It’s been a crazy week for me and my family. We unfortunately had a death in the family so we quickly made plans and flew out to Oregon for the funeral. The service was yesterday and while sad it was nice to see my extended family and remember Bill who was my grandmother’s cousin and my godfather.

Today I was signed up to run the Boulder backroads half marathon, the Decision to skip the race to go to the funeral was easy but I was really sad to miss the race. I love the Boulder Backroads half, it’s well run and a nice course. I emailed the race director to let them know that both my mother and I would not be able to race and they offered to transfer us to their fall race free of charge. I am so grateful and happy to get a chance to run in the fall.

Because I was still bummed about missing (another) race, I checked runningintheusa.com for races in Oregon. I was so excited to see that there was a half marathon scheduled for today in downtown Portland. So just a few days ago I signed up for Race for the Roses (fun fact: Portland is known as the city of roses)

Unfortunately this race has an early start at 7am and I was staying in Eugene the night before so I had a 2 hour commute this morning. With having to pack up, drive and check in before the race my alarm was set for 3:15 am. It’s not the best way to get yourself ready for a race but it was worth it to get to race a half marathon. After missing last months half I was determined not to miss out on another.

Even though I ran this all on my own and had to get up way too early I really enjoyed this race. It was nice weather, well run and Portland in the spring is just beautiful. They had nice tech shirts, roses and medals For every runner.

My only complaint was that the 10k walkers were finishing at the same time as I was finishing and many were walking 4-6 across. I don’t mind walkers but I wish more were mindful of the other racers trying to finish. My favorite part of the day was watching the people who were obviously finishing their first half marathon so full of joy and pride for what they had accomplished, it made me happy just to witness so many people reaching and exceeding their goals. As for me, I am happy to report a PR even after no so stellar race prep (travel, lack of sleep, poor nutrition, whiskey toasts, no taper, etc). My time (according to garmin) was 2:02:36, I am getting closer to beating that 2 hour mark, maybe next time….but that will have to wait until after ironman, I have bigger fish to fry before then, but more on that later.

What time would you get up in the morning for a race?

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I finally tackled Lefthand Canyon today. If you are from Colorado you have probably heard of Lefthand Canyon, it’s a fairly long steady climb. It was suggest by Coach Charley and seemed like a great challenge to take on.

It was a long climb and a long descent.

We rode through Ward which is this crazy little mountain town, I am bummed we don’t have any pictures of it. We aren’t very good at taking photos while riding.

Lucky for us the weather was nice and mild and the views were beautiful.

On the way down we passed Hall Ranch Trail where we like to run when we need to get in some hills.

It was a challenging climb and I would love to take it on again.

Do you have a favorite ride?

On Saturday Cory and I tackled our second triple brick of the season. This one was longer than our last, with a 20 mile bike ride immediately followed by a three mile run. Repeat that three times and you have a pretty tough workout, especially when the wind really picks up by the third set.

We are lucky that my mom and dad will puppy sit and let Cory and I swim bike and run around their picturesque neighborhood.

It was overcast on Saturday but still in the mid 70s so it was great conditions for a workout (except for that wind)

The first set was fairly easy, it was nice to break up the workout into smaller chunks.

Multiple bricks are a nice way to work on running off the bike. We tried to run hard for the first mile and half off the bike then finish the last mile and a half easy.

Second set was a little harder but I still felt strong.

It was nice to run around a little lake, tempting to try some open water swimming!

Third set was much harder, I need some more TITS (time in the saddle) as I was sore on the bike. I rode my road bike this weekend as riding my tt bike is still very uncomfortable, good thing I have a retul fit on Friday!

I was happy to be done after out third set and even happier to enjoy a BBQ with my family.

Do you do multi-bricks?

We have been experiencing crazy warm weather lately. I know many people have been getting really weird/horrible weather, and while I have enjoyed our unseasonably warm weather and getting my workouts done outside, I am nervous about what it will mean for our spring/summer.

We are cooling down for a few days but then back to warm, nice weather. And while the warm weather makes training easier it does remind me that we are getting closer to Ironman Coeur d’Alene, just 97 short days away. It makes me nervous, will I be ready in time?!?!? I sure hope so.

In the mean time I am enjoying the spring flowers

and new strappy sandals.

