O'side 70.3

Starting in January i have been training for Ironman St. George that is coming up quick on May 1st. I have no idea what i'm doing when it comes to training, so in preparation for the Ironman I decided to follow a training schedule (for my first time) that will get me to the finishline. Usually i can fart my way through training (doing what ever i feel like for that day) but I figured its not smart to do that with an ironman distance race, especially when I still haven't ridden my road bike AKA"CROSSrocket" over 85 miles... yet : )

Oceanside was perfect for a tuneup race to get things in check for the real deal May 1st. Its funny to look back to last year to see how little i really did compared to this year. Below are last years results:

2009 O'Side Results
swim 46:50
bike 3:39:21
run 2:17:56
6:52:01 overall
div 83 of 112

This year the swim was awesome, i was totally relaxed (maybe a bit too relaxed) but for the first time i didn't get pounded by all the waves that started after me. I was able to hold a steady pace and just watched the other swimmers around me instead of sighting every second for the buoys like i use to. I finished the swim without feeling totally wiped out and i was ready to jump on my bike.

I'm so proud of my crossbike! It has gotten me through so many miles but i'm glad to finally upgrade and i ordered my new sst 1.o road bike from fuji on friday. Last year after mile 35 i was DONE.. but this year i felt the miles fly past me and it was over before i knew it. Being sick in the two weeks leading up to the race my mind was kind of clouded. For my nutrition i spaced and totally didn't take enough calories on my ride. I had one bar, bottle of vitargo, 4 blocks and stoked to find a hidden gu at the bottom of my bento box. I kept on getting dizzy, lesson learned before st george.

Transitioning to the run i kind of had to regroup, catch my breath, then grabbed my stuff and i didn't know if my legs would be there but they were, only my feet had checked out. Usually the balls of my feet take awhile to loosen up but this was the first time that they just got worse. Every time i would try to stretch out my feet they would feel good for a second and then bam they would cramp up even more. Not sure if it was even cramping, but they tingled and killed i really didn't think i could finish the race. While i'm in pain slater and beth were both flying past me which made me "suck it up" and think about other things besides my feet... its all mental right? Finally after an hour of running my feet were bearable and i finished off the run with coach sean running next to me telling me to bring it home!

This year i was stoked to finish almost under six hours and i shaved off 50:61min off my time from last year.

2010 Results
swim 38:27
bike 3:09:30
run 2:07:55
6:01:40
div 43 of 109

SHAVED:
8:23 swim
29:91 bike
10:01 run

Sweet! Now if only i can get as fast as slater i will be stoked. He also dropped a bunch of time off of his race last year and he was able to make top ten in his AG with an overall standing of #45! wow!

Shoot Me

On thursday my friend paul emailed me that ellsworth bikes were looking for some models for a San Diego lifestyle magazine. I guess the photographers models bailed out on him so it gave me the opportunity to use my modeling skills (which i have non of) to ride some awesome bikes with some cool folks in the beautiful town of Ramona. Tony invited us out early on saturday for a tour of ellsworth bikes before the photo soot. They have some pretty sweet rides that i hope to go back and demo real soon!!

Donald (who works for ellsworth) and me
on one of our many ride-by's on the bikes

slate wishing he was doing hill
repeats with us instead of driving the van

Ramona is such a cool little area, it reminded of bakersfield and the keysville classic race course where there is lots of green grass, rolling hills and small rounded rocks everywhere. The only downside of the photoshoot was that it was FREEZING, and super bummed that i have caught a cold, and fighting it with lots o'tea, vitamins etc. After the shoot we headed out to temecula to visit some friends.

The next morning we were off to ride with "Team Walsh" where we met in o'side and then road up to laguna beach and back! We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day for riding! We ended doing about 70 miles which i didn't expect and then did a run on the oceanside half ironman run course that's coming up in two weeks.

