We are just back from our fifth trip down to the St. Croix 70.3, and yet again the island’s beauty did not disappoint. This is, quite simply, my favorite race. Yes, the course is hard, “THE BEAST” is unlike any climb we have here in New England, and the run is hot, humid and hilly. However, the island is magnificent and the people and atmosphere are second to none…a race to put on the “bucket list” and go to at least once (or five times, in my case!)

This year, Mother Nature threw us a new twist and challenge, torrential downpours the day before the race, and during the race itself. Despite the best efforts of the race committee to make the roads safe and ride-able (and they did a great job!) all of this rain left the roads on the bike course riddled with puddles and a little rough. Unfortunately, two of my Timex teammates had their days end in crashes on the bike due to the slick roads-best wishes for speedy recoveries to you both! However, the rain did bring with it some benefits-a cooler ride and run for those of us from up north, who are not as used to the heat.

After a fairly uneventful swim, I exited the water in third place in my age group, and moved up to first coming off of the bike. There were certainly times where I wondered if Tom had added a few extra hills to the course, but I focused on my power meter, and keeping the efforts up the hills controlled to save something in my legs for the run. As hard as it can be to let people pass me powering up all of the hills, especially early in the bike, I am slowly learning to let them go, focus on my power cap…and then catching them later in the race. It always surprises me just how hard people go right out of the gates on the bike, especially on a hilly course…and then how many of them I can catch later, just by keeping my power steady throughout the 56 miles. (Yes, the old addage of the tortoise and the hare comes true once again!) Heading into T2, I felt great, having consumed my trusty menu of PowerBar Endurance and PowerGels, I was off and running. Though I ran one of the quickest half marathons I have run in St. Croix, aiding no doubt by the clouds and rain on the run, it was still not quite fast enough to capture the elusive Kona spot…I have been fortunate enough to qualify for the big dance twice in St. Croix, but this year I finish third in my age group-passed by two very impressive runners during the 13.1. However, I hang on for yet another spot on the podium, and added another beautiful trophy handmade by local island artist Jan Mitchell Larsen to my collection (I told you this was a fabulous race, where else do the winners receive beautiful handmade, glass plates as an award?)

The next two days were spent splashing in the water and building many sandcastles with my toddler. What better way to relax after a race? Thanks again St. Croix! We will certainly be back for more pleasure and pain. Thanks also to Timex and PowerBar for getting me through the day (my powergels stayed nice and dry!)

I have been busy this month with early season training and racing already. As you all know, the Timex team training camp never dissappoints with the wonderful training and educational opportunities put together by the Timex and Team Sports staff, as well as our incredible sponsors. For me, the highlight of our weekend spent at the Timex Performance Center was the sweat testing performed for us by Dr. Doug Casa and his team at the KSI. I have had a great deal of trouble with my nutrition and cramping throughout the years, especially as the heat gets turned up and the races get longer (think: IM Cozumel and Kona!) Well…the KSI gurus helped solve part of that mystery for me: Every hour of exercise, I lose 1.56L of fluid, and in each liter of fluid, I lose 1.41 grams of sodium! Put that together and I am losing approximately 2,400 mg of sodium every hour in a hot race! No wonder I have had cramping issues.

Carefully washing all the sweat to analyze sodium content

This weekend, armed with this new information, I, the cold weather loving, Boston based triathlete that I am, boarded a plane to Puerto Rico to compete in the 70.3 race in San Juan. My coach and discussed the data I learned from the sweat testing at camp and came up with a new, updated nutrition plan which incorporated the large sodium losses that we were now, for the first time, able to quantify. We did not seek to replace everything that I was losing, as that would be such a large difference from the nutrition plans I had raced with in the past, but we did up the amount of fluid and salt I was consuming significantly. Guess what?? It worked! I hade a great race (3rd AG, 6th amateur female), but almost most as important for future hot whether racing-my stomach felt great and I had no trouble cramping. Thanks to another great sponsor, Powerbar, whose awesome products gave me what I needed throughout the day. Here is a recap of what I took in during the race:

Bike: 3 powergels (chocolate, mmm…), 4 bottles of powerbar perform, 2 bottles of water, 3 succeed salt tablets

Run: 5 powergels (double latte, mmm…more caffiene1), water, ice, and more water, 5 suceed salt tablets

I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to actaully quantify the amount of salt and fluid I lose racing, so I can be very smart about how to replace it-and also to have such a great nutrition sponsor whose products are loaded with all of the right sugars and salts to replace what I am losing!

