Tri-umphant!

Week 23: August 4-August 10

Bike: 67 km (40 on road and 27 on trail)
Run: 6 km
Swim: 1800 m

The Yukon's crazy summer schedule leaves many weeks where your taper begins before your recovery can end. After the Yukon River Trail Marathon, I had only 7 days to recover, prepare and taper for the Long Lake Triathlon. The bulk of the week was spent recovering from knee pounding downhills that left me barely mobile on Monday. It took until Thursday for me to move into the training stage of my event preparation cycle. Because of the fairly consistent schedule of running and biking, I knew that the only real gap for the triathlon was going to be the open water swimming. Although I've been practicing at Marsh and Long Lake, I wasn't convinced that the 1 km open swim was possible, let alone a good idea. To help build my swimming self-esteem, I biked out to Long Lake on Thursday night to practice in the water.

I have already spent considerable time on this blog moaning about the stupid temperatures of Yukon lakes. What I haven't talked about it is the potential for catastrophe due to unexpected water animals. It is true, I don't have to contend with the possibility of fatal shark attacks like those in San Diego. That being said, Yukon Lakes may be more dangerous than anyone actually expects, with frightening creatures ready to pop out and attack at any given time. On Thursday, I was the victim of such an attack, which Tony graciously captured on video (while he could have been saving me). In a perfect world I could have edited this video to be faster with the Jaws soundtrack playing softly in the background, but it's not a perfect world, so this will have to do:

Post swim I was feeling confident about the open water and ready to move into the taper/madly cleaning because Tony's Mom is set to arrive in 48 hours phase of the week. The only training left to do was wetsuit stripping - a very technical part of triathlons that involves the removal of the wetsuit and preparation for the bike ride. I was very lucky to have Ms. Alexis back for a visit from Vancouver and ready to assist me with all my transitional needs. On Saturday night, I jumped into the shower with my wetsuit, and then we practiced stripping it off as quickly as possible. When we got it down to 30 seconds, I knew I was fully prepared for the weekend ahead.

Tony, Alexis and I arrived bright and early to Long Lake. While I got dressed, Tony checked out my bike and Alexis laid on my towel and read (which I'm sure was helpful in some way). With about 10 minutes left until start time, Alexis perked up and abandoned reading to make fun on my wicked triathlon outfit - boy, I miss that girl...

Finally, it was race time. I tried to set myself right in the middle of the swimmers, mostly because I wanted to get kicked a few times, just to see what it might be like in a bigger group. Unfortunately, Yukoners are much too congenial and I remained unscathed throughout the swim start. As I moved through the water I realized a few important points of open water swimming. First of all - it's good to know where you are going. Not just in the 500 m out and back way, but really know where the turn around is. Otherwise, you do like me and just swim in one general direction, taking a longer way than necessary. Secondly, it's good to de-fog your goggles before you start, because not being able to see the buoy (which you haven't bothered to scope out) can be tough through foggy lenses. Despite these minor inconveniences, the swim went swimmingly and I came out of the water near the back, but feeling strong. The training helped and Alexis had my suit off and top on in 24 seconds, getting me on my bike faster than some of the girls who had beat me out of the water.

The next part of the triathlon was a 15.5 km mountain bike ride. This ride would have been much nicer had it not started with a ridiculous climb up a gravel road, and transitioned into a constant climb up soft muddy trail. The mud only ended with the loose gravel/sand began (which was conveniently located at the ridiculously steep downhills). I have decided that before I race another mountain bike ride, I'm going to get myself some sport glasses. Not being able to see the trail ahead is a major problem when mountain biking and bound to lead to my early death.

Finally we were at the run, which was a hilly run by normal standards, but reasonable compared to last week's marathon. This is the part of the race where I gained the most time. Although my bike was not strong, I seemed able to maintain the most energy for the final portion of the triathlon. This is a big improvement over last year, where I was physically done before the run even started. I did two loops of the course cheered on by Tony, his Mom and her friend Lee who were down for the visit.

The big shock of the day came after I rolled into the finish line. The miracle of all miracles seemed to have occurred through some cosmic combination of fates. I had actually posted the fastest female time for the race! For the first time in history (actually this might not be true, I think I won a ski race when I was 6) I won a sporting event. While I don't expect this phenomenon to repeat, I am happy to have tasted the sweet nectar of a gold!

