Preparation H

about sums up the last two days and maybe the next couple of days after racing 140.6 miles. There is sooo much to think about before an ironman race i can see why people would do only one a year. today we dropped off our swim to bike bags, bike to run bags, tomorrow we will drop off our bike and run special needs bags, and fill up our morning bag before the race. sooo many bags sooo little time... by race time tomorrow i hope i won't be "bagging it" . . .

"bag party"

"bike bags"


"run bags and me"

now just kill'in time about sixteen hours till race start. time for a shower, dinner and a little stretching/rolling and some good night sleep, with a wakeup call for 3:30am...

slater learning how to crush dreams tomorrow....

good thing i didn't have a four digit race number !

Team Duke "CHAP Support"

Greg with the "Bling Bike" the children decorated

After John Wayne's own heroic battle with cancer, his family established the John Wayne Cancer Foundation (JWCF) to advance the fight against the illness. The John Wayne Cancer Foundation's mission is to bring courage, strength and grit to the fight against cancer.

Since its founding in 1985, the JWCF has supported awareness programs, education programs and support groups, and is aligned with like-minded groups and non-profits that advance the fight against cancer. JWCF has also been committed to groundbreaking cancer research and education at the John Wayne Cancer Institute (JWCI).

What is grit? Grit is bravery. A fighting spirit. Guts. Determination. It’s standing up for what you believe in and taking care of the people you love.

"Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway"
-john wayne

The Children's Healing Art Project (CHAP) is a program that we are excited to be a part of. CHAP brings the healing power of art to those children (and their parents and siblings) in crisis with cancer. The art projects are helping to fill the voids in life that cancer often results from, and also helps educate the public regarding what it is like for a child to go through cancer treatment. CHAP gives people a way to be heroes, by supporting their work.


Slater rides with Maya, and I ride with Carlos in our support for the fight against cancer by wearing their one-of-a- kind Children's Healing Art Project (CHAP) jersey that each child has painted. It is awesome to ride with our jerseys knowing how inspired we are by the children and their families and how much support and encouragement we all have through CHAP.



Jordan Romero is our friend that will be the youngest, age 13, to climb the 7 tallest summits of the world. Right now he is on his quest to summit Everest the last summit on his list with the support of Team Duke. Keep track of his climb to the summit of Everest on www.jordanromero.com.

Team Jordan with the prayer flags

Jordan's Everest Summit flag by CHAP

Help donate@www.teamduke.org

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 : )