Tri-ing in the Holy Land

I want to win a new Garmin

2010-08-11T19:23:00.002+03:00

Ok, so I haven't posted in over a year, but I have been training and I've even raced a few times. I'm posting today, though, because I want to increase my chances to win a new Garmin Forerunner 310xt. See the details here: http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/08/garmin-forerunner-310xt-giveaway.html

My 305 died a while back and it just wasn't worth it financially to get it fixed -- it would have cost almost as much as a new one. So now maybe I'll win a new one!

Tel Aviv Triathlon - 27 June 2009

2009-08-09T11:28:00.002+03:00

I just realized that I never got around to posting my race report from the Tel Aviv Triathlon. Well, here it is, as posted to my mailing lists. I'm currently nursing a knee injury and it may be a while before I have another race report to post.

Tel Aviv is only about an hour or so away, but I got a good deal on a hotel room through the teacher's union and the race was a day before my 19th wedding anniversary, so Avi and I decided to make a weekend of it. This gave me an extra hour to sleep in the morning, which is pretty significant when the race starts at 6:15 a.m and you want to be there by 5:30 at the absolute latest. The only problem was that I ate way too much hotel food the night before the race and it kept me awake half the night. Not exactly the ideal pre-race meal!

I got to the race at 5:30, got set up in the transition area and headed down to the beach. There wasn't enough time for a real warm up, so I just swam a bit and waited for the start. The swim was a 750 meter triangle which we had to do twice, running up on the beach in between. One of the things that I don't particularly like about this race is the really long run into the water. It's only about knee-deep for maybe 100 meters or so and there are holes that you can't see, making it really difficult to actually run. In fact, I didn't see a single person running into the water -- everyone was safely wading until it was deep enough to swim.

I felt pretty good during the swim. The water temperature was comfortable to slightly warm (I'm guessing about 26 or 27 degrees Celcius) and there were some small waves that I wouldn't have noticed at all if they hadn't made it difficult to see the buoys. In previous Olympic distance tris, I've found myself swimming almost completely alone. This time was different. It certainly wasn't crowded, but there were always other swimmers near me and I even caught up with and passed a few. When the second lap was done, the guy next to me said, "That wasn't bad," and that's when I remembered to look down at my watch. I was nothing short of shocked when I saw 30:00 and change. This was by far the fastest I'd ever swum 1500 meters and I'm not convinced that the course wasn't short, but the race director insists that the measurement was accurate, so who am I to argue? ;-)

After a quick transition, I was out on the bike course. This was a draft-legal race, but at first, I couldn't find anyone to ride with. Then two guys passed me and I managed to hang on behind them. The three of us worked together for quite a while. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could do my share of riding up front, letting them rest for a bit. I couldn't have asked for two better people to ride with. However, after about 15 km or so, a few more guys started riding with us and things changed. Not all of them were willing to work -- most of them just wanted to hang on at the back -- and I didn't like the way they were riding They weren't riding as straight as I would have liked and they would fall off the back and then speed up in order to catch up, yet every time I tried to get ahead of them and ride behind the two guys I'd been with all along, they'd manage to edge me out of the way and I found myself behind them again. At some point, while I was trying to pull out a salt tablet, they dropped me and I didn't make too much of an effort to hang on. So I found myself riding alone for pretty much the rest of the course. It was ok, though, and I had the best ride I've ever had on an Olympic distance course, averaging 30.3 kph, according to my bike computer (I suspect that it was slightly more, as that included the run out of the transition area and also slowing down at the end because I wasn't sure where the turn-off was). The course was slightly short -- about 37.3 km, I think, and my time was 1:13 -- much faster than I'd hoped for (of course, I thought the course would be 40 km).

T2 didn't go as smoothly as T1. I got off my bike and ran into the transition area, wondering why there were so many people just hanging around. Then I wondered why there wasn't a single free spot on the bike rack and why I couldn't find my stuff. That was about the time I realized that I'd run into the wrong transition area. This was the transition area for the sprint distance (which hadn't started yet, thus the people hanging around). Oops. I ran out and found my own transition area, feeling very stupid. I later discovered that I wasn't the only one to make that mistake, which did make me feel slightly better.

The run...

I'm still a relative newbie to triathlon, I guess, but I have learned a thing or two in the last five years. One of them is that there are no shortcuts. If you don't put in the training, things won't go well in the race. That's just the way it is. I knew that coming into the race and I didn't expect much from the run. That's exactly what I got -- not much. It was 10 km of just trying to survive.

I have never liked the run at the Tel Aviv Triathlon. It's in the Yarkon Park, along the "river" (more like a muddy stream) and although it's pretty much flat as a pancake, there's not much shade and it's always hot. There are also always people on the course -- the ones who come to the park on Saturday morning with their kids or their dogs or their bikes and couldn't care less that there's a race going on. So with the sun beating down on your head, you need to run around people who are just strolling along and also try not to get run over by a bike. To make matters worse, they've changed the course so that the out and back are on the same side of the river, meaning that there are runners going in both directions on the path. But to be honest, none of this is what made the run bad for me. What made it bad was very simply lack of training. It was hard, my legs didn't want to move and I started to feel really lousy after about 5 km or so. I had to take several walk breaks -- three or four, I believe -- and I probably would have taken more if I hadn't realized that I was about to PR big time. I forced myself to run the last 3 km, thinking I would come in at under 3 hours. However, the distance markers must have been misplaced (or the course was long) because it took me over 8 minutes to get from the 9 km marker to the finish line -- I'm not capable of running quite that slowly. So I didn't break 3 hours -- I finished in 3:00:26 -- SO close!!! And if I hadn't stupidly run into the wrong transition area, I would have broken 3 hours.

This was a 20 minute PR for me. 20 minutes!!! Even if the bike course hadn't been short, I would have PRed. Of course, every course is different, so the PR really doesn't mean much, but I now believe that I can go under 3 hours, even on a full-length course. My run, including T2, was slower than my bike time (yes, really -- how embarrassing is that?!) and was probably the worst time I've ever done for a 10k. If I actually train, I can easily take 6 or 7 minutes off that run time (running the whole thing would help me achieve that goal, I think!). My relative placement in both the swim and the bike show that I have made a lot of progress in the last year. I'm still a back-of-the-packer, but there were plenty of people even more at the back of the pack than I was. So despite the lousy run, I finished this race feeling really good. I won't be competing at the elite level any time soon, but I no longer feel like I'm just making believe that I can keep up with the "real" triathletes :-)

Women's Triathlon , Herzliya - 6 June 2009

2009-06-28T23:35:00.008+03:00

Ok, better late than never. Rather than write a new report, I'll just post the one I sent to my mailing lists. I've already done another race since this one -- still working on that report!

If there's anything I've learned in my five seasons of doing triathlons, it's that if something goes wrong during a race, it will always be the one thing you didn't think of in advance. I saw the waves and even got knocked over by one while warming up. Didn't bother me in the least. I saw the number of women who would be on the course. Took it in stride. I knew I hadn't been running enough. No big deal. I had no gels. Didn't care -- it was only a sprint. My swim cap ripped when I put it on. I figured it would hold out for the swim. No worries at all on my end. I was right not to worry about any of those things.

The swim was an out and back instead of a triangle, supposedly because of the waves. The waves weren't really that big, but a lot of newbies come to this race and I guess the race organizers just wanted to be safe. They even shortened the course a bit -- something like 675 meters instead of 750. My main mistake in the swim was not standing in the first row. I was far from the fastest swimmer present, but standing in the first row would have kept me from getting stuck behind a lot of slow swimmers. I was completely blocked in for the entire first half of the swim, I was kicked repeatedly, including one nice hard breaststroke kick to the head, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find an open spot of water. The turnaround was a real mess, but I took advantage of the mess to move over to the right and find some open space, so the swim back was much faster. I didn't even notice the waves, apart from one that hit me in the face just as I turned my head to breathe, but I heard a lot of women complaining about them and apparently, a few women even turned around and got out of the water. I've swum in much worse. The breaststrokers were a lot more deadly than the waves.

I got to the transition area and saw that there were still quite a few bikes, so I knew I'd done relatively well on the swim. In fact, it was by far my best relative placement in the race.

I hopped on my bike and almost immediately, women started passing me. At first, it didn't bother me -- I figured they were just good cyclists and slow swimmers. But it didn't stop. For the entire five laps (20 km) I was passed again and again and again. I passed a few women here and there, but this was nothing like what normally happens during a race. The bike is not only my favorite part of the race, it's also my strongest. I'd done this course four times before and I'd never been passed like that. I briefly considered that maybe I had a flat, but it didn't feel like my tires were flat and I didn't have that "bouncy" feeling that I get when there's hardly any air in one of my tires. I felt fine, I just didn't have enough strength in my legs to pedal any harder or any faster. There was some wind on one part of the course, but since it was a loop, there must have been a tailwind on the other side to balance it out. Plus, everyone was riding the same course, so why were women in running shoes and even one or two on mountain bikes passing me??? I blamed it on yesterday's yoga class. Or maybe it was last week's long ride. I really didn't know quite how slow I was going, which, in retrospect, is probably a good thing.

The bike disaster finally ended and I headed out on the run. My legs were a bit stiff at first, but they quickly loosened up. I got to the spot where I'd totally lost it last year and had started walking and I felt fine. In fact, I was passing people. I remember thinking that all the 40+-year-old women in Israel must have been doing a lot of bike training and no running. But that didn't make much sense, as I haven't been doing all that much running myself. Then I remember wondering how the run could be so easy if the bike was so hard -- maybe it wasn't the yoga after all... I passed women during the entire run. I might have been passed here and there, but nothing like what usually happens. My run time wasn't stellar, but it was faster than last year's (because I walked a large portion of the course last year). My finishing time was the slowest I have EVER done this race. Three minutes slower than last year, which was my personal worst for this race until now. I knew I'd had a decent swim and I knew I'd run faster than last year, so this was around the time I realized that those women hadn't been super fast on the bike -- I'd been super slow.

Since this is basically a race that I do for fun, I just took it all in stride. I walked around a bit with my husband who'd come to watch me today, met a bunch of people I know and then went to the transition area to get my bike. As I was walking out, I took a peek at my speedometer to see how long I'd been on the bike. Over 50 minutes -- for 20 kilometers! Even last year, exhausted after three weeks in a row of racing, I'd managed to do 43:00. My slowest time ever on this course as a brand new triathlete on a bike that was too big for me was 45:00. How on earth could I have done 50:00 (actually, it was 51:00) for 20 km?!

I looked down at my bike and that's when I saw it. At first, I thought I was imagining things, but upon closer inspection, there was no doubt. One of my brake pads was touching the rim of my front wheel. I'd ridden the whole course with my brakes rubbing up against the rim! I'd removed my front wheel to put the bike in the car, but I remembered holding the brakes closed when I put the wheel back on, so it should have been centered. Then I also remembered having this problem once before -- I can't even remember when it was, but I remember wheeling my bike into the house after bringing it home from somewhere and noticing that my front wheel wasn't centered. I took off the wheel and put it back on again when I got home, making sure that I centered it properly and held the brakes shut when closing the quick release, but as soon as I'd finished, I looked down and saw that once again, the brake pad was rubbing the rim. I can't help wondering how long I've been riding like this and if perhaps this is the reason why I've had so many crappy rides lately. (Note: I have since fixed the problem. It required taking off the wheel and actually pulling the brakes to a better position)
So there you have it -- yet another way to screw up a race. I could probably write a book by now! I'm glad this was supposed to be more of a fun day than a real racing day, as that has saved me quite a bit of disappointment, though having that bike time posted online for the world to see is a wee bit embarrassing! I figure it was kind of like riding hills, though, and that I got a good workout. In fact, maybe I've had a few good workouts like this one -- who knows how fast I'll be on the bike now!

What I've been talking about

2009-06-08T13:03:00.003+03:00

I need to post my race report from the Women's Triathlon. In the meantime, I'll post this. It's a "Wordle" -- a graphic representation of the most commonly used words on my blog. I like that the biggest word is "bike" :-)

Lehavim Triple Super Sprint - 23 May 2009

2009-06-01T00:23:00.007+03:00

I've put off writing this race report because this could possibly have been my worst race of all time -- or maybe second worst, the worst race being the Eilat Triathlon the year that I crashed and DNFed. I never could have imagined that this race, the one in my backyard, the one I do for all my friends and neighbors to see, the one on the course that I know like the back of my hand would be so... well, awful. It was.

Round 1: run 1.5 km, swim 200m, bike 6 km

The race started and as usual, everyone pulled ahead of me. But this time was different. Whereas I can usually catch the people who start out too fast, I wasn't able to catch anyone, apart from two girls who were running really slowly and chatting the whole way. Everyone just kept getting further and further away and all I could think about was how I wanted to close my eyes and sleep. Not a good start to the race.

The swim wasn't much better. It was slow and I believe I was the last one out.

And the bike, well... That was a total disaster. I did actually manage to pass a couple of people, but the entire time, all I could think about was that I wanted to quit after round 1. I just wasn't into the race at all and I was feeling awful.

I could barely pick up my feet to run across the finish line the first time. And once I got to the finish line, I just stopped. I couldn't move. Eventually, I did somehow make it back to the transition area, shivering, despite the heat, and feeling dizzy. That's when I announced to my teammates that I was quitting.

Round 2: bike 6 km, run 1.5 km, swim 200m

Despite my announcement, I found myself out on the starting line for round 2, right at the back of the pack, which is where I remained. I came in dead last on the bike. That has never happened to me before. It will never happen to me again.

The run was even worse. I'm not even sure I was actually running. I was moving forward (barely), but it wasn't pretty. The gap grew -- I was still dead last.

By the time I got to the pool, it was almost empty. There was one guy in the lane next to me and I noticed that I was swimming quite a bit faster than he was. That's when I realized that I wasn't feeling as awful anymore. I had taken a salt capsule between rounds and maybe it was kicking in -- I don't know. The slower guy got out of the pool (he was a lap or two ahead of me when I started swimming) and I got out of an empty pool, but I sprinted down to the finish line faster than I've ever run before, almost managing to pass one of my teammates, but not quite. I thought I was dead last, but apparently there was still someone in the outdoor pool, or so the results show. Close enough to dead last, in any case.

Round 3: swim 200m, bike 6 km, run 1.5 km

After another salt capsule, I headed up to the pool for the last round. I was feeling much better and I was ready to go. I made the mistake of letting all the men in my lane go ahead of me -- one of them was a slower swimmer than I am and with five people in the lane, it was difficult to pass him. I eventually managed to, but I spent way too much time swimming slowly behind him.

Another sprint down the hill, this time to the transition area, and I was on my bike and going. I passed a few people on the bike. It wasn't particularly fast, but it was a lot better than the previous round!

The only glitch in this round was the muscle cramp in my calf just as I got off the bike. I screamed out in pain and started hopping on one foot, but I managed to get into the transition area (slowly) and to start running. The cramp worked itself out on the run, which wasn't as hard this time, and soon I was done. At least it was a respectable finish -- after the way the race had started, things could only have gotten better!

I don't know what was wrong with me. Maybe it was those non-drowsy antihistimines I'd been taking for my allergies. Maybe it was my allergies. Maybe it was something else (I can think of one or two more things that might have left me feeling a bit under the weather). Or maybe it just wasn't my day. Whatever it was, I managed to get through it and finish, so I can at least be proud of that. Another race in the books.

Nitzana Duathlon - 4 April 2009

2009-04-11T16:09:00.002+03:00

This is a bit late in coming, but here goes...

Nitzana is one of my favorite races. It's a small race that always makes me feel at home. It takes place on the Egyptian border and last year it was canceled because of the security situation. I was very happy to be back this year, even if I wasn't in great shape. Because I'm just getting fit again, I decided to do the sprint -- 5 km run, 20 km bike, 2.5 km run.

I didn't really have any expectations for this race -- just go out and have fun. It started well -- I actually managed to hold a better pace than I had hoped for on the run. I started out way in the back, but I passed quite a few people who must have gone out too fast. That doesn't happen very often, so it made me feel good.

The bike was a disaster from start to finish. First, I couldn't close my helmet -- my fingers just wouldn't cooperate. When I finally got that done, I ran out with my bike, started to mount and then saw that I'd dropped my chain. I pulled over to the side and fixed the chain, then got on and started to ride.

Right away, I noticed that my bike computer wasn't working. I don't need it, of course, but I do like to know how fast I'm going, because when I'm still oxygen-deprived from the run, it's hard for me to get a good sense of how hard I'm working. After about three kilometers or so, I managed to get it working again and the rest of the out section was ok. At one point, I was down on my aerobars and I noticed a shadow coming up on me. I tried to ride away, but it just hung on to me. Then I started to get annoyed, because this wasn't a draft-legal race. I sat up and turned around to yell at the person who was drafting off of me only to discover that it was my own shadow! Oops...

I passed a few people on the bike, got passed only once or twice and soon I was at the turnaround. This is when I decided to take a salt tablet because my calves were cramping. I had the salt tablets in a plastic bag and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get one out. Fed up, I bit off a corner of the bag and just popped one into my mouth. It hit my throat and I almost choked on it, but I managed to grab my bottle and wash it down before I started gagging. Not long after that, I took my lone gel, given to me by a guy I know. It was Gu espresso flavored and I highly recommend it -- it was like having dessert in the middle of my ride! That was probably the best part of the race ;-)

There was a lot of wind on the way back and people were suffering. I didn't find it too bad, but I wasn't riding as fast as I would have liked. Just before the end, I decided to shift down into the small chain ring so that I could spin out my legs a bit before the run. As soon as I shifted down, I dropped my chain again. I managed to shift it back on, but every time I tried to shift down, it dropped until finally, after three or four tries, it got stuck and I could no longer pedal. At this point, I had to get off the bike and fix it and I was more than a little bit annoyed (especially when a bunch of people passed me as I was still trying to get it unstuck). When I finally got the chain thing worked out, I got back on my bike and rode like crazy to pass those people who had passed me (so much for spinning my legs out...). I finished, hopped off and prepared to run.

The second run was short. I don't remember much about it, but I actually held a fairly good pace and, in fact, it was my best relative placement of the day. Before I knew it, the race was over. I finished a good seven minutes or so slower than I'd done two years ago (five of those on the bike), but I'd had fun, which is more important.

The following day, I took my bike into the shop and it turned out that my derailleur was bent. I have no idea how that happened, as my bike hadn't fallen (as far as I know), but the bike mechanic fixed it and it's as good as new now :-)

I think I'm back

2009-02-13T15:56:00.002+02:00

I finished physical therapy this week ("finished" as in I used up the eight sessions that my health insurance will pay for) and my back is almost pain free. Still a bit of soreness here and there and the occasional ache for no apparent reason, but it's much better than it was. I've been swimming and running and cycling -- yay! Now I just need to get back into shape.

I don't have any specific plans for the near future, apart from starting to run outside again (I've been running on the treadmill). I'm just happy to be moving again.

Things are looking up (maybe)

2009-01-29T17:41:00.002+02:00

I'm being cautiously optimistic. I haven't been to physical therapy in a week (scheduling problems) and I won't be for another four days. However, in the last week, my back has gotten progressively better, especially since receiving The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook from Amazon. I'm generally skeptical about this kind of stuff, but I've been in pain for so long that I figured trying what the book said couldn't make things any worse. Plus, my physical therapist has mentioned trigger points. Anyway, I'm not pain-free yet, but I'm not in constant pain, either. I swam on Tuesday and last night I ran (slowly) on the treadmill.

Who would have thought that I'd become a believer in things like Kineseo tape and trigger points?

