I’m happy to report that I survived the swim meet last night, but it was close!

While warming-up, I realized that the starting blocks were on the edge of the shallow end.  The very shallow end.  As in “4.5″ feet deep, that was actually only 4 feet deep.  The thought of diving head first from 2 feet above the edge of the pool, into something four feet deep terrifies me.  This might be commonplace for swimmers, but I am not a swimmer and can’t differentiate my diving techniques between shallow and deep.  It’s whatever happens, I have very little control over it.  Every kid learns don’t dive into shallow water.  If my mom found out I launched myself head first into something 4 feet deep she would kill me, if the dive didn’t.  Luckily, Jordan was just as uneasy about the whole thing as me.  We talked to Sean who, after some extreme coaxing, said we could dive off the side.  No in water starts.

Oh geez, I’m not even going to get to live to have the chance to get my pro card.

I did one practice dive off the side, didn’t break my neck, and decided it might be ok.  Jordan tried one off the blocks and hit his elbow on the bottom. Eek.

About 15 minutes before my race I warmed-up again for a couple hundred yards.  My favorite warm-up/pre-race routine (for running too) is to do a few short repeats at goal-pace.  I did 4×50 or so at 1:20 pace and it felt good - smooth and relaxed.  I started to think I could go even faster than my goal of 22:00.

The race went off, I didn’t break my neck diving, and my goggles didn’t fall off so I was good to go.  I got it going and felt like I was moving faster than 1:20, but it’s impossible to know for sure with swimming.  No visible clocks, and I can’t hear anything anyone is yelling.  The lap-counting method seems bizarre to me too, who counts up in a race??  The girl in the lane next to me, who can’t be taller than 4′10″ lapped me twice.  Maybe this isn’t going so well.  It sure feels hard…

Gradually the count goes up, and the suspense of my time is killing me.  I was more excited to see my time than to actually finish.

I hit the wall, looked back: 21:22.  Sweet!!!

Jordan got all of my splits (what a guy) and I was surprised to have swum (swam?) so evenly.  I hit 1:18s with the exception of a few 1:17s and maybe a 1:19 or two.  I think I only deviated 1.5 seconds or so throughout.  Not too shabby.  I’m happy.

I think I can go faster.  I’m shooting for a sub-21 at the COMSA State Meet at the end of March.

Tonight the Riptide team is heading down to Englewood to swim in the ACES swim meet.  What does this mean for me?  I’m going head to head in the 1650 against girls half my age who are crazy fast (I can’t believe I am old enough to use the expression “half my age”).

My only other experience in the 1650 was last March when I swam in the Colorado Masters Swimming State Championships.  I managed a 22:59 there, so hopefully I’ll improve on that.  Looking back, I am surprised I was able to swim that then, only swimming with masters a few days per week.  You’d think there would be no doubt in my mind that now, after a year of consistent swimming, that I would be able to go faster, but swimming is weird.  Somedays 1:20 pace feels like a walk in the park, other days it’s just doesn’t happen and I don’t know what it is.  The last 3 days (ever since I wrote the post about feeling good again) I’ve felt terrible in the pool.  It’s so up and down.

It’s a race though, and everyone knows that races are completely different than practice.

That being said…my plan tonight is to click off as many 1:20s as I possibly can.  If I can do that for 1650 yards I’ll have a 21:40 which I will be pretty pleased with.  It would also be nice to not finish dead last, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Here goes!
EDIT: 1:20 pace for 1650 = 22:00 not 21:40 =)

Yesterday morning the Table Mountain Triathlon website launched.  Table Mountain Triathlon (herein referred to as TMT) is another great event put on by Sean Wendt and Riptide Multisports.  It’s a super-sprint event, with a 500yd pool swim, 12.5mi bike, and 5k run.  …I know a lot of people who would be happy about such a short swim!  It’s based out of the Duncan YMCA in Arvada, Colorado with the bike and run portions taking place on surrounding neighborhood roads.  It’s a great race for beginners and a nice fitness check for veterans.

The site design is similar to the other Riptide sites, but I added bullet-proof tabbed navigation to this one to create a better user experience.  It’s always nice to know where you are on a website, and the tabs provide a nice sense of direction.  The best part?  No Javascript, no Spry, just standard HTML + CSS.  What does that mean for the user?  A super-light design that loads faster and is highly compatible across all browser types.

Table Mountain Triathlon site screenshot

I went with an old-school recreation softball team look for the site theme, for no other reason than it will look great on a race shirt (and wait until you see the logo I’ve been dreaming up).  In my opinion, race shirts are the single best marketing tool triathlons have: make a shirt look cool and you ensure that the athlete wears it around and it doesn’t get tossed in that wretched old rag bag.  It might just be me, but if I see someone wearing a sweet race shirt I instantly become interested in the race; my logic being if they make a cool shirt, they probably put on a pretty cool event as well.

Check it out! tablemountaintri.riptidemultisports.com

Already?  Yea, I know.  Last Wednesday swim practice started off suffering as usual, then somewhere within the main set of 20×100 on 1:30 I got it going again.  I think it was around numero 5.  All of a sudden my form was back and I was swimming fast [for me] again.  I might’ve got it going a bit too much, because in a flurry of excitement at feeling good again, I hammered over the weekend, and again on Monday morning.  Tuesday morning I was knackered.  Totally wiped out.  After much deliberation I decided it would be best if Gulliver and I snuggled back under the covers for another hour and a half.

Best dog ever.

