No No Nokesville

May 20th

Distance: 43 miles

Goal:  Just get it done 

Here I go again on my own,

Riding down the only road I've ever known;

Like a drifter I was born to ride alone,

But I've made up my mind,

I ain't wastin' no more time

So here I go again....

I've adopted this modified Whitesnake song as my new theme song as I once again hit the road alone to get my miles in. This time I chose Nokesville...the scene of our big fat 120 miler before IMAZ.  Ah, the memories. 

Well, not exactly. I was in no mood to reminisce; I just wanted to get it done and move on. I had originally intended to ride 50, but became so bored with it all that I cut it short at 43. What's up with that? It's not like I ride with anyone during our team rides anyway. Why am I bored now and not bored then?!

Whatever the reason, I won't choose Nokesville for my next solo ride. There's no scenery--not even an interesting fence running across a nice pasture. There aren't any cute houses either. In fact, on one long desolate stretch of road I got creeped out. It looked like the kind of place one would dump an old washing machine. Or a body.

I did manage to get a couple of accidental sprints in when I got chased by a dog at two different points in the ride. I say dog, but one was more of a snarling beast! On the bright side, I needed the sprint.

Da Plains! Da Plains!

May 13th

Distance:  42 miles 

Goal:  Enjoy the scenery

Ironman Effect Items:  bike computer broken, bike pump broken (so I rode with really low tire pressure. Ugh), no salt tabs, no baggie for my cue sheet (which got splashed by my aero bottle water =S).

When you hear "The Plains", you think of flat sweeping prairies fading off into the horizon. But The Plains 42 miler is hardly flat. Actually, the first 20 miles or so are not bad at all....but the last half is full of rollers. Nothing that rises to the level of Savageman, but it's hilly enough to be annoying.

I had opted not to do Kinetic this year (no regrets there), so I wound up riding by myself on this particular weekend. And without the usual time pressures of hardcore training, I gave myself permission to notice the scenery and yes, even to stop and take pictures when the mood hit me.

Rolled up bales of hay dotting the countryside

I've done this ride a few times, but never noticed the small airport runway tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Who knew?

The runway is just above the fence where the white markings are.

 

This ride is a study in fences. Did you  notice that each photo I've posted thus far has a fence? From the standard wooden pasture fence, to the stone/wood combo, to the simple stone fence below:

Wonder how long it took to lay all these stones

There are enough fence variations in Northern Virginia to fill a nice coffee table book!

The Plains

I felt pretty good until the last 8 miles. My legs were getting tired, I was annoyed by the hills, and it was high noon hot. So I was thrilled to finally make it back to The Plains and my lonely little car parked all by itself in a lonely little parking lot. 

Overall it was a good workout with some nice scenery to keep things interesting. But it was also a reminder that I can't neglect the bike or I'll pay for it come Musselman. Kind of hard to believe I just did an Ironman a few months ago and now 42 miles feels like a lot. Sigh.

8,000 In The Bank!

8,000 Yards = 4.5 Miles = 320 Laps = Farthest I've Ever Swam!!

My prep for the Bay Swim peaked on Saturday with the first of three 8,000 yard swims. This is what my workout looked like:

1,000

   900

   800

   700

   600

= 4,000 yards

Followed by 8 x 500s = 8,000 Total

I tried to keep a consistent pace on the 500s and was secretly trying to go fast (haha) but I could only manage a 2:18 pace. I managed to be consistent, yes, but consistently slow. And with no current or chop to factor in. I suppose this should make me nervous, but I've decided to wait and be nervous later. I don't want to waste my nervousness on a pool session! The freak-out moments need to be reserved for open water, right?

Checking the results for the 2011 Bay Swim, the last swimmer to finish came in at 3:14....which comes out to a 2:30 pace. I think that's doable for me....as long as the current isn't ridiculous!

Reconnaissance Mission

Knowledge is power; ignorance is bliss. I could make an argument either way when it comes to researching the Chesapeake Bay Swim. After scaring myself reading blog postings about the Nanticoke River 3 miler, I was hesitant to delve into the wild world of the web for insight on the Bay Swim. I was sure to uncover harrowing accounts of monster currents, rogue waves, and desperate, failed attempts at making the cut offs.

I found some of that, yes, but also acquired lots of good advice. However, no amount of research would be complete without a field trip to the target location to suss it out for myself. It was time for a road trip!

