WIAW Tie Dye Tri Edition..

For my WIAW post this week I thought I would talk about my pre and post rave fuel for the Tie Dye Tri this weekend.

Carb loading was on the menu for Saturday night. Instead of making garlic bread I made some little grilled cheese sandwiches with pesto, mozzarella, fontina cheese and Roma tomatoes. That with a little penne pasta with my spaghetti sauce with squash, zucchini and mushrooms made a perfect carb packed meal.

Breakfast this morning was a half a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Too boring to take a picture of.

After the race we went to a new place in town for a real breakfast. Syrup has not been open very long and I had been dying to try it out. I got a waffle topped with scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese and some green tea.

It was delicious.

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Tie Dye Tri #4...

Before I finish my many Ragnar recaps I have to talk about a little race I did this morning.

This is my fourth year participating in the Tie Dye Tri, you can read about the last three years here, here, and here. I was looking forward to the race this year, it's my third of four races this month and even though I haven't done a lot of cross training lately I have been feeling pretty strong lately.

I made plans to meet Ro when the transition opened at 5:30. I got my bike to the wonderful guys at Sun & Ski Sports for a last minute tune up and then we got our spot in the transition area set up.

Then there was time for self portraits.

In no time it was race time and I was lined up to swim. I was number 25 and I felt great in the pool. I passed two swimmers and would have passed a third if the guy had not blocked me out in the last 100 yards. So frustrating. My swim time was 8:39 which was the fourth fastest swim time.

I used a new approach to transitions this year. I didn't dry off at all. I just pulled on my Injinji socks, my bike shoes and helmet and I was off. I loved the new bike route this year, I hope they keep it for next year. The hills were tough, but it was nice to have some downhills, the old route was just flat and boring. My time on the bike was 41:25 which was almost two minutes faster than last year.

I made it back to the transition, threw on my Revenna's, visor and my Garmin and I was off. The beauty of the run during a Tri is that after you get off the bike you can't feel your legs. If you can't feel them then they can't hurt, right? Well mine worked pretty good for me today. My run time was 24:15, eight fastest run time and faster than my 5k run at Brookhaven two weeks ago.

This was the home stretch.

This one is Rochelle taking off on the run after taking a spill on her bike heading back into the transition. She is crazy awesome! After that she busted out an exact same run time as me.

I finished third in my age group, and fifth woman overall. Makes me wish there weren't so many crazy fast women in my age group.

The best part about today? These people...

That's Camy's head behind Josh. She was so not up for pictures today.

Patti, Kelsey, Abby, Brayden and Kendra all came out to cheer us on. Not pictured here was Brian, Bob and Cliff. There is nothing better than friends that will get up early to come show their support.

I love these girls!

What a great Sunday.

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Scenes From Leg #2...

I've already talked about our first legs for Van 1 at Ragnar Colorado. That's only a third of the story.

After we got food and headed to exchange 12, we got a little rest in the van. By rest I don't actually mean sleep, we mostly just hung out in the van and attempted to sleep but seemed to keep talking.

Jerry was convinced that Kelsey had done time in the military because she had no trouble sleeping in the van. Gotta love that she slept in her safety vest.

Scotty also got some sleep in the van with his safety gear on too.

There weren't a lot of pics from the nighttime legs because they would look like this...

Not very exciting.

Van 2 handed off to us and Jerry headed out in the dark for his second leg. Kelsey and Patti followed Jerry and before I knew it it was almost my turn. We got to exchange 15 with a few minutes to spare, luckily I had a port-o-potty break at exchange 14 because 15 had no facilities. Now that could have not been good.

It was getting cold in the mountains, and I was insanely nervous about running in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. I managed to almost get run over by another team's van while we were waiting for Patti, so that calmed my nerves a little. Before I knew it Patti was there handing the slap bracelet to me and I was off. Decked out in my safety vest, blinky light, two headlamps (one on. Y head, one in my hand) and a glow stick on my handheld water bottle, I tried to bring as much light with me as possible.

I was booking it. For the first two miles I was running at the same pace as the Brookhaven 5k. Since this lef was 5.9 miles I knew that pace was not sustainable, but I couldn't slow down. Fear is a wonderful motivator and running in the dark in the middle of the night, while it was a little exhilarating, it was pretty scary.

At about mile two, the worlds best route supporter meet up with me on his bike.

Craig, not dressed in these awesome pants, came to keep me company. I kept telling him that I was dying and that I was having trouble making myself slow down my pace. Basically, I ended up walking up some of the uphill parts of my leg and than not slowing down much on the rest.

