Manitou Triathlon and Preparing for William A Irvin 5k

OK first I need to vent because I have had a crappy morning and for some reason throwing it on my blog makes me feel better (and will hopefully keep me from throwing something at our receptionist.  I'm sitting at work right now and she is very poorly singing along to the radio.  Seriously!!)  Money has still been ridiculously tight and now I had to throw $443 at my air conditioner for my townhome.  This morning my car was making a weird vibration (keep in mind I just had it serviced a few months ago) and the stupid unfriendly bank teller lady was making me mad because I just needed to quickly deposit a few checks and garage sale cash to pay down my credit card.   First she made me count all the cash, just to turn around and recount it and change my total.  Then I had to use the change machine to count the change and she wouldn't take the full unopened roll of nickles.   Add on that my escrow refund check from my old loan that still has Kevin's name on it that she wouldn't deposit without his signature and I had HAD IT.   My nerves are shot already this morning and it's barely 10am......

Anyway.....moving on......

The Manitou Triathlon has been renamed this year to the Optum Health Performance Triathlon.   Both Mark and I didn't know what would happen at our first triathlon of the season since we had only been to one lake swim.  Honestly the night before the tri we were contemplating not going.  We were tired, it was a 4am alarm, we didn't feel prepared....  But I knew Mark would be disappointed if we didn't go and likely I would be too.  Plus my USAT "boss" is the race director so I would feel horribly guilty if I didn't show up :-P  We arrived with just enough time to pick up our stuff and quickly get setup in transition.  Then it was about 1.5 hours before our wave start so we relaxed with some friends that were racing.   Warming up before the swim start wasn't much of a warm up since I didn't get very far in the water.  I was shivering from how cold the water was so I decided to just get wet and wait for my wave.   The swim went ok, I was a little cautious to keep my head up and not get smacked.   Weeds were pretty thick too but they don't bother me too much during a race.   It was two laps and the second lap I had plenty of space for about 2 minutes until the wave behind me caught up and I got a bit ran over.
I was surprisingly dizzy getting into T1 so it was a bit slow getting my bike shoes on but I got out on the bike course just hoping my bike would stay in one piece this time.  Weather was cloudy and kind of cool so riding was great. It was a rolling hill course and I tried to use the downhills to recover some speed although some spots in the road were rough and I didn't want to risk being in aero in those areas.
T2 was a sigh of relief because I made it through the bike with no issues!   :D :D
The run was great although a tough start as usual.  Body just isn't used to the bike to run transition yet for this year.   The course was nice and flat and pretty much exactly what we ran for the Jump To It 5k so that was a nice flashback since I had a good run that day.  I was running probably 90%, not wanting to blow everything I had on this race since the Irvin 5k is this coming Friday.
Overall I was satisfied with my times:  Swim: 18:14 (pace 2:05) Bike: 44:00 (pace 18.4) Run 24:53 (pace 8:18)  Age Group placement 7 out of 19.
Unforunately no pictures to post from this event, at least yet.

Last night we went to our first outside Masters Swim at the New Hope pool.  Unfortunately there was also a group of young kids taking up 6 of the 8 lanes with a coached swim so they annoyed me a bit.   But it was our first time swimming a full 50m pool.   Wow I was thrown at first, I took off for the first lap and I had NO idea how far I was from the end.  But it was fantastic to be able to swim that far and concentrate on technique for much long before having to turn around.   My typical stroke count in a 25yd pool is 20, in this 50m pool is was 52.   And it was fun being out in the pool while it was starting to get dark and they turned the lights on.  One of the last laps I did, I was turning around at the far end and looked up into the sky.  There were the coolest clouds from the rain that had been passing through the moon was shining brightly.  I actually stopped for a few seconds just to take it in.  I LOVE being outside :)   This evening swim is available to us now Tues/Thurs nights through July.

We are running a small bit this week in prep for the 5k on Friday but I have no idea how it's going to go.  I just don't have confidence that I can shave off enough time to make my 23:18 goal.  I'm considering putting the headphones on for this race.  Might as well try right?  It's going to be a fun weekend away in any case.   We have our 5k on Friday evening then we have at least 3 friends running the marathon the next day so we will be on the course cheering for them and then partying away the evening.  Sunday we need to make our way home again but our plan is to hit a few of the State Parks and pick up the Passport Club, Hiking Club and Safari Challenge Geocache at each one and still get home before too late.   We have a tendency to want to spend too much time exploring the parks and before we know it, we are out of time.  But it's fun :)

Legends 5k and My First Annual 29th Birthday

Seems like I'm on a two week posting routine.   Honestly I think about writing just about every other day but by time I get home and have time, the mental energy is gone to sit in front of the computer. 

Let's get the 'blahs' out of the way first.