View of the Bay Bridge from Sandy Point

So Priscilla and I launched our Bay Swim Reconnaissance Mission on Saturday, right after my 8,000 yard swim (epicness, woohoo! More about that later). We drove to Sandy Point State Park to check out the beach where the swim starts and get a look at the bay waters.

It looked just like the videos I had been watching on YouTube, no big surprise there. But there's something to be said for staring down the monster before you slay it, right? I mean, you have to face your fears before conquering them....or at least neutralizing them.

The water looked rough, much choppier than the Nanticoke. But I've been in roller coaster water before, so this I can do. And for some reason, it looked cold. Perhaps the swimmer in the long-sleeve wetsuit gave off that impression. But really, after surviving Mooseman, last year's Rumpus polar nightmare, and the frigid IMAZ swim, there's no way the bay can compare ...especially in June. There have been years when the bay water was around 80 degrees, so I've decided to cross water temp off my list of worries.

Finish Line! Somewhere around here...

Part Two of our Reconn Mission involved driving across the bridge to Hemingway's, where the finish line is! It's also where the Bay Swim One Mile Challenge starts and ends, which is what P will be doing. Thanks again to the YouTube videos, we were able to pinpoint where the finish line will be. The next time I see this shoreline, I will be swimming for the finish! Oh happy thought.

Chesapeake Bay Swim Countdown!

OMG THE GREAT CHESAPEAKE BAY SWIM IS ONE MONTH FROM TODAY!!!!!

This will be my view as I swim--minus the hundreds of other people who will be swimming ahead of me:

Photo Courtesy:  Chesapeake Bay Trust

In honor of the one month countdown I offer the following:

Random Bay Fact:    The Chesapeake Bay holds over 15 trillion gallons of water. 

Most Excited About (other than finishing, duh):  Seeing the bridge spans from the water

Most Nervous About:  Making the cutoffs

Most Confident About:  Going the distance

Biggest Fear:   The unknown, as in:  what the hell will be current be like? 

Why Am I Doing This?:  Because what else is there to do after an Ironman?

Projected Outcome: SUCCESS!!!

Nanticoke River 3 Mile Swim

Goal:  Finish

Result: DNF 

Cedar Hill Marina. Look how calm the water is!

The Nanticoke River Swim was my first 3 mile open water swim and a test run for the Chesapeake Bay Swim in June. The setting is so pretty. Everything is staged at the Cedar Hill Marina in Bivalve, MD, right on the river. The event includes 2 mile and 3 mile swims and a very small sprint triathlon. Very low key, extremely nice people, so much to love about it.

Despite being sick all week and having a brief freak-out episode the day before, I was totally pumped for this swim. I left my house at 5:30am and headed for the eastern shore. It was just getting light when I reached the Bay Bridge. I got chills driving over it, thinking about how next month I will be swimming right between those two spans. OMG, I'm not worthy!

I got to the marina two hours before the race. The swag included a long sleeve technical shirt with the Nanticoke River Swim logo on it and a water bottle with the same logo. Cool! 

The volunteers doing the body marking were differentiating between the tri participants and swimmers by putting the race numbers on the swimmers' hands. As I was about to get body marked, one volunteer asked me my age...but before I could tell her that I wasn't in the triathlon, another volunteer saw my white swim cap and said, "Wait. She's a swimmer." 

She's a swimmer. It sounded odd to hear that. I never think of myself as a swimmer. I've always been a runner, never a swimmer. But as I walked toward the water, past transition where the tri people were racking their bikes, I allowed myself to think maybe I am a swimmer. Not a fast one or even a good one, but a swimmer, nonetheless. As Budda supposedly once said, "We become what we think." So, swimmer it is....at least for today.

The sign was a bit concerning...

I had time for a quick practice swim before the race director called everyone out for the pre-race briefing. The water and weather conditions were sick, SICK--as Ed would say. The air AND water temp were both 70. It was low tide and the river was calm. Nice!

The race director told us that the tide would be coming in during the swim and that meant that we would have a current to deal with on the second loop. He said we were going to have to angle ourselves a different way on each leg of the triangular course to avoid getting pushed off course by the current. (This is where being a pilot came in handy. I thought of the current as the wind and figured out which way I would aim the nose of an airplane to stay on course.)

