Saturday, June 28, 2014

Family triathlon training fun

So this weekend I am home visiting my parents and brother and sister, but obviously I still need to get in a few workouts. Today my training plan said 1000m swim (open water if possible) followed by 1-2 hour bike (back-to-back if possible). So I convinced my dad to load up the kayaks and we all went to Tanassee Creek Lake.

So pretty:
It was raining off and on, but my mom and my brother were still willing to be kayak support. I didn't get any pictures of my sister because she took most of these.


After I finished my 1000m, we couldn't figure out what the weather was going to do, so I took a turn paddling while we waited to see if it would clear up enough for my ride.

My decent weather luck so far this summer held out again - the rain stopped and there were a few patches of clear sky, so we decided to go for it. I had a pretty challenging ride planned - 16 miles with over 3000 feet of climbing (and not much descending at all) up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. My brother, who doesn't own a road bike and had never really biked on the road, decided to join me, so I brought my hybrid for him. :)


It was a really beautiful ride, despite the hills. I love the views from Tanassee Gap Road (no picture from today on the bike, but here's one from the Smoky Mountain Relay in April):


My dad was excellent sag support. :) The climb up 215 to the Parkway was tough, 6 miles of climbing with no breaks, but it wasn't too too steep. Finally, after an hour and a half, I made it to the Parkway:
Refueling. We had to bring our picnic inside because it poured almost as soon as we loaded the bikes.
And when the rain finally stopped, a rainbow. :)


We made pizza tonight before my 1 hour run tomorrow. 


I also sogned up for my first ever century tonight - Roan Moan on July 26. Hope I'm ready!

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Tough day

Today was rough. Since I raced yesterday, I had to do my long run and my long ride today. I did decide that I could sleep in a little, so I ran my 10 miles around 8:30 this morning. Brad joined me for the first half, so that part was better. :) It wasn't too too hot yet, but still.

Then a 45 mile ride at 1 pm. Hot. I was getting pretty tired and maybe a little dehydrated by the end. Good practice for the bike/run in Weihai, though. It looks like average temperatures in September are around 70-80 and based on the schedule I've seen I think I should finish the swim around 10:15, which means I'll be biking from then until 3:15ish and running until 5:15ish.

Overall, training has been going really well and I'm loving hanging out with all the people I've been training and racing with - so on days like today I just keep going and remember why I'm doing this.

Recovery week starts tomorrow!

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Enka Triathlon at Biltmore Lake

The Enka Triathlon at Biltmore Lake was the first tri I did, back in 2010. I loved the course, but I hadn't done it since then because of timing and other race goals, so this seemed like a good year to go back. 

The lake was beautiful this morning:

Ready to go!
The swim was great. Great conditions - the water was 80 degrees and the lake was really calm.  I felt pretty smooth for the most part. I think swimming 3x per week since January (ish) is finally paying off a little. 

Then onto the bike. I LOVE this bike course. It's pretty hilly and a little long for a sprint (17.5 mi), so it's tough, but it's gorgeous. And I like the hills anyway. Normal story of my life on the bike- passing a lot of people on the uphills and trying (usually failing) to stay ahead of them on the downhills... or at least to stay close enough that I can catch them on the run. 

Back into transition and out onto the path around the lake for the run. The path is lovely and shades, but not quite 3.1 miles, so there's a little detour through a neighborhood with a huge hill to get the distance. Back on the trail at about 1.5 miles in I was feeling good and still passing people (the advantage of being a relatively weak swimmer is having a lot of people to catch on the bike and run). Except for the one hill it was a pretty flat course and I had a great run. 

Coming into the chute!

Finished! And a PR for this course (by 14 min over the first time when I didn't even have a road bike). 

When the preliminary results were posted it looked like I had placed in my age group, so we hung around waiting for the awards ceremony.

Good thing we stayed, because I won a door prize for a $100 gift card to NOC. :)

And also, because I was 2nd in my age group (if I counted right, I was the 8th female overall)!
Yay!

And then, a shower and refueling.
So yeah, it was a good day. Compression tights on now so hopefully I'll still be ready for my long run and long bike tomorrow!

Friday, June 20, 2014

Racing tomorrow

We are in Asheville tonight for the Enka Triathlon tomorrow. It was the first triathlon I ever did and is still my 2nd favorite (only behind Lake Logan), so it should be a fun day. 

Getting some carbs at Pizza Pura (yum!):
I have everything laid out for tomorrow, so hopefully I can get some sleep and have a good race!

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Keowee swim

I got the opportunity to swim in a lovely protected cove of Lake Keowee this evening. It was beautiful! 