Ok, so I thought I'd be a better blogger

2009-01-07T13:16:00.002+02:00

I just never seem to get around to posting much apart from race reports, so now I'm back, but there's not that much to report...

I've been training rather sporadically since Eilat. I'd been suffering from back pain, even before Eilat, since about October, but I'd managed to keep training through it. After Eilat, I decided to take some time off to rest my back. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake. The more I rested, the more my back hurt. It finally got painful enough for me to go to a doctor, who send me to physical therapy. That's pretty much where I'm at now, though I am trying to do a long ride once a week and I've started swimming and running a bit.

The security situation being what it is here, team workouts have been canceled (under the orders of the Israeli Home Front Command). I've been running on my own (at home on my treadmill) and swimming and cycling with a friend. Exactly a week before the military action began in Gaza, we did a 90-kilometer ride to Be'eri and back. I wouldn't go anywhere near there, now, as that route takes us right past quite a few of the places where Kassam and Grad rockets have been falling. This past Saturday, we rode up to Kiryat Gat and back, thinking it would be safer than riding towards Beer Sheva. Beer Sheva was quiet that day, but a Grad rocket fell in Kiryat Gat a couple of hours after we'd been there.

So training in the midst of a military conflict has had it's challenges (as has life in general -- my kids and I have all been out of school for over a week and we have no idea when we'll be going back). I have no interest in getting into a political discussion here -- there are far better places for that -- so I'll leave it at that, hoping that life will get back to normal soon for all the people in this area.

Eilat Triathlon - 28 November 2008

2008-12-01T22:30:00.005+02:00

The swim was a single 1500 meter loop (triangle). I guess someone must have heard me talking online about those cables that hold the buoys together and help me swim straight, because they decided not to have any this year. Not only that, but there wasn't a single buoy between the start and the first turn. Even standing on the shore, it was hard for me to see the buoys in the distance. I swear they put them in Egypt... In the water, I knew I'd have no chance of spotting them from so far away, so I just decided to follow other people's feet.

The horn sounded and we were off. I forgot to start my watch, so like a complete idiot, I actually stopped swimming for a moment to push the button. It looked to me like I was all the way at the back of the pack by myself, so I tried to swim "hard" ("hard" is a relative term, I guess) to catch up. In reality, there were plenty of people behind me -- I just didn't see them. I caught sight of someone swimming a very fast breaststroke and decided to follow him, as he could see where he was going. I stayed behind him for much of the first part of the swim, until I was joined by a man who swam almost glued to my side for the rest of the way to the buoy (and, I believe, on the way back to shore, as well, though that may have been someone else).

About halfway to the first turn, I suddenly felt like I was being stung in my arms, legs and face. There are no jellyfish in the Red Sea, but there is some creature that lays eggs that sting like crazy. I remember being warned about them one year at training camp. The sensation was very unpleasant, but there wasn't much I could do about it, so I just kept swimming. I later heard just about everyone complaining about being stung.

First turn, second turn, back to shore, the first part of the race was over. As soon as I stood up, I pulled off my swim cap so that I could take my goggles off (I had them on under the cap), as I can't see that well with them on. I don't know exactly what happened, but I somehow managed to drop the cap and when I bent down to pick it up, I stumbled and almost fell and managed to make myself look pretty silly. Once I was back on my feet, I glanced at my watch and saw a less-than-spectacular swim time -- a good three minutes more than what I can swim in the pool, even slowing down at the wall. It wasn't any slower than I'd gone in the Jordan Valley Triathlon, though (that was a fresh water swim and this was salt water, which should have been faster, but whatever...).

It was a long run through one parking lot, across the street and then through the hotel parking lot into the transition area, but my transition was pretty fast. I got a bit peeved at the three guys who had to stop abreast right on the mounting line, making me pretty much stop in my tracks so they could get on their bikes. When I stopped, though, one of the volunteers moved out of the way, allowing me to inch past and move up a bit further so that I could get on my bike. I was off.

Most of the bike course is on the Arava Road, the main road that leads into Eilat. The Arava Road is always very windy and the first 20 km were directly into the wind. The wind could have been a lot worse, but it was still pretty unpleasant, at least for me -- as much as I suffer on hills, I'll take hills over wind any day (actually, in addition to the wind, there are a couple of small hills on this road, too). The entire time, I counted backwards to the turnaround point (10 km to go, 7.5 km to go, 5 km to go...). As far as I was concerned, the bike course ended at 20 km. After 20 km of being passed a lot, both by people in my heat (I had no idea so many people had come out of the water after me...) and by fast people in the following heat, I finally reached the end of the first half. I turned around and found myself flying.

For much of the second half of the course, I was riding at over 40 kph and I went as fast as 55 kph. I ran out of gears and just kept spinning as fast as I could. I love speed on a straight road (with no cars) and this was the best part of the race for me. I had a look at my chip splits and discovered that I was 25 minutes faster on the second half of the course than on the first. No, that's not a mistake -- the first 20 km took me over 58 minutes and the second 20 took me less than 34 minutes. Obviously, I've got the pedal-as-fast-as-you-can-even-when-the-wind-is-at-your-back thing down pat, but I need to work on riding into the wind!

On the ride back, I started thinking about whether or not I'd be able to run. My back had bothered me a bit during the swim, but it was fine on the bike. I figured I'd decide when I got into transition.

For some reason, the bike-to-run transition at the Olympic distance never seems to go smoothly. For once, no one had taken my spot on the rack, but when I tried to put on my running shoes, my feet refused to cooperate. It was as if the shoes were suddenly two sizes too small and I just couldn't push my feet into them. I've been racing in these shoes all season, so this didn't really make sense. Maybe my feet were swollen -- I don't know. Eventually, I did manage to get them on, and once my feet were inside, the shoes didn't feel tight. So I started heading out of the transition area -- in the wrong direction! I knew which way I was supposed to run, so I have no idea why I started running the other way and I have to admit that I felt pretty silly. I got myself straightened out and finally got out on the run course, realizing that I was going to be able to run with no pain at all.

It was almost over. All that was left was a 10k run. I was going to take the run easy, both because I hadn't run 10 consecutive kilometers in two months and also because I wasn't sure how my back would deal with anything other than an easy run. The run was four out-and-backs. On the first one, I met my coach, who was in the heat that started 15 minutes ahead of mine. He was on his third out-and-back. The first kilometer or so were a bit difficult -- my legs felt a bit sore, but I just kept going and the soreness worked itself out very quickly. The rest of the run was a breeze. I don't understand why the run at the end of an Olympic distance tri is so much easier for me than the much shorter run at the end of a sprint tri, but that has been my experience this season. At some point, I glanced down at my watch and realized that I was going to PR. Out and back, out and back, out and back, out and back (I picked up the pace at the end of this one) and the finish line was right in front of me. I crossed it with a huge smile on my face and a five minute PR.

And with that, I have ended my season. Three Oly distance triathons, two sprints and one "triple super sprint" this year. My training was less than ideal, especially in the last two months (and, in fact, if I'd listened to my coach, I wouldn't have even done the Olympic distance in Eilat, as I really wasn't properly trained for it), but I've discovered that I can pretty much do whatever I put my mind to. I look forward to doing some proper training for next year and improving my times, but even if I don't get faster, I'm going to continue enjoying this new, longer distance.

Eilat Triathlon - before the race...

2008-12-01T21:15:00.000+02:00

This is the pre-race report. The race report will follow later on...

I arrived in Eilat on Thursday. This year, teammate Ronit and I were lucky enough to get our room right away. Or at least we thought we were lucky until we saw the room... This year's room was much smaller than last year's. Last year, we'd had a king-sized bed, this year, we had a standard double. Last year, there had been plenty of room for the two of us, Ronit's daughter and our two bicycles. This year, we had to move things around a bit just to be able to fit the bikes in the room. Ok, this was no big deal, but in addition to the smaller room, we also discovered that this was actually an adjoining room and in the other half, there were three boys from the team. These kids are around 13 years old or so and they were staying together -- either their parents hadn't come with them or they were in another hotel. 13-year-old boys are very loud...

I decided to skip the short workout meant to get us familiar with the course (the course that hasn't really changed in the last four years...). Instead, I rested a bit. Later on, I went to the briefing, checked out the expo and then went to our team briefing to get my number. At around 10 p.m., Ronit and I were ready for bed, as our race was on Friday morning. Unfortunately, the three kids in the adjoining room had other ideas. Their race was on Saturday and I guess they thought that Thursday night was a good time to "let loose". Ronit went to their room and asked them to keep it down, but that didn't work. So I went in and in my best "teacher voice", I told them that if they didn't stop screaming and slamming doors, I was calling their parents. That shut them up very quickly and we didn't have any more trouble with them that night, although this scene repeated itself the following day when Ronit and I wanted to rest after the race.

Although it was fairly quiet, I didn't get much sleep on Thursday night. I wasn't feeling at all nervous, so maybe it was just the unfamiliar bed or the fact that the room wasn't completely dark. Or maybe it was Ronit's daughter's watch that beeped on the hour. Whatever it was, I woke up at around 2 and I only got bits and pieces of sleep after that.

At 5:45, my alarm went off and I got out of bed. When I went to turn on the light in the bathroom, I discovered that it didn't work. Neither did the light outside the bathroom or any other light in the room. I somehow managed to find the right button on the phone to call the front desk, but the guy there told me it would be at least 15 minutes before anyone could come to fix our electricity. Note that this hotel was hosting the race and just about everyone in the hotel was racing or officiating or whatever. I told the guy at reception that we didn't have 15 minutes because we had to get into the transition area. He apologized and said that he understood but that there was nothing he could do. So we fumbled around in the dark, trying to light up the bathroom a bit with our cell phones (that didn't help much). Ronit later told me that she dumped an entire tube of toothpaste into the sink.

After getting dressed, I went downstairs to fill my bottles. When I got back up to the room, the lights were on. That evening, long after the race, I discovered what had happened. Some time before dinner, I went up to the room to read. When I opened the door, I noticed that all the lights suddenly came on. I sat on the bed for half an hour or so and then I suddenly found myself in the dark. Because I remembered that the lights had gone on when I'd opened the door (and that they'd been on when I got back from filling my bottles), I tried opening and closing the door and that did the trick. I called reception and the woman there told me that the lights in the room worked on movement sensors. However, she also told me that they were supposed to come on as soon as someone moved in the room, which obviously was not the case for our room. I described what had happened to us earlier in the day and she promised to take care of it. We didn't have any more electricity problems.

Back to race preparation... Once I was ready, I took my bike down the elevator and headed for the transition area, which was pretty much right outside the front door of the hotel. I got checked in and got my stuff ready. We had assigned positions on the rack and I couldn't have asked for a better spot -- I was right next to the bike exit, meaning that I'd hardly have to run at all with my bike. Cool. After getting set up, I went back up to the room for a final trip to the bathroom and then discovered that because we'd taken so long getting ready in the dark, I really didn't have any time for a warm up. I went to the beach and ran maybe 100 meters or so and then did a very quick swim, mainly to see how cold the water was (it was actually pretty pleasant). My stroke felt very "sluggish", but I haven't been swimming well, so this didn't really surprise me too much. Whatever -- it was too late now to even bother thinking about such things. I just got myself together and went to stand on the starting line.

Lehavim 3k - 22 November 2008

2008-11-22T17:58:00.000+02:00

Our town's annual 3k and 10k took place today. I had pretty much decided not to run this year for a number of reasons. First of all, I have the Eilat Triathlon coming up on Friday and I didn't want to do a race six days before. Plus, my back is still not 100% and I didn't want to risk hurting it. Finally, they changed the race this year, taking much of the 10k route off of the road and onto a dirt path with a lot of small stones and I was really afraid of slipping and falling -- I wouldn't have minded taking the chance if I didn't have a race six days from now, but Eilat is the biggest race of the year and I didn't want to do anything that might prevent me from being able to race on Friday.

So I went out for a 40 km ride early this morning. The whole way back, I kept thinking about this race and how bad I felt about not signing up for even the 3k -- it's a very small race and I do it every year to support my town. As we rode back into town, I saw people getting ready to race and I started thinking that maybe I should see if I could still sign up. I went home, changed into running clothes, took some money and walked down to the race site. I got there at just after 8:30, which I was sure would be too late to sign up for the race, but I was wrong -- they were more than happy to take my money and let me run.

I decided to do the 3k very slowly. I knew this would be hard, because the 3k is generally a very fast race and I always get pulled out fast at the beginning by the people in front of me, but I was very determined to just run slowly and enjoy myself -- I wasn't racing, just participating. I met a guy who is a very slow runner and told him that I'd run with him. Then I saw one of my former private students, who had decided not to run. I suggested that maybe she wanted to do the 3k very slowly with me and she immediately agreed and went to change her clothes.

At 9:45, we were off. The first thing I noticed was that there was only one other woman. She started out a lot faster than I did -- I stayed in the back with Oded and Shir, running at a very easy pace, talking the entire way. At some point, I had to leave Oded behind -- the pace was just TOO slow. I asked him if he wanted me to wait and he said no, so Shir and I ran ahead. We never stopped our easy conversation for the entire 3k, even when we started running uphill. As we were running and talking, we passed the other woman, who remained just slightly behind us for the rest of the race. I picked up the pace slightly about 50 meters before the end, but apart from that, this was a really easy run and I even commented at some point that it was a good pace for a 10k at the end of a triathlon.

I was very surprised when I looked at the results and saw that I'd run at an average of 6:03/km. That's not a particularly slow pace for me, especially these days -- I've gained a little bit of weight in the past year and I've been running pretty slowly. If I had pushed myself even slightly, I would have easily gone under a 6:00/km pace -- I haven't run more than a kilometer at that pace in a while (sad, I know...). This was more of a point of interest than anything else, as I hadn't planned on pushing myself or running fast -- it was just a fun (short) recovery run after a Saturday morning ride. It was one of the most enjoyable runs that I'd done in a while (the beautiful weather contributed to that, as well as the conversation).

So by noon, I'd finished a nice ride, a nice run and I had a HUGE trophy (the smaller the race, the bigger the trophy?). When I walked in the door, my youngest son saw the trophy and looked at me with amazement in his face and said, "You won THAT?! Did you win first place?" I assured him that I had, but my older son shattered the fast-Mommy myth at lunch -- when the younger one mentioned that I'd won first place, the older one (who had volunteered at the race) replied, "Yeah, there were only two women!" LOL.

Gan Shmuel Triathlon - 27 September 2008

2008-09-27T19:42:00.002+03:00

Wow. What a day!

It started at 3:42 a.m., when I actually woke up three minutes before my alarm went off. Imagine not needing an alarm clock at such an early hour! By 4:15 or so, I was on the road. 15 minutes north of here, I hit rain. Rain?! I knew it had been raining further north, but I didn't expect the rain to have moved this far south. It's very early in the season for rain for us. I hadn't seen rain in months. I wasn't even sure my windshield wipers would work properly! (They did.)

I got to the race, got my number and got set up in the transition area. It was very windy, but the sky was mostly clear -- it didn't look like it would rain. Suddenly, I heard the following: "Athletes are requested to start making their way to the boat harbor, about 500 meters up the beach." One look at the waves in the sea explained why we were going to swim in the boat harbor, but 500 meters up the beach (which was another 200-300 meters from the transition area)? And we'd have to run back all that distance? Hmm...

Well, they hadn't lied about the distance. It was far. I got there just in time to hear the briefing for the Olympic up to 39 heat (which is the same briefing that we would get). The instructions were to swim from one side to the other, get out and run back -- four times. Run back? Like, run up the sand, over the breakers and then all the way back to the starting point? And after all that we have to run all the way back to the transition area? Wasn't there a shuttle bus or something? Yikes. The swim looked easy enough, anyway, and it certainly didn't look like it was going to be 1500 meters.

Ha!

A short warm up on the beach (not too much -- there would be enough running today!) and then a short dip in the very dirty water. Yuck. I couldn't see a thing, but at least we didn't have to swim in those waves.

I started the race way in the back. There wasn't enough room to spread out, so I knew it would be crowded. Fans of being beaten up during the swim would not have been disappointed by this race. I was kicked so many times that I stopped counting. I was swum over, but unlike on previous occasions, where people have tried to swim over me and then backed off, these people felt me underneath them and just kept going. I'm fortunately to have a nice strong kick that comes in handy when someone is about to drown me. Up to the first buoy, things were going well, apart from the violence, but then the swim got interesting. The currents from the buoy to the exit were so strong that I could hardly swim. There was no panicking involved here -- I just kept swimming -- but I was going nowhere. Every time I looked up, the buoys were in the same place. It was like swimming in an endless pool. I'm a pretty good swimmer and, fortunately, a very confident one, but I'm not physically strong. The swimmers with strong pulls were moving forward and I was just fighting the current. All I could think about was having to do this four times.

I did finally reach the other side, but getting out of the water was almost as hard as swimming in it. There was no way I could run out -- I could barely walk. The run back was ok, apart from the fact that I couldn't see a thing with my goggles on (I solved this problem in the subsequent laps by putting my goggles on my forehead). I jumped back into the water for round two, which started out a bit better, because there were far fewer swimmers around me. Just as I got to the first buoy, though, someone charged into me from behind and suddenly, I was being pushed right and left. I was being lapped. That was fast! When I got out of the water after the second lap, I asked the guys around me how many times they'd swum. They told me three. Great.

The third lap was much like the second, but when I got out of the water, I found that I was alone. Now there had been a few people who had been swimming with me from the beginning, but I didn't see them anymore. When I jumped back into the water for my last loop, I was sure that I was the only one still swimming (and, in fact, I was almost correct). When the nightmare finally ended and I got out of the water for the fourth and final time, I looked behind me. There were maybe one or two stragglers (it was hard to tell, because there were already people warming up for the next heat), but that's it. I was completely by myself.

I ran back across the beach all alone. There were plenty of people on the beach, but none of them were racing -- they were either in later heats or specators. I don't even think they realized that I was in the middle of a race, because none of them bothered to get out of my path. Finally, when I reached the turn off the beach, I heard someone yell out to clear the way. He sent me in the right direction, and eventually, I made it to the transition area. A few people shouted out words of encouragement on the way and all I could think was, "Yeah, they're all pitying the last one out of the water!" Note that in all of the races I have done, I have NEVER been last or even close to last out of the water. It was a very hard swim for me today, but there is no doubt in my mind that there were people who didn't do all four laps. I don't really care, as this was my race and I wanted to do it the right way, but being all alone on the course was a very strange experience.

Obviously, I had no trouble finding my bike, waiting there for me all by itself. I hopped on and started riding.

At first, it seemed like the bike leg would be ok -- I didn't feel any signficant wind and the road was dry. At the first turn, I discovered why I hadn't felt the wind -- it had been behind me. There was wind and plenty of it. I generally do worse in wind than I do on hills (there were a few of those, too) and people started passing me right and left. The course was five 8-kilometer loops and I had no idea how far behind I was, though I did notice that I'd passed one woman right at the start, so at least I wasn't last. I struggled in the wind as people raced past me. It wasn't easy, though it was easier than the swim.

During the second loop, it started to drizzle. This was nice -- it wasn't raining hard enough for the road to be wet, but the rain was very refreshing. During the third loop, it started to pour. So now I had it all -- wind, rain, wet road... I took the turns very slowly, kept my hands away from the brakes and just kept riding. There were several accidents and it was a bit scary, especially since I have almost no experience riding on wet roads.