The first loop was awesome. I had no trouble sighting and barely had to angle myself to stay on course. But once I rounded the buoy for the second loop I could feel the difference. The current started sweeping me along. I cruised to the next buoy with the current pushing me from behind. However, as I rounded the buoy for the second leg, the current was coming from the side and started pushing me off track. And so began my battle with the current. 

The chop kicked up a bit, but they had big bright green marker buoys at the mid-point of each leg for us to sight off of, so I just  aimed for it. Actually, I aimed to the left of it to correct for the current. I swam and swam and swam some more. When I finally got close to the green marker I scanned the river up ahead for the next turn buoy but couldn't find it. I asked a kid on a kayak where it was and he pointed to my right.What? It's over there?? I had been looking straight ahead for it, but because I was having to swim at such an angle to fight the current, the buoy was to my right.

I swam and swam but seemed to be making little progress. Pretty soon I noticed the kid on the kayak was staying with me. Then another kid on a kayak came up and kept him company. I had a two-kayak escort going here!  I figured it was because I was last---instead of cops on motorcycles, I had kids on kayaks following me.

It seemed like I would never get to this buoy! I popped my head up at one point and asked the kayak kid how things were going with the other swimmers and if I was last. He pointed way off to the right and said they had swimmers over there who had been blown off course. Then he told me I had 35 minutes to finish the race! I glanced at my watch and had only been swimming for 1.5 hours!  The cut off was 3 hours, so 35 minutes didn't add up. I kept swimming, figuring kayak kid had his times wrong.

After what seemed like FOREVER, I was finally closing in on the last turn buoy. Once I turned, I would be on the final leg-- about .5 to the finish. As I turned my head to breathe, I noticed a different kayak next to me. A few breaths later, the man on the kayak was yelling to get my attention. I popped up and it was the race director! I'm thinking, What's he doing way out here? Shouldn't he be on the shore managing the finish line or something? But he was there to tell me that he was only going to let me swim the final yards to the buoy...and then I would have to get a ride in on the boat. 

I told him I was okay, I wasn't tired, had only been swimming for 2 hours, and would be okay on the final leg. But he said the current had picked up to 2mph and that they had swimmers getting pushed too far north. He said the last leg would be harder than the one I just completed and would take me longer than the hour I had left. No worries, I told him, I would just swim until I was too tired or until the cut-off, to which he said, "It's not a good idea for you to be out here." That sounded a little scary, so I swam the final yards to the buoy, then grabbed the back of the race director's kayak and he paddled me to the boat.

There were several other swimmers on the boat who had also been pulled out. We compared notes and they told me they had been watching my progress and it looked like I was swimming in place! That's exactly what it felt like.

When we got back to the dock, the guy who was driving the boat told all of us swimmers to follow him. He led us over to the finish line and gave us all medals! We were like, we get a medal? But we didn't finish! He said we earned it anyway! That was nice.

Sombrero Bottle Opener Bling!

So here's how I would sum up my first Nanticoke River Swim:

Positives:  My longest open water swim so far, good practice swimming with a current, and I never really got tired. 

Negatives:  I just wasn't strong enough to swim faster against the current....and that's not something I can change before the Bay Swim. Becoming a swimming hulk will take time! 

Overall though, a great experience! Maybe I'll try again next year...

Rockin & Rumpussin' The Mud & IronGirl Bling

2012 is already turning out to be a banner year for bling. I'm accumulating hardware faster than I can write race reports! I've done 6 races already, 5 of them over the course of just 4 weekends in a row, mind you. And I have another one coming up on Saturday. Whew!  Perhaps more evidence that I'm overdoing it in the Year of Fun.

ROCK

Goal:    2:30 would be nice

Actual:  2:27:43 **11 seconds shy of my PR

Mental State: Annoyed

I was so unprepared for the Rock-n-Roll Half Marathon....and I was dreading the uphill part of it. Sure, it's no Savageman, but the hills are annoying, nonetheless. The scenery? Familiar. Bland. Same old, same old. I'm turning into a race snob, I suppose. The course essentially covered my usual downtown DC stomping grounds. I had said I wouldn't do this race again back when it was the National Marathon, but alas, I caved to the FOMO that was sure to erupt if I missed the first Team Z race of the year.

So, this race is easy to sum up:  I ran the whole way and felt pretty good, managing an 11:17 pace in spite of the annoying hilly section. Got my bling - cha-ching! Next?

