Not Quite Back...

I'm not one who tends to wear physical ailments on her sleeve. Mainly because I have a premise that random people in our lives aren't interested in hearing about other peoples daily physical issues and as a society we spend way too much time discussing them. Who wants to hear an athlete or elderly person regularly disclose their litany of prevailing physical maladies?

I have aches and pains just like every other person out there who pushes their body, but instead of talking about them I act on them. Attending to them is about doing what I can to mute their existence. So that is why my posts last week left out the fact that I’ve been struggling with a heart issue recently and have been spending some time in addition to training trying to get that sorted out.

This problem has not been fully tended to but I still got the ok to race this past weekend. So I did with a dismal lack of results. I was quite fit going into this race and should have solidly been able to do this supremely tough course. Instead I was left with extreme fatigue in the swim and dizziness and a ‘strange’ feeling in my chest causing an inability to recover from any kind of hard effort (even a short hill).

As fit athletes we should be able to push up a tough section or fast effort, back off that effort and feel our body and heart rate recover to be able to do it again and again and again. The fitter one is the more we can ride this line of effort/ recovery on the move and the easier it becomes. My training showed me I was fully ready for this sort of abuse until I overtrained a bit a couple of weeks ago and my heart started acting up (this is not new, I have had some history with this years past). For the past two week I have not been recovering, daily or in training.

As athletes do, I started the race thinking that perhaps the gun going off would somehow make it go away, but it didn’t. I pushed though a miserable swim (lovely swim, miserable for me) and it went from bad to worse on the bike until I decided that with dizziness and a feeling that there was an anvil on my moving body parts I had become a swerving liability to myself and the other riders on the road. I casually pulled over at an aid station and prudently took myself out of the race.

I’m hugely disappointed—mostly because I didn’t get to do what proved to be an incredible course. But my efforts now need to be to get this sorted out. There are always more races to run – but we only have one heart (oh wait I guess they can give you another one). I’ll keep mine for now and see what I can do about getting it to let me come out and play again. I’ll be back…again.

If you are a triathlete interested in proving what you’re really made of – The Auburn Tri is the true test. If you are looking for an exquisite ass kicking in the sport – the Half Ironman is for you. Not for the faint of heart (pun intended).

Huge kudos to Julia, Sherri and Jane for amazing efforts in incredible heat on a proven tough course. You rocked!!
Terri

Derailed Training in Perspective

I was going to post today about how after all these years of training - I still recently bonked in a swim workout and how I overtrained myself to exhaustion a couple of weeks ago. But in light of recent happenings it all just seemed so trivial.

Yesterday my brother in law survived 9 hours of heart surgery and I noted that 2 of my dear friends both have parents who are dying of cancer and another athlete/friend recently had a stroke.

So instead of belaboring my training mishaps I want to focus these works on a dedication of my race to these folks who aren't as fortunate as I to go out and push my body this weekend. I hope your thoughts will go out to them too - while I'm racing. I'll let you know how it goes...
Terri

Tri-ing Again – After All these Years

My last blog post was almost a year ago after my climb on Denali. I won’t tire you with irrelevant excuses as to why I took such a long hiatus from blogging, but I will say that I’m back – in more ways than one.

After 13 years of adventure racing/running/climbing around the world I’ve decided to do a triathlon again! If you asked me even 6 months ago if I were going to do another triathlon in this lifetime I would have dispassionately brushed off the question. I raced triathlon hard core for 15 years and felt as though I had wrung the sport out. I tend to continually seek new physical experiences and my life post triathlon has been an exercise in that trend. Now here I sit, 6 days before my next triathlon as giddy as a veteran soldier going into a firefight (what?). A few things fell into place to bring me to be sharing this info with you today.

(me, many years and lots of races ago...)

Today I FedEx’ed to The Mountaineers Books (publisher) the final edit on my next book that will be coming out in November – Triathlon Revolution: Training, Technique and Inspiration. I’ve been working on this project for the past eight months or so, inclusive of a gut wrenching writing ultra-marathon of approximately 3 months leading into my initial manuscript deadline (I think I’d rather crawl through the jungles of Borneo again than repeat the effort of the last aforementioned time period – ouch).

By dissecting in detail the sport of triathlon, I reconnected with a remarkably rich time in my life—10 years of traveling and racing as a professional triathlete. Since I have been privileged to engage in so many rewarding adventures since that time, my life as a triathlete was inadvertently sent to the archives of my conscious. In many ways I grew up as an adult doing triathlon. I revisited this time of youth and world-class endurance through my book and in doing so it ignited a small spark in my gut. One might call this feeling situational-happiness.

I also decided a few months ago it was time to dust off the road bike and overhaul its frozen drive train. After a couple times out on my “new” ride in the pristine mountains of Santa Cruz—my old Ironman training battle grounds—I was reminded of how much I love the zen of road riding. Each Saturday I found myself reaching for the road bike instead of mtnbike. After some hours climbing in the consummate beauty of our ‘country roads’ I noticed a bit of resiliency arriving back in my quads and that happiness-thing taking front stage.

At this same time I had made the decision to start swimming masters workouts again to offer my beat up running legs a reprieve and to mix things up a bit with some speed. This immediately stitched that competitive toggle in my brain and after a few weeks I was sort-of-kind-of close to reasonable swimming speed again (I have never and doubt I will ever equate pool swimming to ‘happiness’).

The deal clincher was a Sunday morning run and drive through Auburn, CA on my way back from a speaking engagement in Lake Tahoe. After a lovely run inclusive of a bear sighting on some trails close to my heart— the Western States 100—I drove around for a bit checking out sections of the bike course for the “World’s Toughest Half Ironman”. This race has always intrigued me since I tend to look for events that lie on the fringe in a sport and I had to see first hand if the “World’s Toughest” moniker held water. A half hour of roaming and I declared with a smile, “Damn this is a tough course!” With race seed planted and a belly full of a central-California-cult-status-In-and-Out-Burger, I wandered home and got on the race website.

Set in one of the most picturesque areas in California the self-professed ‘Endurance Capital of the World’ and put on by ex-pro triathlete Brad Kearns, this still relatively grass roots triathlon caught my eye. Since I tend to seek out challenging events The World’s Toughest signature drew me in to what has potential to be a truly exquisite ass kicking. As I read more I noticed that giddy/happiness-thing in my gut again.

I wondered if, like the veteran soldier, hard core endurance athletes are just plain compelled to engage again in memorable battles, especially if the fight is proven to be a mega-challenge. Or, perhaps too much time without an adventure caused me to grab at the nearest body-flogging fix that presented itself.

In any case, I’m back (for at least this one tri anyway). I’ll be on my blog later this week with some interesting info on the ups and downs of revisiting my tri training process for this race. Whew!
Terri