When the sprint racers came out onto the course, I started to feel a bit more confident, as I passed plenty of them. I wasn't riding fast, but I was riding faster than many of them. To be honest, though, once it started raining, I stopped trying to ride fast -- I just wanted to finish the course on my bike, rather than on the road.

It eventually stopped raining, but the road remained very wet. I managed to finish in one piece and I have to say that I have never been so happy to run. First, though, I had to find my spot in the transition area. I don't know why, but I was completely confused. I ran into the wrong row and couldn't find my stuff (because it wasn't there). I looked behind me and didn't see it. I looked in front of me and then I saw my bag (and someone else's bike in my spot, but there was room next to him). After looking very stupid for a minute or two, I racked my bike and crawled under it to get my shoes. My hat looked very wet, so I decided to leave it in the transition area. My transition was very slow -- I took some time to drink and just generally get myself together.

My goal for the run was to run the entire 10 km. No walk breaks. I actually felt quite good on the run -- I wasn't running fast, but I was running easily. I did the entire thing at conversation pace -- I guess this is something I have to work on, but today, I just wanted to be sure to run the whole thing, so I didn't mind doing it slowly. The only difficult part about the first five kilometers was the discovery that after the first water station, just past the start of the run, there wasn't another one until the halfway point. I really wanted water and I had expected water stations every kilometer, so this was a bit of a surprise. There were a few people walking on the course and others running even more slowly than I was, so I passed a few people. Many of those, though, were doing the sprint, so they only had to do one loop. I had to do two.

The second loop was nice, in a way, because there was almost no one left on the course. This made it rather strange, though, as well. I actually started the second loop with a very nice man and we chatted a bit, but then he pulled ahead of me. A minute or two later, I suddenly took a spill -- I have no idea why I fell -- I either tripped or slipped -- I just know that I suddenly found myself sitting in the dirt with a scraped hand and leg. Apart from that and some mild humiliation, I was fine, so I got up and immediately continued running. This was the only time that I stopped running during the entire course and since it wasn't exactly something that I could control, I don't think it counts! ;-)

As I ran through the water station at the turn-around, I heard one of the volunteers say something like, "She just won't give up." Now why would I want to give up? I wasn't even struggling during the run and if my lousy swim hadn't put me all the way in the back of the pack, I probably would have looked a lot better than many of the people around me. I just smiled to myself and thought, "No, of course I won't give up -- it's been a very hard day and it's almost over and this run is a piece of cake!"

At 9 km, my coach met me and we ran the last kilometer together. I picked up the pace at the end and crossed the finish line with a big smile. My time was a frightening 3:31, but I actually did the run faster than I had planned -- I had planned on 7:00 per kilometer, figuring my legs would be tired after the bike, but my run time, including the transition, was 1:08 and I believe that without the transition, it was around 1:05 or so, which is a 6:30 pace and not a bad time for me, especially considering that I was running off the bike, I fell in the middle and part of the run was on sand. In fact, for the first time EVER, my highest relative ranking was for the run (one place higher than the bike).

I was 5/5 in my age group (no big surprise there...), but I didn't finish last -- there were still several people on the course when I crossed the finish line. And to be honest, even finishing last would have been ok. It had been a day full of challenges and I'd faced all of them successfully. It was a great workout (which is all I was looking for) and a lot of fun.

Just one final comment -- if I had raced the sprint, I wouldn't have taken a spot on the podium (there were a LOT of women in my age group in the sprint), but I wouldn't have finished anywhere near last, either (not overall and not in my age group). However, I now know that it's not about beating other people, or at least not for me. I wouldn't have traded places with anyone in the sprint distance today, not even the person who finished first. For me, it's about "relentless forward motion" (I know I've stolen that phrase from someone...) and about distance, not speed. I don't want to do a race that is shorter than the workout I would have done that day unless there is no longer option. The only challenge in the sprint course for me is trying to get around it fast (which I will probably never do). The Olympic distance, on the other hand, is still challenging to me. I'm really starting to understand why so many people want to do an Ironman. I'm not there yet and I may never be (although I do see the possiblity of a half Ironman distance in my future), but at least I "get it".

Thanks for reading this far.

Caesaria Triathlon - 6 September 2008

2008-09-20T16:19:00.002+03:00

Ok, this race report is two weeks late. In fact, my whole blog is out of date. Sorry!

Here goes...

I decided to do the sprint distance at the Caesaria Triathlon, because I'm planning on doing an Oly distance tri next week and my coach didn't want me to do two of them in the same month. What I completely forgot about when I signed up was that this year, in an effort to reduce the number of cyclists on the road (and prevent accidents), the start times for the sprint distance have been really late. This race started at 9:40 a.m. and it was a very hot day. The heat was my biggest challenge.

I have to admit that I wasn't in much of a "competitive mood" before this race -- no adrenaline rush or anything like that. I just wanted to do it and have fun and not die of heat exhaustion. The swim was ok. The cool part about the swim was swimming directly over ruins from the ancient city of Caesaria. The water was calm (uncharacteristically so for this race) and the buoys were red, which made them easy to spot. I'm sure I swam straight and apart from some confusion at the end (I didn't know where to get out of the water, nor did anyone around me), I didn't waste any time. So there was really no excuse for my very poor swim time. When I glanced at my watch a few seconds after exiting the water, I saw 17:45. This is a very slow 750 meter time for me. Ok...

Getting on my bike turned out to be a challenge when the crotch of my tri suit got caught on the nose of my saddle. My feet somehow got clipped in all on their own and there I was, trying to stand up and thrust forward enough to get my suit off my saddle while barely moving and hoping not to fall over. I'm sure it was rather amusing to anyone watching. Eventually, I managed to get myself properly seated and started to ride. I didn't push too hard on the bike -- I was too busy thinking about how hot it was already and how hot it would be on the run. This was a draft-legal race and at around 12 km or so, this guy passed me and yelled out, "Come on!" -- so I did. I hung onto his back wheel until the end of the course and it was a lot of fun and also helped me to make up some time.

In T2, I quickly downed two salt tablets, which I'm sure helped me with the heat, as I really didn't suffer all that much on the run. In fact, I have to say that the run, although not fast, was pretty amazing. I passed quite a few people, most of whom looked like they were dying. I felt the heat, but I never actually felt bad, just hot. The run was slightly long -- it was advertised at 5.2 km. My time for T2 (which wasn't all that fast -- I had some trouble getting those salt tablets out of the bag I'd put them in) and the run was 35:something, which is pretty slow, but not disastrous. And unlike many of the people I saw on the course, I actually ran the whole thing.

I finished the race in the fastest time I've ever done Caesaria, though it's hard to compare, as the course was changed this year (the run was longer, though, so I'm still pretty happy with my time). I felt good throughout the race, though I never did get that adrenaline rush and I really didn't care who was up ahead of me. The worst part of the day was sitting around in the heat after the race -- it had to be close to 100 degrees outside and I even suffered in the shade.

So it was a good race, overall -- certainly better than my previous race, the Women's Triathlon, back in May. I will hopefully have an Oly distance race report next week, though that's not looking 100% sure at the moment, due to some "technical problems" (bike trouble and some question about how I'm actually going to get to the race). Hopefully, things will work themselves out.

Saturday ride

2008-06-16T15:18:00.003+03:00

Check out the 20 km that I've circled. If you have trouble adding, that's 34:20. Ok, so it is 20 km of a general downward slope, but it's really more like rolling hills that take you to a point lower than where you started -- plenty of uphill sections there. I'd never ridden any 20 km anywhere near this fast before! A big thanks to the guy who urged me on :-)

The rest of the ride (about 60 km total) did not look like this, but I rode my heart out for that 20 km and it was amazing!

Pictures from the Women's Triathlon

2008-06-13T13:10:00.003+03:00

These are a bit late -- I've been too lazy to post them! Here goes...

Here I am before the race. The team manager caught me in the transition area looking for the bathroom. I did eventually find the porta potties, but they were incredibly disgusting -- I didn't know that women could be so gross! There was no way I was using them. No need for any more details...

Coming out of the swim... Hard to believe how many women were still behind me, considering how slow my swim time was (and you can only see the ones who had already finished swimming -- there were plenty still in the water). Note how far we had to run in the water -- and it was an equally long run on the sandy beach after getting out of the water.

I've just come off the bike and I'm heading into T2. My favorite part of the race was over.

This was actually shot near the end of the run, when I was feeling better. It sure doesn't look that way! I don't want to know what I looked like for the first 2.5 km!

Women's Triathlon, Herzliya, Israel - 31 May 2008

2008-05-31T20:54:00.001+03:00

I'd like to call this a really bad race, a catastrophe, a mistake. However, I think it would be better to refer to it as a learning experience.

Recap: Two weeks ago, I did my first Olympic distance race. Last week, I did the triple super sprint in Lehavim. This would be my third race in three weeks. It was just a sprint, but it was a race, nonetheless.

Everything leading up to this race was bad. I was tired in training this week. My hip was bothering me. I ate all the wrong stuff the day before. I didn't get enough sleep in the two nights leading up to the race. My husband didn't feel well and decided not to accompany me, so I had to drive both ways. Honestly, though, I wasn't thinking about any of this (apart from my hip). I had butterflies in my stomach starting the night before, which was really weird -- I'd done this race three times before and I was planning to just do it for the fun, so why was I nervous? On the way to the race, I freaked out, thinking I'd left my chip at home (I hadn't). I got my bike into the transition area just as they asked everyone to leave (no one did -- I got myself set up and then left). I did a quick 1 km warm up run (barefoot -- my shoes were in the transition area) and my legs were not into it at all. Then it was a quick dip in the water, which went slightly better.

While waiting for the start, I asked myself why exactly I was doing this race. That's nothing new. What was new was that I asked myself the same question repeatedly during the race. In retrospect, it was an excellent question.

The swim started out with a long run into the water. That went ok -- I ran in with the pack and started swimming with all the other women. Everything was going well until suddenly, I saw a very large woman directly in front of me swimming breaststroke with a kick that could kill. I tried everything to get away from her, but she was big and hard to get around (and there were women everywhere). Eventually, I resorted to swimming on the other side of the cable (where there were a lot of other women) -- I swam right up next to it until I could go back to the other side, making sure to round the buoy on the correct side.

The swim was crowded until the first buoy. It was semi-crowded until the second buoy. From the second buoy till the end, I had plenty of room to swim. When I got out of the water, I looked at my watch and had my first shock of the day -- my swim time was a good 3 minutes slower than what I do for the same 750 meters in the pool. Not good.

Transition was uneventful, apart from the fact that I almost rode into someone when I mounted my bike. I felt pretty good on the bike and I passed a lot of people, but I wasn't going as fast as I would have liked and, in fact, my bike time was the slowest I've done for 20 km in a very long time. Some of that can be attributed to the fact that I had to keep braking to avoid riding into people, but I think it was mostly fatigue that had built up over the last couple of weeks.

T2 wasn't as good as T1 -- there was a bike taking up half of my spot and I had to crawl under my bike to get to my shoes.

The run was... Well... Painful. I had expected my hip to hurt, but it wasn't my hip. Every muscle in my lower legs, especially my right leg, just seized up on me after about 1 km. It wasn't a cramp, but rather the feeling that there was a vice squeezing my legs. This is that pain that I sometimes get at the beginning of runs before I'm warmed up. It was really bad. Finally, I had to stop running.

I had never walked before at this race. There's always a first time, I guess. I walked and tried running and walked and tried running. This went on for about 1.5 km. Women were passing me right and left. I started to wonder where all the other walkers were (there are normally a lot of them at this race). When I got to the turnaround, I figured it out -- they were still behind me. Finally, a little bit after the 2.5 km mark, my legs finally loosened up enough to allow me to run. I ran my heart out for the last 2 km and I passed a LOT of people, but it wasn't enough. I finished with the worst time I've ever done at this race by about 10 minutes!

Although I was doing this race "just for fun", there wasn't a whole lot that was fun about it, apart from seeing people that I only meet at races. Pain is not fun. Being slow when you're trying to be fast isn't fun. There were a few fun moments on the bike and I really enjoyed the last 2 km or so of the run, because I was finally able to run. I can't say, though, that the overall experience was great.

So what did I learn? Racing three weekends in a row is possible, but not advisable, or at least not if you want to do well. Maybe if all three races had been sprints it would have been fine, I don't know. I just know that my body is tired and things aren't working the way they should be, but it's nothing that won't be resolved with a little bit of race.

I was considering doing another race (Oly) two weeks from yesterday. I've reconsidered. Bad idea. Then there's another one in four weeks -- a race I don't particularly like. I'm still thinking about that, but I'm also thinking that the better plan may be to skip the next two races, train well during the summer, including a lot of work on flexibility and strength to get rid of my hip problems and hopefully to solve the problem in my lower legs, lose a little bit of weight (not too much -- but 3 or 4 kilos would be nice), work a bit on my overall nutrition and go back to racing in September.

Pictures from the Lehavim Triple

2008-05-26T20:54:00.006+03:00

The pictures from Saturday's race are really good -- too bad I don't look so good in some of them! Here goes...

This is a picture from the end of the first run. This one looks ok above the hips. Unfortunately, my lower body is not quite as skinny as I'd like. To make matters worse, my legs, which aren't all that heavy in real life, always look awful in pictures. And that mess above my left knee is marker smudge -- I'm not sure where it rubbed off of, but this seems to be a chronic problem, no matter what kind of marker I use.

Here I am on my way out of the transition area with my bike, trying to keep it balanced on the grass. No complaints about this picture, other than the fact that I'm holding on to my bike with both hands (well, better that than dropping it!).

Here I am crossing the finish line at the end of round 1 (yes, I ran to the finish line in cycling shoes with a helmet on my head).

And a couple of seconds later... The cute guy behind me in the red shirt that looks like a dress is my son.

Here I am before the start of round 3, hands on hips, looking at who knows what. Note that the legs of my tri suit are not the same length. One apparently worked it's way up when my suit got stuck on my bike saddle in round 2. This made for interesting tan lines.

Still with my hands on my hips, now looking the other way...

Coming out of the water after the swim (and yes, I swam with my number on. It's allowed in this race, although not mandatory. Last year, I left my number on the side of the pool and forgot it there and I had to run back to get it. This year, I decided not to take any chances.

Pulling off my goggles so that I can actually see something on the way to the transition area.

It's finally over! I am very glad to be crossing the finish line for the third and final time.

A couple of pictures from the podium. This is after a shower and a short nap on the grass.

Lehavim Triple Super Sprint Triathlon - 24 May 2008

2008-05-24T17:08:00.001+03:00

A week after my first Oly distance tri, with almost no training in
between (I only worked out twice this past week), it was time to once
again tackle the Lehavim Triple Super Sprint. At first glance, this
looks like an easy race. It's not. It's fast, intense and even
confusing at times. It's all about fast transitions and keeping your
heart rate up.

I've explained this race several times before, but here's a quick
recap. It's three rounds, each consisting of a 200 meter swim, 6 km
bike and 1.5 km run. The first round is run, swim, bike. The second
round is bike, run, swim. The final round is swim, bike, run. There
are 40 minutes between rounds and if you don't finish within 40
minutes, you're disqualified.

For me, the worst part of starting with the run is that I can actually
see everyone pulling away from me. I wasn't last, but I was way in
the back of the pack. On the new course, I could see the turnaround
point almost from the very start of the run, which was good. I ran as
hard as I could, trying to ignore the fact that almost everyone else
was so much faster. When I reached the end, I looked down at my watch
and I'm pretty sure I saw 7:35, which would be an amazing time for me
for 1.5 km. The swim was really hard (it's kind of hard to swim when
you're panting) and it was slow. The bike was ok -- I got up the long
hill in a pretty good time and then went whizzing down. Round 1 was
over and I had almost 10 minutes to rest before round 2.

Round 2 is my least favorite. I don't like starting on the bike
because I'm always wobbly getting on and I'm afraid of bumping into
someone else. This means I always have to start in the back. To make
matters worse, today, when I went to get on my bike, my calf cramped
up. OUCH! I got rid of the cramp and then had an extremely difficult
time clipping in. While all this was happening, I watched the crowd
of cyclists moving further and further away. I did manage to catch
up, but my bike time was not what I would have liked. I don't
remember much about the run and the swim -- I think the run went ok
and the swim was slow again. I just wasn't moving well in the water
today. I finished round 2 in just a few seconds more than round 1 and
for the second time, my son, who was volunteering today, handed me a
bottle of water at the end. That was the best part of the race :-)

Round 3 is my favorite. I like it when things are in the "right"
order, or at least the order I'm used to. Round 3 is when I
discovered just how fast the other woman in my age group swims. She
actually lapped me at 125 meters and out of four women in the lane, I
was the second out of the water. She completely blew us away! The
bike went well and all I remember about the run was thinking "It's
almost over!" I don't run fast (I think I've mentioned that...), but
I ran as fast as I could. I can usually dig deep enough to sprint the
last hundred meters or so, but not today -- I was giving it my all and
I had nothing left at the end. I had hoped to go under 30 minutes in
the last round, but it wasn't to be. I actually had no idea if I was
anywhere near my goal, because I was running too hard to be able to
look down at my watch. I finished round 3 in about the same time as
round 2, which, I guess, is pretty good.

It was over. I was exhausted -- much more exhausted than I was after
last week's race, although I'd been moving forward for a lot less time
(less than half of what last week's race took me -- almost two hours
less, in fact!). I was 2/2 in my age group today, but I didn't care.
It had been an incredibly fun morning and I love racing right here in
town, less than a kilometer from my house.

Next race next week -- the Women's Triathlon (a sprint). That will be
three races in three weeks, another first for me.

The pictures

2008-05-19T19:17:00.003+03:00

Some pictures from the Jordan Valley Triathlon (courtesy of Shvoong) -- these don't need much explanation (and I can't really believe that I'm posting the pictures from the run, but since I never get any good running pictures, these will have to do).

Coming out of the water after the swim:

On my way out of the transition area (after I finally figured out where to put my bike):

Just before the finish:

Jordan Valley Triathlon - 17 May 2008

2008-05-18T09:22:00.003+03:00

Photo courtesy of 4sport

My first Olympic distance tri -- a 43rd birthday present to myself. Done :-)

We drove up to the Galilee on Friday and I spent the day trying not to think about how nervous I was. During dinner,some of the people at the table scared me when they started talking about how I should have done at least 80% of the Oly distance in training, which, of course, I hadn't (I'd done all the distances and then some for each sport alone, just not combined). This didn't help my nerves any and by race morning, I was kind of a wreck. In fact, I started to think about not doing the race. I don't think I was serious, but I was very nervous. My stomach had been bothering me for three days (in retrospect, I think this was nerves) and race morning was no different. How on earth was I going to get through the race with a stomach ache (and no bathroom to use)???

Anyway, I got set up in transition, did a short warm up and was ready to go. I was worried about the water temperature (21 degrees Celsius -- I wasn't swimming with a wetsuit), but then I reminded myself that in the last few years of doing tris, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the things that go wrong on race day are almost never the things that you stress about before the race. This would prove true again at this race.

They gave us about ten minutes in the water before the start. That was just enough to get used to the water temperature (a bit chilly at first, but then fine) and to take a few quick strokes. That was enough for me. Before I knew it, the race had started.

The first thing I noticed was how shallow the water was. I've swum in the Sea of Galilee before and I don't ever remember being able to run in the water for a couple of hundred meters before it was deep enough to swim. We were still able to stand at the kids' buoy. This is rather sad and even frightening, as the Sea of Galilee (or the Kinneret, as we call it) is our main water source and there just isn't all that much there. It was a relatively dry winter and this is the result.

Back to the race...