Better than my normal open water swims in Hartwell, and MUCH better than 80 laps in the pool. :)

It was so great. And we finished up to see an amazing sunset!

And Brad has been so supportive of all my training. I got home at 9:30 and he had dinner waiting. :)


Tuesday, June 17, 2014

The "real" top of Paris Mountain

Another day, another bike ride... there was a break in yesterday's storms barely long enough for my swim, so I was worried about the weather, but it ended up being totally sunny (and hot). We decided to do Paris Mountain again, but this time Dennis wanted to go up the little side road to the right to the real top. I was disappointed with the lack of a view the first time, so this made up for it!


I did use the new 28, so it was definitely nice to have, but I noticed the bigger gaps between gears with the 11-28 than I had with the 12-27 and missed a few of those "missing" gears. 

The ride down that little road was scary. I had to talk myself through it... hope there's nothing like that in China!

Monday, June 16, 2014

Bike makeover

I needed new tires and new bar tape (and apparently a new chain and cassette too), so I dropped my bike off after Cycle to Farm on Saturday and picked it up today.

Before, with gray tires and peeling bar tape:
After, with pretty new blue Pro4s and new bar tape:

Yay! And I went from a 12-27 cassette to 11-28, so we'll see how much that 1 cog helps with Paris Mountain tomorrow (just kidding, I know not to expect much)!

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Cycle to Farm

I've been excited about the Cycle to Farm ( http://cycletofarm.org ) ride since I first saw the flyer at the Swamp Rabbit Cafe, and I signed up pretty early, but I was a little bummed when I found out it was the same day as the Ride for Animal Care, which has a lot of climbing that I thought would be good training for China. However, when the route was posted a few weeks ago, I realized that this ride would be just fine for training - 69 miles with 4900 feet of climbing!
( http://www.strava.com/routes/270670 )

So I headed up to Greenbrier Farms (which is also where we get our CSA from - yay, local food - check them out here: http://www.greenbrierfarms.com ) this morning for an 8:00 start. I had eaten a little breakfast at home, but I knew they would have food at the start. I had a banana and then tried all 4 flavors of Threshold Provisions' new energy bars (these might join ProBars in my rotation of nutrition bars with real food ingredients for long rides and races) and part of a yummy chocolate chip scone from the Swamp Rabbit Cafe. Then I was ready to ride!



 None of my normal riding friends were doing it, so I decided this was a good chance to practice riding alone (since you can't draft and can't ride 2 abreast, there's really no way to talk to anyone during the long hours of the bike section of a triathlon). Because of this, and because it was only 5 miles in, I decided to skip the first farm. After that, it was a while before I saw any other riders, but I did eventually catch up to a few others just in time for the second stop, which was at mile 22 at Hagood Mill. They make corn meal and grits, and have special events one Saturday a month. Even though I don't think this was that Saturday, they still had bluegrass music and cornbread with butter and honey for us to try (in addition to all the yummy rest stop food from Earth Fare). 




Then back on the road for the 30ish miles to rest stop #3 at Double Blessings farm in Travelers Rest, where they had goat milk and fudge and soap made with the goat milk. I don't think I saw anyone on this part, but the route was lovely (and challenging), so it was fine. It was a little hard to get back going after that stop because we were starting on a pretty steep hill and I just couldn't get going fast enough to balance. But eventually I was on my way. The route went into downtown Travelers Rest and onto the Swamp Rabbit Trail for a while before turning off to follow some well-known local bike routes back over into Pickens County. At the turn by the Woodlands, one of the volunteers told me I was the first rider he saw and took my picture - apparently he has a blog about local agriculture, so hopefully I'll be able to get that picture. 

I was ready to be done when we turned back on to Hester Store Road. And I was the first rider back who actually completed the course (they had great sag support, but I was happy I didn't need it)! This was not a race, at all, but I was still pretty happy to be first. And the organizer was pretty happy that the first person back was a woman. :) 

I finished at 4 hours, 22 minutes of actual riding time, for an average of 15.6 mph, which is right on where I wanted to be. China will be hillier, but I still think I can average >15 with 3 more months of training!

The taco bar Greenbrier put together was perfect after that ride!

And since tomorrow is Father's Day, I bought my daddy a shirt (shhh… don't tell).


Overall, this is a great ride and I would highly recommend any Cycle to Farm or other event by Velo Girl Rides (but be prepared for some hills).

Friday, June 13, 2014

Finally Friday!


