road trip!

the kids (aka: our bikes) were so well behaved on this trip. the (beer) cooler got along real well with them too. about 6 weeks ago, we decided to throw caution to the wind and said, let's go to Georgia and do our favorite hell of the east ride called 6 Gap. we absolutely heart this 104 mile, 11,200+ feet of climbing ride and had not been there to do it since 2008. the weather can be a little tricky there since it is hurricane season. we were registered to do it in 2009 but a ton of rain caused much of Georgia's major interstates to flood and it was a royal mess, so we opted not to risk it. plus, you don't want to go down these descents with slick roads. you risk your life and i'm not kidding when i say that. cyclist have been seriously injured there and i know of one woman from south florida who died of massive head injuries in 2008 after losing control of the bike. this ride is not for the weak at heart or to be more blunt, it is not for the chicken shits who are afraid to go fast downhill. you have to have excellent bike handling skills, period! i'm thankful for the bike handling skills i developed with many years of mountain biking that i began doing back in the early 90's.

oh yeah baby! love me some mountains. every time i drive into this area of Dahlonega, i start to wish i could live there. i can see it now ...a nice comfy cabin, a rolling river stream out back, a jacuzzi on the deck, you get the picture? the only thing stopping me from moving there? a job in my chosen field of work! unless i want to work at Krogers, Ingles, or a mom & pop joint, there's nothing there. not that there's anything wrong with working at any of those places, but really, there isn't any major company there and i'm a little spoiled with not having to work holidays or weekends. it is a pretty low key town. maybe when i retire, i'll buy a vacation cabin there and ride like a fool everyday. a girl can dream can't she?

this is the historic area of Dahlonga, called the square. this is where the ride packet pick up and expo were held at. there were some killer deals to be had here too and leave it to me to sniff em' out. Jason at Cook|Train|Eat|Race, i'm still waiting for your wish list of tri related products and permission to use your credit card. you know i'll find the best deals out there on whatever you need. they also had criterium races on saturday afternoon and evening. we watched a lot of them and i even took some videos with my phone but i haven't quite figured out how to get them on to my blog. the pictures you see here were taken with my phone and that was easy to figure out so i dunno why the videos would be any different to upload but they are. whatevz!

deal of the century at the expo were these Bahati Foundation, Louis Garneau, matching arm and leg warmers being sold by the RealCyclist cycling team. both for $10/each!! unreal deal, right? the J-man said, "but you don't have anything that matches those," to which i replied, "so what!" actually, i do have cycling stuff that matches, he just doesn't realize how much cycling apparel i really have, ha-ha! living in Florida, my winter cycling wardrobe is pretty minimal. up to this point, i had only 2 pair of arm warmers (one i love the others i hate), and a crappy pair of leg warmers that don't fit right and i only wore them one time last year and then put them in the black hole drawer never to be worn again. i can't wait to use these new one's once the weather starts cooling off.

okay, let's get to the real story behind this blog post shall we? to be exact, it is 103.8 miles and 11,230 vertical feet of climbing. i won' t bore you with too many details except to say that this ride is tough as nails, you better have prepared for it thoroughly, don't take your fancy carbon wheels because you may end up dead, know how to feather your front and rear brakes when descending, and scream yeeee-haaaaw when flying down the switchback mountain roads. my max speed was 46.1 mph!! that is better than any Disney ride ever made! here is the best part of all. THIS IS NOT A RACE! at least that's what the announcer kept saying over and over and over again the day before at the square and the morning of the event. guess what dude? you gave everyone chips to put on their ankle and this triathlete races when she has a timing chip wrapped around her ankle. this ride is always a race in my mind and race i did! i placed 5th female overall and 4th in my AG (those 40-44 year old females are fast!! but, i wonder if they can do an Ironman?). my main reason for doing this ride was to use it as one of my training rides for Ironman Florida. mission accomplished!
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in other news ...
*36 more days til IMFL! OMG!
*if IMFL were this weekend, i'm ready.
*someone bought me race wheels for IMFL, delivery scheduled for tuesday. thank you honey, you rock!
*i'm seeing a flash mob of leg hugging in the near future (inside joke).
* i'm always impressed with all my fellow bloggers who manage to blog almost everyday. how in the hellz do you do it??
*to everyone racing this weekend, bust a move and git er' done! everyone else, happy training and have an awesome weekend!