Sierra posted this on Aug 14, 2008 from the outside | | permanent link

Rest and Run

Week 22: July 28-August 3

Bike: 39 km
Run: 24 km
Swim: 0 m

When the days are long it's hard not to be out and about enjoying the light. The choice of whether to rest or work is not always yours to decide. This week, my body decided to force me into relaxation by inflicting a horrible cold onto my respiratory system. For five days I slept more hours than I spent awake. This was a nice opportunity to catch up on long forgotten soap operas, whose plot lines stayed eerily the same, and to loiter in my garden. In honor of not moving, I finally put up the hammock that I bought in Belize and read in amongst the fireweed.

After five brutal days, it was the weekend and time for the Yukon Trail Marathon. Right up to Sunday morning, I wasn't sure what exactly I was going to run. The only thing I knew for sure is that we had some left over faerie wings from our 24 Hours of Light extravaganza that were begging to be re-used. Our team included Tracy, Lisa, Jenn and our special mascot Miss Annie.

The Yukon Trail Marathon is a horrendously hilly 42 km course that weaves along the Yukon River and through many of the trails that I frequent near Hidden Lakes. The first leg was run by Tracy, who was brave enough to start running straight out of her car and onto the course due to a slight timing error. Next up was Jenn, who took the run from the Miles Canyon Bridge along the river trail all the way to Chadburn Lake. Note the fairy wings that are helping her navigate the ridge:

Next, Lisa was nice enough to share leg 3 with me. To describe leg 3 as hilly is an understatement, and I was glad to have someone to endure the horror with. Back at the Miles Canyon bridge, Lisa rejoined the team and I continued down the final 14 km back to Rotary Park. I had managed to pre-run leg 4 last Friday, but soon realized that running that marathon course was a bit like childbirth...after you're done, you forget just how horrible it was. This selective memory issue caught up to me as soon as I got off the Schwatka Lake Trail and started into the hills of death. The run culminated with a brutal climb up "Heartbreak Hill", which should be called "Heart Attack Hill". This hill is located 3 scant kilometers from the finish line and involves scrambling up a cliff-like structure. I'd love to watch the front runners tackle this hill, because I can barely walk up the thing, let alone run it. Poor Jen was forced to walk up the entire hill just to capture photos of my triumphant conquest.

After 24 brutal kilometers, I made it over the finish line with a total team time of just over 5 hours and went straight into the river to ice my aching legs. Next up - the Long Lake Triathlon...

Sierra posted this on Aug 06, 2008 from the gym | | permanent link

Carb Loading

Warning - nothing that I write in this post was responsible, encouraged, or intelligent. Unfortunately, a significant amount of what I do falls under the categories of stupid, immature and potentially dangerous.

Week 21: July 21-July 27

Bike: 48 km
Run: 25 km
Swim: 750 m

An important part of training is nutrition and for the last couple months, I've been trying to figure out what the perfect nutritional supplement is for long runs and rides. So far I've tried Enduromax (good results - disgusting taste), First Endurance (good results - disgusting taste) and Gatorate (yummilicious, but not good in the long term). This week a group of us decided to investigate the qualities of a variety of carb loaded drinks.

As with any event - Jenn and I could not resist the temptation of dressing up, and dragged our friend Julie into our costume obsessed world. We decided to go as tarnished Beauty Queens and dressed accordingly.

The race course was set up on a flat path up near Grey Mountain. Teams were randomly chosen, although through some odd twist of fate the Beauty Queens ended up together. The goal of the event was to race laps of the course and in between consume carbohydrate loaded beverages. The beverages seemed to assist with the timing of the race, but had some odd side effects. It appeared as thought the beverages led to an skin irritation that caused the sudden removal of clothing. Even Starbuck suffered from this odd side effect when he lost his shirt to Tony.

In the case of the Beauty Queens, somehow we went in the forest wearing one outfit and came out wearing another...odd...clearly this is something that should be considered before using these beverages in a race setting.

The event finished with Ben, Jonah and Stephen destroying everyone while managing to retain all their clothing.

This week was a pretty pathetic training week due to work commitments that meant 12 hour days on Tuesday and Wednesday. Unfortunately it's not nearly as pathetic as next week will be. I've been battling illness since Monday (I write this on Friday) and have been out of commission.

Sierra posted this on Aug 01, 2008 from the gym | | permanent link