I have also been racing a litte bit closer to home as well. Now, as I mentioned, I am from Boston-so while the first race of the year might mean the beginning of the spring outdoor riding season for many of you, this is not always the case far up north. So, instead, we triathletes find other ways to “race” early in the season. One of my favorite such events is the Team Psycho Indoor Team Trial. This is a roughly 9 mile time trial, done on a series of 16 linked computrainers so that riders can “race” the other 15 racers in their heat. I love short course power efforts, so this is always a personal favorite of mine. As you can see from the results, early season power indicators look pretty good! (See “official” results below.)

Team Psycho Indoor time Trial results 2012 (image credit to trigirlpink)

Cheers to a great 2012 kick off both indoors and outdoors!

What is a 69.1 you might ask? Well, its a 70.3 without the swim. This weekend my family and I traveled down to Stroudsburg, PA for the inaugural Poconos 70.3 race. However, when we arrived the Delaware river was so flooded that the race directors had deemed it unsafe due to currents, and decided to cancel the swim. Hmmm, ok I thought, the swim is one of my strengths, so that’s a bummer-but hey, I have never done this distance before…let’s give it a go. Plus, as it was forecasted to be about 45 degrees race day morning, I was just as happy not to start the day out wet from the swim, struggling to warm up. The race started in a time trial format, with racers scheduled to start every 3 seconds. However, in practice, we were starting just about one second apart, or as fast as we could after crossing the timing mat in a line! Without the swim to thin out the crowd, the bike course, especially the first few miles were pretty crowded, but I soon settled in to a good rhythm and enjoyed the beautiful course through the rolling hills of the poconos mountains.

The run is where things really heated up for me-I had been back and forth between first and second places with one girl in my age group throughout the 56 miles of the bike, and I came in to transition a few seconds ahead of her. Out on the run it was more cat and mouse…the first time I had really raced within 100 yards of some one for an entire 13.1 miles! That is a long time to be racing right next to someone! When we finally hit mile 12, she pulled even with me and then I dropped the pace about :30/mile and opened up a pretty good gap. I was racing hard towards the finish line, unsure of just how much of a gap I would need to “win” as I knew she had started a few seconds behind me due to the time trial start formation thanks to the cancelled swim. In the end…after a really long and hard battle, ironmanlive.com reported that even though I had finished a few hundred yards ahead of me, her time was :12 better earning me 2nd and her 1st. She had a great race. Ugh. A PR on the run of over five minutes (yay! I have REALLY been working on my run) but 12 little seconds out of the top podium position. Some days are just like that I guess…I was both really happy (ok, ecstatic) with my run split, but hung up on how I could have eeked out 13 more seconds over the course of four hours. After a quick call with my coach, who encouraged me to let the :12 go, I was really satisfied with a great day. I am sure had I known exactly what our gap was and how far I needed to finish in front of her to win, maybe I could have, who knows. But-as this race was just a tune up race for the big one in Cozumel, and I already have my ticket to Vegas 2012 punched…I am really happy with where I am at both on the run and the bike. And, hey, I still have 7 weeks, one marathon and one more 70.3 to go before my next Ironman!

Thanks for a great race…hopefully next year I will be back for the full 70.3!

Podium Poconos 70.3

We all hear a lot about eating local…but this weekend I reminded myself just how much fun it can be to race local! That’s right, I raced a sprint triathlon in my own backyard right through the middle of Boston! This was the first race back for me since Ironman Coeur D’Alene five weeks ago, and it was just the jolt I needed to get going into the second half of my season. IM CDA was my first IM back since Ella was born, and it was…less than spectacular to say the least. Nothing specific went “wrong”, no bike crash, nutrition meltdown, blisters, lost goggles, forgotten socks or anything else on the long list of things that can go wrong during an ironman-but it was just not my day (see my teammates Mark’s great post on his day in CDA-I agree with his consensus that 140.6 is not equal to 70.3 + 70.3!!)