A lot of people feel bad about unplanned off-days, including a former version of myself, but I don’t anymore.  The only reason an athlete should feel bad about an unplanned-off day is if she isn’t putting in the work to begin with.  This morning I assessed the situation: 3 weeks w/o an off-day (planned or otherwise) + 5 days of hammering = time to let my body recover.  Instead of looking at it like I am a lazy ass, I see it as another important workout.  Today I let all the little microtears in my muscles heal, mentally easy, but my body was still working hard.  I wouldn’t be able to make any significant fitness gains without giving my body time to catch up.  An easy day could have worked too, but I think I had dug myself in deep with too many intense workouts in too little time so that even one easy day probably wouldn’t set me right again.  And besides, I’m swimming the 1650 Friday night - I need to be ready to take on those 12 year olds!

Race season doesn’t begin for another 3 months, I have to relax a little bit.  Now’s not the time to get overzealous.

Easier said than done.

Whew, these Colorado winters are just brutal:

Saturday — 60°

Sunday — 66°

Monday — 66°

Tuesday — 72°

Wednesday — 72°

Thursday — 67°

Friday Jordan and I were skiing some of the best snow in world, and Saturday I was outside mountain biking sans jacket and gloves.  Sunday I ate breakfast outside.  This morning I ran in shorts.  You get the idea.  It’s a rough life.

Pic from the trail: Looking S. from N. Table Mtn on Saturday. Coors Brewery is in the foreground. N. Table Mtn. is my new favorite place.

The warm weather has me really excited about the upcoming race season, now just 3 short months away!  It’s looking like I’ll kick the season off at St. Anthony’s, but I’m still toying with the idea of heading to Miami in mid-March to see some fam and get the rust out with the Miami International Tri.

My itch to race will be quelled slightly with a 1650 at a swim meet in two weeks.  In December my swim felt great, and I was seeing significant progress each week, even busting out a 1:05 (100 yd) in team goals one day — though admittedly, I caught a bit of a draft from Cyrus — 1:05 nonetheless!!  Now, it’s hurting.  I was sick for 2 weeks around New Years and didn’t feel back to normal until this past Saturday.  Hopefully I can get things moving before the swim meet and make a big improvement off of my time from my 2008.

As for cycling and running?  TBD.  I’m on the trainer a lot more this winter, so that can only mean good things, right?  Last winter around this time I was really ramping up my running in preparation for the Boston Marathon, so it’s silly to compare apples to oranges.  There’s no doubt in my mind that come April I’ll be ready to go across the board, but now I am getting impatient and itching to have some fast workouts to get a feel for where I am.  I should be patient, but that’s never going to happen.

Sunday trainer ride at Bicycle Village with the Riptide Team. Hurtin.

There you have it: my mid-Winter training update =)

I first read about Twitter last March in Inc magazine [article here].  It seemed over-the-top, just like Facebook did in spring 2004 when I got lured into that procrastination trap. Facebook has grown bigger than I could have imagined 5 years ago, and so I figure Twitter, with its even higher ranking on the creeper scale, will fair similarly.

Why do we care so much about what other people are doing at any given moment in time?  We don’t just care, we love it.  We’re addicted to it.  We love to know stuff about people that we haven’t seen or spoken with in years.  Then, should we run into that person we have to feign stupidity when they say, “Oh yea, I work in the city and live in Hoboken now.”

“Oh no way!” but deep down you’re thinking, “You also have a cat named Mittens that swallowed your boyfriend’s cufflinks last Thursday.“  You don’t dare say it.  That would be creepy!

Anyway, here I am.  On Twitter.  For no other reason than curiosity.  Don’t expect updates frequently.  I’m gung-ho now but odds are I will have forgotten about it by Monday.

Notice I removed the link “follow me on Twitter” that brings you to my Twitter profile, it comes standard with the ready-to-paste HTML code.  Following in any form still strikes me as creepy.  So please, don’t follow me.  And if you must, at least do it from a distance.

Introducing my first race website!  The Littlefoot Triathlon is a sprint distance event (750m swim, 15mi bike, 5k run) held in Bear Creek Lake Park by Sean Wendt and Riptide Multisports.  The 2009 race will be the third running of the event.  Last year I had the opportunity to compete in the event, and despite frigid water temps (~55F), I can’t say enough good things about the race. Overall a really well organized event with a delicious hot breakfast afterward.  What more could you want?

Designing the site I had two goals:

1. Strong branding that easily links Littlefoot and Riptide Multisports.  I wanted the Littlefoot site to have the same basic layout as the main Riptide site.  Littlefoot also needed strong branding for the race specifically.  While I am still developing the logo, it was important to design the site with a unique and strong feel,  provided with the black and lime green color scheme coupled with a rugid, but modern look.

2.  Ease of use.  Triathletes range in age from 14-80+ (seriously).  The site has to look cool, but also be highly functional.  Nothing is more frustrating than hunting around forever trying to find how much the race costs or the link to register.  All information can be accessed within 2 clicks from the Littlefoot home page.  This is very key when designing in general, but even more so when you must appeal to a variety of ages and demographics.

Coming soon for the Littlefoot Triathlon:

• race logo
• race shirts

Coming soon for other race sites:

• Table Mountain Triathlon
• The Great Colorado Triathlon

Please visit (better yet, register for it!) the Littlefoot Triathlon site and let me know what you think.

http://littlefoottri.riptidemultisports.com

After working on my own site for over five months, it’s finally presentable to the outside world.  Since August I’ve been fortunate to have my plate full of other sites to design, so this one has taken a backseat.

So here we go!  This blog will be more work-focused than my old one, but of course with the occasional triathlon and skiing posts mixed in.

Please share your comments!

Enjoy =)