Swimming totally redeems itself!

Last night we got back into the Thursday night Riptide tradition of Team Goals: a bunch of all-out 100s, with an in-water start.  Swimming still hasn’t been going too well, 1:20s are usually a struggle, even with decent rest and I haven’t swam all-out since August, so I didn’t have incredibly high hopes for the workout.  The one “good” thing about Team Goals is that it’s a short practice, rarely over 3000y.  Last year I started off around doing these around 1:12s, then by Christmas I was hitting all of them under 1:10, and eventually got to a 1:05, but mostly hovered around 1:06/1:07.

Last night they were on the 4:00 (for non-swimmers, this means if you come in at 1:30, you get 2:30 rest).  Of course I got put in the lane with my fiancé/business partner/roommate/co-Gully owner/aquatic nemesis.

First one.  All out.

1:14.  There is no way I can do that again.  I am totally spent.  How can I possibly feel so awful and out of shape?

Second one.  I’m still sucking wind from the first one.

1:16.5.  I quit.

Third one.  Obviously I didn’t quit.

1:17.  Ok I’m done.

Fourth one.  I can tell that Jordan thinks I’m starting to feel sorry for myself and I want to prove him wrong.

1:11.  Yay.

Fifth one.

1:07.5.

Sixth one.

1:08.

Finished!

I needed that swim!  Maybe I didn’t reach my triathlon peak at the age of 24 after all.  And as for my aquatic nemesis?  He had a good workout and is now off to Texas this morning to race the Austin 70.3 on Sunday.  I think his Tweet says it best:

jordanj191 After a race season with a broken chain, broken tibia/torn meniscus, giardia, flat tire/crash I’m due for a good race Sunday!

Loyal blog readers!

Powder7.com and Colorado School of Mines Outdoor Recreation Center are teaming up to bring the latest Matchstick Productions ski movie to Golden!

When: Friday October 30 at 7pm

Where: Colorado School of Mines Campus (Colbaugh 209 — click here for a campus map)

What: The Golden premier of Matchstick Production’s latest ski movie: “IN DEEP: The Skiing Experience”.  There will be free swag (from Powder7.com of course!), burritos, and a costume contest!

How much: $10 per person/$5 for Mines’ students with valid school ID — all revenue goes directly to the Colorado School of Mines Outdoor Recreation Center

Watch the “IN DEEP” teaser here.

Come check it out and support a great program.  For more information call 303-237-7547 or email us at info [at] powder7.com

This year it’s been really hard to get back into training.  I’m an all or nothing type of person, and lately the nothing option has been very very tempting.  Last weekend I felt like I was getting back in a good grove, but had some sort of cold thing going on during the week so only swam Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  Not surprisingly, I got back out of the groove and back into wondering why am I doing this?  Sports have been a huge part of my life since I started playing soccer when I was 5…maybe it’s time for a change.  Pick up a new hobby, something to keep me busy, and experience life from another perspective.  No pressure to get workouts in, no traveling all over to races, ….I could sell my bikes and buy a really sweet camera and get into photography, just for fun.  Or maybe become a hardcore backcountry skier and take some avalanche courses.

Friday night I got to thinking that even though all that stuff sounds awesome and fun…it’s not me right now.  I pictured myself, 20 years from now, telling my kids that yea, one summer I had this crazy idea to become a pro triathlete.  So I did it, raced three times, and in my first nationals I got lapped out by the narrowest of margins and got a nice DNF next to my name.  Then I quit because I figured the whole thing wasn’t for me.  Not exactly a good role model, huh?  Wouldn’t it be much better to say, I got lapped out in my first go at ITU, but I buckled down and worked like crazy to get my swim together, and the next year I went back to nationals and finished in the top-10?  So with that nice revelation on Friday and watching Kona all day on Saturday, I think I’m officially ready for the winter.

This morning I met up with the Vista Trail group, and suffered through 94 minutes of running.  Sonja came and another girl, Bre, and we hammered away together to keep up with the guys.  It was exactly what I need right now, in perfect company, and on the most beautiful trail I have EVER seen.  If you’re somewhere around Denver/Golden/Boulder, come run with us every Sunday at 9am.  =)

Now I’m off to the gym for some core work, and then the POOL — dreaming of my next go in the Black Warrior River all the way….

PS- We got snow here yesterday and it’s absolutely beautiful here right now…unfortunately no pics from today’s run, but I got some yesterday:

Pedestrian bridge near home.

Favorite run close to home.

The mountain tops are still covered by the clouds today. Can't even see the School of Mines' "M".

Gully's favorite spot on a snowy day: under the covers.

While perusing some ski forums yesterday I came across the K2 Pink Chase, an event at Keystone that pits teams of 3 women against each other, racing to cover the most vertical feet in a 6 hour span.  It’s a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  I immediately contacted my  two fittest (and most competitive..) ski bunny friends, and they were more than up for the challenge!  On December 12th, Sonja Wieck, Michelle Ford, and I will compete for the overall championship: most vertical feet, most money raised, and most spirited.

