to review the vests and provide our honest assessment.] “So, how did you like the Road Noise vest during the race?” I asked John the morning he ran 100 miles at the NJ Ultra Festival. “It’s the sh!t.” He replied. If you’ve never heard of the Road Noise vest, then I am excited to be the one to introduce you to this invention which solves problems for endurance athletes of all type–runners and cyclists in particular. In sum: Road Noise is a headphone-free way to …

When Ironman Becomes The New Normal

After a few years of racing Ironman, John and I have got a solid rhythm. We have a routine that works for pre-, during- and post-race. I’m not saying that Ironman has gotten boring–because for me it definitely hasn’t–but I will say that much of the mystery and uncertainty has been revealed. The unexpected still happens, but in general, we know how the system works. Nutrition, gear, spectating – we got our routines and they work. So what do you do to shake things up? Well, if you are my crazy husband, you sign up for a 100 mile ultrarun. …

Suffer Today, Win Tomorrow: 20 Weeks to Ironman Lake Placid

Twenty weeks, five months, less than half of a year. That’s how much training time I have from now until my third go round with Ironman Lake Placid. (Previous IMLP race reports here: 2010, 2011.) With some experience, my understanding of what “5 months of training” means has changed considerably. For my first Ironman, 20 weeks to go was filled with questions such as: Will I finish? Will I hear Mike Reilly call my name as I cross the finish line? How difficult will it be to pee during the race? What goes on in the changing tent? Is it …

A race for you, a race for me: The two-athlete household

“What are you doing today?” John asks me each morning. Now, in the average household, when one partner asks the other what she is doing, this typically results in a response about the totality of the day’s scheduled events. In the two-athlete household, this question only means one thing: What’s your workout? There are other idiosyncrasies to the two-athlete household. The laundry. Oh. Em. Gee. The laundry. Even though there are only two of us, we manage to produce a Brady Bunch sized volume of laundry.  This is complicated by the fact that there is a forcefield surrounding the laundry that makes …

The Breath

Breathing. A simple, taken-for-granted action of the body that drives everything we do. We will continue to breath (hopefully!) whether we think about it or not. But, when we breath with intention, we can get so much more from our breath. My yoga instructor begins and ends her classes with a series of breathing exercises, which she refers to in Sanskrit as pranayama. These exercises teach us how to extend and control our breath, for if we control our breath (or our life force), we can better manage our movements. Or perhaps, more precisely, we can be more in tune with …

The Anti-Skiing Ski Vacation

“So, you really aren’t going to ski?” John asked. We were packing for our weekend trip to his grandparents’ vacation home Vermont. “Nope. My body is a temple,” I replied. “I’ve got to respect the temple.” Ever since I started training for Ironman, I have come to see my body in a very different way, as something to build, to strengthen, to protect, and to respect. Sounds like some kind of temple to me. At almost 40 years old, I am the fittest I have ever been in my life. I have worked very hard to build my temple, and …

Making Dreams Real: Kona Report – part 2

This is the second part of my husband John’s experience at the Ironman World Championships in Kailua-Kona, on October 13, 2013. Part 1 can be found here.  Into T2, and it was time to flip the switch and go do what has always been my best event of the three. My target heart rate for the run was 145 beats per minute (bpm). At the first aid station, I was way through the ceiling at 165. On the bike I was able to offset the heat with the wind and by consuming over 12 water bottles. No, I’m not kidding. …