Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Heading North

Josh and I are getting on a plane Friday afternoon and heading to Alaska.  ALASKA!  I'm so excited.  We already have plans to camp out at Denali Nat'l Park, ride the scenic train through the mountains, visit some natural hot springs, and hopefully go on a canoe trip for a day or two.  And if I get my way, before I come home I'll also get to pan for gold and go fishing for salmon... I mean, hey, when will I ever get the chance get to do these things (in Alaska, no less) again?

We'll be gone for two weeks, and I'm hoping to be able to post an update or two while we're away.  Josh will be lugging along his own body weight in camera equipment, so at the least we should be able to upload some of the photos.  We've got two more days to figure out how to stuff all of our crap into our backpacks without busting the seams or going over the weight limit for airplane luggage.  I'm trying to conserve as much space as possible so that I can maximize the amount of salmon-y foods I can carry back with me.

How is it August already?  Wow, this summer is flying by.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

No Habla Mexican

Arizona High Schools To Now Teach Spanish Entirely In English

(compliments of The Onion)

... Sigh.  It'd be funny if it weren't so close to the truth.

Arizona's SB1070 is horrible piece of legislation.  I have high hopes that the judicial system will not allow it to be enacted on the intended date of July 29th, but there's no telling what will happen in the next week.  It's both infuriating and terrifying.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Mountain Man Sprint Triathlon

I completed my third triathlon yesterday.  It was held at Lake Mary, in Flagstaff, and was a really beautiful race... but it was not easy.  After doing this race, I've decided to take a break from triathlons for a while.  I've got both the Mount Lemmon Half-Marathon and the El Tour de Tucson coming up this fall, so I think I will concentrate on training for those and wait until next spring to think about doing any more tris.  I just cannot get excited about swimming, and have thoroughly disliked the swim portion of all three tris that I have completed thus far.  For now, I'd rather stick with the stuff I enjoy.



Anyway, here is the race report that I wrote up for my training log:


Pre-race
Josh and I drove up to Flagstaff Saturday morning and found a campsite about 15 minutes away from the race area. We were sitting around camp playing Scrabble, when I happened to look over at my bike on top of the car... Me: "Um, babe, why does it look like both of my crank arms are pointing down at the same time?" J: "Um, because they are. Shit." Turns out, the crank bolt had somehow come loose on the 4-hour drive up to Flag, and the pedals had slipped so that they were both now hanging at the same angle. We initially thought that a piece of the crank setup had actually fallen out, so we were worried. We frantically called up the local bike store in Flag to make sure they were open, then drove into town and crossed our fingers that they would be able to fix whatever was wrong. Turns out they just needed to realign the crank arms and re-tighten the bolt, so all was ok. Lucky I noticed the problem when I did, otherwise I probably wouldn't have been able to race at all.


Warm-up
Woke up at 4:45, ate a bagel, packed up our camp, and drove to transition. Got my stuff set up, tried to stretch out a bit and pull my wetsuit on. This was the first time I've been in the first wave of a race, which was different, but I felt totally relaxed and ready to hop in and get started when they blew the horn.


Swim (750 meters)
This was pretty terrible. Like I said, I was 100% relaxed going into the swim start, and was actually anticipating a decent swim as I'd even gone out for a OWS practice a couple of weeks ago and felt pretty comfortable. Within about 50 meters of starting the swim, I was completely out of breath. It hadn't even occurred to me that the altitude might affect my swim(Flagstaff is about 4,500ft higher than Tucson), but man-oh-man did it ever. I remained calm and never freaked out because I knew that all I had to do was turn over on my back and catch my breath, but I just felt like it was impossible for me to take deeps breaths and even unzipped the back of my wetsuit to relieve some of the tightness. There were a lot of women struggling behind me and it was so frustrating to me because I knew that I could do this swim and I felt strong and calm, but I just couldn't breathe! Ugh. The second wave of men caught up to me as I was about halfway through, and then by the time I was almost to the boat ramp a few of the faster ladies from the third wave had caught me too.
Swim time = 25m:18s


Transition 1
Coming out of the water, I was exhausted and a bit disoriented. I could barely get my wetsuit off my arms as I walked up the boat ramp, but somehow managed to jog up the sidewalk to transition even though my head was spinning. I had to sit on the ground and fight with my wetsuit for a little bit to get it off my feet, but otherwise this went pretty smoothly. I didn't try to rush since I was a bit light-headed. Made sure to take a few big swigs of both gatorade and water.
T1 time = 03m:22s


Bike (12.4 miles)
The bike was the redeeming factor of this race for me. I had promised myself the morning before the race that if I could have a good bike split, I didn't really care what else happened. And after the disastrous swim, I was REALLY ready to have a great bike and push myself. I hopped on my bike in a pack of men and vowed to track down and pass as many women as I could, since it seemed like so many of them were way ahead of me thanks to the swim. It took me a good 4-5 miles of the bike before I truly felt like I had regained my breathing and no longer felt lightheaded. I was able to get my speed up to 20-21mph very quickly, and really just tried to keep as fast a pace as I could. The bike is my favorite part of the race, so even if my legs were fried for the run, it'd be worth it for giving the bike everything I had. There were a few gradual hills on the course which I hit pretty hard and managed to pass a few people on. All in all, I passed 9 or 10 women, and was only passed by a few women who were obviously on the faster end of the older age groups and had started after me. I was feeling good for the whole ride, enjoying the scenery, and happy with my pace. I had hoped to break 45 minutes, so seeing that my split was 40 minutes was a HUGE confidence boost once I looked at the results. I love my bicycle.
Bike time = 40m:34s  (18.34mph!)