To learn more about the Pink Chase click here…if you think you can take us down, click here and sign up

To donate to our team, Bunnies for Boobies, click here.

Thursday morning (post-swim) Jordan and I drove up to Aspen for a quick business trip.  The mountains were getting some snow and driving over Independence Pass was absolutely beautiful.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have our camera, so all I have is iPhone pics.  Though not great, they give you an idea of how amazing fall is in the Rockies:

Along 24 between Leadville and the turnoff for Twin Lakes.

Coming down Independence Pass into Aspen.

An aspen grove on the Western side of Independence Pass.

So much color!

October First was the day!  My glorious month of cinnamon bun eating and sleeping in has come to an end.  Now it’s time to get to work in the pool!

One of the best things about training with Riptide is that Sean gives us total control of our off-seasons.  When I told him I was feeling run-down after Tuscaloosa, he didn’t try to talk me into racing one more race.  He knows that all of us have been training hard long enough to know when we’ve had enough.  He let me disappear for two weeks before I had to be back in the pool, swimming just 2-3 times per week so I wouldn’t be starting from scratch later on.  I came up with the October 1st start-date for the real training to begin and when I started outlining my winter plan he pulled in the reigns.  I was getting froggy.  One step at a time…

So this morning I dragged myself out of bed at 6 and made my way to the rec center in the dark.  It wasn’t easy…I’ve gotten really used to sleeping-in and not doing much of anything.  I can totally see how people who don’t workout regularly have a hard time forming a routine.  The first few days are so brutal.  For me, it helps to think about how much I’ll enjoy it once I’m actually in the pool, and even more so how much more I’ll enjoy racing with all of the yards under me.

For now, it’s only singles in the pool, doubles will come later this month.  My big plan for the winter is to step it up a few notches and tag along with the guys on all of their rides and runs.  I will be the annoying little sister of the team, it’s a role I fill naturally.

…but not fast times.

Tuesday night I ran in the Horizon Prairie View Citizen’s/Coach’s race at Addenbrooke Park. Hands down the best cross-country race I’ve ever run in. Super low-key, no timing chips just race numbers with perforated tags. The race featured 5 water jumps — all in the last mile! They were way too wide to jump across and varied in depth so I never had any idea how deep the water was I was launching myself into. I bit it a couple times and clawed my way out of the muddy banks. So much fun! I wore spikes, which was misery for the first mile which had a lot of cement, but definitely helped in that last mile.

As for the race itself, per usual I went out too hard and died a slow and painful death. Unfortunately it takes more than 8 runs in a month to be able to go out in 5:55 and hold that pace. But it really didn’t matter, I was there for the water jumps! I was the second female across the line in a blazing 22:15!! I think that’s my slowest 5k ever, but that’s fine.

It was great to be in the high school XC meet atmosphere. I miss course maps like this:

Notice all the course features!

I wish I had some photos from the race, they would definitely be humorous, but I don’t.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this race. Just come out and do it, and know that your $30 entry fee goes straight to the Horizon Prairie View XC team. Oscar Ponce was there (Running with the Buffaloes star), but so were kids’ parents finishing in 45 minutes. A great way to spend a Tuesday evening.

In prep for the XC race next week I decided that yesterday would be a good day to do a little workout.  It was cold, raining, and by the time I got home it was getting dark.  It was perfect.  As luck would have it, I was able to recover my training log from my junior year of college.  I had it on Blogger and now have conveniently imported it into this blog, so if you’re ever so inclined you can read all about my deep, dark, past (like..my summer 2005 swim training - honestly didn’t remember swimming even this much, accounts from my second trip to CO to visit Jordan,  my first multisport race, and much much more!  sadly I wasn’t too into providing any details or anecdotes, so it’s pretty much just my training with little fluff.  the log ends abruptly, because I quite obviously get injured…this happens several times.)

I knew I wanted to do the boil, simmer, boil workout, but I couldn’t remember how it went.  Thankfully, I found it here.  You can’t have a bad day running when you’re boil, simmer, boiling.  It’s impossible.  There’s no distance to worry about.  Just boil for X amount of minutes, simmer for X amount, and boil again.  Boils are at race pace, and simmers are around tempo - not hard, not easy.

Last night I headed to my favorite trail and boiled for 5, simmered for 4, and boiled for 5 again.  After running easy for 4 minutes I did it again.  It’s a little different than the original BSB workout, but variations are definitely allowed.  The workout went very well and I’m surprised with how good running feels.  Next week the “race” is totally just for fun but it’s exciting to be preparing for something different…even if preparing consists all of 8-10 runs haha

As you can probably tell, I’ve been very nostalgic for XC lately, which is funny b/c I was never too fond of it.  I really liked the concept of it, but never ran well during the fall.  It was firmly implanted in my head that I couldn’t run any distance beyond the 800.  Now that I’ve run 2 decent marathons I know that isn’t true, but still fall into that mindset all the time…like every time I have to run a 10k after biking and swimming.  Someday I’ll get back into the whole running thing, but that’s a ways off.  I’m enjoying the little bit I’m able to do now, because come October 1st I’ll be drenched in the most chlorinated water you can imagine for many hours a day.  I’ve got some big plans.  …but for now, I’m going to keep on simmering.