Another weekend is here and I'm so excited about Cycle to Farm tomorrow! I picked up my packet at the Swamp Rabbit Cafe tonight and they had a special - pasta with local vegetables, salad, bread (they seriously make the best bread I have EVER had) and dessert:


I'm sure it would have been prettier if I had eaten there, but I still had to swim, so I got it to go. When I got to the pool it was windy and the sky was dark, but I managed to get my swim in before it thundered. And the dinner was yummy. :)

Thursday, June 12, 2014

More storm dodging

My friend Kristin and I had planned a short ride after work today, so I put our bikes on my bike rack before work and put bags over the seats and handlebars because the weather forecast looked pretty bad. Kind of like yesterday. It poured around noon and again around 3 and I started paying attention to the radar. At 5 it looked like the radar was clear and the future radar forecast thing had a hole in the rain right over where we were, so we decided to go for it. We were able to get in our ride and get home before the rain started. AND we saw a double rainbow (which I stole Kristin's picture of):

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

2 laps!

Open water swim at Clemson tonight. In keeping with my plan to keep my long swims during the week, I wanted to do 2 laps (each lap is a mile). So we got there, and it was pouring. And the lightning alarm went off. But we could see on the radar that the storm was passing. So we waited it out and finally it cleared up and even got sunny. We did the first lap (which is all everyone else was doing) and finished just as Abby arrived to join me for lap 2. I looked and the radar and we were perfectly in the middle of the gap between the storms, so we set out. A little over 2 miles in an hour and 20 min... should be on track for the 4K swim in China in 1:30 or so. And, we finished just in time! After we had dried off and changed, the lightning alarm went off again just as we were leaving. :)

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Sunday morning bike + run

I was kind of dreading having to fit in a swim this weekend. It's just always so hard to schedule - plus, this weekend was the Upstate Farm Tour and I wanted to see as many local farms as possible between 1-6 Saturday and Sunday afternoons. So when one of my friends told me there was a group going down to the lake to swim and then run this morning, it was perfect.

Yesterday we went to Happy Critters Ranch (pigs, chickens, and cattle) and City Scape Winery (yummy wines for summer - I got pineapple riesling, peach muscadine and raspberry white zinfandel) since they were on the way back from Grits and Groceries. Today, I wanted to go to the Seneca Treehouse Project (sustainable living), Milky Way Farm (we've been buying their raw milk for about a year and I love it), and Hurricane Creek (yummy hydroponic tomatoes in the winter). Since my friends wanted to swim and run at Clemson and then have lunch at Mellow Mushroom, it fit perfectly with the locations of the farms I wanted to see, so I decided to go for it.

After some rough storms early this morning, we decided the forecast looked OK and headed down to the lake (most of these people were on the team for the Smoky Mountain Relay - race report here: http://tri-ingforchina.blogspot.com/2014/04/smoky-mountain-relay.html)


It was a beautiful morning for a swim:


And a run, too: 


We swam a little over a mile from the docks in the first picture to these buoys and back. The water was not frigid (thank goodness, since I was the only one that didn't bring a wetsuit), and it was actually pretty pleasant.


After our swim, we set out for a run around campus. We made a nice 5.7 mile loop that ended along the dike and shortened it a little on the second lap to end up with 11.3 miles.


When we were finished, we headed over to Mellow Mushroom for some food. Yummy salad (and pizza too, but I forgot to take a picture of it):


Another week starts tomorrow with a swim after work. For now, we're having frittata with local eggs, milk, carrots, spinach, turnips, radish, spring onions and green garlic for dinner and I'm hanging out on the couch with my compression tights on.


Saturday, June 7, 2014

Grits and Groceries!

I love Grits and Groceries. I've loved it since the first time my friends Julie and Will took us there. If you haven't been you should go. So when my friends plotted out a metric route that took us there around mile 58 and planned a ride for this morning, I was in. We had a great group, and the route was good too, with lots of the same pretty, mostly not busy roads we were on for the Safe Harbor ride last week.

Here's part of the group at Grits and Groceries:

And here's my reward after 58 miles. :)

Fun day! Tonight we're going to dinner with the other guy from Greenville who's going to the race in China, and tomorrow I have a swim + run planned with friends. 

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Paris Mountain climb

I don't really know why, I guess lack of opportunity and fear of the descent, but I'd never biked to the top of Paris Mountain. But today, it worked out that my friends were doing it on a day I could go, and I know I need to train on hills (including the descents), so I went. 

Our target: 

It was tough, but really not horrible. And it was a pretty peaceful ride. I've never seen more Jack-in-the-pulpits together than on the side of Altamont Rd. 

I made it!
After that it was a mostly easy ride through the countryside and back home. The sunset was especially nice!