Unlike most of the Oly distance swims here, which are two loops of 750 meters, this one was a single loop of 1500. That meant swimming out a fairly long distance to a faraway buoy which was barely visible. It also meant that the 200 or so participants in the Olympic 40+ heat got very spread out. For much of the swim, I was completely alone. This was ok on the way out and between the first two buoys, as at the beginning, I just followed the people in front of me and later on, I was close enough to see the buoys. After getting around the second buoy, though, I suddenly had no idea how to swim in a straight line to the exit, which I couldn't see. The buoys were anchored, not tied to a cable, so there was nothing for me to follow. I couldn't clearly see anyone. So I just swam in what I assumed was the general direction. Fortunately, having to swim a lot is one thing that doesn't stress me out, especially in pleasant, calm water. Also, I had made a promise to myself to take this race easy -- I was trying out a new distance and I wasn't interested in how fast I could go, but rather in finishing the race. Every few strokes, I picked up my head and searched for the exit, but I couldn't see it. Eventually, though, I caught up with a group of swimmers ahead of me and I just followed them out.

I wasn't at all surprised when I looked down at my watch and saw my less-than-stellar 1500 meter time. I'd done an easy swim, no effort at all, and I'm sure I did a lot of zigzagging. My watch read something like 38:00. Yikes! But I was very surprised when I reached the transition area and discovered that I'd exited the water before two of my teammates, one of whom is a faster swimmer than I am and the other someone who always manages to beat me out of the water at races. As it turned out, they finished the swim two minutes behind me!

I hopped on my bike and started riding. I noticed that I wasn't riding anywhere near as fast as I'd ridden last year, but I also knew I had to go twice the distance and I was a bit concerned about a hill on the far end of the course that I'd never done when I'd raced the sprint distance. So I didn't push myself at all on the bike, which is normally the strongest part of my race. I got past the sprint turn-around and about 2.5 km later, I saw the first of several small hills. As I started heading up, I shifted onto the small chain ring and my chain slipped off. This doesn't happen very often, but when it does, I've learned to calmly just shift it back up. This time, though, that didn't work -- when I tried to shift it up, I ended up with chain suck and I was unable to even pedal. I managed to clip out before tipping over and I got off my bike and fixed the chain. This is when my two teammates passed me. It didn't actually take me all that long to get the chain back on, probably because I was so calm about the whole thing, though slightly annoyed that I had to stop in the middle of my ride. Soon I was back on the bike, pedaling away, and downshifting very gently.

When I reached the "big hill" that I'd been so concerned about, I almost laughed out loud. Yes, there was a bit of a hill, but it was definitely not a big deal -- not even close to some of the stuff that I climb around here. On the way back, I found myself riding completely alone. At the top of that hill, I looked right and saw the whole Kinneret. What a sight! I was on such a high and this feeling didn't leave me for the rest of the race. I wasn't riding fast, but I was cruising along, down on my aerobar, singing and commenting aloud how beautiful everything was. I was having so much fun that I could have stayed on my bike forever!

The bike course was slightly short, I think -- about 39.2 km, according to my bike computer. When I reached the end, two friends were waiting for me, cheering me on. I smiled at them and yelled out that I was having so much fun. My legs felt great when I got off the bike because I hadn't even tried to ride hard. All that was left was a 10 km run, but first I had to get through transition.

The transition area was full of bikes. I was sure I knew where my spot was on the rack, but when I got there, it wasn't my spot. I got rather confused and I started running back and forth and back and forth with my bike, mumbling to myself: "Where's my stuff???" My team manager was refereeing in the transition area and finally, he called out to me, "If your stuff is with Ilan's, it's over there!" and he pointed to the spot. That was, indeed, the place, but someone else had put their bike where mine was supposed to be. I managed to squeeze my bike in and I had to kind of crawl underneath it to get to my shoes. I had decided to wear socks for the run and I'd practiced putting them on quickly. Well, that didn't happen this time -- I ended up putting them on crooked and because I didn't want to get chafed by the seam, I took the time to straighten them out. Eventually, I did make it out of the transition area. My coach was waiting at the exit and I think he was rather amused. I certainly was.

The run was slow. Very slow. I just wanted to make it through 10 km -- I didn't care about the pace. At 2 km, I had to walk because I couldn't manage to get my gel packet open while running. I walked a couple more times after turning off the sidewalk onto a dirt path, mainly because I was afraid of turning an ankle, but also because I was just being kind of lazy (and it was getting hot). I've had some problems with the joint at the top of my thigh (between my hip flexor and my groin -- I'm not sure what to call it) and it started to ache around the middle of the run, which caused some more walk breaks. However, I saw lots and lots of people walking and I never really walked for all that long. I smiled and said hello to people and thanked the volunteers -- I honestly didn't care how I got through the run, as long as I finished it. It turned out, by the way, that the run was longer than 10k. One person measured it at 10,400 meters. My time for the T2 + the run would indicate that that was correct -- I'm slow, but my T2 + run time was 1:15 -- I'm not that slow, even when I walk!

I remember almost nothing about the last 300 meters or so. I was just on a high -- I was finishing my first Oly tri! I sprinted to the finish and I remember hearing the announcer call out my name. What I didn't hear was that he wished me a happy birthday and congratulated me on my first Olympic distance. I hit the stop button on my watch and looked down and almost laughed. 3:25. That was quite a bit slower than I thought I'd be, but then again, there wasn't a single point during the entire race when I'd actually tried to go fast (well, apart from that 300 meter sprint at the end). As it turned out, only one out of the four team members who did the Olympic distance went under 3 hours. It was a rather slow course, I guess.

As soon as I stopped panting (because of the sprint at the end), the first thing I noticed was that I felt a whole lot better than I've ever felt after any sprint triathlon. Apart from the joint above my thigh, which has been bothering me for some time, nothing hurt and nothing had that tired, achy feeling. I had kept myself well-hydrated during the race and I'd also taken three gels and two salt capsules and I had no headache, no nausea -- nothing. In fact, the first thing I did was grab a sandwich and start to eat. I have never done that at the end of a race before -- normally, it takes at least half an hour or so before I can actually eat anything.

So that's it. I finally met the goal that had had to be put off for so long. And it was no big deal. Maybe I'll even try a bit harder on the next one! And now that I've done it, I definitely understand the appeal. There's no way I'm going back to sprints, apart from races that don't offer any other option. This was just so much more fun!

Oh, and I finished dead last in my age group. Unlike in the sprint, the people who race Olympic distance here are mainly serious, talented athletes. The women who finished one place ahead of me beat me by about 5 minutes, some of which I could have made up by not having to get off my bike and by having found my spot in the transition area. And if I'd actually raced, I think I probably would have finished ahead of her, so I don't feel like I'm out of my league.

European Championships

2008-05-09T22:05:00.003+03:00

Ok, so I've been seriously neglecting this blog. No excuses.

Anyway, the European Triathlon Championships are tomorrow in Lisbon, Portugal. All three junior boys representing Israel are from right here in Lehavim. Good luck to Bar Fogel, Yodar Shafrir and Ron Darmon (appearing in that order from left to right)!

What I didn't do

2008-03-29T22:50:00.004+03:00

No, I haven't disappeared -- just not spending all that much time on my computer.

Today's ride was to "Ma'ale Akrabim" ("Scorpion's Ascent"). We drove to Dimona and from there, we rode about 30 km to the top of the ascent. I took one look down and said, "NO!" For probably the first time ever, it wasn't the climb that scared me. Yes, that looked really hard, but I figured I could do it slowly and the absolute worst thing that could happen would be that someone would come pick me up. No, it wasn't the climb -- it was the way down. The rode was twisting and steep. Other riders were complaining about how much their hands hurt from holding the brakes. Then, they told me that the second half (which I couldn't see) was much worse than the first -- that convinced me. Here's a picture from Google Earth of the second part (and note that this is a 200 meter descent over about 2.5 twisting km on a road with lots of stones and cracked pavement):

That seemed a bit beyond my bike-handling capabilities and I didn't feel like dying today.

What I did do was ride down to the bottom in the car, then go halfway up and ride to the top from there. Here's what the top section looked like (ignore the straight line -- that's SportTracks trying to deal with a missing chunk of the route -- the way up is the squiggly line):

This, by the way, was not easy, either. I stopped once on the way up, rested a few seconds and then got back on my bike and finished.

There were one or two short but nasty climbs on the way to the major climb and on the way back, so overall, even without doing the whole hill, it was a decent ride and I felt it in my legs.

Am I sorry that I didn't do the whole thing? I'm not sure. I'm definitely not sorry that I didn't ride down -- that would have been more of a test of my nerves than of my athletic ability (and, of course, a test of my bike-handling skills, but that wasn't really the way I wanted to test those). When we got to the bottom, it was hot and we were running out of time. The team would have had to wait for me for quite a while and that would have made me uncomfortable (we still had a 30 km ride back to where we'd left the bike cart and the cars). The road was very chopped up and it would have felt more like mountain biking than road biking. The hairpin turns looked very scary, even going uphill (in fact, there was one hairpin turn on the part that I did do and I almost lost my balance on that one). I did a shorter climb and finished it, even though it wasn't easy (and I also rode the whole 30 km back to Dimona), so I didn't wimp out entirely (and I know that I can get to the top from that point, which is a good thing to remember for next time). Overall, the ride was a challenging and satisfactory experience. I can't honestly say what kind of experience it would have been if I'd done the whole climb, although I do know that I would have been very stressed out about getting to the top quickly so that everyone could go home. It's been over 12 hours and I don't feel any sense of disappointment, so I guess I'm not all that sorry.

There are still plenty of hills out there for me to climb.

Ein Gedi Half Marathon - 16 February 2008

2008-02-17T19:05:00.002+02:00

Pictures lie. I look a whole lot better than I felt!!!

It's over, I did it. I didn't achieve any of my goals, but I did PR. I
don't even know if I should call this a good race or a terrible one
-- it was almost like two races in one...

After a very rainy week, we got a beautiful, sunny day for today's
race. There was almost no wind at all, which is very unusual for Ein
Gedi -- usually, there's a strong headwind the entire way back. It was
also very warm -- way too warm for February and much warmer than any
weather I've run in for the last three or four months at least. The
funniest part about that is that they're predicting an extremely cold
week, starting Monday -- even talking about snow. I couldn't even
imagine cold or snow today.

I went out to do a 2 km warm up before the race, but after about a
kilometer, I heard the announcement that all of the start times were
being changed. The 10k was supposed to start at 8:30 and the half
marathon at 9:15. Everything had been pushed back by half an hour. So
I stopped my warm up in the middle and finished it up later on. At
9:30, around the time that I finished warming up, it was very warm
out. I had done the previous warm up in a singlet and shorts and now I
was sweating in them and the race hadn't even started. Yikes. My legs
felt great, though -- no aches and pains at all.

I decided to do two things that I don't normally do. One was to run
with my mp3 player. I do train in it, but I'd never raced with it
before, although they haven't been made illegal here at road races (or
at least not yet). Almost everyone I knew doing the half marathon was
running with one and since I like music when I run, I figured why not.
I have to admit that for the most part, I wasn't sorry -- it kept me
occupied and helped me keep up my pace and I kept it turned down low
enough to be able to hear the people around me and even to carry on a
conversation. The other thing I did was I ran with my heart rate
monitor. I haven't raced with it in a very long time and I'm sorry I
did. More on that later...

The race started out GREAT. It took about 10 seconds to actually start
moving after the start (and they measure time from the start of the
race, not from the starting mat -- in fact, I didn't even see a
starting mat today). There were a lot of people running and even once
I did start moving, it was quite slow for almost a minute. Then I
found an open spot and I was able to start running. I felt fantastic.
My legs didn't hurt (not even once during the entire race, in fact),
the pace felt comfortable and I was smiling. The only thing that
bothered me was that although the pace felt comfortable, when I
glanced down to see what heart rate I was running at, I saw it was
already over 160 -- and the race had just started. My heart rate
didn't seem to correspond with the way I was feeling, though, so I
just kept going.

I finished the first km in 6:29, which was technically over the
average pace I was aiming for, but not once I deducted the 10 seconds
it had taken me to start moving. I wanted to run at 6:20 and that's
just about where I was -- maybe even a little bit faster. As I
continued, I periodically looked down to check my pace and I saw that
I was actually running slightly faster than I had intended to, so I
tried to slow down a bit. The second km was 6:18 and the third was
6:17. After that, though, they started getting a little bit slower,
and I wasn't sure why. My heart rate was high, but I felt good and I
was running more or less with the same people all the time. I decided
that I didn't really care and I just kept going at the slightly slower
pace -- around 6:30/km -- planning to pick it up a bit after the turn
around.

At the halfway mark, I was still feeling good. I had finished the
first 10k in about 1:05 or so and I reached the turnaround in 1:08:55.
I was sure I was going to finish in under 2:20. Because of the heat, I
had taken a salt capsule at the start and I had planned to take
another one at the turn around, but when I reached into my pocket to
get it, it wasn't there. It must have fallen out when I pulled out a
gel at 4 km. So much for that.

As soon as I turned around, I suddenly started feeling out of breath.
I figured that I'd picked up the pace when I saw the halfway point
(which I had), so I just slowed down a bit and tried to get my heart
rate down. It had been over 170 for quite a while, which is very high
for me, or at least running at that pace. I would have been better off
not knowing this, because at some point, the fact that I couldn't get
it down started to bother me. It just kept climbing higher and higher,
although I was running more and more slowly.

At 13 km, I was starting to feel a little bit less than great. My
heart rate was over 180 at this point (in fact, I just had a look at
the data and saw that at 13 km, it reached 185). I decided that this
would be a good time to take my second gel. This particular water
station was rather comic. They were handing out sponges at 13 km and
because it was getting really hot (it was probably only around 72
degrees or so, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the sun was
directly overhead), I wrung out the sponge on the top of my head.
That would have been fine if I'd tilted my head back a bit further,
but I guess I misjudged the direction that the water would flow down
in and it ended up coming down in my eyes. The combination of water,
sweat and sunscreen made my eyes sting terribly -- it was so bad that
I couldn't keep them open. So there I was, running with my eyes
closed, praying I wouldn't trip over anything (or anyone). I had a
bottle of water in one hand and a gel in the other. I guess I could
have poured more water in my eyes, but I was afraid that would make it
worse. Instead, I somehow managed to pull off my sunglasses and wipe
my eyes with my hands, which did the trick. I took the second gel,
drank some water, through the bottle aside and kept going.

I started to feel a little bit better, but I was counting down the
kilometers left until the end and this wasn't a good sign. My heart
rate was at around 176 or so and my pace was way off. I don't know why
this was, as I'm normally stronger in the second half of a race (or
even a long run) than I am in the first. Maybe it was the heat (I
later heard other people commenting on how hard the second half of the
race had been for them).

Things really started to go downhill. My heart rate was still climbing
and I was doing something that resembled running but wasn't much (or
any) faster than walking. I hit the 16 km mark and told myself, "Just
5 more kilometers -- that's nothing!" This was where I had planned on
really picking up the pace, but I could barely keep my legs moving. At
17 km, I was still going, but I was feeling bad. By 18 km, I was
feeling nauseated. At 18.3 km, my legs stopped running. In fact, my
legs almost stopped moving entirely. I could barely walk -- I felt
like I was standing on jelly and I was sure that at any moment, I'd no
longer be upright. About 100 meters later, I heard my friend Ella, who
had been behind me for the entire race, scream, "Bari! RUN!!!" I
started running again and that worked for a while, but towards 19 km,
I was really starting to slow down. That's when Ella passed me. She'd
never passed me in a race before and watching her go by was rather
disheartening. I slowed to a walk again and this time I decided to
walk until I could get my heart rate down a bit. I also took advantage
of that time to drink about half of the bottle that I'd been handed at
the water station. I was still feeling really nauseated, but when my
heart rate finally got down to 150, I started running again.

Just before the 20k mark, my friend, Itzik, was waiting for me. He had
finished his half marathon and come back to help me finish mine. We
ran for a few seconds, but then I started walking again. I was feeling
so sick that I was sure I was about to vomit all over the road. Maybe
it was all the water I'd drunk -- I don't know. He encouraged me to
run -- we were almost at the finish -- and at 20k, I decided that
enough was enough and I started running again. I was even able to pick
up the pace a bit. Actually, this isn't all that surprising. My legs
felt more or less ok and 1 km before the finish, I didn't care how
high my heart rate got -- I just wanted to finish. The km between 20
and 21 was the fastest of the day and the 100 meters after that were
at an even faster pace. I crossed the finish line at 2:24:34. This was
not the time I had wanted to do, but it was a PR and it was also seven
minutes faster than last year (and this year I managed to finish
before the official closing of the course).

I'm a bit disappointed with my time, but the first half of the race
did go very well, so what concerns me more is what went wrong in the
second half. I've been going over all the details in my mind, trying
to figure out why my heart rate was so high for the entire race and
why I felt so nauseated for the last few kilometers. The heart rate
could be from any number of things -- excitement, the heat, or who
knows what else. The nausea, though, is weird. I thought it was from
running at such a high heart rate for so long (which is why I wish I
hadn't worn the heart rate monitor, because then it might not have
occurred to me that I should slow down to make it go away). Then I
started thinking that maybe it was that second gel that did it to me
or maybe just the heat. Or maybe I'd had TOO much water (there was no
sports drink on the course this year -- nothing but water. Last year
there was sports drink at some of the stations and also bananas).
Maybe it was a combination of things. I don't know and it's driving me
nuts, because without knowing what caused it, I can't prevent it from
happening again.

I also think I need a better game plan for next time. I went out at my
planned pace, but maybe I should have started out slower (or maybe my
planned average pace was too fast, though based on my 10k times, it
shouldn't have been). In any case, at the end of the day, all it
really was was another race and at least part of it went well. I wish
I had RUN the whole thing, but I didn't actually walk all that much
and all of the walking was done in the space of 1.7 km (and I only
walked a few hundred meters) -- not that big a deal, as I finished
21.1 km.

Oh, and I treated myself to a new pair of Sugoi cycling shorts at the expo :-)

24

2008-02-02T00:13:00.001+02:00

That's how many kilometers I ran today. Well, actually, it was around
24.1, but 24 is close enough. It was painful at times, slow and not
too pretty, but I finished. This was my longest ever run and to be
honest, I have absolutely no desire to run any further (so no
marathons in my future, I guess, unless running gets easier). I'm
proud of myself, though, for sticking it out and finishing -- and also
for reaching the peak of my half marathon training. Now it's time to
start my taper.

Omer 10k - 26 January 2008

2008-01-26T18:53:00.000+02:00

With the Ein Gedi Half Marathon coming up in three weeks, this was supposed to be a training race. It's a race I do every year and I really don't like it, but it's very close to home and it's always right before Ein Gedi, so I do it. The course length is never right, there are never enough volunteers on the course and the overallorganization isn't anything to write home about, but so be it.

So today, I really didn't have a specific, concrete goal in mind, though I was hoping for a 6:00/km pace.

We had some very loud thunder storms all night long and I thought they might cancel the race. It was still raining when I woke up, but there was no more thunder and lightening, so after briefly debating whether or not this was really how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning, I
got up, ate breakfast, got dressed and drove off to the race, about 15 minutes away.

I did a 2 km warm up and then I really started asking myself if I wanted to race. My legs were really achy, as they have been at the start of just about every run I've done this winter, and I knew that 2 km wasn't going to be enough to get rid of the achiness, but it was all I had time to do. I was soon standing on the starting line, minus the strap on my heart rate monitor, which I'd brought with me, but forgot to put on. I decided I'd just go by feeling and pace today.