much love and peace out!

you’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’ …

Whoa, that lovin' feeling,
You've lost that lovin' feeling,
Now it's gone...gone...gone...wooooooh.

so sorry if that song is now stuck in your head playing over and over again. misery loves company ya know.

maybe i overdosed on nyquil last night because this morning i woke up and i made a crazy decision. wait! rewind for a moment. i’ve got a cold, thanks to the j-man and an indirect thanks to the coworker who gave it to him because he touched her mouse …computer mouse. sleeping with the enemy always guarantees that you too will get the crud. ok, back to my not so smart decision. so i wake up when the alarm went off at 3:15am to access how i feel. not too bad, throat is sore, a little cough but nothing to stop me from doing my 18 mile run. out the door i go by 3:45am, hitting some good mile splits, 8:26, 8:05. 7:44. 7:48, and this goes on for 13 miles, feeling like a supah-star. i’m thinking to myself, “woo-hoo, i beat you sucker (me talking to the cold)!” different story for the last 5 miles as fatigue came over me like a tidal wave but i can happily report that i finished with an average pace per mile of 8:06. 3 positives: long run done, great pace considering the circumstances and no more long runs for 2 weeks. 1 negative: i went to work after the long run and had to pack it up early and come home. then i crashed and fell asleep for what felt like a minute to only be rudely woken up by the “yard” guys with their noisy blowers, weed eaters, etc…

now allow me to address the song about losin’ that lovin’ feelin’. this is how i’ve been feeling about the long runs and it only started happening this year. i actually used to look forward to running, 18, 20, 22 miles at a pop but not so much anymore. what’s wrong with me …or is it, what’s right with me? see, BT (Before Triathlon), i only did marathons. i still biked a lot but more for cross training effects, so the long run was a staple of my diet for 13 years. honestly, i don’t miss it at all and even though technically i still do marathons, you don’t really train for them quite the same way when you are getting ready for an ironman. the bottom line is, i’m over long runs, i still have a couple scheduled, i will get them done, but i may bitch about it a little. give me a 100 mile bike ride any day over a long run and i will gladly do that instead.

speaking of riding, i’m supposed to be riding both weekend days in the hills but not sure how i will feel until i get up in the morning and access the situation. hopefully, i do a better job at the accessing part than i did this morning.

ok, i’m going back to sleep now. plus, it’s raining so the yard guys have been scared off by the lightning and thunder.

much love and peace out!

CHALLOOOOOONGE!!!!

idle hands (minds) are the devil’s workshop. in my case, i like to come up with challenges for me and i like to involve my friends since they are such good sports and they are the double dog dare types. just recently during a boring spell i suffered at work, i came up with a fun idea to help us be more accountable to our training. since Summer and i have stuck to our guns on the swimming deal we made to each other, i thought, lets take this one step further and with that, the email was composed and sent to a couple of people.

we like to call this challenge (or CHALLOOOONGE – remember this word please), DWYLLC …the Do What You Least Like Challenge. thank you Beth for that lovely, creative title. the gist of the DWYLLC is that you have to pick the thing (in this case, swim, run, bike or weight training) that you least like to do and do it 5 days out of 7, in the same week. how bout some rules?

~ if you pick the swim, like Summer and I did, 1 mile is the minimum. i’ll let you do the math in yards/meters.

~ if your choice is to bike, like Beth, then you have to bike no less than 12 miles per day. that over-achiever is already on day 3 or 4! i bet she was the teachers pet in school too.

~ if you think that the run is your least favorite, then you have to run no less than a 5K (3.1 miles). did i really have to do that conversion for you all? probably not.

~ if you pick weight training, you need to do 30 minutes as a minimum for each day.

what do you get as a prize you ask? not a dang thing except PRIDE and a HUGE sense of accomplishment that you just busted your tail doing your least favorite training mode. i would also recommend that once you have completed it, that you brag about it on your blog, facebook, twitter, or dailymile because you freakin’ did it! and of course, please let me know that you did it so i can give you big props on this here blog of mine.