Awesome weekend and ready for the next!

the "SUPER" schd

2010 started off good! Now that i'm working as "SUPER" Nanny for my nephew Kadin I am starting to figure out when my ironman training will/can happen through the week! It is hard to work long hours and fit everything in... i average about 10hr days watching the "Meatball" and this last week I was able to get 12 hours of training in... stoked. oh ya i have fridays off too.. plus i'm learning valuable "mommy" stuff so by the time we have kids i'll have everything figured out! Hopefully ; )

My Survival Training Guide with an 8 month old:

*be flexible and adjust your schd to his
*eat when the baby eats (every two hours)
*walk with Kadin in the morning (i have to wait until he poops first so he's not sitting in a
dirty diaper for my hour walk) and he usually will take his first nap in the bob
*sleep when he takes his second nap
*stretch/yoga/foam roll while he plays
*if its raining I take him to their exercise room, turn the TV to cartoons and I run my brains
out on the treadmill and lift some weights.
*bring a bottle/binky/blankie/bear on every outing
*my bike trainer will be my new friend

** Now i only just need to convince my sister to buy a backpack and bike trailer so I can hike and
bike with him now!

With slater doing 30runs in 30days it has made it super easy to bump up my running by joining him on some of his adventures. Signing up for Masters swimming in Sept. has also helped me get out to the pool! I love swimming and can't wait to move up a couple of lanes with the fast ladies that fly by slater! Below compares this December 12 - January 12 from last year...

In the 32 days ending 2010-01-12:

	activity	#	time	miles		km		+ft
	Swimming	15	14:55:00	15.11		24.32
	MTB	6	10:51:53	90.79	(7:10)	146.11	(4:27)	14967
	Running	10	7:15:06	41.83	(10:24)	67.32	(6:27)	1061
	Trail Run	6	5:49:39	32.62	(10:43)	52.5	(6:39)	3061
	Road Bike	4	5:41:36	52.72		84.84		2469
	Walking	3	2:44:18	9.92	(16:33)	15.96	(10:17)	1181
	Hiking	2	2:20:00	5.0		8.05
	Yoga	3	2:00:00
	Weights	3	1:40:00
	Snowshoeing	1	40:00	1.19	(33:36)	1.91	(20:53)	895
	Total	27	53:57:32	249.18		401.02		23635
averages - sleep:8.7

In the 32 days ending 2009-01-12:

	activity	#	time	miles		km		+ft
	MTB	9	21:55:00	143.0	(9:11)	230.14	(5:42)	2500
	Road Bike	7	11:20:27	124.3	(5:28)	200.04	(3:24)	530
	Snowshoeing	3	11:18:15	19.8	(34:15)	31.87	(21:17)	3000
	Running	7	6:03:00	29.0	(12:31)	46.67	(7:46)
	Paddle	1	1:30:00	4.0	(22:30)	6.44	(13:58)
	Yoga	1	35:00
	Weights	1	30:00
	Total	24	53:11:42	320.1		515.15		6030

Super stoked to have been able to add swim/run miles and now i'm ready to add more biking!

Drop a Gear and "HOPE" to Disappear

This weekend I did my first 12 hour mountain bike race in temecula and loved every minute of it! I want to say thanks for the awesome support from my friends from Team Sole and Intense. Thanks also to Luke for helping me with my lights and to my cheerleaders the mann clan.

We couldn't have asked for better weather with the fall colors on some of the trees down by the lake.. it was beautiful. Slater was out of town for a training camp and I had a bunch of friends going out to race the 12 hours and I wanted to get a long bike ride in so I decided to race also. My goal was to ride the full 12 hours! I didn't even bring a chair to tempt me to want to sit down. Just a day of fun on my bike with 600 other of friends who also love to ride. My first 4 laps were awesome I couldn't stop smiling, I was having a blast and I guess others noticed because people kept telling me that it looked like I was having fun? weren't they?

On my 5th lap I crashed up on the rock garden and busted my back break by the lever, and scraped my arm... shoot...

I was kinda shocked and just started walking, your mind does funny things for some reason I kept thinking how am I going to get back? My friend chuck came up from behind and made sure i was ok and said that I can still get back! That kinda snapped me out of it and I hopped back on my bike and rode the rest of the course with only a front brake... it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and when I finished everyone was stoked to see that I was ok. I guess chuck spread the word through friends on the course like the "telephone game" and they thought i would be bleeding to death and barley walking and maybe lost a leg j/k but word spreads like fire whether its true or not.. funny ..

