Too Much for Me!

Hocus Pocus
Very few people except for Craig and the kids know that I am training to do an Ironman. I am semi-unsure, no, make that totally unsure of my abilities. I would rather not be confronted with well meaning inquiries on how the race went and have to explain failure. Not even my friend Jenn knows. Jenn and I had planned to do a pool sprint tri this weekend, it would be her first and I said I would love to do it with her and she could come stay at our house the night before as it is a shorter drive than from Malibu. Unfortunately Jenn has to go to Texas this weekend for the UCLA game. But there's no stopping Jenn, tomorrow morning she has her own personal tri mapped out. We were discussing it this morning, I am her support crew, back-up man, go-to person if there are any problems (which I am fairly certain there won't be). Hocus Pocus overheard us discussing it, after Jenn left she said:
"So how'd you do in the race?"
Me: "Oh I didn't race, we were talking about Jenn's race tomorrow."
Hocus Pocus: "Well I knew you biked, but all that swimming, running and walking has got to be just too much for you!"
Not long ago I was told I was too old for the outdoors, now a sprint tri is too much for me, and I think I'm going to be doing an Ironman in 81/2 weeks? Hand me the remote and the Oreos, I give up.

TMI

Let me just begin by warning, this post may be TMI, but it's my training blog and you don't have to read it if you don't want to. If you read triathlon boards you will always see posts from men complaining about their saddles and their quest for the perfect saddle to accommodate their junk. The quest for a perfect saddle is endless, until....you find and break in that perfect saddle; whether you're really breaking in the saddle or your sit bones or other, I'm not sure. Lately I have been forgoing my long rides in order to get in my run training for the St. George Marathon, (I know I will pay dearly for this later!) But this week was a recovery week, with no long rides and my long run was only 12 miles. It seemed like Saturday morning would be a great day just to get a nice leisurely, ride in.

Not even five minutes into the ride I protested, well, rather my she-junk protested. I Chamois Buttered like crazy to no avail. I am hating my saddle, and therefore hating riding, I cannot imagine getting my post marathon 100+ mile rides done. This has actually been bothering me for some time and I have suffered through, but I can't suffer through the ramp up, no matter how hard I try, it's not gonna work.

Craig put my stock saddle back on the bike after carefully measuring my current setup. No--that didn't do it either. Then I remembered when I did my Arizona ride I didn't have any problems and it was right after that SBR did some seat tweaking, pushing the saddle all the way forward. Yeah...come to think about it, I have never been comfortable since. So we started experimenting, slowly pushing the seat back, hmm better, more, lots more, no....back forward. Voila, hit a point where not only was the seat feeling good but the pedal stroke felt a lot better too. I wasn't expecting that too.

Craig rode home, picked up my TriStryke saddle and we decided to put it back on. Wow! What a difference. I will let you know what I think after my 95 miler next weekend. Oh...you really don't want to know---ok, just don't read.

OWS

I had a really good run this morning, I did 12 miles, next week is 8, I'm tapering for the St. George Marathon, gotta love those tapers! After running Craig and I went out to Lake Perris and I got an open water swim in my new wetsuit. Wetsuit is good, makes my butt float more than the old one, heaven knows we need floaty butts. We were swimming in the swim area but there were no lifeguards, three guys run out and dive in. One starts calling to Craig and I to help him, he was struggling. There is no way we are strong enough to pull someone struggling in, but we start towards him talking and talking, trying to keep him calm. We finally got him to flip over on his back, fortunately we were not that far out and we were able to get him to the point where he could stand up. Whew, that was kinda scary.

When I am an old woman I shall.....

Wear purple with a red hat....Naw...when I am an old woman I shall ride my bike:
Now some may argue I am already an old woman; point well taken. In fact I have even been told that I am too old for the outdoors. I will choose to laugh rather than respond, heaven forbid my inhibitory neuron misfire.

Today I had a really good ride, lately it seems all my rides have just been slogging it out, but today it all came together and it was a good ride. It was the kind of ride that leaves you smiling and energized and happy with your accomplishment for those few hours. To make the day even better I actually made it to the Saturday yoga class, I haven't been in so long I didn't know the instructor was a sub, but she was great.