The Last 3 Days

Have been bu-sy!!!

Wow. Let's recap. Kind of a long post. The running parts are at the end.

On Friday was an off day from running which was great because I had so much work to do. We met up with my cousin Lisa for a late breakfast (she is now living in the hip Wicker Park area) at a place on Milwaukee called Earwax. Good hippy-ish food and good conversation as always. It's really fun have Lisa in town because I think I'll have someone to play with me when I'm bored :-)

Then....I went to work. I had an Inbox full of triathlon e-mails, more people wanting to register, more questions, more organizational trama to deal with. I spent the day working through those e-mails, meeting with the other oranizers of the race, setting up the biking and running course, setting up the swim order with Jim who was in charge of the swimming portion of the race and finishing up the excel spreadsheets housing people's name and what would hold their finishing times as well as other ones that would be running check points along to course to make sure people went by that point (or so they didn't get lost). I left Fermilab at 12:30am but didn't get home until about 2am due to some midnight lane closures on I-290.

I woke up at 4am (yes if you are counting...home at 2am...probably didn't fall asleep till 2:30 am=1.5 hours of sleep) and threw myself out of bed and into the shower to wake myself up. The shower helped and I had to get into the mode of controlling not only 40 odd competitors but all the volunteers and spectators as well. We made a quick stop at Jewel for last minute things we needed for the race and then at McDonalds for some coffee for us and then it was back to the lab.

We got there at 5:45 and I mentioned to the security guard that there would be an influx of people coming in around 7am to compete in the triathlon. Now I had organized all of this with security and the roads and grounds grew already and I knew that security knew about it. Of course this security guard got all Barney Fife on me and said, "I don't know anything about any triathlon, if non-fermilab people get here before 8am I'm not letting them in. So you better call dispatch and let them know". So not having much sleep and already being a nice little ball of stress I was freaking out. I calmed down a bit and got a hold of the security guard that was going to be my contact for the day. He was SO SUPER nice and said not to worry about it and that of course he knew about it and would let the guards know that these people would be coming in. He came by the race site as well and we talked about the race and where people would be and it was nice to have such a nice person helping out with the event.

The race ended up going really really well. I was really nervous when I started to check people in and couldn't find my other GSA partners. Somehow it all got done though. Jim was spectacular in getting the swimming organized and all of a sudden it was happening. People were exiting the pool and runing for their bikes and coming back from the bikes and heading out for the running. Everyone said they had so much fun and thanked me so much for organizing the event. Past Fermilab competitors said it was so much fun to have more people competiting and even had other ideas to get more people through the race. I was so happy because I know I did a job well done. I was thrilled that people were happy with the race and that they had good time and that it actually worked! In the end we had 42 total competing (8 teams and 34 individuals) and the whole thing was over in 3 hours and 45 minutes! Thanks to all my GSA partners in helping me with the event as it would not have happened so smoothly without them.

Now onto running.

After the event I was flying high and so even though we were a bit tired we wanted to get OUR workout in. We had a 7 miles with 8x100m strides. We did the 3 miles of the race course which was good because I found some paper signs along the course and so I picked those up. We came back to our car for some water and then back out with 1 more mile of normal running and then 2.4 of strides and then .6 of cooling down. I think I finally have the strides figured out. We go all out for the stride part, walk for 0.13 slowly start jogging again for 0.1 and then sprint for 0.07. So each segment is .3 miles. It was a great run done just as I think it should be.

After we got home we showered ordered some pizza and passed out for a few hours. We woke up around 8:30 pm and watched Pride and Predjudice. I wanted to see the movie version since I had just read the book and as usual the book was better....but actually a really well done movie and Jason said he liked it....although I'm not sure if he really did.

We woke up around 7:30 this morning and I have to admit less than thrilled to have to be going out there for a 18 mile run.

But it went REALLY WELL!!!!! I took Garmin but instead of just watching the miles ticking off I set the fields to look at the time of day and the pace of the previous mile. This way I could just run and not go...oh my god that felt so far and it was only 0.4 miles!!! That doesn't help the mental game in anyway. Lalapalooza was happening down in Grant Park so we got some music as we went by (we don't take iPods for the long runs) and I, of course, heard a song I really liked and have no idea who it was. And we just ran. and ran. and ran.

In the end we paced 9:38 min/mile. When I list the pace times it always includes any water stops we take or lights that we hit. I want to simulate the marathon as best as I can and the clock doesn't stop on race day so I don't like to stop it during our runs. This is a perfect pace for our long runs (anywhere from 9-10minutes) and our last two miles were 8:56 and 8:52 respectively. All the other miles were over 9 and so we didn't go to fast and still had some in our tanks at the end.

My legs are sore now....it's time to shower and nap! (The ice bath is already done and I think Jason is already asleep)