It was so nice to have someone to chat with, I never run alone and I love having someone to talk to. It was pretty beautiful and peaceful in the dark. After a while I saw what I thought was another runner ahead of us. Turned out that he was not another runner, he was some guy out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

Craig was still with me and the van was there when I passed him. They passed him in the van long before I got there and they never would have let me pass him all by myself (I had the best teammates) but it still scared the crap out of me.

After that Craig turned back and I headed off for my last mile or so on my own. I ended up running 5.9 miles in under 52 minutes, and was so happy to hang off to Scotty at the exchange.

Scotty busted out his 4.5 miles or so in no time flat and the Ro was up. Scotty was gonna run some with her, and they got to run my a guy with long blonde dreadlocks that Ro said had to be a zombie. So weird that we passed two random guys on two nighttime legs of the race.

Ro handed off to van 2 and then we headed to exchange 24 to rest up for our final legs. Ro, Jerry and I headed into the gym at the school the exchange was at and tried to get some sleep.

We didn't get much sleep but Ro modeled her ninja outfit.

Leg 2 was a success because we made up some ground and finally started seeing other runners and not just bums and zombies.

More about leg 3 to come.

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Van #1, Runner #4...

So I have already talked about the numbers, so let's talk about the fun. Based on our projected average pace we were scheduled a later start time. Since we were van 1 we headed to Brekenridge to set off at noon. It was a little intimidating to start with five other teams when four of the teams were ultra teams. (An ultra team only had six members instead of 12, that'll make you feel like a slacker.)

Do you think Kelsey and I look intimidated?

I can only tell that this picture was from the start because I look like I had recently had a shower here. We were kind of cold before the race start. It was cloudy and a little windy, when the sun was out we were fine, but then it would go back behind the clouds and we would be cold again.

And then we were off! Jerry made it through his first leg, and then Kelsey had a little rain for her's. Patti was up next and set off to run straight up a hill that was almost two miles long. By hill I mean mountain, and the almost two mile distance is not an exaggeration.

We did have a nice place to take pictures waiting at the top to cheer her on again.

We had a pit stop, one with a gas station bathroom instead of a port-o-potty, and then another cheering pit stop before we made it to exchange three. There was a port-o-potty pit stop there too, I was nervous.

When it was my turn to run, I took off and felt pretty good for about half a second. The elevation was a little over 9,000 feet and it was really hard to breathe. I ran for 6.5 miles with a side stitch that I just could not breathe through. This lead to quite a bit of walking on the uphill portions of my leg. Though my uphill portions were nowhere near what some of my teammates endured.

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I love that they got a picture of Ro laying on the ground taking my picture. I thinking I pulled off not looking like I was dying here. I did get some sunshine on this leg, and I got some beautiful views of Lake Dillon. Of course, I ended the leg with a very steep uphill climb, but it seemed all too quickly my first leg was over and I handed off the slap bracelet to Scotty.

Scotty took off like the bad ass he is and busted out his leg in no time. We almost didn't get to cheer for him because he was too fast for us. We meet up with him at exchange five and the Rochelle was off for a hill that was about seven miles long and took us to Vail where van 2 was waiting for us.

We stopped on the way for an ice bath, and a cheering station. That water was cold, but it sure made our feet feel great.

It was great to see van 2 when we made it to Vail.

Kelsey, me, Robyn, Patti, Tiffany, John, Monica, Steve, David, Scotty and Jerry. We were waiting for Ro to meet us at the top of the hill. Kind of makes you feel bad knowing we were hanging out while she was killing herself on a massive mountain.

She made it to the top and we had some pictures.

Van 1 with Lance. He had a great time as route support for both vans. And then the girls of van 1 with our asweome shirts. Yeah, we were looking good.

Then, while John was running up to Vail Pass and an elevation of about 10,800 feet (the highest for a Ragnar ever), and then Steve set off for a nine mile trek straight downhill that he ran in an hour, (a freaking hour!) we got food and then headed to wait at exchange 12 for van 2 to hand off to us again.

Next time we will talk about leg 2, the middle of the night legs.

 

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WIAW Ragnar Edition...

For my WIAW post this week I thought I would talk about what I ate in Colorado this weekend.

If you are going to be a part of a 188 mile relay with eleven friends there will be food involved.

We flew into Denver last Wednesday evening and were starving when we got there. We picked up our 12 passenger van that should have been a 15 passenger van and headed to Pinche Tacos for some food. After a little bit of a wait we sat down and ordered some tacos.

