LavaMan Newsletter2

Hi Sponsors,

Okay, my second newsletter.  December was a blur with family events.  Needless to say I didn’t do much training.  Our coaches at Team in Training this week stated that the usual training for an Olympic Triathlon is only three months so not to worry if we haven’t trained much to date, however now is the time to get serious.

If you want an executive summary:  I’m still alive and haven’t landed in the hospital with any broken bones or pulled muscles, however I’m not going to break any triathlon records for my age group either. 

Many of you have asked me what is my goal.  Well being me, it wouldn’t be right not to have an aggressive (BHAG) goal.  That goal is 3 ½ hours.  If you add up my times for the individual sports I’m currently at 4 ½ hours.  That is not counting the fact that I’m going to be more tired doing all three events together and the transition time between the events.  In reality I would be thrilled with anything around 4 hours, but our coaches are doing the event in around 3 hours and it didn’t seem right to me to say 4 to 4 ½ hours (even though they have done it before and are in their late 20’s/ early 30’s). J  As I get closer to the event and have actually done more practices that simulate the tri I will give you a better goal, but I have put the stake in the ground:  3 ½ to 4 hours.  Boy do I have to get training!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I need to thank a few folks:

• First I want to thank you all.  With your tremendous support we have raised $23,400 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  A huge thanks to all of you!

• Many thanks to Michael Dearing who setup a blog site for me.  I will post my newsletters there and will start sending some more timely updates to it as well. I will continue with my newsletters, but please feel free to read my blog and update it as well: http://lynnreedy.typepad.com.

• I want to thank Elizabeth Tse who told me about a Barracuda polar swim cap and gave me a web site to purchase one.  It has got me through my first few swim practices.  More on this in the swimming update section!

Now for the details:

Swimming:  I have now participated in three swim practices at an outdoor pool in Menlo Park.  The water is 85 degrees.  The normal temperature for competitive swim meets is around 78 degrees.  Everyone else is complaining about how hot the water is.  My first practice I get in and I’m immediately cold.  I complain to my coaches (I’m their worst nightmare!) how cold I am.  They don’t believe me and tell me to just swim.  Well about 30 minutes into our 45 minute practice one of the coaches tells me my lips are purple and I should get out of the water immediately.  However we had only one more drill to go (another 16 laps) so I ignored him and finished the practice and then went in to the locker room and stood under HOT water for about 15 minutes trying to stop shivering.  The good news is I completed practice, and now the coaches believe me.  The bad news is they are quite concerned that I may actually get hyperthermia in Hawaii.  For my husband Kevin, this only further confirms that I’m not human but a cold blooded reptile.

On the serious side, I did successfully complete two more coached swims without getting purple and I have swam at Club Sport (our fitness club) twice this week.  I swam 66 laps (25 yards each) which totals the 1.5K distance of the triathlon in around 40 minutes without any stops and all freestyle.  This is much better than I was doing before I started training.  Back then I could do the laps, but had to alternate freestyle with breaststroke to catch my breath.  So I know I can do the distance and in reasonable time, my only concern continues to be the water temperature. 

The big water test is coming up, on January 20^th, 27^th and February 10^th we are having three open water swims in the Bay.  I will be wearing a wet suit, but my coaches are sure I can not handle the cold water, so they are going to have me swim parallel to shore and get out when I’m cold.  They want me to experience open water swimming, but know I will not be able to sustain the Bay water temperature for long.  So the question is how long do I last?  Any predictions?

Biking:  I have progressed to riding my new road bike.  I went out with Kevin and a good friend riding around the foothills in Palo Alto.  Our friend, Mike, stated that there was a very gradual hill coming, long but not too steep.  Well it was too steep for me.  I was quite out of breathe and wanted to walk my bike, but they both convinced me I would make it, when it was obvious that I would make it they rode ahead and waited for me at the top of the hill.  I was soooooooo excited when I got to the top of the hill that when I stopped to be with them I forgot to unclip my feet from the pedals and immediately fell.  I fell in their direction!  Once they realized I was fine, they told me in the future to fall away from them J

I have done a few more bike rides, but have only done one ride that was the required 25 miles and that took us 2 ½ hours.  That is NOT a good time.  A competitive time would be more like 1 hour+, so I’m hoping by event day that I’m down to 1 ½ hours, but that depends on how hilly the course is.  I would like to average around 15 miles per hour, but on hills I only average around 6 to 8 miles per hour.  So I need a lot of progress on this.  At least I’m now training on my road bike!

