Overbooked and Overtired

The worse part of the triathlon life is definitely the time commitment. I absolutely love training and will do just about anything to get my training in but sometimes life just gets in the way. So what’s a girl to do? Something has got to give, right?

Well unfortunately, I am and never will be a good enough athlete to quit my job and dedicate my whole life to triathlon, so a precise delicate balancing act is necessary to continue doing the sport I love and carry on with my life. Right now I must admit I am struggling with balancing everything. Here is what I have on my plate

1) Depending on how far into training I am, at any given point we can have 10 to 20+ hours of training a week.

2) I work an average 45 hours/week and sometimes those hours are spent in the field where 10 to 12 hour days, hours away from home, are the norm.

3) I am trying desperately to finish my grad school work, thus I have class two nights a week. Not to mention my thesis which will be going into full gear VERY soon.

4) I like to give back to humanity wherever I can since I find myself so blessed with a fantastic life therefore I volunteer one night a week at the Children’s Hospital.

5) Engineering is a different kind of professional world than most; it works like an apprenticeship like in the old days when a son was sent off to learn a trade. First we must take a brutal 8 hour exam on the fundamentals of engineering and pass it (four years of engineering school put into one test), then we must work for four years under a licensed engineer to learn “the trade”, and finally, we must take another brutal 8 hour exam on the practices and principals of engineering to become a licensed engineer. This last one is where I am at in my career. The professional engineering (PE) exam is just a God awful exam testing your knowledge of the last four years (6 year for me, hehe I’ve been putting this off) under a licensed engineer. Imagine taking a test on every little detail of your profession and then some... it’s just plain hard. People study anywhere from months to years for this exam and yup, you guessed it I have to take it in April!!! So I must study all weekend every weekend and then any time I might find during the week!

6) Family time. My poor husband is so neglected! Lucky for me he does Ironmans as well, so he understands the time commitment but with everything else, he is probably really annoyed with me because he is just getting ignored. I know it’s awful and I need to carve out some time for him!! (and the pets!)

Ya see, SOMETHING HAS GOT TO GIVE!!! I find all these things above equally important to me so how am I to choose what goes? I mean I am overbooked, right? And I need to back off on something, right? Am I just being an overdramatic person? How does everyone else balance all of this? I know in the end I will find a solution but right now it just all feels so overwhelming. I guess “overwhelming” is what you get when you have the luxury to complain about such things.

"You owe it to everyone you love (including yourself) to find pockets of tranquility in your busy world"

Chilly Cheeks Duathlon, Race #2

This past Saturday I raced in the second race of the Chilly Cheeks Duathlon series. This race was vastly different than the first one which was a 4 mile run followed by a 10 mile bike. This particular race was a 1.5 mile run, 3.6 mile bike, 2.5 mile run, 7.2 mile bike, 50 meter run, very odd distances but it was a blast!

At the first race I entered the “fat tire” division and decided to stick with that division because I figured I ride my tri bike about 99% of the time so why not have some fun and ride my mtn bike. The first race in this series had the roads partially covered in snow and ice where this race was pretty clear except for the run course which was on trails. Since it was so clear the race attracted a lot more people and a lot more people with road bikes.

Even though it was so nice I was determined to stay in the fat tire division and use my mtn bike; I didn’t want to change divisions and I certainly was not going to cheat and use a road bike in the fat tire division. Unfortunately other people weren’t so honest. There were numerous people using their road/tri bikes in the fat tire division!!! How not nice!!! I was/am so angry with this. I mean if you look at the results I would like to know how ANYONE can ride a fat tired mtn bike on a relatively hilly course holding an 18mph pace! YEA RIGHT!!! Most of the people in the open division couldn’t hold that pace!!! I actually had a lady tell me that she was blatantly cheating and using a road bike in the fat tire division because “the roads are just so nice and it’s not a big deal to not change divisions”. Yea guess who was one of the 6 that beat me??...grrr. Oh well enough ranting I’ll get back to the race.

The first run I did awesome I really put my all into the whole mile and half and surprisingly my efforts paid off I finished the run in 10:02 and second OA. Not bad, not bad. I was happy with this because, doing the math that is a 6:41 /mile pace!!! I have not been able to get under a 7 min mile (7:30 in reality) pace since I moved to CO...not sure if altitude has something to do with that, but I’m gonna blame it on the high altitude ; )

After an embarrassingly slow transition (I couldn’t get my helmet clipped) I hopped onto my bike and began the second leg which started with a nice three quarter of a mile climb. This is definitely where riding a mtn bike sucks! I was very jealous of all that road/tri bikes effortlessly zooming up the hill. Oh well head down and pedal pedal pedal. I finished the first segment of the bike at a 15.4 mph pace, which in my opinion is awesome for a mtn bike.

Another embarrassingly slow transition (no excuse here) and I was off onto the second run which was 2.5 miles of hills. Obviously my pace went down significantly from the first run but I was still at about an 8:30 pace. Again not bad for an uphill 2.5 mile run.

Yet again, another embarrassingly slow transition (see a pattern here) and onto the bike again for 7.2 miles of mtn biking fun! I felt slower on this leg and in fact I was, I averaged about 15.2 mph, still not bad for the equipment being used. But again, I was getting passed by numerous people on road/tri bikes, which was a little disheartening. HOWEVER, I did manage to pass about 8 people on road/tri bikes, WOAH!! (thus going back to the aforementioned women doing 18.4mph on a mtn bike, yea right!).

Coming into transition I felt ok, and knew I only had 50 meters of running left so I wracked my bike and ran barefoot across the line in 1 hour 15 mins!! I was VERY pleased with this time for two reasons 1) I knew I had pushed as hard as I could throughout the race (well set aside the transitions) and 2) I was 7 mins faster and this race was a mile longer than the first race in the series, not to mention having to do 3 additional transitions! DAMN! That makes me one happy lady.

Overall it was a great race, beyond the cheating that was going on, and I finished 7th overall female and 3rd in my age group. My placing was worse than the first race but I can hold my head high knowing that I did the best I could and I ran an honest race. So suck it, you cheaters!!! Tehe ; )

The third and final race of this series is February 20th and again I plan on riding my mtn bike, no matter the conditions and again, running a hard and honest race. Hey maybe I can knock another 7 mins off my time! (Dreaming BIG)