I ate one of my tacos too fast so I only got a picture of the second one.

Horrible picture but yummy taco.

For breakfast Thursday we had some English muffins that Patti made just for us. Can you say best teammate ever?

There is an English muffin in this picture, I was also drinking my green tea, Ro was having some coffee and we were having some fun with Flat Abby and Flat Cliff. (They will have their own post.)

We headed out to get in a shake out run and see if we could not die in the altitude, and we had to stop for food on the way.

I had some French onion soup and Patti walked next door to the Winery Tasting Room.

A interesting woman came in to buy a bottle of wine and when she left she did this...

Very entertaining. We headed to Dillon to run and met up with the Cali/Utah members of our team at Dam Brewery. There were lots of appetizers, some beer and a really big plate of nachos, none of which I have pictures of. (I am a horrible food blogger.)

Afterwards we headed to Target to stock up on food for the van. If you take six runners to the grocery store to stock up on food for a 200 mile, 24+ hour relay, you will end up with something that looks like this...

My favorite part? The big bear full of animal crackers, dipped in Nutella was amazing. We also had candy corn mixed with peanuts, that was interesting. We were thinking that they should have been honey roasted peanuts but the dry roasted were good.

On Friday we made it to Copper Mountain and handed off to van 2. We were starving so we decided to get some food at C.B. Grille. Patti nd I shared some cheese ravioli, and I had some green tea. It was so cute.

The rest of the time in the van included lots of snacks from the shopping cart above, when we finally reached Snowmass we were starving again. We headed to Sneaky's Tavern for some post run fuel. Plus we were waiting on van 2 to make it to the finish line.

There seemed to be a limited number of vegetarian options on the menu but they had hummus and it was awesome.

In case you were wondering, I didn't share this plate of goodness with anyone. Everyone else was having burgers, so they weren't sharing with me either. The veggies were so good, I'm not sure if I was just starving after spending the previous 24+ hours in the van, but this was the best hummus I have ever eaten.

When we finally got back to where we were staying we had some spaghetti, and there was a little Starbucks on the way to the airport and an Einstein Brother's pumpkin bagel with cream cheese on the plane.

What a great weekend of eats and running.

 

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Ragnar Colorado 2012...

This is the first of multiple posts to recap this weekend. I thought I'd start with the actual miles and then go from there.

I was Runner #4, here are the stats from my three legs.

Leg 1--6.57 1:03:44

Leg 2--5.88 51:23

Leg 3--2.1 16:47

Total miles:14.55

Total time: 2:11:54

Total pace: 9:03

In all I am really happy how the race went, considering the altitude and the mountains I think it was fabulous.

Our team finished 28th out of 164 teams, in our division we were 13 out of 97 with a total time of 27:29:10. That's an average pace for more than a day of running as 8:46.

This picture was taken on Thursday afternoon when we meet the California and Utah portion of team Starbucks All-Stars/OK Runner. The back is Monica, John, Tiffany, Patti, Steve and Bob. Middle is Rochelle, Robyn, me and Jerry. In the front is Scotty, Lance and Craig.

I can't say enough about this weekend was and how great this team was. More recaps to come I just have to get over my Ragnar hangover.

 

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Brookhaven 5k...

This was my fourth year running the Brookhaven 5k, you can see last year's recap here. Not sure what happened to the pictures in that post.

Anyway, today is September first and it was time for my first race since Cowtown. I was a little bummed yesterday when I was thinking that I was gonna have to run it solo, turned out that Ro and Laura were there with me. It was funny, Josh had been thinking he was gonna come if I didn't have anyone to run with. He and the girls used to come watch me run 5k's.

Ro and I got there early and became those runners that we've always made fun of. We ran two easy miles before the race, it was a nice 9:45 pace and I was a little worried about how it was gonna go.

It was hot out, and our usual photographer was out of town. We ran into Jeanne and had her take a pre-race picture for us.

I already looked like a hot sweaty mess.

So we visited with some fellow runners (I love Brookhaven for that) and lined up at the start. I ran this race a lot smarter than last year, my splits were a lot more even. My miles were 7:45, 7:48 and 7:54.

My official chip time was 24:36, which is almost the same as last year. I was 6th out of 47 in my age group and 58 out of 399 women overall. Not a bad start to September.

I came home and iced my feet.

And had some leftover pizza.

Now, I'm hoping to get a brick workout in this weekend and get packed to leave for Colorado on Wednesday.

 

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