The race started and the first km was ok. In fact, it was faster than the pace that I more or less wanted to run -- I finished the first km in 5:42 and it felt really good and not too hard. However, around the end of that km, my legs started to ache again and they would continue to ache for the next four km or so. Ugh. I hit the halfway point in 30:44, slower than I had hoped, and I was still having some trouble actually picking up my feet.

I don't know when it happened, but somewhere around 6 or 7 km, I finally loosened up a bit and felt like I could run. I looked at my watch at 7 km and saw that my chances of going under an hour were practically nill, but that maybe I could PR (my PR for 10k was 1:00:48, set at Ein Gedi two years ago). With only 3 km to go and my legs finally feeling good again, I picked up the pace a bit. For the last 3 km, I averaged well under 6:00/km. With 2 km to go, I pushed as hard as I could, still hoping to PR.

I crossed the finish line and looked at my watch. All I could see was 1:00 (that screen didn't show me the seconds), so I knew I hadn't gone under an hour, but I also knew I wasn't far off my PR for 10k. Then I saw that my Garmin read 10.1 km. Once again, the course had been long. A closer look showed me that the course was off by 120 meters. My time for 10.12 km was 1:00:56, eight seconds off my 10k PR, but with the extra distance added in (and I'm pretty sure the course was accurately measured at Ein Gedi, which is a much bigger and more well-organized race), I believe that I PRed for 10k today. My average pace was 6:01/km, which was pretty close to what I had hoped for.

According to SportTracks, I finished the first 10k (before the additional 120 meters) in 1:00:23. A little bit frustrating, as that sub-1:00 10k is only 23 seconds away, but I'll take it. Oh, and I had a negative split, averaging 6:09/km for the first 5k and 5:54/km for the second 5k.

Once I get past the leg pain after 4 or 5 km, I think I'll do just fine in my half marathon in three weeks.

Where I've been

2008-01-19T14:24:00.001+02:00

Well, nowhere, actually. Just really busy training and with life
(that's what happens when you go on strike for over two months and
then suddenly have to go back to work and make up the hours that you
didn't work). Anyway, I'm still alive and well, and as you can see
from the statistics in the sidebar, I've been running a lot in
preparation for the Ein Gedi Half Marathon next month.

More some time soon...

Eilat Triathlon - 30 November 2007

2007-12-03T13:12:00.000+02:00

The first test of my new positive attitude would take place even before I got out of bed in the morning. For a variety of reasons, I didn't sleep all night. I drifted off here and there, but something always woke me up and by 4 a.m., they were setting up the transition area outside my window. At 6:00, I tumbled out of bed. I should have been exhausted. I'd been tired before I ever hit bed the previous night and no sleep should have made it worse. However, I refused to even think about sleep and fatigue. I had a race to run. I didn't tell a soul about my lack of sleep -- it would just sound like an excuse for a lousy race (before I even started the race!) and talking about not sleeping would certainly make me start thinking about how tired I should be (and ultimately would be if I thought about it). So I didn't. In fact, I even managed to completely forget about it until I crashed later in the day, long after the race had ended.

I quickly got set up in the transition area, checked out the entrances and exits and then left with no intention of returning until T1. There was nothing for me to do there. I didn't need to hear athletes hanging around complaining about this and that. I'd briefly noticed that the last two racks, one of which was my assigned rack, were very close together and since there was nothing I could do about it, I needed to get that out of my mind.

I went back up to my room, put on my spare pair of running shoes and went out to watch the kids coming out of the water. That was a lot of fun, although a lot of them came out crying (it was cold). I always like to watch the kids racing -- I find them so inspiring. At 7:30, I went for a warm up run. I did about 1.5 km and it felt good. Then I headed up to my room again to take off the running shoes and grab my goggles and swim cap.

I still had more than enough time for a swim warm up before the start of the race. It took a very long time to actually reach the beach, as there was a huge crowd of people trying to pass in a very narrow area next to the kids' transition area. Eventually, I got through and went down to the water. Because of my dizziness the day before, I'd decided to swim with ear plugs. I put them in, but when I went to adjust my swim cap, one of them rolled out and disappeared. I spent a few minutes looking for it and then gave up and decided to pull out the other one and just pull my swim cap well down over my ears. Then I went for a warm up.

I don't know how long I swam or how far. I do know I drifted off to the left and suddenly, I found myself right in the path of swimmers who were just starting the race (but, fortunately, far enough away to not be seen by any race officials and also to have time to move over before anyone came close to me). I swam back to the shore, doing a sprint or two. When I got out of the water, I glanced at my watch. 8:15. Oh, 8:15, that's nice. 8:15?!?!!!!! The start for the women's sprint was at 8:17 and I had to get into the start area!!! Yikes!!!

I don't know why (new attitude, maybe?), but I was completely not stressed out about this. I noticed that the men who were supposed to start at 8:15 were still standing on the beach, so I figured I had an extra minute or two. When the men started, I was still looking for the entrance to the swim start, which I eventually found. When I walked up to the shore, I saw Ronit and went to stand next to her. Immediately, I heard, "40 seconds to start time." Well, I'd made it -- just. Then I realized that I didn't even know where we had to swim to and there were all kinds of buoys in the water for the different distances. So with only seconds to go, I remembered to ask someone. "Out to the red buoys," she told me. Ok, red buoys...

I was still in "astronaut mode" when I heard, "Ok, Eilat, are you ready for the women?! BEEEEEP!!!!" Next thing I knew, I was swimming hard. The whole start happened so quickly that it was almost surreal. In retrospect, I decided it was great. I hate standing on the beach, listening to people complain about how cold the water is or how many people there are or whatever. The only thing I'd had time to hear anyone say (besides "the red buoys") was "good luck!" That's how I want to start every race!

I have never started a race like I started this one -- no hesitation, no waiting to see what the people in front of me do (there weren't too many people in front of me). I just dived into the water and started to swim hard. I wasn't even worried about tiring myself out. I knew that if I got out of breath, I could just swim slowly. I've practiced that enough in the pool and it's so much easier in salt water where you float without even trying. I never got out of breath.

I was feeling amazing and then... BOOM! I got breaststroke-kicked in the teeth, hard enough to elicit quite a grunt. Ouch. I thought I'd have a swollen lip (I didn't), but I also knew that my teeth were intact and there was no reason for me to slow down, so I didn't. Then... OUCH!!! This one was somewhere between my side and my stomach and it hurt more than the first. In fact, it hurt so badly that I did something I've never done -- I raised my head out of the water and cursed at the woman who'd kicked me (not that I knew which one had kicked me, but she was somewhere near me). I don't know if anyone heard me and I don't really care. The two words that escaped my lips gave me the mental strength to keep swimming hard and soon, there was no pain at all in the place where I'd been kicked. Then, a third woman tried to swim right over me. I've had men do this to me before, but never a woman. I don't get the "swim over other swimmers" thing. I mean, sometimes, I accidentally hit someone or find my arm on someone's back, but I immediately back off. I would never keep going right over someone. And I wasn't going to let this woman swim over me. An elbow and some good kicking managed to get her off of me. That's not a race tactic -- it's a survival tactic.

At the first buoy, everyone around me was suddenly swimming breaststroke -- slowly. We were barely moving. I'd had enough. Once again, I raised my head out of the water, this time to scream, "SWIM!!!"

Some time after that, I noticed that most of the people around me were wearing yellow swim caps. I'd caught up with the slower swimmers in the men's 40+ sprint who had started two minutes before the women. Once again, I was surrounded by breaststrokers, but this time, they were big, strong men with big, strong kicks, so I escaped. I'm not sure where I escaped to, but I noticed that although there were quite a few swimmers around me, there were more swimmers way off to the left. I guess I went a bit off course, but at least it had gotten easier to swim.

Despite being beaten up (a complaint that all of the women I spoke to had, by the way), I actually enjoyed the swim. I have no idea how long it took me, because someone had accidentally hit the stop button on my watch. I do know that I finished two minutes faster than a couple of male teammates, who got out of the water with me. Ronit and I finished in just about the same time and we ran to the transition area together.

Check out teammate Meir and me wearing our new team tri suits:

I honestly don't remember too much about T1, apart from the fact that the soles of my feet started to hurt a little towards the end of the long run to the transition area and also that someone had placed their bike on the belt holding my number, so I had to really yank it to get it out. I recall that it was a bit difficult to actually get out of the row that my bike was in (remember those closely placed racks?), but in my mind, I turned that into a good thing -- "Look how many bikes are still in the transition area!" I also remember people stopping right at the line, in the middle of the road to get on their bikes (one of my pet peeves). I ran a bit ahead and mounted at the side of the road.

There was a lot of wind. I think. There's always a lot of wind in Eilat and my bike time would indicate that there might have been more than usual, but I'm not sure. I wasn't thinking about the wind, I was just thinking about riding my bike. During the out section, north on the Arava Road, I played leap frog with a few other riders. This was good, because it kept me on my toes, though looking back, I think I could have ridden a bit harder. For the last year or so, the bike has become the strongest part of the race for me, but I don't think it was my strong point in this particular race. Anyway, I passed my old "friend" the road block and before I knew it, I was at the turn-around. There was an official standing there directing us ("Sprint turn around, Olympic straight ahead...") and as we passed him, he said, "That's it! The hard part is over! Now have fun!!!"

I turned around and with the wind no longer in my face, the world went quiet. I let out a huge cry of joy (lots of people were "whooping" at the turn-around) and took off. I don't know why people ride so slowly at races when the wind is at their backs. There are no cars on the road, nothing to be afraid of, so why not just let loose? I was flying along at around 50-55 kph and I just kept passing more and more people. I was having a great time. That's when I heard a cyclist coming in the other direction yell out, "Slow down! Accident up ahead!" Seconds later, I could see a crowd of people standing in the middle of the road. There was also a race official indicating that we should slow down and directing us over to the right so that we could pass. I didn't look at the men lying in the road. I couldn't. I could tell by the number of people hanging around and by bits and pieces of things that I heard that these weren't just scrapes and cuts. A few seconds later, the first ambulance whizzed by, siren wailing. Then the second ambulance went past. This was the only part of the race that I didn't enjoy. It's not fun to see people lying hurt on the road. It's frightening to have an ambulance race past you. And it's stressful to start wondering who those people were -- I spent the rest of the race looking for my teammates.

It turned out that the accident had been a head-on collision caused by careless and illegal riding of cyclists not actually involved in the crash. Both cyclists were taken to the hospital. One was hospitalized in serious condition with head and other injuries. As of yesterday, he was still in intensive care. I didn't know either person involved, but I know that they were just amateur triathletes like me, out there to have fun. What a horrible way to end what was supposed to be a great day.

Back to my race report...

I don't really remember too much of the way back after the ambulances went by. I do recall being very careful in the traffic circle at the entrance to Eilat, as I remembered from training camp that there were a lot of holes in the road (and I remembered from previous races in Eilat that there's a lot of wind in that traffic circle that can blow you over if you're not careful). I don't recall seeing a photographer, but there must have been one, as I found this:

Although it's a cute picture, I don't particularly like the way I'm sitting on my bike, which might account for my less-than-fantastic bike split. I'd had fun, though, apart from passing the accident, and maybe for the first time ever, I was actually looking forward to the run.

T2 was fast and unmemorable. As I was heading out of the transition area, my number tore. We do most of our races here with permanent numbers, but in Eilat, we get special numbers for the race and these weren't made of particularly strong paper. I'd already seen them tear in the kids' race and looking at the pictures, I see that a lot of people were no longer wearing numbers by the run. I just tucked mine into my race belt, as you can see here:

There are some good shots of me running in this race, which is very unusual, but I wasn't surprised when I saw them. I had set out to enjoy myself during the run and also to run harder than I normally do in a triathlon. I accomplished both goals and looked good doing it. The only downside of the run was that I had to keep playing with my number and eventually, I ended up running with my race belt tucked under my butt, which elicited a few comments from people who were sure that it was going to slip off. Now that I've seen the photos, I understand the comments:

The run has always been the weakest and hardest part of the race for me. I've never considered myself a runner (although now that I've seen that my run time was faster than almost half of the women who did the sprint, maybe I should rethink that) and I've always managed to just "survive" the run. The night before the race, I'd asked my best friend, Itzik, who would be officiating on the run course, to say two words to me when he saw me: "You can!" These are the two words he's used to urge me on in various situations over the last few years and I knew that hearing him say them would give me the push I needed. I didn't actually see him when I set out on the run, but I heard him. He said what I'd asked him to say and I nodded my head in agreement. Of course I could do it -- and I could enjoy doing it, too.

I've often found myself walking part of the run course at triathlons, even if the course is only 5 km. Last year, I tried to break that habit and allowed myself to walk only at water stations. This season, I ran every step of every race and practice race I did. Eilat was no exception. I didn't even slow down when I took water.

Towards the end of the run, Gil was waiting for me. He had been hit by a car while riding his bike two weeks earlier and had broken his collarbone and dislocated the thumb on his other hand, so he was in Eilat as a spectator this year. As I ran past him, Gil, with one arm in a sling and a cast on the other hand, started running with me. Both his girlfriend and I yelled at him to stop running, but he kept going. I yelled again and he said, "Pass me and I'll stop running!" So I did. This is just about the only thing I remember from the last 500 meters of the run. Before I knew it, I was crossing the finish line and the announcer was calling out my name. It was over. I'd finished the race without a single negative thought, without a single doubt about my ability to get out there and do my best. And I'd had a great time. I was sorry it was over!

My time for the race was actually a minute slower than last year. It's hard for me to see why, as the timing mats were placed differently last year, but I suspect that it was my bike split that was slower and since I think I went slightly off course, my swim split was probably a little bit slower, too. In addition, for some reason, the run turn-around was a bit further up this time and possibly the bike turn-around, as well. I definitely ran faster, though (despite the slightly longer course), and overall, I think I raced harder and better this year, regardless of the slightly slower time.

For those interested in the statistics...

750 meter swim + T1: 20:52, 29/133 women (note that the run to the transition area is very long at this race -- I was probably out of the water in somewhere between 16 and 17 minutes)

20 km bike +T2: 47:47, 31/133 women (and yes, that looks slow to me, even taking the transition into consideration, but my relative placement indicates that all of the times were slow)

5 km run: 30:05, 68/133 women

I was 39/133 overall (women) and 8/29 in my age group. When I got home, my 16-year-old daughter who has absolutely no interest in triathlon asked me how I'd done. I told her I came in 8th out of 29 women in my age group and much to my surprise, she looked at me and said, "Wow, that's really good!" That was the icing on the cake.

The day before...

2007-12-03T10:58:00.000+02:00

Back in Eilat again for my 26th triathlon. Twenty-sixth!!! How on earth did that happen? This was my fourth time at the Eilat Triathlon. It's probably my favorite race for several reasons. First of all, it was my first ever triathlon -- in 2004 I did the now defunct "super sprint" -- 300 meter swim, 8 km bike, 2 km run. That was my first taste of multisport racing, which has since become an obsession. The following year, Eilat would prove to be my biggest challenge. Eilat 2005 was the only race I've ever dropped out of in the middle. About 6 km into the bike course, I crashed into (and flipped over) a road block, totaling my bike but miraculously remaining more or less intact. I have a small scar on my knee to remind me of that day (well, that and a lot of teammates who like to point out "Bari's road block" every single time we enter Eilat). The accident happened so quickly that I don't even remember part of it, but it was traumatic enough to stay with me for a very long time. The first few races I did after the crash were stressful and even now, two years later, the bike course in Eilat does something to me that I can't describe and when I complete it, whether in a practice race or in the actual race, I feel both relief and a sense of accomplishment. And of course, Eilat is the national championship -- the biggest race of the year. Everyone is there, it's a huge "happening" and a lot of fun.

So on Thursday, I was back in Eilat. A year ago, I thought I'd be doing the Olympic distance in Eilat in 2007, but this wasn't to be. However, I was in Eilat this year with a new attitude and a new set of personal goals that I hoped to achieve (oh, and a new tri suit to go with the "new me" -- pictures to accompany the race report). These weren't time goals, but rather mental goals -- I've spent the past few weeks working on a new attitude and my main goal was to tough this race out with only positive thinking.

On Thursday, we did a quick workout -- a short run, which felt great, and then a short swim. The water was cold and I was pretty dizzy when I got out (as was everyone else I spoke to). I actually don't mind swimming in cold water, but it did make me wonder how exactly I was going to get out of the water and run to the transition area on Friday. I didn't dwell on this for too long, though -- those kinds of thoughts don't fit into the new attitude and besides, I had other things to do (like drag my very heavy duffle bag from the parking lot up to the hotel entrance).

At around 2:15, we went to check into the hotel. Everyone got their rooms and started getting settled. Well, everyone except Ronit and me. Our room "wasn't ready". We were wet and cold and really wanted to shower, but that would have to wait. Instead, we grabbed out bikes and decided to make sure they'd arrived with all parts intact and everything working. We did a very short and very frightening ride (frightening because there was a lot of traffic on the road and the cars were way too close to us for comfort) and then headed back to the hotel, confident that our room would now be ready. They'd promised us the room by 3:00. It was now 2:55. No dice. Still not ready.

At 3:00, we'd both lost our patience. Our check-in was through the travel agency responsible for team reservations, but since they hadn't yet received an envelope for our room, they suggested that I check with the front desk. At the front desk, they didn't even have our names on the guest list (but we were on the list with the travel agency). I found the person in charge and she said she'd take care of it. Well, she did take care of things, but not fast enough for Ronit. After this woman told me that we now had a room and that she'd be able to give me the keys soon and that she'd call me when it was ready, Ronit had had enough. I don't know what she did exactly, but she disappeared for a few minutes and when she came back, our room was ready. It was already 3:45. We were still wet, still cold and getting colder and both dying to hit the shower, which is exactly what we did when we got to the room.

The entire hotel had been "decorated" by Nike with signs everywhere. For example, the sign in the elevator said, "Instead of riding in the elevator, your opponent took the stairs. What about you?" In our bathroom, the sign on the mirror said, "You are looking at a winner." Then there was the one on the TV that read something like, "Instead of sitting around watching TV, your opponent is out training." They were in the rooms, in the lobby -- everywhere you looked. And they left us a few bumper stickers with similar slogans, as well. It was impossible to be at Sport Club Hotel and not feel the spirit of the race.

After getting settled, we hit the expo. I bought the last of the chocolate flavored gel that I hadn't been able to find in Beer Sheva (good thing I hit the expo early or I wouldn't have found it in Eilat, either) and looked around at some other stuff. I'd been looking for a pair of long women's running tights and for some reason, I hadn't been able to find anything (all the women's running "tights" that I found had flared legs, which I don't like), but I finally found a pair in the Nike booth (at a 35% discount, which didn't make them cheap, but did make them affordable), which I would buy later on.

After the expo, we headed over to the Royal Garden Hotel auditorium for the race briefing, where Ronit and I both fell asleep! I'm not even sure why we bother to go to the briefing every year, as the course hasn't been changed for the last three years and they never say anything new, but it's just kind of a tradition. Anyway, the nap was nice and I saw Michaela, who was disappointed to hear that I was doing the sprint and not the Olympic distance (I keep promising her "next time"). I didn't talk to her after the race, but from what I heard, although it wasn't her first Oly distance, the race was tough for her this year.

After the race briefing, we had a team meeting, where we got our numbers and other race stuff. We went back to our room to put our numbers on our bikes and get our stuff ready for the next day and then we went down to the dining room and had dinner with coach Yigal, who didn't say a word about all the chocolate I had for dessert!

