LavaMan Newsletter4

Before updating you all on my last month of training I wanted to plug to other blogs.  They are extremely rich and diverse in subject matter.  Please check out Michael Dearing's blog at : http://reardenmetal.com  and Shri Mahesh's blog at: http://shripriya.com/blog

Now onto the latest newsletter update:

Hi,

Time for another update.  Exactly 4 weeks to go to event day in

Hawaii

.  Unfortunately, the last month has been marked by injuries and illnesses.

Before I go into the training, I want to thank all my sponsors one more time.  We have raised almost $27,000.  This is awesome and really is going to a wonderful cause.  A HUGE thanks!

Also I want to thank Scott Murray and Thomas Fenrich who both went on bike rides with me.  They are helping me to get into shape and finish the event.  Scott got to ride with me for the first time after my biking accident and it was his job to keep me safe.  That was a tall order given how accident prone I am.   He succeeded and my first trip back on the bike was a success.  I also picked up the 2x4 (really a 4x6) and will have it on display at the celebration party I’m having for my sponsors.

Okay on to the training and my illnesses:

Last year, my Dad who is 82, invited Kevin and I to go to

Acapulco

,

Mexico

with his golf group for eight days of golfing and we accepted.  (On a side note it was fun being the babies at the age of 51).  The dates were February 12^th through the 19^th.  It turned out with our Lava Man Triathlon training schedule that the timing was not good, but we had committed and Kevin and I were positive about running and swimming every day in

Mexico

.  It was going to be great to run in the heat and swim in the ocean.  Well, our best laid plans didn’t happen.  In the orientation meeting at our hotel it was stated quite clearly that we were NOT to go into the water, since the city’s sewage was being dumped directly into the ocean.  That left running.  For the first 3 days we ran about one hour each day and we were doing great!  However on day four I came down with an intestinal bug that was suppose to last only 1 to 2 days.  When I do something I do it big .  It lasted the rest of the trip, on the flight home, and I finally had to go to the doctor to get antibiotics.  In total it lasted around nine to ten days for me to get better.  That took a huge chunk out of my training at a critical time and I also had to come back up a curve for getting my endurance back.

The other bad news is I have had three issues with muscles.  My upper left leg had an issue for around 5 days and I couldn’t train, then my left shoulder and arm ( I could run and bike, but couldn’t swim) and the latest which I’m still nursing are sore calf muscles (both left and right legs) which are interfering with both the bike and the run, but significantly affecting the run.  I only hope that I get past this latest issue and stay healthy for the last three weeks.

My trainer said that all the muscle issues are the fact that for my body I’m over-training and I should take it easier and that I’m not eating enough protein.  Therefore I’m breaking down my muscles with the running and biking and not replenishing them with protein.  So you won’t believe this, but I bought cottage cheese and tuna fish and before and after my workouts I eat both.  I’m only doing this for the remainder of the training!!  I can not change my diet long term to dairy products and tuna fish.  I have to get back to Coke and Cheetos J

This past Sunday, March 4^th, Kevin and I participated in

Stanford

University

’s Treeathlon.  It was a sprint triathlon:  500 meter swim (1/3 of LavaMan), 20K bike (1/2 of LavaMan), and 5K run (1/2 of LavaMan).

First we had to be in the transition area at

Stanford

University

by 6:30am.  I don’t mind going to bed at 5am, but getting up at 5am to be at an event in

Palo Alto

by 6:30 was tough enough and I hadn’t even started the endurance event!

The swim portion was at the Stanford pools. So I had to wait for my heat (heat 10) in the cold weather waiting to get into a cold pool.  I did fairly well on the swim.  They didn’t let anyone stay in the pool more than 10 minutes to finish and if you didn’t then you were assessed a 2 minute penalty.  I didn’t finish so a 2 minute penalty was added to my total time, but I only had about 20 feet to go which was really good!  A lot of the women and men in their 20’s didn’t finish and I almost did.  However it was harder than I thought and I’m not sure how I’m going to do 3X that in

Hawaii

and in the ocean to boot.  We swam the perimeter of the pool around buoys and it is the first time I didn’t swim laps where you touch the wall every 25 yards.  This was MUCH harder!!!!

