One week to go

I feel like it's been awhile since I've posted a blog.  My life has been crazy! Tonight was our mini-triathlon for the Great Beginner Triathlon program.  This means the tri is a mere week and a half away.  It went pretty well.  Kitty wanted us to swim 20 minutes, then go to transition.  I started my swim out across Lion's beach, and back, and was disheartened when I was told I had to swim back out, and it had only been 10 minutes!  What?! 10 minutes, no way!  So I reluctantly swam out, not nearly as fast, and turned around where Kitty gave me the okay.  I jogged through the sand up to transition, wiped my feet off, put my socks, shoes, and helmet on, and was off.  We just did a small 2.8 mile loop, but up a rather large hill on Racine.  The downhill was nice, but I'm sure the uphill was more vicious than that downhill!  Next it was run time, I racked my bike, grabbed my water bottle and headed out.  This is where the heat became noticeable.  I forgot to spin in a low gear on my bike before the transition and my calves were screaming at me.  Needless to say I won't be forgetting to do that next time!  It wasn't a race, but I was 3rd back.  Next week is the last week, I'm not sure if I'll make it on time with work and it being a holiday week (4th of July).  It would be nice to get out into the river for another swim.

A few more Ragnar pics

More Ragnar pics

Leg 2 in the books!

I want to start by saying I had an AWESOME 7 mile run this morning, however the road to that run was not so smooth. After leg 1 my electrolytes or something else were far out of check and I had a headache for quite awhile.  I tried everything; Gatorade,  water, salt tablets, the rest of my subway, pretzels, Tylenol, and sleep. No such luck, my dehydration headache would not go away and I was feeling crummy and cold.  And I must have looked pretty awful because my team was worried about me. Jessica gave me a ONE coconut water to drink because of the electrolytes and potassium. I grabbed a banana and slowly made my way the exchange in time for me to throw the rest of the banana and ONE to Jessica before I took off running in my tank and arm sleeves. I was finally feeling better when I took off. I passed 2 people right away and had to roll off my sleeves at half a mile. Mile 1 8:45, mile 2 8:45, mile 3 was around a 9, and I'll have to consult my garmin for the specifics. The miles  were flying by as the sun came up. 6 roadkillz. Just after mile 6 I saw my next target; an athletic male about my age. At 6.5 he was about 200 feet ahead of me and i was slowly gaining. At .15 to go I started picking up my pace to sprint. When I was 4 feet on him sprinting when he turned around and saw me gaining on him; so he started a sprint, we were neck in neck coming into the exchange when I wasn't sure where my hand off person was. I saw her on the left side, handed off then high fived the guy and told him good race. What started off as an iffy run turned into a great one. 5 miles left this afternoon for me!

Time moving splits (There stop lights I had to stop at so I think it's fair to use these times!!):
8:47
8:44
8:55
9:02
9:33
9:15
8:48

5.8 to go

Leg 1 is done! 5.8 of 17 miles done! I wish I could say it went really well but it was a huge mental battle for me. I started out too fast at a 7:30 pace, and decided to slow at half a mile. I didn't take music and there wasn't anyone near me for most of the run.  At mile 2 my wonderful teammates were on a trail intersection to cheer me on, it was great.  Then soon after my lower left leg started to cramp, I talked myself up, and pushed through. Then I saw a shiny little packet on the trail, I stopped, went back 2 steps and found myself a full gu. I immediately took the gu and kept on going. The scenery along the trail was absolutely gorgeous. A river along the trail with a grassy bank. I tried to keep my pace under a 9:30, which was difficult at times. A couple runners passed me but not before we had some friendly exchanges. The first guy to pass I asked what he was hoping to pace and he said he didn't know so I asked if it was around 9 and he said yes so I tried to keep up with him for a bit and pushed my average pace down. The next couple to come by made comments about the bugs; there were a ton!  Then finally there was a water station at a mile to go.  I felt pretty good so I started sprinting  to the finish to hand off to Andrea.

4 done

We are currently on runner 5. Caleb is on the road and we are waiting around mile 3.7 of 6.3. We are having a good time. We stopped at subway for some fuel. It's kind of hard to give updates while driving a van and stopping here and there.

We saw Caleb at mile 3 he was looking well at a good pace. We are now waiting at Nathan's mile 2 of 10.9. Then we will be heading to our exchange point to get van 2 rolling (or running)

Some pics

200 Miles to go

Today is the much anticipated Ragnar Relay Chicago race!  30 hours and 200 miles to go.  I'm super excited to have the best team ever, team Green Machine with van 1 Spike, Cassie, Caleb, Nathan, Travis, and Steve; van 2 Britten, Dixie, Andrea, Maria, Jessica and myself.  I hope you follow us on our journey, I will try to post plenty of pics.