Before going to bed, I took a walk on the Eilat boardwalk. I needed to clear my head before the race and start concentrating on the things I wanted to achieve. The boardwalk was unusually empty -- I guess most of the people in Eilat this weekend were triathletes who had already gone to sleep. I walked and walked and even went into a store or two (but didn't buy anything) and then went back to the hotel. It was time to go to sleep. I had triathlon number twenty-six in the morning...

It's dangerous out there...

2007-11-17T14:30:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, my friend Gil was hit by a car while out on his bike. The driver was "nice enough" to stop to see if Gil was still alive before fleeing the scene. Gil broke his shoulder and dislocated his thumb. His helmet broke -- I don't even want to think about what would have happened to his head if he hadn't been wearing it.

This morning, I was woken up at 6:23 a.m. (two minutes before my alarm was to go off) by what sounded like a big metal object falling. My husband immediately recognized the sound as that of a car accident, so we ran outside to see what had happened. I left the house, rounded the corner and this is what I saw:

From where I was standing, I couldn't see whether or not the driver was in the car and I assumed that he was, but I quickly discovered that he had already managed to crawl out the window. The driver was a young guy, about 20, who was most likely returning home from a party or something. He wasn't clear on what had happened exactly, but from what we could tell, he hit the parked car pictured below, lost control of his car and flipped over.

Here are a couple more pictures of the flipped-over car:

Amazingly, the driver was uninjured apart from some lacerations on his hand from the broken glass. As we were standing outside looking at the scene of the accident, however, something really scary occurred to me. Our team ride this morning was to the beach in Ashkelon. The meeting time was 6:30, but for various reasons, several of the adult members of the team decided at the last minute to do our own ride in the area and to leave at 7:00. While we were outside, we saw all the kids riding down to the meeting point. That's when I realized that if my 62-year-old teammate, Ilan, who lives one street down from me, hadn't changed his mind about the team ride, he would have been making a left turn out onto the main road (where the accident was) at just about the time that the accident happened. To get a better idea of where he would have been, look at this satellite view (he would have turned right out of his house and then left at the corner, exactly where the parked car was):

It's too scary to consider what might have happened if he'd chosen to ride with the team.

Anyway, we did a short and uneventful (apart from the fog, which we hit a few kilometers up the road) 40 km ride and we all got home safely.

Lehavim 3k - 10 November 2007

2007-11-10T15:55:00.000+02:00

After registering for the 10k, I reconsidered and decided that for a whole bunch of reasons, doing the 3k at this race would be smarter. 3k is short, but in my opinion, it's a lot harder than 10k, or at least if you race it.

The race took place less than a kilometer from my house. I actually got to sleep "late" this morning, because I was racing instead of doing my long Saturday ride, which normally starts at 6:30. I walked down to the race site at about 8:30, got my number and then just hung out for a while talking to friends. The 10k started at 9:15. I watched the start and then headed out to do a warm up. The shorter the race, the longer the warm up, so I settled on 2 km, which might not have been enough, but I was starting to feel warmed up when I finished. When I got back to the starting line, a friend informed me that I'd almost missed the start because they'd decided to make it 15 minutes earlier. Uh, hello? Not a really smart move when there are people out warming up! In the end, the race started on time.

This is a really small race and even in the 3k, there were some fast runners. The start is always the worst part for me, as the faster runners take off with the slower runners trying to keep up. I, on the other hand, always try to start at a pace that I believe I can hold. Maybe my strategy
is wrong -- I don't know, but it works for me. So there I was at the back of the pack, either the last runner or one of the last. The one other woman in my age group was up ahead of me, running fast, but I just decided to keep running my own race at the best pace I could hold. Within 500 meters, I'd caught up with and passed that woman and I'd started passing other people.

My goal for this race was to do under 6:00/km (finish in under 18:00). That's really slow for most people, but it's a good pace for me and, in fact, one I've been having trouble maintaining recently. At the first km, I glanced down at my Garmin and saw about 5:25 or so. I was very happy with this pace and for a moment, wondered if I could hold it, but then decided to just keep running as hard as I could -- it was only 3 km! The first half of the race was almost entirely uphill. It's not a steep hill, but it's a long, gradual incline. I've run this route more times than I could possible count, so I knew what to expect. I also know that if I could make it through the first half without slowing down, the second half would be a whole lot easier, apart from a 100 or so meter uphill section at the end. I never looked at my watch again until after I'd crossed the finish line.

I don't remember much about the race after the turn-around. I do remember that I was still running hard. As I turned towards the finish line with less than 500 meters to go, I was faced with that short, but rather steep hill. I knew that the moment I hit the top, I'd be home free. And I was. According to my watch (I haven't seen the official results), I crossed the finish line in 16:17 and my Garmin says the route was 3.07 km -- 70 meters long. The last 70 meters took me 19 seconds to run. So I guess my goal of under 18:00 was a bit conservative. I finished 3 km in under 16:00 with an average pace of 5:18/km. I'm pretty sure I've never run that fast over a distance of more than 1 to 2 km in my life. I did actually finish this same race a second faster three years ago, but I'm almost positive the course was short that year (I remember checking it with my car and discovering that it was very short -- like 300 meters). I took first place in my age group and got a huge trophy (as you can see in the photo above).

And, of course, with the Eilat Triathlon coming up, the first thought that passed through my mind was, "Could I hold that pace for another 2 km?" And the answer is, I don't honestly know. My average heart rate was 172, reaching 184 only towards the end, when I tried to sprint (and when I had to go up that hill). If anyone had asked me yesterday if I could hold that pace for 3 km, I would have said no. Not only did I hold it, but I had a negative split (of course, the second half was a bit easier than the first). On a 5 km course at the end of a triathlon, I have to take water. I skipped the water stations today -- I don't need water to run a stand-alone 3k. That will obviously slow me down a bit, but how much? And running at the end of a triathlon is harder, but how much harder? My normal triathlon running pace is over 6:00/km, but I'm aiming to beat that in Eilat this year. I'd say, "Wish me luck," but I suspect that there's a lot more determination involved than luck.

Pictures from training camp

2007-11-07T19:52:00.000+02:00

Here we are at the lecture on Thursday night. As you can see, we were all captivated. I'm in the blue jacket, between the two men. I'm not sleeping, just resting my had on my hand. Gil, on the other hand (sitting to my right) is fast asleep, but somehow, he was still able to tell us what the lecture had been about!

Here I am on the way up to Ein Netafim on Friday morning. You can't tell from the picture, but at this point, I was already exhausted and had already stopped for one (long) break. Shaul, the guy who took the picture, was busy talking to me from his car about some translation work that I did for the team and I was actually answering him. Gotta love the crazy pink jersey (this is the one I got for my birthday). My daughter saw this picture and all she said was, "WHAT are you wearing?!"

This is at the swim workout on Friday afternoon. I look a bit confused. That's probably because I seemed to be moving against the stream for the entire workout. While everyone was swimming in one direction, I was always going in the other!

Saturday morning before the practice race. I'm heading out for a warm up. The picture is a bit blurry, but I'm smiling!

On the way to the swim start, still smiling.

Last minute instructions before the start. Everyone else is listening -- I'm not sure what I'm doing...

Still getting instructions and I'm still standing in my typical hands-on-hips pose. It's always nice to have someone take a picture of your butt!

Into the water for the start. It was cold!

On the bike. I'm still smiling and having a great time (as is Meir, who's busy drafting off of me -- he later passed me and then took off).

This is the run start -- I think. Am I running??? Kinda hard to tell...

Getting ready for our ride to the Taba border on Saturday morning. That's me in the sleeveless red jersey. This is a jersey that I'm going to wear more often -- I look skinny!

The team at the Taba border. We look pretty good for a group of people who got very little sleep and worked very hard!

Training camp in Eilat -- part 4

2007-11-04T14:24:00.001+02:00

We met in the parking lot at 5:30 for our first workout of the third day -- a practice race on the course of the Eilat Triathlon. The idea of doing a practice race after the previous day (with that very difficult climb) was rather overwhelming, but fortunately, my brain is not very awake at that hour of the morning, so I just kind of went with the flow of things.

Got to the "transition area", did a short warmup, took a dip in the water and then stood on the beach, shivering (it was cold!), waiting to start the "race". I'll spare you the blow-by-blow of the practice race and just supply the highlights. Remember Ronit, my teammate who I have never ever beaten in a single race or practice race? Well, she and I ended up doing the entire swim together, side by side, and that's how we got out of the water. I'm much faster than she is in the transition area and I headed out on my bike long before she headed out on hers. I'm also stronger on the bike than she is (that didn't used to be the case), so she never managed to catch up with me. It was a very tough first 10 km into strong winds (Eilat is always like that) and we both struggled, but I guess I struggled less than she did. The second half was much easier ;-) Ronit runs faster than I do, but she didn't manage to catch me. Despite sore muscles and the previous day's dehydration, I was in top form this morning and although the run wasn't fast, I felt strong and I had no problem keeping her behind me. I finished a minute or so ahead of her and as soon as she finished, she announced to everyone that I'd done a great "race" because it was the first time I'd ever beaten her.

I really had done a great race. It wasn't just beating Ronit -- it was my entire attitude. I should have been tired and sore and maybe I was, but the entire time, all I could think about was how much fun I was having. In fact, I even said it out loud on the bike (while riding uphill into the wind). And I smiled during the run. SMILED!!! I'm not sure I've ever felt like that during a race (real or practice) before. In fact, I usually hate practice races -- they're harder than races (no water stops, for one thing) and there's no finish line, no one to cheer me on (though there were a few triathletes from the Eilat team out there this morning and they were cheering all of us on), no competition -- nothing to keep me motivated. I loved this practice race. It was like someone had switched something on in my brain and I was just out there feeling great and loving every second, even when it was hard. I can't even describe the feeling and I don't know what caused it, but I hope I can get it back next time. As I said to my coach after the workout -- maybe before every race I need to do a hard climb, get dehydrated and be completely exhausted! By the way, I actually did the practice race 15 seconds faster than I did the race last year. I think the swim may have been a little bit short and the run to the transition area was shorter, but I had to ride a bit slower today (there were cars on the road and in certain places it was frightening).

After the practice race, we rode back to the youth hostel, showered and had breakfast. Then, at 10:00, we headed out for the next workout -- a ride to the Taba border crossing and back, about 8 km each way. The ride there was easy and fast (with the wind at our backs). We stopped at the border to wait for the entire team to regroup, had a few pictures taken and then headed back. Well, I tried to head back. First, before I even managed to get on my bike, I dropped my chain (I must have accidentally kicked it). I got that back on, but while doing so, I must have dislodged my pump, which I discovered falling off my bike after I'd started moving. It had actually started to fall apart (this is good -- I've been looking for a good excuse to replace it with a better one), so I had to stop, pick a piece up off the road and then hand it to the team manager, who was in his car. I ended up being the last one to leave the border with everyone else well ahead of me. There was a pretty strong headwind and a lot of traffic. Because of the traffic, I was afraid to go down on my aerobar -- the wind was making me wobbly and I didn't want to fall off in front of a moving car. So I just kept my body as low as possible and rode hard, trying to catch up with the team. Slowly, I did catch up with at least some of the team. I passed a few kids and then I passed Ronit, who I figured would hang on behind me, but she didn't. The best part, though, was that I passed one of the boys who later said to me, "I tried to draft off of you and I even managed to do it for a while!" This really made me smile. Most of these kids ride really well and the idea that one of them thought that I was someone worth drafting off of just made my day!

Here's a satellite map of our ride to Taba. The route is marked in red. To the right is the Red Sea. The yellow line is the border with Egypt. It looks here like we crossed the border, but, of course, we didn't -- whoever drew the line on the map apparently "missed". We did ride right up to the border, though.

As soon as we got back to the youth hostel, we changed into swim suits for the last "workout" of the day. This took place at the beach right across the street from the youth hostel. Eilat has a very beautiful coral reef and although we weren't on the reef itself, we were close enough to be able to see a LOT of beautiful coral and fish -- both the coral and the fish came in a variety of colors ranging from green and yellow to purple and blue. So while the kids were busy sprinting back and forth (because the coach told me that that's what they consider "fun"), Ronit and I were busy "sight-seeing". This was the perfect end to our short training camp -- it was so much fun that I was sorry I didn't have a snorkel (I had to keep taking my face out of the water to breathe -- how annoying!) and I didn't want to get out of the water. But like all good (and bad) things, training camp had to come to an end. We got out of the water and went back to the youth hostel to shower, pack, eat and head home.

So now I'm home -- sore and tired, but very content. It was a great weekend and I can hardly wait until next year (when I finally reach Ein Netafim!).

Training camp in Eilat -- part 3

2007-11-04T14:20:00.000+02:00

After breakfast, we had a little bit of time to rest (and digest) before heading out for the second workout of the day at 10 a.m. Remember how cold it was in the morning? Well, it wasn't cold anymore and it was getting hotter by the minute. The heat, combined with the very low humidity in Eilat (normally around 10-15%, I believe), were to be major factors in this workout, which was definitely the low point of training camp for me.

The plan was to ride up to Ein Netafim, only about 10 km, but with a climb of around 550 meters, then ride back down most of the way, run 5 km and return to the youth hostel. I'd done Ein Netafim once before, during training camp two years ago, but I hadn't made it all the way to the top then (well, I did make it to the top, but I walked the last kilometer and a half or so). My teammate, Ronit, HAD made it to the top that day and I had vowed to make it all the way next time -- if Ronit can do it, so can I!

Time out for a side note... Ronit and I are teammates and we're not in the same age group (she's five years older than I am), but there is some healthy competition between us. Mainly, it serves to push us both a little harder. She's always been just a little bit faster than me and it drives me nuts, but it also gives me incentive. She took a year off from training due to breast cancer, but she came back several months ago, stronger than ever (that in itself is incredible) and I still can't keep up with her, except on the bike where I improved a lot while she was sick. Since Ronit did this climb two years ago, in my mind, there was absolutely no reason why I couldn't do it now -- I'm a better cyclist now than she was then. And back to my climb...

The climb started out great. I was trying to keep my heart rate as low as possible, spinning in low gear (although I couldn't really call it "spinning" for very long, but I still tried to save as much energy as possible). I quickly pulled ahead of Ronit and several other teammates and apart from one, I never saw them again during the climb. This is a steady climb, apart from two very very short breaks where the road goes downhill for maybe 100-200 meters. It was getting hotter and hotter (I'm talking mid 90s) and despite the dry climate and the wind, the sweat was still managing to drip down my face and into my eyes. That plus the flies was making me a little bit nuts, but I kept going. However, I have trouble drinking while I'm climbing slowly -- I really feel like I need both hands on the bike for balance. I had to wait until those short breaks to drink. I should have stopped the bike, had a drink and then continued on. Everyone is smarter in retrospect.

I don't know when the climb started getting really hard. I really was doing fine for a long time, despite the fact that I wasn't going any faster than 8 or 9 kph and sometimes even slower. I tried not to look too far ahead, because I found that looking up really freaked me out -- it's a never-ending climb. At around 8.4 km or so, I'd had it. My feet just kind of clipped out by themselves and I found myself standing on the side of the road. This is when I lost it. There was no one around (thankfully) and I just stood there and started sobbing. I admit it -- I cry really easily, especially when I'm stressed. I think it was my body that was stressed more than my mind, but crying is just my reaction to any kind of stress. I was also very disappointed. I'd planned to finish the climb and now that I'd stopped, I knew I couldn't finish because how could I possibly get back on the bike going uphill at a spot that had been so hard for me that I'd had to stop?

I stood there like that for about 15 minutes. At some point, I did stop crying (because I was literally screaming at a wasp that wouldn't leave me alone). I looked up and down and didn't see anyone. Eventually, a few of the faster riders did start coming down and then one of the drivers that was accompanying us pulled up and asked if I was ok and if I wanted to keep climbing or go back down. When I told him that I didn't think I'd be able to get on the bike, he told me that the grade wasn't too bad where I was standing and that I'd be able to do it. Amazingly, he was right. That 15 minute break (along with a lot of sports drink, though not enough) had done wonders. I easily got back on my bike and started heading uphill again.

I made it about 800 meters and then I had to stop again. The same driver stopped again and said that it was almost time to start heading down, so if I wanted to make it to the top, I had to get moving. So I got back on my bike and kept going, but it just wasn't meant to be. 100 meters later, I was off the bike again and this time, despite my great disappointment, I knew it was over. I was 500-700 meters from the top -- not too far, but it might as well have been a million miles, because I just couldn't do it. I managed to get off my bike and cross the road, intending to head back down, but when I got to the other side of the road, I realized that I couldn't get back on my bike. I was shaking like crazy, my heart rate was something like 175, which is very high for me on the bike and I was pretty certain that if I did somehow manage to actually get on the bike, there was no way I could control it going down that twisting, turning hill. I tried to call one of the other drivers, but he didn't answer, so I just stood there until the same driver came by again, this time with my coach in tow. I told my coach that I couldn't get back on the bike because I was shaking and I felt horrible and he said that I should get in the car and he'd ride my bike down (I think he was actually thrilled to get to ride!). The only problem was that I couldn't even swing my leg over the bike again. He had to hold my bike and hold on to me in order for me to get off (and I still managed to almost fall over).

So I rode down to the area where we were supposed to run in the car. When I got there, I just laid down on my back in the grass, unable to even think about running. When my coach showed up with my bike, I took the bike from him and then laid back down. I have no idea how anyone else was able to run in that heat, but I couldn't move and I certainly wasn't going to attempt to run 5 km or even 1 km for that matter. I was still shaking and I was starting to get nauseous. I was drinking, but still not enough.

Here's the elevation graph from the ride. The downhill part at the end is where I forgot to turn off my Garmin after getting in the car. I only rode the long uphill part...

After everyone was finished running, we got back on our bikes to ride down the rest of the way, maybe 3 km, to the youth hostel. We were supposed to ride down as a group, but I couldn't keep up because I still felt terrible and I was holding onto the brakes, just hoping not to fall over. I should have asked for a lift down. In the end, I did ask for a lift down. I managed to get down most of the way, but there was a spot where the road got bumpy due to road work and as soon as I started bumping all over the place, I knew there was no way I could keep my bike upright, so I clipped out and called one of the drivers to come get me. He put my bike in the truck and drove me down the rest of the way.

I somehow managed to put my bike away and get up into the dining room, but I had no appetite and I was still shaking and nauseous. My best friend (the same driver who'd driven me and my bike down the end of the hill) suggested that I try some rice, which is what I did, along with some salad and a lot of water and juice. By the end of the meal, I was feeling much better, but I couldn't take in any protein, which left me pretty hungry later on.

After lunch, I took a 2-hour nap, which did wonders. I didn't sleep all that well (stupid kids from the team were making a lot of noise outside), but just lying down was enough. I woke up feeling like a new person, but I did notice that despite the enormous amount of water, sports drink and juice that I'd taken in, I was barely urinating and, in fact, the only reason I went at all was because I thought I should -- I felt no need to pee at all. Bad sign, but not surprising considering the weather.

Note to myself: Next time I try climbing up Ein Netafim, I have to stop to drink and also take salt tablets with me. I did have salt tablets. They were back in my bag at the youth hostel.

The last workout of the day was a swim/run, which was mainly a swim. It was starting to get dark, but it was still light enough to swim. We did a few hundred meters with some running on the beach and that was pretty much it. It was a fun, not very hard workout. We then went back to the youth hostel for yet another shower (this was the third of the day -- I'd showered after the ride, too) and dinner, followed by a short lecture and then ice cream. I was in bed by about 10:30 or so, ready for another 5 a.m. wakeup call the next day.