Okay, after the swim it was back to the transition area to get ready for the bike portion of the event.  I can only tell you when I looked around (while still drying off and putting on my clothes) everyone else from my heat was gone.  I still had about 5 minutes before I was cycling.  So I think I have to practice the transition.  More to come on this.

The bike ride was fairly hilly so I didn’t make my average of 12.5 miles per hour, but instead did 11.5 miles per hour.  With the transition, the bike portion took me around 1 hour and 7 minutes which was really NOT good.  I only passed one women who couldn’t make it up a hill and had to get off her bike and walk it.  However, later on the bike course on a large downhill she passed me.  So I was the slowest in the entire event.  After my big bike fall I just couldn’t go racing down the hills.  I was fairly cautious and that cost me a lot of time.

After the bike ride it was back to the transition area to get ready for the run portion of the event.  This was the worst transition for me.  I got a speck of dust/dirt in my eye and I wear contacts.  So I had to take my contact out, clean it and when I put it back in I couldn’t get it positioned on my eye correctly.  I had to go to several competitors looking for a mirror so I could find the contact in my eye and fix it.  I finally got past all that, put on my running shoes and set off, for the run portion.  I did slightly better at the run portion.  I passed ONE person and completed the run including transition in around 33 minutes (which was okay) especially given the calf problems I’m having.

So my total time including my 2 minute penalty, all the transition time, and the swim, bike, and run times was 1 hour 55 minutes.  There were around 190 competitors and only three had a worse time than me.  [On a side note there were only four females older than me.]

The good news is I finished!  The highlights were the swim and that I ran the 3 miles even with my injury.  The bad news was the bike ride (I was too slow on all the downhills) and my transitions were horrible.  So I’m going to practice over the next few weeks transitioning!!!

We have a practice tri on March 17^th, so I hope to do better.  If I extrapolate my time today with the LavaMan event I would do the event in around 4 ½ hours and I was hoping for under 4 hours.

This continues to be a wonderful experience and I have learned a lot about endurance athletes, nutrition and training.  Also the true heroes continue to be our honorees who battle cancer every day.  It was sad that we lost one of our honorees a week ago.  The cancer finally won, but she had a wonderful attitude up to the very end.

Two other training notes:

• A week ago Sunday, February 25^th, we had an Urban Adventure Race in downtown

  Los Gatos

  .  It was suppose to have both a bike and run portion. However, it was pouring (we really didn’t want to go, but we have got to get training so we went).  When we got there we said that we would only do the run portion, because we didn’t want to fall off our bikes.  (We are now being problems).  So they all decided that it wasn’t a good idea to do the bike portion and they modified the event and we went running for the next 2 hours, finding clues and answering questions about downtown

  Los Gatos

  .  When we got done and Kevin and I were driving home we both commented on what “nuts” we are.  Pouring rain and running for two hours.  What has happened to our common sense?  Put a competition in front of us and we lose our minds!
• This past Tuesday evening was swim practice at Burgess Pool in

  Menlo Park

  .  About ¾ of the way through the practice there was thunder and lightening.  Yes, we were swimming in the rain!  But once we saw the lightening, we got to go home.  That was the end of practice.

As I stated, getting ones’ body in shape to do an endurance event is far harder than working at a desk.  My job at eBay was EASY compared to this.

More to come in the next couple weeks, stayed tuned.

Thanks for all the support.  I really couldn’t do it without all of your encouragement and helpful advice.

Yours truly,

Lynn

(a project in the works)

Comments

[Shripriya]

Lynn - wow, a lot going on. Amazing that you are doing so well. I think considering you have never done an endurance event before, just finishing would be a huge accomplishment!! Good luck! Can't wait to hear more updates :)

[Adam Nash]

Unbelievable... I can't imagine doing the triathalon... Amazing.

Feel free to check out my blog sometime... you might find the topics amusing.

Take care,
Adam