So, two days after CDA, I signed up for IM Cozumel in late November (after spending the requisite 24 hours every triathlete spends post-ironman, swearing never to do another.)  And thus the 2011 2.0 began! I took a few weeks easy to let my body and brain regroup and recover before the long road to November, and then yesterday took the legs out for a test drive in the ramp up to Cozumel! What a great race! Though I felt a little rusty from some much needed recovery, I came in second overall, being chased down by a fleet footed runner (the bike was only 9 miles, and then run was 4 miles…which is not ideal for me considering my strongest event is cycling, not running!) But I had such a great time-I forgot how much fun it is to race on roads you train on and run into many familiar faces of training mates and neighbors. Traveling all over the country (and the world!) for Ironman racing is an amazing opportunity in a different way, but racing at home was wonderful too! Recently we have shifted our racing to include more events close to home, as the logistics are understandably easier with Miss Ella-and its nice to know that now we have one more great option for the 2012 calendar! So, thanks for a great race “Urban Epic” Boston! We will see you next year! And in the meantime…go race some local events in your own backyards! Its a great way to support triathlon in your own community, and as a more experienced athlete I found that I was able to be a resource to many of the newer triathletes who made up most of the field in the more local events-Bonus! I had a great race, had fun, and helped out some other people!

Last October I “raced” my own life changing endurance event; No, I was not on the lava fields of the Big Island where I had been the year before…instead after 40 hours of labor (I told you it was an “endurance event”) I join the ranks of so many other women I race and train with and became a MOM.

Now, before Ella was born I had thought a lot about what it would theoretically mean to train for ironman with an infant, and my husband and I had devised a tentative workout schedule and system so that we could both get our training in, while taking care of the little munchkin. However, in practice now that she has really arrived this so called “plan” doesn’t always pan out. Things are different once you enter the land of MOM. Wonderful, but different. Perhaps all you moms out there can relate to these little changes in my training habits:

• Up super early to ride the trainer or run while the baby sleeps.
• Rides and runs occasionally interrupted by shorter than scheduled naps.
• Racing to finish that last interval while the baby plays with her toys in front of your treadmill (I have learned that the home treadmill is a saving grace for us moms)…can I finish this mile repeat before she gets bored and starts fussing?
• Swimming when shelled right after a hard brick workout…without enough recovery time between the two, because that’s when there is babysitting at the pool!
• Training bag now filled not only with bike shoes, heart rate monitors, powergel, and whatever I need for my day, but also overflowing with diapers, bottles, toys, clothes and the myriad of other things I must remember whenever heading out with Ella!
• Waking up even earlier race day morning because now I am not getting only myself ready and fed before the gun goes off, but Ella fed, changed, and played with as well.

Ella "helping" get ready to swim, with her paddles!

Yup, before she was born I really had no idea what sort of a balancing act all you moms out there were performing (and I only have one baby!) Now, don’t get me wrong, I love each and every minute of it, and often Ella serves to give me a wonderful sense of perspective about what is really important (her and my family) rather than me getting too caught up in mile repeats times, swim intervals, wattages, etc…but, as all you moms know, it’s just really, really different-and not to mince words, its hard. So, this mother’s day as a newbie to the Mom club, (who is very much still learning the tricks of this balancing act, and will take all suggestions you more experienced moms out there might have!) I wanted to give a shout out to all the other moms out there and acknowledge that now I know just how hard it is to do what you all do everyday! Balancing  being a mom and triathlon can be done, and you can still race at a very high level, but doing so requires some adjustments and flexibility in your training approach (I used to be extremely inflexible and regimented about my training) and, or course a lot of support from your partners and family!

Pre-Race Hug!

So…to all you moms reading this-keep up the good work! You can be a great mom and a great triathlete! And…to all the Dads reading this, give mom a little extra thank you this weekend, she deserves it because whether you noticed or not, she’s been working really hard to take care of the kiddos, and get her training in (and probably to make your training possible as well!) Happy Mother’s Day to all you Tri-Moms!

Lastly…I would be very remiss if I didn’t mention a key role model, supporter and friend, seeing as this post is about Mother’s Day! My Mom. Mom (in addition to my husband) makes my training and racing with Ella possible. Just this past weekend my parents came down to St. Croix with us so that my husband and I could both race the 70.3 race. And its not just when we are 2,000 miles away from home on a little island in the Caribbean that she helps out-we are so lucky that she lives just 10 minutes from us, so she has entertained Ella for countless swims, bikes, and runs. Meeting one of my season goals (qualifying for Vegas in St. Croix)  would not have been possible without her, so thanks mom! Plus…she is a pretty amazing athlete in her own right, and recently took home more than one (4!) podium finishes at the New England Short Course Masters Swim race. Go Mom!

Four Generations: My grandmother, My Mom, My Daughter...and me!