Training camp in Eilat -- part 2

2007-11-04T14:12:00.001+02:00

Day 2 started with a 5 a.m. wakeup call. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of noise at the youth hostel during the night, so I hadn't slept very well, but I got up and got myself ready for the first workout of the day.

At 5:30, the team met to take a short ride to our "transition area" (in the area where the Eilat Triathlon will be at the end of the month). Then we had a couple of hours of transition practice. Each team (children, youth, adults) did something different. The adult workout was supposed to be five parts, but we ran out of time (we had to be back at the youth hostel for breakfast), so we only did four of the five. The first drill was a short swim (I'd say about 200-250 meters) in the Red Sea, followed by a fast run to where our transition area will be at the race. The swim was great, but the run was... well, painful. There are a lot of small stones on the shore (which are covered by a long mat at the race) and the road up into the parking lot had a lot of small stones, too. Running on stones barefoot was very unpleasant, but I did it. The second drill was identical to the first, but I couldn't face doing that whole barefoot run again, so I cut it a little bit short. The bottoms of my feet were very sore after the first two drills, but we weren't done running barefoot yet...

The third drill was another swim of the same length followed by a run to the makeshift transition area and then a 7 km ride. Eilat is in the desert, but the desert is cold in the morning (and the Red Sea has a year-round temperature of 22-24 degrees Celcius) and I was shivering when I got on my bike. It was cold! Too bad I couldn't hold onto this feeling for later in the day.

The fourth drill resembled the third, but the ride was longer and took us up on the Arava Road, which is the major highway leading into Eilat. It was still very early in the morning, but there were a lot of trucks on the road and it was scary. This is the road we do our race on, which is why we were training on it (well, that and the fact that there just aren't too many places to ride in Eilat). I was very happy when this drill was over and I have to admit that I wasn't all that disappointed to see that we wouldn't have time for the final drill (a swim and a run) because I was getting very hungry and I knew I'd be running enough later on and the next day.

At 7:45, we headed back to the youth hostel and had time for a quick shower and change of clothes before breakfast.

More to follow...

Training camp in Eilat -- part 1

2007-11-04T14:05:00.001+02:00

I was going to wait until there were some pictures, but I decided to just post any pictures later on. This report is in several parts -- I'll post the others later. Enjoy!

Day 1 was actually very short. We left home at around 2:30 and arrived in Eilat at around 6 p.m. It was already dark and we had to get settled in our rooms and get the bikes off the bike cart before we could do anything. And we had to be in the dining room for dinner by 7:30. The plan was a one-hour run, but by the time we were organized, we didn't have that much time. I was the last person to leave for the run (not because I was lazy or slow, but rather because I drove down with the guy who took the bike cart and I was responsible for watching it while he got the rooms worked out. When the bus arrived, everyone got off and went up to get their rooms and I was still standing with the bike cart), but my coach waited for me and then insisted on running with me, despite my best efforts to convince him that that probably wasn't a good idea. Whenever I run with someone faster than I am, even when they promise to run at my pace, I always find myself running too fast. We didn't actually run very fast, but either I was very tired or a little bit dehydrated, because my average heartrate for our 5.1 km run was 162.

After the run, we had dinner (in our running clothes -- yuck!), showered, and then had a lecture on vitamins or something (I was a bit too tired to listen). Then I took a short walk with a friend and we were in bed by 11 (which was actually a bit late, since we had a 5 a.m. wakeup call the next morning...).

Days 2 and 3 will NOT be so short...

Four Peaks

2007-10-27T16:47:00.001+02:00

While most of my team was at a duathlon today, I did a long ride with two other team members who, like me, had decided to skip today's race. I thought we'd do something easy, but no, instead, we chose to do "Four Peaks" (also known as "Quatre Peaks" or just four big hills). I hadn't done this route with all of the hills in a while and, in fact, I'd never done it without actually having been told to. I found it surprisingly pleasant and not terribly difficult -- like I said last week, I'm starting to like hills! Here's the elevation map from my Garmin with each of the hills pointed out:

Although it's not the hardest hill, Joe Alon is, in my opinion, the most "annoying" by far. It never actually looks like you're going uphill, but you can sure feel it in your legs! Imagine riding on what appears to be a flat road, your legs burning like crazy in low gear, looking down at your watch and seeing a 15% grade climb! The 15% was probably off (the Garmin Forerunner isn't terribly accurate when it comes to elevation, especially "real time" readings), but it wasn't too far off, at least for that particular section of the climb. Goral is the easiest of the four (in fact, I found it very easy today, even though I was still just warming up) and my favorite is Sansana, which takes you right up into the forest, or the closest thing you can find to a forest here.

The only downside of today's ride was the wind, which made going downhill a bit scary (I could really feel it blowing me across the road). Oh, and the herd of goats crossing the street as I was coming down Eshkolot was a bit of a bother!

Advice to newbies

2007-10-24T19:33:00.001+02:00

My blog description says I'm a newbie, but I've been at this for about three years, so I guess I'm not all that "new" at it anymore. And newbies are actually asking me for advice (see the comment on my last post)! So maybe I should finally start doing something that I'm really good at -- giving advice to other people.

Today's advice is on learning how to drink while riding...

When I first started cycling after a break of many many years, I was scared to death to let go of the handlebars for even a second. I had a bottle cage on my bike, but that was just for holding the bottle so that when I stopped I could take a drink. Well, my former coach caught on pretty quickly when he saw that I didn't drink once on a 45 kilometer ride (my first ever "long" ride -- seems kind of short to me now). He took me to an empty parking lot and had me ride around in circles. At first, he told me just to take my right hand off the handlebars and try to touch my bottle. After we did that for a while, he told me to try taking the bottle out of the bottle cage. And finally, I got to actually drink from the bottle. This took some time and it wasn't as easy as I'm making it sound. Also, it took a while before I was willing to do this out on the road and even longer before I actually felt comfortable doing it.

Really, there's no way to learn how to do this other than just doing it. Find a place to ride where you won't be bothered (or endangered) by traffic and practice just touching the bottle briefly. Do that until you know exactly where it is without having to look down. Do it a lot. Then, when that becomes comfortable, try taking the bottle out of the bottle cage. If you can't get it back in at first, just stop and put it back (yes, it is possible to grab your brakes with a bottle in your hand). Keep practicing this new skill until you can put the bottle back. Again, the trick is to learn how to do it without looking -- that's what will make you feel confident and unafraid. The drinking part is easy -- once you can take the bottle out and put it back, drinking won't be a problem, so I won't even bother explaining that part.

Generally, it's a good idea to ride with two hands, but learning how to ride with one is important, as well (we all have to wipe our noses or push up our sunglasses or scratch an itch at times).

Now I need to take my own advice and learn how to take my left hand off the handlebars so that I can open and close my shoes while on the bike...

The things I no longer suck at...

2007-10-22T12:10:00.001+02:00

I just reread this list of things that I suck at from May 2006. Well, it turns out that I no longer suck at all those things:

I no longer suck at running in the water, or at least I don't feel silly doing it (probably more of the latter, but that's ok, because I don't think anyone is really great at running in water).

I no longer suck at turn-arounds on the bike. No, I'm not really speedy, but I never think I'm going to crash anymore and I guess I'm not all that slow, either.

Drinking on the bike? A piece of cake. I can't believe that less than a year and a half ago I "sucked" at this. There are still times when I prefer to wait to drink, mainly because I like to have both hands on the bike when I know I'm going to need to shift or go around the corner, but grabbing the bottle is not a problem, nor is putting it back.

I don't suck at changing my shoes. In fact, my transitions are pretty fast. I'm not sure I ever really sucked at this -- maybe it was my imagination.

I'm still not great at the rest of the things on the list and I'm afraid I may need to add swimming to that list pretty soon (especially after last night's disastrous workout, which I would rather forget than write about), but who really cares? I'm having fun!

I may be starting to like hills...

2007-10-20T22:21:00.001+02:00

Ok, this is kinda scary. I mean, why on earth would someone like me, who seems to enjoy complaining more than anything else, like hills???

We do our major hill workouts on this horrible, annoying hill. What makes it annoying? The fact that you can't get anywhere by going up it -- all you can do is turn around and go back down. Well, that and the fact that the road isn't in great shape and it's very narrow and twisting and going back down the hill is worse than going up it, especially when there are people riding in both directions. It's about 2 or 2.5 km long and it's actually several hills. It starts with a very steep incline. It's fairly short, but every single time I do it, just before the end I start thinking, "There's no way I'm going to make it up this thing today" -- and then I'm at the top of the incline, which is the hardest part of the hill (in my opinion). Then there are several more semi-steep hills with minor inclines in between. One of them is a bit longer and quite tiring. Well, ok, the whole thing is tiring. And then, you get to the top and you have to make this hairpin turn to turn around and go back down. Every time I turn around at the top, I'm sure I'm going off the side of the road and I have to remind myself to look where I want to go, not where I don't want to go.

Today's ride started out in some very thick fog. Actually, it didn't (because if had been that foggy while we were still in town, we never would have left). We turned out onto the main road and I could see some very low clouds up ahead, but I didn't realize how low they were until I was riding through them. As always, I had my sunglasses on and it took me a while to realize that the main reason I couldn't see anything at all was because my sunglasses had completely fogged up. The ride to the hill is also uphill (or at least the first 5 km or so is uphill), so I didn't really feel like stopping to take off my sunglasses and I'm not terribly talented when it comes to actually finding my pocket and putting something in it as I'm riding, so I just pushed my sunglasses to the edge of my nose and looked over them. That's when I saw the water dripping off my helmet (and it's also around when I realized that my gloves were soaking wet). So we stopped at a gas station after turning off the main road in order to decide what we were going to do. Obviously, going up and down a dangerous hill in zero visibility wasn't a very good idea.

We took off in two groups and by the time we got to the base of the hill, the fog had dissipated and we were able to start. But then I realized how many people (including some not very careful and not very old kids) were going up and down the hill and I panicked. I am really scared of someone riding right into me as I'm going up and they're coming down. So everyone took off and I just waited. Finally, I decided I had no choice and up I went.

The first time was hard, or at least it was hard at the beginning. I had to remind myself to JFRide. Then I whizzed back down, got off my bike, ran a kilometer and got back on my bike for round two. The second time was much easier. Back down again (much more slowly this time -- a couple of big tractors came up the hill as I was riding down and there was barely enough room for them to pass), another 1 km run and back up the hill for round 3. The third time was a little harder -- my legs were starting to feel the climb. But I got to the top (passing one of my teammates rather quickly and then surprising myself after the turnaround when I realized how much faster than him I'd climbed the hill -- at that point he was WAY behind me and he's not normally slower than I am). Turned around, rode back down, ran a kilometer and called it a day (well, apart from the ride home). I could have done it a fourth time (though that would have meant that the rest of the team would have had to wait for me), but I wanted to finish the workout feeling good and with the feeling that I could have done a little more, rather than finishing exhausted with the feeling that I'd reached my limit. I'd only done that hill three times in a row once before and that was a year and a half ago (and I didn't run that day, so it was a little easier).

And the crazy part is that when I got home, the main thing going through my head was that it had been a fun ride. Huh??? Obviously, I am losing my mind!

I don't have to pick up my feet when I run!

2007-10-18T00:16:00.001+02:00

Forget all those form drills and my coach screaming, "Pick up your feet!" According to this article , the way I run (which looks pretty funny to other people) may well be the perfect, most economical way for me to run. So there.

Ashdod Sprint Triathlon -- 12 October 2007

2007-10-15T09:52:00.000+02:00

These were the national sprint triathlon championships, which doesn't mean a whole lot (apart from the race getting more money from the government). Despite being the "national championships", it wasn't a very big race, but it was a nice one -- good location, good course, great weather.

While warming up on the beach, I saw a huge jellyfish (I'd say about 30 cm in diameter -- that's a foot for those of you who are still challenged by the metric system). I already knew that there were jellyfish in the water, as we had swum at this beach the previous weekend. Still, seeing one that size didn't exactly make me want to go in the water. I apparently made this very obvious -- as I was slowly making my way into the water (which, by the way, was crystal clear, perfect temperature and as calm as a lake) for a short warmup, someone commented something to the effect of "You look like you're still trying to make up your mind." Uh, yeah... Fortunately, my swim was free of any jellyfish incidents, but one of the older kids on the team wasn't as lucky -- a jellyfish attached itself to his nose during the swim, making it very red and swollen and ultimately causing him to drop out of the race during the run when he just couldn't handle the stinging and the swelling anymore.

Anyway, back to my race...

Because the race was fairly small, they decided to combine all of the sprint starts -- youth, elite and age group -- into one. That means I got to start with twins Ran and Dan Alterman (at least one of whom will hopefully be representing Israel in the Beijing Olympics),Nina Pekerman (national women's champion) and Bar Fogel (national youth champion), all of whom were out of the water around the time I hit the first buoy. I took my "swim with the champions" in stride and just did my own thing -- after all, I rode to the race in the same car as Bar Fogel with his not-quite-as-famous dad Itzik driving and I managed to get all the way to Ashdod (and back home) without asking for an autograph.

Oh, yeah -- back to the race...

The swim was rather brutal. I'd had this stupid idea to draft off of a teammate. I followed her into the water, started swimming long after I would normally have started, and then followed her into a huge crowd of swimmers (not before she'd managed to almost kick me in the face by switching to breaststroke). She managed to get out of the crowd, but I got stuck and I was surrounded by people during the entire swim. I got whacked in the head, hit and kicked (including my personal "favorite" of having my goggles kicked closer to my face, if there is such a thing) during the entire swim. In fact, the goggle kicking incident occurred just seconds before I finished the swim. I also kicked my share of swimmers, I'm afraid. Overall, it wasn't a particulary pleasant experience (better than jellyfish, though) and I was glad to get out of the water.

Running to the transition area, I saw Ronit (the woman I'd tried to draft off of) already running out with her bike. I quickly got ready to ride and ran out with my bike to try and catch up with her. We had to ride three loops of a mainly flat course with a lot of traffic circles. Because the course was short, it was a draft legal race. There were at least three crashes on the course, including one of the elite athletes -- I don't know if they were the result of taking the traffic circles too fast or of careless drafting, but it's never fun to see cyclists lying in the road.

On the first loop, Bar Fogel whizzed past me, riding by himself. He later asked me why I hadn't caught up with him so that I could draft off of him. I hope he was kidding (and I'm pretty sure he was, unless he'd been planning to throw me a rope or something so that I could keep up). I, too, ended up working alone for most of the ride, as I didn't find any good drafting partners (unlike Bar, the Altermans just didn't want me in their peloton). I could see Ronit up ahead, but she was quite a distance in front of me. Finally, on the second loop, I managed to catch up with her and pass her. I must have slowed down a bit after that because on the last loop she caught up with me and we finished together.

I'm pretty quick on the transition. Ronit, on the other hand, takes her time to do things like pull a shirt out of her bag and wipe her face (this gave me a good chuckle and I decided to remind her that this was a race). I finished my transition before her and took off running. We had to run around the entire transition area before actually going out on to the run course and just as we reached the course, Ronit passed me. No big surprise -- she has always run faster than me.

The run was two out-and-backs. The first out-and-back was hard for me. I had run through the transition area too quickly and I was still trying to catch my breath when the course started going uphill. Eventually, there was a nice downhill section to pull myself together, but that was followed by an even worse uphill right to the turn-around point. When I ran over the mat, all I could think was "I don't want to do this again!" At the second turn-around (for the second out-and-back) there was no mat. I clearly remember what went through my mind right at that moment: "I could just stop here, wait 15 minutes or so and then cross the finish line and then I wouldn't have to run anymore!" Of course, my oxygen deprived brain had forgotten one minor detail -- there was at timing mat at the other end of the course that I had to run over again. In any case, I would never really cheat -- it was just one of those crazy thoughts that I occasionally have when I'm suffering.

The second out-and-back was much easier than the first. I have no idea why, but this seems to be the case at every single race I do, so maybe it's something to keep in mind while I'm suffering through the first half. On the way back, I actually managed to pick up some speed and I saw that I was closing the gap between Ronit and me. She was too far ahead to catch, though, and I finished 31 seconds behind her. Another race finished.

I ended the day with a podium spot -- 3rd in my age group (ok, so there weren't that many women in my age group, but there WERE more than three...). I also finished with a good time, going under 1:30 for the second time in a row, although I should mention that the bike course was 19 km instead of 20. And I was home in time for lunch.

Oh, and a side note... This was also the team championships and our team (pictured below) took first place. Go Lehavim!

Just the top row, from left to right: Itzik and Shaul (team managers), Yodar (what's he doing up there with the grownups?), Yigal (coach), Ronit, Sami, me, Gil

It's all in the angle

2007-10-08T00:21:00.001+02:00

When I first saw this picture from yesterday's ride, all I could think was, "Wow, I look really bad on my bike." Well, that was only until I saw the rest of the pictures (of the other people on the ride). We all looked the same. I guess that's what happens when the person taking the picture is sitting in a car and shooting slightly up. But hey, at least I'm smiling!

Oh, and the reason I'm riding in my tri suit is because I'm much too lazy to actually change into a bathing suit when I get to the beach. All I had to do was take off my helmet, gloves, sunglasses, shoes and socks and put on my goggles and I was ready to swim! However, a tri suit is not the most comfortable thing to wear for a long ride -- the padding isn't all that padded...

80 km to the beach

2007-10-06T20:38:00.001+02:00

Ok, so it was actually 78 km, but close enough. A fun, easy ride this
morning. If someone had told me three years ago that I'd call 78 km
an "easy ride", I would have died laughing. I remember wondering if
I'd be able to ride 8 km in my first triathlon. Things have changed
:-)

We rode to Ashdod and then we rode the bike course for this coming
Friday's race. Then we went for a quick dip in the sea. The water
was so clear that I could see right to the bottom, even where it was
deep. I even saw a fish or two.

It was a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

The advantage of having a stand (almost) to yourself

2007-10-02T00:13:00.000+02:00

Obviously, I took advantage of the empty stand at Saturday's race. I have absolutely no memory of these pictures being taken, nor do I remember being such a hog and using all that empty space, but here's the evidence (I've just racked my bike and I'm changing my shoes):

The woman next to me, by the way, is doing a relay and waiting for the cyclist to return so that she can start the run.

The second picture is even stranger. I've got one shoe on and I have no idea why I'm holding the other shoe like this (though I think maybe I've still got one cycling shoe on and I'm trying to push it off with the other foot). I also have no idea why I'm smiling -- an enjoyable transition, maybe???

Triathlon pet peeves

2007-10-01T13:31:00.001+02:00

I like to race. In fact, most of the time, I really like to race.
I'm never going to make it to the Olympics or be a pro triathlete or
be famous, so if I didn't like racing, I wouldn't do it. However,
there are a few things that bother me at races. I don't mean for this
to be a negative post, so I'm only going to write about one of them
here: blocking.

When I get out on the bike course, there are always people in front of
me who are slower than I am. There are two reasons for this:

1) Relative to other triathletes, I'm usually slightly faster on the
bike than I am in the swim, so there are fast swimmers but slow
cyclists ahead of me.

2) There is almost always at least one wave ahead of mine that has
both fast and slow triathletes. Usually it's the sprint up to 39
wave, which normally starts five or ten minutes before the sprint 40+
wave. That means that everyone in that wave has a five to ten minute
lead on me and I'm faster than probably about a quarter to a third of
them and significantly faster than a few (I even pass some of them in
the water). I catch up to most of the slower up-to-39 athletes on the
bike.