While everyone was surveying my bike and I went and washed my face, added more sunscreen and loaded my pockets and bottle for the next lap. The pit crew from intense were going to try to switch out my brake but they only had shimano on their demo bikes but I had all SRAM gear. So there was an Intense Medium Tracer 29er that was itching to be ridden.. it may have been a couple sizes too big but the pedals were switched, seat was moved forward, and I was ready to roll on my green moto machine : )

That bike was a beast. The hardest part about riding this bike was the super steep sandy uphill sections. When I would have to get off to push I would lose my footing and find myself laying down with the bike on top of me sliding backwards on the hill. Pretty funny! Super heavy bike! I was able to ride my last 3 laps on the green moto machine. I was stoked that I was able to finish with a ride time of 11 hrs 42mins and ended up with a third place finish in the Expert/Pro class with a total of 8 laps.

My nutrition consisted of 4 vitargo, 2 perpetum, 1bottle 1/2 vitargo and nuun, 1bottle water, 1/2 chocolate power bar, a couple bites of a turkey sandwich, 1 bag of GU chews, one Hammer GU w/caffine in the evening, DK last lap, apples, bananas, blueberries and grapes.

My kind of Maui!!

I loved the Xterra World Championship Course. During the race I kept thinking to myself how much I love this crazy, loose and scary dirty volcanic rock roads. It was like Vision Quest an Adventure Race and an Xterra all smashed into one. It even went through a dozen of ecosystems from super dry cactus sections to beautiful sandy beaches. The day was beautiful and kept it's cool with the layer of clouds above.


The swim was the most awesome ever with its clear waters and coral below. I was swimming and I looked down and totally jumped when I saw something black below, it was a scuba diver camera man. On my second lap there was this black stuff the was twirling beneath me which I finally figured out was a school of little black fish. It was beautiful : ) Also super stoked that I was able to draft some guy on the the first lap and was able to find him again on the second lap. The three months of master swimming is working because before i was just struggling to make it out of the water let alone having the ability to draft someone!


Out on the bike course i'm always checking the sidelines to see who is off stranded for a tire repair or etc... it looked like a war scene with people everywhere, from far away a couple of the guys looked like slater but as I got close I was wrong. As I was coming down one of the worst sections of the race I saw this guy limping up the steep hill that I was flying down.. "is that slater" it couldn't be, but it was... i yelled "are you ok" and he yelled back "just finish the race!" I kept on going thinking did he break a leg, an ankle???? what happened??? well i figured if he could answer me then he was going to live : ) so i kept on going.


Running on Mckenna beach was beautiful and I love the maui sand, eventhough at that point of the race I wish I was laying on the beach in my bikini soaking in the scenery instead of running my sandy death march! I made it to the finish line and was stoked to see slater hobbling towards me! I was bummed that he wasn't able to finish the race but thanked God he had no broken bones!


After the race we had a couple of days to relax and sight see. We ended up biking up Haleakala from sea level to over 10,000 feet of climbing... I could not have made it without slater towing me up the mountain. We had a fun trip but I always wish we had a couple more days to just lay on the beach and do nothing : )

Xterra Nationals Ogden, Utah

Santa Barbara Bash

I love Santa Barbara!! We had such a wonderful weekend with an awesome group of friends. Chuck was our host and he did a great job of showing us around town. It was nice to have a whole weekend of no driving. Chuck lives a couple of blocks from state street and about a mile from the race start so we had no need to jump in our automated wheels. Life is good. Racing, Eating, Cruz'in the beach cruiser, Eating again and Cheering on friends!

cruz'in around town

Saturday we woke up around 4:30am for the Santa Barbara Triathlon. Our group doing the race this year was chuck, tiffany, wes, slater, sean, lisa, paul and me. Everyone did awesome and it was super cool to see friends out there on the course!

cutie pie

I was able to use slates power tap so I can start gathering info, i guess... : ) I still don't get all that confusing graphs and crap, oh well at least he does... my results were:

1st hour - 138norm watts / 335max / 131avg
2nd hour - 130norm watts / 330max / 119avg

i also shaved about 30min off my time from last year.

More eating sat. night : )

Paul's girlfriend Lisa and her roomie Doreen did the women's only race on sunday, it was both their very first tri and we were all super stoked to be their fan club. We headed out early on the bikes and got coffee then headed over to watch them kill it! Lisa ended up having the 10th fastest bike split overall and it was doreen's first time on a road bike and loved it! They did awesome and are ready for their next race!

Lisa getting yelled at by Ellen because she forgot to put on her lip gloss before the run : )

The Santa Barbara Bash is definitely on the agenda every year!
See ya next time!