Running:  Well both good news and bad.  When going out only for a run (not combining it with a bike or swim) I now can run 6 miles.  (The event is 6.3 miles).  Considering when I started I could only run for 5 minutes this is great.  However I run about a 12 minute mile (or 5 miles an hour) and even then I’m totally exhausted when I’m done.  A really good time is about an 8 minute mile.  Well, I’m not going to get there but it would be great to get to a 10 minute mile.  I’m just not sure I can do that.  I’m really out of breath running.  Also it is very hard on my left knee and it is starting to hurt all the time!  So we will see on the running front.

Nutrition and Strength Training: Kevin and I continue to see our trainer, Erik, every Tuesday and Thursday.  I have to say that I continue to get an F-.  I have to track what I eat on a daily basis.  In the last 30 days I have done that about 4 times.  I’m not getting enough protein or carbs and way too much fat.  (Good thing I’m an efficient fat burner J).  Everyday I wake up saying okay today is the day I’m going to follow what Erik has laid out and by 3pm I can not help myself.  Everyday it is something different, but none the less not what I’m suppose to be eating.  One day chocolate, another day chips, another day cookies, then peanuts (at least they have some protein J).  I am progressing on the weight training.  I now at least know how to use the machines and I’m doing the exercises correctly.  Erik seems pleased with that progress, just not my nutrition.

Fun Event:  About 3 weeks ago we had a fun event.  Team in Training had us pair up with another partner (so I picked Kevin) and we ran/biked for three loops (each loop took 2.4 miles) as a competition for a total of 7.2 miles.  The rules were that one of us ran while the other rode the bike then we could switch whenever we wanted per lap and as many times as we wanted, but at the end of each lap we needed to meet, run up a hill together and then do some sort of silly challenge (where depending on how we did on the challenge it would knock off time).  Our strategy was I would run .8 mile, while Kevin rode the bike.  Then I would find the bike and Kevin would already be running his .8 mile.  Then I would drop the bike at 1.6 mile and then we would estimate where Kevin would drop the bike so we would end up at the hill at around the same time.  I did the first challenge (Blindfolded I had to get 3 bags of food from between my knees into a basket with Kevin directing me) and Kevin did the second challenge which was to knock down 6 milk bottles with an orange in pantyhose tied around his waist.  Well I hopped with both legs so as to not move the bags of food and Kevin hit the milk bottles from the side not front.  With our innovations we got the maximum reductions in time and our strategy on how to ride/bike got us 3^rd place right behind two teams of coaches.  Needless to say we were quite cocky about our performance since most of the teams are in their twenties and thirties and as you know we are well past that J.  Of course none of this matters in the actual triathlon, but at least we felt good for that one Saturday!  Another thing about the event we had to come in costume and had to have a team name.  As some of you can guess we were Team Enterprise and Kevin was Captain Kirk.  I have attached two photos of the event.

Now that we are past the holidays you will be getting more updates and I will be updating my blog site more regularly.  Please add comments.  I really enjoy hearing from you all and need the ribbing or encouragement.  Either works for me J

Happy 2007 and April 1^st is approaching too quickly.

All the best,

Lynn

Comments

[Shripriya]

Lynn, this is great. Can you post daily updates, please? Especially the details of your daily diet :)

[Andre Haddad]

My prediction for your Bay swim: no more than 9 minutes in the water. See if you can beat that!!

[MD]

This is my new favorite blog. I think that you will be in the water for 13 minutes when you do the open water swim in the bay. Please post the Team Enterprise photos on the blog too. We want to make sure every shred of this experience gets online. You are a champion. :)

[Marty]

I'm going to invent high protein cheetos and make a killing off of Lynn while she is training for her event. My prediction on the swim is that she gets waist deep in the bay and then says the hell with it and quits.

[Mireille]

Lynn, keep it up because if anyone can do it, you can! With your drive
and commitment to execution, we all know that failure is not an option!! :-)

[Matt]

Hi Lynn,

Hope the training continues to go great for you. Noticed you mention there's room for improvement when logging what you eat for your strength training. If you're still looking for further direction with this, here's a link to further strength training info for you.

Very best to you,
Matt
http://www.honestmusclegain.com/strength-training

[kim]

Lynn, glad to see your weight training progress, by now you should have achieve something or gaining some weight...that usually happen. You will not only track what you eat also try to develop a habit of buying the quality food..look at the label, identify "trans fat" as well as saturated fat, avoid high "sugar" level, perhaps 5g per day.

Kim
http://darkhollow.org

[michael jones]

That is great! I am interested in strength training and i like that blog very much! I am happy that i have found it!:)