Work:

Don't get me totally wrong, I love what I do, I just can't stand WHERE I have to do it.  I knew it would be hard for me to transition back into an office again but now that the weather is nice, it's sucking the life out of me.  Have to stand up if I want to see out the window, none of the windows open, the other people in the office chew their food like they were born in a god damn barn and I live off frozen meals or cans of soup.    I know I could get out and walk or whatever for a break but it's isn't as refreshing as you think walking up and down Washington Ave by yourself.   And not to mention all the driving I have to do while Mark and I continue to have to maintain two houses.  I literally get only minutes outside in the fresh air before it gets dark.  Otherwise I'm in my office or my carThere may be a day in the future where I can spend some days working from home and that will help and I desperately hope that when we get our own office, I have a window I can open right next to my desk!! I'm not an indoors person and I got to have my home office and my windows and my kitties and my run breaks all the time for over 3 years so lately my routine is doing nothing but severely depressing me. Bleh....ok moving on....

Memorial Weekend:

Mark and I had a ton of garage sale items on my parent's sale again this year.  I was super excited that I sold my road bike before the sale even opened.   Listed it on the Craig's List ad and a guy responded Tuesday, came out to see it Wednesday night and paid cash.   I couldn't believe both of our old mtn bikes and my road by were sold by the end of day 1 :) 

Memorial Day we went to the Gunther's House for their "Mixed Up Tri / BBQ party"   They were doing a group ride, transition, group run, transition, group swim.   We opted to sleep in a bit and skip the bike but we got there in time for a 5.5ish mile run and then a swim across the bay (about 2/3 mi).   It was our first time getting back in the lake this year so it was nice to get back in and get used to lake swimming again.

ALARC Legends 5k

We planned for this race to be our last "tune-up" leading up to the William A Irvin 5k (our goal race).   We knew it was a smaller race and the way things had been going at the other small 5ks we have been doing, we knew there was a chance to place well again.   Especially since there was a partnered 10k which a lot of the faster runners there were doing.  I was focused on my overall time but I knew it was going to be hard to get a fast time since this course was hilly and we've been racing flat courses until now.   The first few hills shot my heartrate up pretty high but we got on the limestone trail before mile 1 and stayed on it until about 2.75 maybe.   My body calmed down a bit from the hills once I was on flat ground for a bit and I realized I was first place female. (sweet! but will it last.....)  Somewhere around mile 2 I could definitely feel I was losing steam and the HR wasn't coming down from 190.  The last .2 or so was back up a somewhat small grade and then to the finish.   There was no "push" into the finish but I still managed to cross as the first female and landed a time of 23:58 - AVG hr 186.

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Minneapolis Marathon:

We volunteered as course marshals for this event the day after Legends.  We might run the 5k event they have here next year but we'll see.  (I have a bit of an issue with the group that runs this but I'll keep that to myself.) We were around mile 4.5 which was perfect.  We got to see everyone go by and then we were off to chase down Mark's brother Michael as he was running his first full marathon.   We saw him right around the wall of mile 20 and then again at the finish.   He did awesome!   I know he really wanted a 4hr marathon, I did too when I ran my first one but it's harder than you think and the sun came out to heat him up midway through the race which didn't help anyone I don't think.  I always look back at my first marathon, not happy with my time but I try to remember all the things it taught me and apply them to my endurance runs.

My First Annual 29th Birthday:
We started the celebration by going out with our Groupon coupon to Forepaugh's Restaurant in St. Paul.  It was this great old house converted to a fancy restaurant.  We picked up a cool geocache in the area before our reservation but I'll talk about that in my post on our "A Life More Complete" blog.

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The morning of my birthday was just another morning, followed by just another work day.   First time in years I went to work on my birthday.   Would have taken the day off but trying to preserve the vacation days for the wedding :)   Thanks to my birthday showing up on all my "friends" Facebook accounts I got a ton of bday wishes on there all day long which was great.  Also a few phone calls and text and emails :)   That evening we went out for dinner with my parents at Houlihans.   I was uber excited that I got a DSW gift card from Onyx the cat, an Olive Garden gift card from mom and dad and the best of all....Mark got me a gift card to Sanctuary Salon Spa to get my hair done!!!!  OMG you have NO idea how badly my hair has been needing a makeover.   Long story short, I made it all of two days before I made an appointment for my fancy new 'do.  Love it!!    I also got a great Fuschia plant from Mark so now my patio actually has color :)

 

Wedding:

Things are still progressing on the wedding front.   Throwing $$ in all directions but things are slowly coming together.   I think I'll start trying to be more consistent and post wedding updates only on our "A Life More Complete" blog and/or the wedding webpage on The Knot.com.  If you all follow me on Twitter, I usually send out a note when I update either of these pages.

Training:

Has still been pretty much run focused and even that has been suffering due to lack of time/energy lately.  My bike is being picked up from the shop tonight probably.   Had the crank arms looked at and basically they said the true fix is to buy new ones ($170-ish) but for now the temp fix is lots of lock-tite.  Sigh.....

Masters swim is now offering outdoor evening swims at the New Hope pool Tues/Thurs nights so starting next week we are going to try for that option the next two months and see if that is better on our schedule.  I think we can stay up later much easier than we can get up earlier while we are still doing the two house thing.

Next up:

This weekend we have the Manitou Triathlon.  That should be interesting considering we haven't really done any bricks and only one lake swim.   I think our multisport season this year is going to be based around fun and not speed.  And I guess that's ok. buy my competitive subconscious tends to make me feel crappy about not being in top shape for tri's this year.