Tri-Dogmom

What happens when you put someone who has been training for Ironman distance into a Sprint Triathlon on a whim? Well, I'll tell you. You can go maybe a TAD bit faster than normal, and finish ready for the next workout :) July so far has been about all these fun new challenging workouts. Short, hard, max effort, hammer up the hill, squat, lunge, then run or ride on those squat and lunged legs, repeat. No 5hour rides (although the swim distance is still there, so are the 100's repeat!), no long slow HR caps. I'm loving the mixup of training, and based on what my Garmin is showing, it's MUCH needed. My legs poop out on the max effort 1min hill repeats with a HR BARELY hitting 170. I can run at 145-150 all day long but that 170 on the bike I literally almost fell over at the top of the hill only to dart down it and do it all over again. I guess I got off topic here. Shane & I were out on this gorgeous ride on the old IM Course by Hayden Lake. It was a Friday after...

I still can't believe how lucky I am right now to be in this gorgeous place while my friends are just melting at home in 115degrees. It's not even the cooler temperatures that are making everything so much better.  It's the small town summer life.  It's the getting out and doing things and enjoying as much as we can. Sure we are incredibly blessed to be able to do this, but I do believe that we all get to choose (mostly) how we live our lives, and what we choose to do with our time, money and careers. Shane and I have been fortunate with jobs (some self made) that allow us to work from where ever we want.  While my day job might not be a dream job, it's a great company with benefits and daily challenges and most importantly they hired me remotely. And when remote can mean sitting outside in July with this view, well then I'll take just about any job :) We try to spend as much time outside as possible! Honestly that's what I love most about it here. Yo...

Michelle always says, "the fittest athletes recovery the best." I know that 3.5 years ago when we first started working together I took much longer to recovery than I do now. I would be sore and trashed for days after even an Olympic race. With my consistent and SMART training, focus on active recovery, nutrition and generally taking care of myself my recovery time almost shocks me these days. After Boston I needed about a week and I felt completely back to normal, ready to get back to the heart of Ironman training. After I raced a half Ironman on no sleep and uprooting to CDA, I needed 2 days of active recovery and sleep catch up. After Ironman, it's been 2 weeks and I feel fantastic. I spent the first week doing something light and easy almost every day, including walking probably 4 miles back and forth from the finish line to our house 3 times that evening. I swam some, floated around in the pool & the lake. I rode my cruiser almost daily and did a couple of sp...

This was my 4th time doing Ironman CDA, and like every other time, this race brought out challenge after challenge.  After finishing the last time in 2011 I said I needed a break from this course.  My stomach was a mess from start to finish (the cold that year - 53 water) shut my system down and I was unable to take in nutrition. This year the water temperature was PERFECT 61.8 degrees and weather temperatures were forecasted to be perfect as well 54/72, partly cloudy.  The only outside factor we would ALL have to face was the wind.  And the wind was intense.  In fact, out of all 4 times I've competed in this race this was by far the choppiest water (IMO), including 2007 when they gave us the option to not finish the swim. What was different about this day, and what got me through each leg of the race was my head.  I stayed calm throughout the week, the morning of, and during each minute of the 11:15 minutes that I was out there on the course.  My ...