We completed our 20/3 triple brick this weekend and enjoyed catching up sleep, but more on that later. This week has a focus on recovery before we head into a new phase of our training. We are moving from base building phase:

The BASE BUILDING PHASE is used to build the aerobic capacity. Although longer duration workouts at slower pace and intensity are predominant, there will be some training that will test your anaerobic base. Specific emphasis will be placed upon each discipline (swim, bike, or run). Depending upon when you begin your training schedule and your level of fitness, the Base Building Phase generally makes up the bulk of your training schedule

to Capacity Building Phase:

The CAPACITY BUILDING PHASE emphasizes developing your anaerobic capacity and increasing your lactate threshold level. Although you will have long aerobic sessions, speed and intensity will increase. Your weekly training hours will increase and 2 a day workouts will become a daily routine. Bricks and transition workouts will also become a regular part of your training during this phase. Your workouts will be more challenging and focusing on race pace.

So more intensity and time training. Wish us luck! I haven’t seen a schedule yet but I am curious for what it will be like.

What is your weather like? Are you looking forward to spring?

Unfortunately this weekends plans were thrown off course. Cory and I had planned to drive down to Salida Saturday morning for the Run Through Time Half Marathon Trail Race. I was excited for this race and while I knew it would be hard, I was excited for the challenge and to see how I would do in this type of race.

Friday night we drove up to my parents house to drop our dogs off for some puppy sitting.

Even though we weren’t leaving until morning, I don’t think my mom and dad would appreciate us dropping off our dogs at 4 am.

After dropping off the “kids” we grabbed some sandwiches from a little shop near my parent’s house to eat on the way home. We got home and headed to bed early since we had an early wake up call. I will save you the gory details but Cory spent most of the night up very sick. Poor thing ate something that his body wasn’t happy about. We discussed what to do about the race. Cory understandably said he wasn’t up for running, while I was fine I didn’t want to have to drive six hours by myself to run (or have Cory drive me while sick) after losing a lot of sleep myself. We made the difficult decision to miss the race and DNS. These things happen but it was a bummer. The really sad thing was that by 7am when we got up Cory was feeling completely better but there wasn’t enough time to get to Salida for the start.

The good news was Cory was feeling good enough to get some training in and it was BEAUTIFUL out so we grabbed our bikes and rode a nice 60 miles out around Boulder.

On Sunday we made up for missing our half marathon by running 15.5 miles along one of my favorite paths.

I can’t wait for the trees to get their leaves, I am ready for spring! The weather has been so warm that I ran in a tank and got a slight sun burn. I would have liked to head to a hillier trail but we were limited on time so kept in simple.

After our run we had a lot of errands to run but an iced coffee made it painless.

Have you had to DNS a race?

How was your weekend?

Cory and I are trying to finalize our plans for this Saturday’s Half Marathon. We will be running the Run Through Time trail half marathon in Salida, Colorado. In my great planning for this race I didn’t realize it was 150 miles away from Denver, whoops! Looks like we will be taking off on Friday and staying the night in Salida. I am excited though because I have never been there before and it sounds like it’s beautiful.

I am a bit nervous about how difficult the course will be, it’s mostly technical trail, very hilly and sometimes covered in snow. This is my first official trail race as well, I am trying to get used to racing on trails so that I can complete a ultra later this year, but I am just SO SLOW on trails that I am not sure I will make the time cut offs. I am hoping this race will teach me a lot and hopefully build some confidence.

2 mile course is 100% dry. The half marathon course was 95% dry as of 3/4 a.m. There are some hard packed snowy spots on an uphill in the half marathon from mile 8-8.5. This may be muddy race day. The marathon is ~80% dry as of 3/3. Marathoners will very likely encounter sections of mud and a little hard packed snow and some ice between miles 5-7. Miles 13.5-19 are 60% snow, with some ice spots in the marathon. This snow was ~2” deep untracked on packed tire tracks on 3/3. Marathoners follow the half marathon route to the finish for the last 6.3 miles, so marathoners will encounter a snowy uphill with mud at mile 21-21.5.

Have you ever done a long distance trail race? Any advice for a beginner?

You would think I would be used to it but now, I have lived in Colorado for almost three years now. But I just can’t get used to the crazy weather here. It was over 60 degrees yesterday and this morning we woke to poring snow with 2-5 inches accumulation.

I am hoping that we are getting all of this snow out of the way now so March will be nice a warm, wishful thinking I know.

It is supposed to warm up again for this weekend, so i hope this will all melt by then.

I have a 60 mile ride on the schedule for Saturday and would really like to not spend 4 hours on my trainer.

I am a wussy about riding in the cold, won’t go out in anything lower than 40 degrees. I know I could get better gear and be more comfortable but I am just too cheap. I also won’t run in anything less than 10 degrees, I know some people will head out in almost anything but it just hurts too much and I wold rather head inside to the treadmill or trainer.

What are your boundaries, or are you hard core and will go outside in just about anything?