MUD

Goal:  Don't Get Injured

Actual: Jammed my ankle, but nothing serious 

Mental State: Pumped!

The Primal Mud Run-- the toughest mud/obstacle course I've done yet! The obstacles included scaling walls, climbing cargo nets, ropes, and a slippery rock wall, carrying sandbags up-and-downhill, swimming under barrels in cold muddy water, crawling thru pipes, slithering under barbed wire through a mud pit, sliding down a mud slide, heaving ourselves over hay bales.....OMG, it was brutal!

And then --THEN! There was this tight rope we were supposed to negotiate by hanging upside down from our ankles and trying to pull ourselves along. It was ridiculous!  If you couldn't complete the task you were supposed to drop to the ground and do burpees. Fortunately, they weren't really enforcing this.

In a nutshell:  Had a blast, got muddy, need to work on my upper-body strength!

Smartest Move: bringing our goggles and gloves!

RUMPUSSING

Goal:   Whatever, as long as it's under 2:00

Actual: 1:53:19

Mental State: Casual

Rumpus always seems to be the shake out race. I never do as well as I want. Something is usually missing or not functioning right with my race equipment. This time it was my bike computer.But I was pretty laid back about the entire race. Hence, the "casual" rating.

 

Swim:  20:58   I'm not happy at all with my swim time. After all of the miles and miles of swimming I've done this year, I couldn't manage to come in under 20 minutes?? WTF?

I can't really complain about the water though.It wasn't as cold or as rough as in previous years, so I can't blame it on the conditions. This was a new venue and a better course. However, I just felt like I couldn't get into the groove. My arms were sore and I was tired --perhaps doing an obstacle race the day before wasn't such a good idea. But hey! It's the Year of Fun! We take our chances! We throw convention out the window! We get crazy! 

Bike:   45:27   The bike was my best leg of the race. I averaged 15 mph, which is better than previous times on this same course. The Ironman Effect was in full effect here as I didn't have a working bike computer. I tried to hammer it in my big ring as much as possible, but I still need more leg strength on the hills.

Run:  40:11  I jammed my ankle during the mud run and had a bit of a limp heading into the race. Unfortunately, the new run course didn't help. It wasn't just off road, it wasn't just trails or gravel, it was big fat chunks of gravel --all nice and uneven. That did a number on my ankle. Good practice, though, for Tussey!

Finish Line:   1:53:19

Interesting tidbit:  I was 6th out of 11 in my age group coming out of the swim but dropped to 9th during the bike and finished 9th overall.  In other words, I need to get faster on the bike or fast enough on the run that the bike doesn't matter.

MORE MUD 

Goal:  Don't Get Injured

Actual:  Finished Unscathed

Mental State: Mixed--dread and mild excitement

Muddy Buddy:   Nonstop rain. Good for the mud, not so good for Priscilla and me. It rained the entire time during our drive to and from Richmond. It rained throughout the entire race. It rained before and after the race. AND it was 50-something degrees! Ingredients for a miserable time indeed. But P and I didn't let the rain rain on our mud parade! We plowed through -- or, slogged through --the 3ish mile course.

The obstacles were pretty tame compared with Primal. The one that stands out is this huge inflated slide thing. You climb up a cargo net to get to the top of the slide, then slide down. We flew down the slide so fast we shot right off the end of it at the bottom! You could see the remnants of the pile of hay they used to have at the bottom for just that scenario, but by the time we got there the hay was gone and I landed right on my butt on the hard ground. P had a nice technique and actually landed on her feet, but I was flailing about the whole way down. It was pretty funny. They should've had a big muddy water pit at the bottom! 

Summary:  Not as hard as Primal Mud Run, nice bling, plenty of mud. Mission accomplished.

IRONGIRL

Goal:    Whatevs, but secretly hoping to PR it

Actual:  2:43

Mental State: Why Am I Doing This?

WTHill??  Let me get the excuses out of the way first:

1. I swam 4 miles the day before.

2. Woke up feeling like crap with sinus problems and a sore throat.

3. Hadn't run more than 6 miles since Rock n Roll in March.

4. It was hilly.

I believe this is the slowest half I've ever done! It started out fine:  I averaged 11:13 over the first 2 miles in spite of one uphill after another (that was faster than my PR pace). By mile 3 I dropped to about 11:30 and only got slower from there.

I may have to do this one again next year to redeem my pathetic self. Enough said.