Circus Fun

This Saturday was an insane day for me and I can't believe I survived it (umm, barely).

Saturday our coached workout was to do the Aqua Challenge and then go on a 50 minute run with our team. Amy and I had agreed to carpool because it was about an hour drive and since we didn't need to bring our bikes it'd work out great. I was to pick her up at 6:15.

Del Valle Aqua Challenge - Saturday Morning

5:53am I turn to look at my alarm clock

Me: OH SHOOT OH SHOOT (or something like that, haa, haa)
hubby: WHAT? WHAT? What's going on? (he was in a deep sleep)
Me: MY ALARM DIDN'T GO OFF!!!

I was suppose to be up at 5:00 and out the door by 5:45 :o( Um, reason my alarm didn't go off was operator error. I set my alarm for 5:00 PM....oopsy.

I called Amy to tell her I was WAY running late and she said she'd wait for me. My hubby made my breakfast and loaded up my car....THANK YOU HUBBY...while I got dressed and then scared the oatmeal down. I was out the door in 7 minutes. By the time I got to Amy's house we were 25 minutes behind schedule (Coach Paul had asked us to be there at 7:15) and we thought we'd be late but weren't to worried about it since the race didn't start til 8:30. We drove at the speed limit and figured we'll get there when we get there. We arrived at 7:10. HUH??? How'd that happen. I guess google maps was wrong and it didn't take all that long to get there. So we started out 25 minutes late and arrived 5 minutes early, pretty funny.

I realized half way there that I had left my water bottle in the fridge :o( this was HUGE later on in the day.

Parking was not big deal, we found the rest of our group, got our race number and just hung out. We later found out that our group, the 1 mile group, wasn't even going to jump in the water til 9:10, sigh!!!

Coach Paul gave his morning speech and then we watched and cheered our Sprint Distance Triathlon people as they did their 1/2 mile swim race. They all did great and once everyone doing that swim was out of the water it was our turn. At this point it was already getting pretty darn warm. Not good.

I have to say that I am very very happy with my swim. By my watch I finished 1 mile in 41:35 :o) yay! I felt great the entire time and because I had waited at the back of the pack to jump in the water I was able to find a nice wide open spot and I just swam swam swam with no issues. I was a bit zig zaggy and one lady did smack me but other than that it went very well. I'm hoping that Pacific Grove goes this smoothly.

By the time we got out of the water, changed and were ready to go on our run it was well over 95 degrees, it may have even been 100. We were suppose to do 50 minutes total on a super hilly dirt fire trail. It was awful and I was a bit worried before, during and after the run.

I had asked Coach Paul when I first got to Del Valle how far we were running and at that point he wasn't sure he said it'd depend on how hot it was after the swim. I told him I had forgotten my water bottle but he said not to worry we'd have water stops.....HAAA!!!!! That was not the case.

I had brought an extra water bottle with tap water in it to rinse my feet off after the swim so I emptied that out and put nice fresh water in it and mixed in some of the Powerade powder the team had brought. I figured that it was better than nothing. I took off on the run and was feeling okay but about 4 drinks of Powerade later I was feeling icky and my stomach really started to hurt :o( so I had to stop taking it. I now had nothing but wasn't worried since we were suppose to have water stops :o( The Olympic team was suppose to run 25 minutes out and 25 minutes back and I think the water stop was about 20 minutes out, I stopped and asked for water and to my surprise there really wasn't any. Two of the coaches had ridden their bikes out on the trail and in their backpacks they had thrown in some of the NASTY Joint Juice the swim race had provided and 1 water bottle. 1 water bottle for the entire team!! are you kidding me???
I had what was left of it which was about a 3 oz cup of water and then on my way I went. I walked the last 5 minutes before I had to turn around and then I walked the other 25 minutes back.

I have been trained by some awesome marathon coaches (THANK YOU COACH AL & MAMA LISA) and I know when to quit and how to train smart. Smart was to walk the last 25 minutes because I was dehydrated and I started feeling the signs very very quickly. If I would have run I think the outcome would have been much much worse because of the intense heat and my intense sweating. I have to tell you that I am really surprised I did not pass out on that stupid trail. I again tried to get water from one of the other coach's that had ridden his bike and NOTHING no water just that nasty Joint Juice which about made me barf :o( I continued walking and finished 3.67 miles about 50 something minutes later. I looked like hell and so did most of my teammates. I have to say I was pretty disappointed with the support we got. I know we are suppose to be prepared for anything but that was crappy.

It took me til sometime Saturday evening to finally get rehydrated and not feel sick. I know that affected me all day and into my afternoon activity :o(

Anyway, I had plans in the afternoon so I had to get out of there. I took Amy home and then headed to Olivia's house to shower and change to head to Sonoma.

Sonoma Trapeze for Lael's Birthday - Saturday Afternoon

TO BE CONTINUED (I have to go now but I'll write about this later, here is a little glimpse though of what we did), hee, hee. Yes that is me :o)