Next time you’re racking your brain for a running workout to change up the routine, try out the boil simmer boil, and the best part: you don’t have to adjust your times for altitude!  Cooking joke! AaaYO!!!!

One of the coolest things about our company is that we do almost everything in-house.  It’s pretty rare to find a small business with a decent amount of sales that has built their own site from scratch, without the aid of any templates or content management systems (Joomla, ZenCart, OSCommerce, etc.).  It’s like making brownies with Duncan Hines mix — it gets the job done, but can you really be proud of it since the brunt of the work isn’t your own?

Jordan built the first MileHighAthletic.com using some very basic HTML.  It was just for informative purposes, you couldn’t buy anything on the site.  Over the summer of 2007 he learned PHP and the site took a huge leap: customers could buy skis directly from the site and skip eBay altogether.

MileHighAthletic.com circa December 2007. Table-based layout, no CSS.

Aesthetically the site was still primitive, and so in January 2008 I started learning XHTML and CSS, and with our forces combined we churned out a pretty decent looking site.

An improved, CSS-based site. Circa February 2008.

Since then, Jordan’s PHP skills and my HTML/CSS skills have far improved.  Jordan’s PHP has allowed us to have a one-of-a-kind CMS designed specifically for  selling used skis.  From a design and user interface perspective, we knew what worked with the old site and where we needed to make improvements.  Thanks to Google Analytics, we know that a lot of our customers use our “Ski Finder” feature, a wizard that narrows down products we have available to what they are looking for, be it a price range, ski length, ski type, etc.  The overall navigation worked well too, the menu was easy to find and since it was chunked into smaller pieces, easy to find what you’re looking for.

One of the biggest problems with the old site was the landing page, or the page you first arrive on when you visit Powder7.com.  Instead of displaying our products (what we sell, what we do, a very important message to get across to customers, especially online where attention spans are very short), I had rotating graphics of some skis we sell.  The graphics were pretty dense, and though I meant well, there was no way I could keep updating them to coincide with what we have in stock at that exact moment.  I grabbed photos of of some of our best-selling skis and created a visual spread that placed each ski within a classification.  Jordan wrote some code that randomly selects three skis from each category and displays them under the category.

One of the categories, displaying our most popular women's ski: the K2 Burnin Luv.

The new landing page.

We also updated the item display page, making it easier to find the ski’s specs and replacing two medium sized photos with one big photo of the tops of the skis and a smaller one of the bases.  Clicking on the photos takes you to a giant-sized photo of the tops and bases that you can zoom in on.

Item display page - notice the navigation is consistent throughout the site.

Finally, since a site that is too bland can look a bit unwelcoming, I perked it up with a background:

Might be a bit hard to tell in this small image, but the background is our logo.

Next up: Part III - Our First Ad Campaign

Last week I was summoned back to the pool by Sean.  The first day of swimming wasn’t so bad, but each day thereafter got worse and worse.  I’m not ready to be submerged for 2 hours everyday, and really haven’t been too into the whole exercising thing for the past few weeks, let alone training several hours a day for a race season that is months and months away.  So yesterday I skipped swim practice, worked later, and then drove up Lookout Mountain for a run that turned into more of a hike….

I’m not sure if it’s the time of year, getting out in the fresh air, or reading my former teammate, Mollie’s running blog, but for the first time in awhile I feel like running again.  When I’m training for triathlon, running is my least favorite of the 3: it can’t take me far away like cycling can, and I don’t see the improvement I see with swimming.  Running always gets the backburner while I develop in the other two, and hopefully someday I’ll be able to come back and focus more on running.  I thought I might be able to do that this winter, focus on running for a month or 6 weeks, and go run some indoor races at BU (I admittedly have ulterior motives…).  After I got crushed on the swim in Tuscaloosa, it’s obvious that plan was not a sound one: I have to spend my winter in the pool.

…but it’s not winter yet, it’s cross-country season!*  I’m taking the next month or so to find as many XC races as I can.  It’s a little hard to do as an adult.  I could probably pass as a home-schooled high schooler, but I stumbled across this little gem and now I don’t have to: a Euro-style cross-country race in Addenbrooke Park!  Water jumps!  Mud!  Grassy field!

It’s less than 2 weeks away, but I’ve run twice in the past 3.5 weeks (both this week), so I’m ready to go.  I did actually get off my lazy rump and start training today though: 62 minutes from the new office, up into White Ranch — awesome!!!  Not sure if I mentioned how great our new office is?

*Clearly this does not mean I don’t have to swim…I just am not subjecting myself to 4-5000 yards/day right now, just a few shorter workouts per week so I’m not starting from scratch later on.