Transition 2
Crossed the timing mat feeling really happy about my bike split, and thinking that I felt pretty good about being able to knock out the run in 30-32 minutes. Racked my bike, changed my shoes, then had to spend a few seconds messing with my hair because it got caught in my bike helmet.
T2 time = 01m:53s


Run (3.1 miles)
I initially felt pretty good coming out of transition and into the run, but in a matter of minutes it became obvious that I was not going to be able to finish without walking. I tried to jog as slowly as I could and take deep breaths, but my lungs just did not want to cooperate with me. I was getting really frustrated because, just like in the swim, my legs felt good and I was wanting to push myself, but I simply couldn't breathe. It's not like I had a pain in my knee that I could just ignore and keep going... I truly could not breathe, and that's not the kind of thing I could just ignore. So, I ended up walking numerous times. Kevin caught up with me and said hello, and I considered trying to keep up with him as he was going at a nice steady pace, but again I lost my breath and had to stop to walk and just concentrate. This entire run was a huge disappointment and I was basically counting down the steps to the finish line so that I could be done with the race. Once I got to the point where I could see people turning towards the finish line in the distance, I ran as fast I was able to (which admittedly was not very fast at all) until I crossed the line.
Run time = 41m:34s


Warm-down
Crossed the line and immediately looked for water. I felt dizzy and there were people everywhere and it wasn't immediately obvious where the water was, so I sat down on a random rock and tried to catch my breath and stop my head from spinning. Eventually made my way to my stuff in transition, packed stuff up, met up with J, and we headed to the car and started heading back towards Tucson.


Total time = 1h:53m:40s

If there are any photos that do not show me huffing and puffing and looking like death, I'll post them later.

Friday, July 16, 2010

26

I just realized that I can now be referred to as being in my "late twenties".  NOT COOL!

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Tonto Wanderings

Last 4th of July, I jumped out of an airplane.  This year was quite a bit more relaxing.  Josh and I took the dogs up to the Tonto National Forest to do some camping over the holiday weekend.   We left town without any solid plans as to where we were going, headed north with a car full of camping gear and a forest map, and ended up having quite a nice time exploring bits of the area that neither of us had seen before.

This was the first time we had taken both dogs camping together (and really, the first time we'd ever even had them in the car together for more than 15 minutes or so), so it was a bit of an experiment.  My car is officially a furry, muddy disaster, but otherwise both Sienna and Callie had a great time in the forest and dealt extremely well with each other and the elements.  Sienna had a blast chasing lizards and pretending that she's a tough mountain dog, and even though she can't be trusted to run off-leash, Callie seemed to thoroughly enjoy lounging around in the dirt.  We managed to get both dogs into the water at Roosevelt Lake, and although neither of them was very happy about it, they both swam a bit.  I never would have imagined that I could have such an outdoors-loving dog who hates swimming.  Sigh.

Our first night camping, we found a nice little spot north of Roosevelt Lake, near Cherry Creek.  There was a small running stream and blackberry bushes and we were able to camp right next to the car.  The second night, we drove further north towards Payson and found a really gorgeous spot on the East Verde River (which apparently is a popular spot, as we had to really search to find a place that wasn't already occupied by noisy rednecks with generators and gas grills- you know, real campers).  The spot where we camped on the Verde required that we park the car on one side of the river and hike our gear across to the other side, which required a few trips because we hadn't packed for actually carrying our gear, but this worked out really well because it put us further away from other campers in the area.  I would definitely go back to this spot-- it was beautiful and the water was clean and cold (and the higher elevations and cooler temps were nice too).

While driving around the forest we visited both the Tonto National Monument and the Tonto Natural Bridge State Park, neither of which I knew much about or had ever seen.  Turns out, Tonto Nat'l Monument is where the Tonto Cliff Dwellings are [duh, I should have known that!], so we took a quick-yet-steep hike with the dogs up to the base of the ruins, which were pretty nice but currently off-limits due to budget cuts.  Tonto Natural Bridge is apparently the largest natural travertine bridge in the world, or something like that.  The park is really pretty and lush, with waterfalls and really green vegetation and a neat old historic lodge.  SIDE NOTE:  The state of Arizona is cutting budgets to the state park system so badly that more than half of the state parks are in danger of being closed this year.  Some have already been shut down.  Tonto Natural Bridge was supposed to have been closed in June, but the town of Payson fronted the funds to keep the park open until late September, at which point it is likely to be shut down indefinitely.  This is crap, and the legislators in Airzona right now are full of crap.  Just FYI.

(You should be able to click on any of the photos to see them in a larger size.)