CHALLOOOOONGE!!!!!

the whole time this challenge has been in my head, so has the video above. do any of you remember this Cosby Show episode with Sandman Sims? Sandman Sims was the youngest Huxtable daughter’s, tap dance teacher. please, please, please take 2 minutes to watch it. it is hilarious.

ok,back to the DWYLLC. it isn’t a race so no pressure on speed. you have til the end of the year, 12/31/2011, midnight to do it. i, for one, have not decided if i will do it before or after IMFL. we’ll see.

you can read a different version of this challenge as described by the Discom-BOB-ulated runner by clicking HERE and also HERE if you’d like to read about Summer’s thoughts regarding the DWYLLC. fun reading for sure!

last but not least, to all my friends racing Cedar Point Rev 3 this weekend, i wish you all nothing but the best race of your lives and i will be thinking about you all and following online.

much love and peace out!

7 links

the peeps at Tripbase have been running a blogging experiment with the goal of uniting bloggers from all around cyberspace to share and develop a collection of lost, but not forgotten blog posts that deserve to be brought back into the limelight.

i was nominated by a very hip triathlete named http://junkmiles.org/, and I thank her for nominating me to do this. lord knows i need a nudge every now and then to post something.
here are the rules:

1. Blogger is nominated to take part
2. Blogger publishes his/her 7 links on his/her blog – 1 link for each category
3. Blogger nominates up to 5 more bloggers to take part.
4. These bloggers publish their 7 links and nominate another 5 more bloggers
5. And so it goes on!

without further ado, here are mine:

my most beautiful post: my little secret, written on friday 12/3/2010

  

this post captured how i feel when i’m running. free as a bird, solving the worlds problems, ridding myself of any stress. on this particular post, i tried to point out how important it is to stop and smell the roses sometimes.

my most popular post: la vie est belle = life is good, was written on friday 9/17/2010

this post was about my birthday weekend celebrating at rainbow river. the reason i think it is the most popular post is because it has the most internet search hits of any other post i’ve written. i guess a lot of people are interested in this really cool get-a-way.

my most controversial post: short and sweet, written on saturday 4/3/2010

not sure that this post or any that i have ever done were all that controversial but i think it could be if my audience base was made up of pure motorists and motorcyclist types who aren’t cyclists. can we all just get a long?

my most helpful post: i believe in miracles, written on wednesday 2/24/2010

i have referred so many new triathletes to this post, especially the one’s who struggle with the swim, to help encourage them and to let them know that they too can conquer the swim. i had only been swimming for about 2 months at the time i wrote this post and i was at a very frustrating point with the swimming but finally had that little break-thru where things started to click and the swimming started to come together. the rest is history and i no longer feel defeated in the water.

a post whose success surprised me: born to win, written on tuesday 7/20/2010

this was a poem i wrote on a whim one morning while at work. not sure what was going on in my head but i just started thinking about different decisions i’ve made in my life and where they have led me. some were good, some were bad but i have no regrets and love where i’m at in my life and the course i set myself on. when i hit publish on the post that morning, i was hoping it wouldn’t come across as corny and based on the comments, it came across well received.

a post i felt didn't get the attention it deserved: exercise IS the best medicine, written on tuesday 1/26/2010

i was a greenhorn blogger when i wrote this post with maybe 5-10 followers so that’s why this post did not get the attention it deserved. most of you know my background is in exercise physiology and that in my previous life, i owned my own personal training facility, yada, yada, yada. i had a few things going on the week i wrote this that made me realize that i not only use exercise to train for certain events but also as a medication. i’m much nicer when i’ve worked out in the morning, LOL!

the post i'm most proud of: great floridian 140.6 race report, written on tuesday 10/26/2010

i was most proud of this post because it was my most proudest moment …finishing 140.6 miles and still smiling. it was a long 10 month journey but worth every single 4am wake up call. i knew that night when i crossed the finish line that i would do another one as soon as possible.

i hope you enjoyed this post and now i have to nominate 5 other bloggers:

1. Karen at working it out ...

2. Beth at discom-BOB-ulated running

3. Summer at the blue line runner

4. JC at fat slow triathlete

5. Chloe at Chloe is ...running with a bottle of wine

much love and peace out!