I don't mind having people in front of me on the bike course. In
fact, I really enjoy passing people and it motivates me to go faster.
I particularly like picking out someone some distance ahead and "going
after him" until I pick him off. I think we all like this. I can
rarely do it on the run, but I can almost always do it on the bike.
What I dislike is slow cyclists riding in the middle of the road or on
the center line. I am constantly asking people to move right, which
they normally do, but it would be a lot more considerate (not to
mention in accordance with the rules) if they were already riding on
the right.

What I dislike even more than slow cyclists not on the right-hand side
of the road is groups of slow cyclists riding abreast of one another.
It doesn't even have to be a group, actually -- a pair is enough to
really tick me off. These people are normally breaking two rules --
blocking and drafting. It's a lot harder to get past them than it is
to get past a single cyclist, as if the road isn't all that wide, one
of them has to first pull ahead of the other before it's possible to
pass them.

Some of these people are warned or even disqualified from the race by
passing race officials, but no matter how good the officials are (and
I have some very good friends who are race officials, so you won't
normally hear me complaining about how they do their job), they can't
be everywhere on the course. It really puts a damper on my race when
I have to slow down simply because I'm stuck behind someone who isn't
moving out of the way fast enough (and never should have been there to
begin with).

So that's my triathlon pet peeve, or at least my biggest one. Anyone
else want to post theirs?

Gan Shmuel (Hof Karmel) Triathlon - 29 September 2007

2007-09-29T19:16:00.001+02:00

I missed this race last year because I was still recovering from my
broken hand. I was really looking forward to doing it this year
because of the very fast bike course -- I wanted to finally have an
official result of under 40 minutes for 20 km (I did under 40 minutes
at the Jordan Valley Triathlon, but there was no mat at the end of the
bike course, so my bike time in the results included the transition
and was slightly over 40 minutes).

I'm not in the greatest shape. My back is basically better, only
hurting occasionally, but my swimming has been terrible. I'm almost
completely free of shin splints, but my left shin still bothers me
after hard runs and I haven't been running all that far. I figured I
was in good enough shape to finish this race, though, and hopefully
improve my time from two years ago. My dream was to go under 1:30,
but I knew that wasn't realistic.

We left at about 3:30 a.m. and arrived at the race site about 20
minutes before they opened the transition area. We had to find the
person who was holding our numbers for us and then we had plenty of
time to get set up in the transition area. At this race, the places
in the transition area are reserved by number (unlike most races here,
where you have to fight to get a good place and then hope that no one
moves you). I couldn't have asked for a better spot -- at the end of
a very short rack, right by the bike exit. I ended up being all alone
on that rack -- I don't know what happened to everyone else.

After a quick run warmup followed by a quick swim warmup, I was ready
to go. I wasn't feeling 100% and I was especially concerned about the
fact that my back was bothering me. My shin was a bit sore, as well,
but I knew I could walk during the run if I had to -- I wasn't
completely sure I'd be able to swim a pain-free 750 meters, but then I
remembered that I'd managed 2000 meters in the pool with my back
hurting the whole time, so I figured I'd be ok.

As I was waiting for the start, I completely missed the announcer
saying, "One minute to start," "30 seconds to start," etc. It's a
good thing I had my goggles on, because all I heard was, "Take your
marks!" followed by a horn. We were off.

It was a fairly long run into the water and then I found a very good
spot to swim in right from the start. I can't say that no one touched
me during the swim, but there were no serious kicks or people trying
to swim over me. The sea was fairly calm and sighting was easy. I
think I actually managed to swim in a straight line, more or less.
And my back didn't really bother me. I wasn't swimming particularly
fast, though, and I was very aware of this fact. I think I have an
allergy to going fast, especially in the water! Just after the second
buoy, I felt someone actually swim into my feet and push me from
behind. This was kind of fun (in a weird kind of triathlon way),
because I felt like I'd been pushed forward a bit, but I couldn't
figure out how someone that fast and that strong could be behind me.
It only took me a second or two to figure it out -- the first of four
or five white swim caps passed me. These were the fastest guys from
the heat after mine (39 and under Olympic distance). I briefly
entertained the idea of catching a draft off of one of them. Yeah,
right. If I could swim fast enough to draft off of them, I would have
been in the front of my heat.

The swim was soon over and as usual, I forgot to check my watch when I
got out of the water. I did check it about 30 seconds or so later, as
I was running towards the transition area. I looked down and saw
15:00. Huh? Someone else in my shoes might have thought, "Wow, I had
a great swim today!" My mind doesn't work that way, though. The
first thing that went through my head was that someone much have hit
my arm and restarted my watch. But then I remembered that my watch
couldn't restart -- it could have been stopped, but it wouldn't have
started again. I still didn't think I'd had a great swim, though. I
figured the course had been short (and I believe it was).

I had a good transition and headed out with my bike. Swim time plus
T1 was 16:52. Two years ago, I did 19:06 (but I suspect that course
really was 750 meters then).

The bike was what I'd been looking forward to. I have to admit,
though, that I was a bit disappointed. The bike course was so crowded
that it was impossible to avoid drafting and it was very difficult to
pass. People were riding all over the place and to make matters
worse, there was some road work going on that had closed the shoulder,
making the road narrower than it would normally be. At one point, I
wanted to pass two people riding abreast (yes, riding abreast the
entire time -- it was difficult not to draft, but some people just
blatantly ignored the drafting rules). There was no way for me to get
past them, so I yelled out, "Let me pass, please!" The guy on the
right moved further to the right. The woman on the left, though,
moved left. Maybe I could have ridden between them -- I'm not sure --
but I wasn't going to. I was getting closer and closer and she was
still blocking me, so I screamed, "Move RIGHT!" I guess she didn't
like my tone, because as I passed, she said, "Calm down! It's just a
race!" I wonder if she wanted me to calm down before I rode into her
or after...

Most of the bike course went like this for me. More than once, I
found myself in a position where I simply couldn't pass the people in
front of me. It was rather frustrating. However, I was making good
enough time to be able to achieve my goal of under 40 minutes. I
crossed the mat at 39:39 for exactly 20 km -- I'd done it. I was
happy about making my goal, but not completely happy with my ride.
I'm fairly certain I could have ridden faster and my relative
placement, both in my age group and overall, say the same. With the
bigger races in Israel getting more and more crowded, it's getting
harder and harder to have a good ride -- I think I'm going to need a
smaller race to really "prove myself". Two years ago, I did this bike
course in 44:01, so this was quite an improvement, despite my slight
disappointment.

All that was left was the run. I did a quick transition and as I was
heading out onto the run course, I looked at my watch and realized
that thanks to the apparently short swim course and a decent ride, it
was definitely possible for me to go under 1:30. It was getting warm
and running was hard, at first, but I really wanted to push for that
goal, so I kept moving. Most of the run was on a dirt path and some
of it, annoyingly, on sand. Some of it was also on asphalt, which is
my preferred running surface, even if it is a bit harder on my joints
(fewer things to trip over and slip on). I wasn't running fast, but I
was running and it actually started to get easier after a while. It
was only 5 km, but I've hardly run for the last three months and it
never actually got "easy". I did manage to chase away the negative
thoughts, though, and to keep running throughout, even through the
sand. At the 4 km mark, I checked my watch and saw that although 1:30
was still possible, I'd need to keep running at a fairly normal pace
to make it -- I wasn't exactly breaking any speed records. I picked
up the pace a little, soon crossed the finish line with a smile on my
face and then looked down at my watch. 1:29:24. Quite an improvement
over my time two years ago (1:36:33). In fact, even if the swim
course hadn't been short, I would have improved my time.

My run time did leave much to be desired, however: 32:52 for the
second transition and the 5 km run. Amazingly, though, even that was
better than two years ago (33:23). I need to take 10 minutes off that
run time if I want to be really competitive in my age group at this
distance. I think the better option is to find a new distance!

So that's it. A fun day and not a bad race. It certainly left a good
taste in my mouth and I'm looking forward to the next one (not sure
which race that will be yet).

Up, up, up...

2007-09-15T11:28:00.000+03:00

We did some climbing today, as you can see from the elevation graph:

And in case it's not clear from that graph how steep one or two of these climbs were, here's the grade/distance graph:

The track smoothing on this is 60 seconds, so where you see an 8% incline, that means we were doing 8% for at least 60 seconds. In fact, the hardest climb was almost 3 km long and I did much of it at a "speedy" 8 kph. We were supposed to do that climb six times, but I have an allergy to repeated climbs that don't take me anywhere (as in climb the hill, ride back down, climb again, ride back down again, etc.), so I only did it once.

After the ride, we were supposed to run 3 km. I almost ditched the run -- my stomach hurt (too much holiday food) and it was 10 a.m. and very hot outside. But then I remembered that I'd saved my last 3 km of the week for today and also that I'd wimped out on the repeated climbs, so I made a deal with myself -- I could do the 3 km on the treadmill instead of outside. The air-conditioning was wonderful -- I can't believe how easy those 3 km were to run, even after those hills on the bike.

And the best part? I ran three times this week. That may sound like nothing, but after battling shin splints all summer and running very sporadically, three times in one week is an achievement for me.

My first DNS

2007-09-08T13:12:00.001+03:00

I've only DNFed (did not finish) one race, the Eilat Triathlon two
years ago, when I crashed my bike. Today, I had my first DNS (did not
start). I signed up for the Caesarea Triathlon because... Well, I
don't really know why. It's a big race and lots of people were doing
it and I thought it might be fun.

Yesterday, I discovered that I had no way to get there, apart from
taking my own car. I don't mind driving, but I hate driving home from
races when I'm tired and this race is almost two hours away. I'm also
in the middle of a big translation job and I'm exhausted from the
first week of school. And my shin isn't completely healed yet,
although it's a lot better than it was. Then I heard that the sea was
very rough and they were thinking of making it a duathlon. A duathlon
would have meant another 2.5 km of running and also running further
than I have been in training.

In short, there were so many reasons not to do this race and I
couldn't find too many to do it, so I decided to ditch it. Instead of
getting up at 3 a.m., I got up at 6:30 and went out for a 60 km ride
with friends. Then I went to the pool and swam 1200 meters. That's
more than I would have done in a sprint triathlon and at least as
enjoyable, if not more.

DNFing kind of sucks, but this DNS thing wasn't bad at all...

Ready to roll

2007-08-31T13:58:00.001+03:00

I got my bike back a couple of days ago and hopefully it's actually fixed (I haven't ridden it yet). And I can now swim. And apparently, I can run, too -- I actually ran twice this week and both times it was a longer distance than I've run in a long time (no, I'm not overdoing it -- it was a whole 6 km or so, done very slowly). No more excuses -- time to start training seriously.

"Savlanut"

2007-08-27T11:06:00.001+03:00

That's the Hebrew word for "patience" and I guess that's what it takes to get all kinds of problems worked out. My shin splints are gone, or just about (or I can run without pain, anyway) and my back finally seems to be a lot better. I had to wait all summer for this, but my patience paid off because my injuries are almost gone. Last night I swam 1000 meters without a break. I hadn't been able to do that in almost a month -- my back would start aching so much that I'd have to stop in the middle. Then, after the 1000 meters, I swam the best 200 meter time I've done in a very long time -- 3:57 (no, you won't be seeing me in Beijing). I was drafting and I know I'm not up to doing that time alone yet, but as the wise man that I was drafting off of pointed out, I still had to keep up with him (and I did, even when he tried to pull away).

Tomorrow I hope to take my bike to the bike mechanic to find out what's wrong with it, as I haven't been able to fix it. That will work itself out, too, I'm sure. Savlanut...

And here are the pictures...

2007-08-25T16:59:00.000+03:00

I'm too lazy to try and fit these into my race report, so I'm just posting them separately. Thanks to Ofer Bayda and Shvoong for the pictures, none of which are worth buying this time (certainly not the photographer's fault!).

Here I am on the first run, looking ok except for the crooked hat (I had accidentally knocked it off while trying to pour water over my head and I had to put it back on while running. It's a good thing I don't run while trying to get dressed in the morning!):

And here I am at the end of the first round, looking down at my watch and feeling very disgusted after my bike troubles:

Round two has just started here. Notice how far back I am right at the start -- there are about 45 people in front of us and maybe 2 behind us. If I don't look all that enthusiastic it's because... well... I wasn't!

Here I am finishing up the bike segment in round 3. I'm smiling here for two reasons: First of all, I had finally managed to shift onto the big chainring and I'd even passed a few people. Second, the race was almost over.

And I don't have a whole lot to say about this one -- this is seconds before I crossed the finish line and I am very happy to be done. I have no idea what kind of weird thing was going on with my hands, but I think that despite the smile, the look on my face here illustrates the way I was really feeling.

Lehavim Triple Super Sprint Triathlon - 24 August 2007

2007-08-25T12:48:00.001+03:00

The day started out badly. In fact, it started getting bad from last night, when I had a dizzy spell. I get these once in a while, but it hasn't happened in several years. The dizziness wasn't too bad last night, but I still wasn't feeling great when I first woke up this morning. I stayed in bed and got up a couple of hours later feeling much better. Until that point, I was sure I was going to have to pull out of the race (and in retrospect, maybe I should have...).

I got to the race site (less than a kilometer away) at around 3 p.m. It was hot, just as I expected it to be. I'm sure the temperature was around 100, but there was also a bit of a breeze, which was nice. Just as I got there, my former coach's son came running up to me to ask if he could borrow my goggles. He was doing the youth race and was supposed to be done before I started, so I gave them to him. Then I got set up in the transition area and waited around for the next 2 1/2 hours or so.

The first thing that went wrong happened even before the race started. Because of the heat, they had to change the time of the kids' race. Somehow, it ended up interfering with the third round of the youth race, which then had to be held up. The adult race was also delayed slightly, but when I did the math, I realized that the youth race wasn't going to end before we started and Amir had my goggles. When he got out of the pool, I asked him to throw them to me and he did (yes, this could have gotten him disqualified, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't and as it turned out, he didn't finish the race anyway). When I looked down, I saw that they weren't MY goggles. I have a lot of trouble with goggles and I really wanted to race with my own, but I had no idea where they were. So I waited for Amir in the transition area, which was open because the adults had to get ready for our start (and this was a very small race and the atmosphere today was pretty easy-going). When he ran in with his bike, I saw where his stuff was and grabbed my goggles, only to discover that he'd apparently tried to adjust them and the strap had gotten all messed up. I thought I only had five minutes until start and I had messed-up goggles to fix. Of course, I was so stressed about the whole thing that I couldn't fix the strap, but fortunately, someone else offered to do it for me. That done, I went out to the starting line, only to discover that the start had been delayed by another 15 minutes (this was good -- the later it got, the cooler it got).

Round 1: 1.5 km run / 200 meter swim / 6 km bike

The first round actually started off ok. I had wet myself down in a cold shower and with the breeze blowing, I didn't really feel overly hot at all. A couple of my teammates pulled a bit too far ahead of me on the run, but I figured they'd gone out too fast and I'd catch them on the way back. I was right. I passed one of them and finished right behind the other. I had a faster transition and got to the pool before her. She actually swam a bit faster than I did, but I still managed to get out just before her and it's a good thing. Because of the nature of this race, I was allowed to wear my race number in the water, but I chose to leave it at pool side. Very bad idea, because I completely forgot to pick it up when I'd finished. Fortunately, Ronit was behind me and after she called out to me several times that I'd forgotten my number, I ran back to take it. In the meantime, she passed me, but I figured I'd catch her on the bike. Wrong.

I dealt with forgetting my number ok, but the first round on the bike is what broke me. I hopped on my bike, started riding and then went to shift to the big chainring and I couldn't. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the chain to move to the other ring -- I didn't know if it was the derailleur or the shifter or what, but it was just stuck. The bike is the strongest of the three sports for me and here I was, unable to reach any of my high gears, spinning my pedals like crazy going downhill. I couldn't catch up with the people in front of me because I was already pedaling as fast as I could and I had no gears left. By the time I started going uphill, I was mentally somewhere else. In retrospect, I realize that I could have looked at this differently -- instead of trying so hard to go fast downhill, I could have just rested my legs and used them like crazy going uphill. Anyway, I reached the top of the hill and then rode back down, my chain scraping against my derailleur because I was using combinations that don't work on my bike. And it was all pretty much in vain, because just coasting down the hill I was going over 40 kph and my feet just couldn't keep up and certainly weren't going to make me go any faster, but like an idiot, I kept pedaling like crazy. I finished the round exhausted and very frustrated.

Between rounds, I hoped I'd be able to fix my bike, but even with several people helping me, nothing I did worked. I was about to pull out of the race when someone said that I should just keep going and do it slowly -- at least I'd finish (and if I finished, I knew there would be hardware, not that I really cared right at that moment). In the meantime, while everyone else rested during the break, I was busy with my bike and when I started the second round, my heart was still pounding as if I'd just finished.

Round 2: 6 km bike / 1.5 km run / 200 meter swim

I kept going, but in my mind, this race was already over. I set out on the bike and just let everyone pull ahead of me, without even putting up a fight. When we turned around at a traffic circle, I was actually surprised to discover that I wasn't dead last. Going uphill, I managed to pass one or two people, but I just wasn't in a race frame of mine -- it felt more like an aggravating training ride. Going downhill, I had the sense not to pedal this time. I found that I could go just as fast or faster if I just got way down on the aerobar and coasted down the hill.

I don't even remember the second run. My mind was somewhere else. I do remember the kids at the water station calling my name and cheering me on, but that's about it. Before I got to the pool, my swim cap and I had a fight -- I wanted to put it on my head and it didn't want to be there. More wasted time. I swam over 100 meters completely along in my lane. Everyone else in the lane had already finished and I didn't honestly care. I ran across the finish line for the second time, feeling totally disgusted with the race and with myself.

Round 3: 200 meter swim / 6 km bike / 1.5 km run

The swim was easy enough. I had to wait for the faster people in the lane to start and then I just took off right behind Ronit and drafted off of her for the entire thing. We left the pool together. Back on my bike, I felt the same old frustration. Ronit passed me right at the beginning (I'm normally faster than her on the bike) and I never managed to catch up. It occurred to me, going uphill, that she was actually pulling farther away and that could only be because I wasn't giving it my all, but it just wasn't there. At that point, all I wanted to do was to finish the race. Then, just as I rounded the traffic circle at the top of the hill, something strange happened. I automatically tried shifting up to the big chainring and to my surprise, I felt the chain move. This is when I took off. I shifted up to my highest gear, got way down on the aerobar and pedaled like crazy. This is when I started passing people. It was too little too late, but it felt good for a few minutes, anyway.

All that was left was a measly 1.5 km run. On the way out to the run, just as she was passing me, one of the women I had passed racing down that hill said to me, "Good job! You're amazing on the bike!" Well, I guess I'd been "amazing" for a couple of minutes, anyway. Normally, the whole bike segment would look like that. The run was pretty slow. The kids were cheering for me again as I passed the water station and I heard one of them say, "That's my English teacher!" and then one of my son's friends begged me to take water from him because no one else had (but I already had a cup). They told me to run faster and I calmly replied (yes, I was running that slowly), "What difference does it make? I'm the only one in my age group!" Great attitude :-( Anyway, I did manage to give a bit of a push at the end and I was soon crossing the finish line. I have never been so glad to have a race over with (as opposed to being glad to finish a race) as I was today.

Yes, the mental demons beat me today. Stuff goes wrong all the time in races, but I'm usually mentally strong enough to just deal with it and keep going. Today wasn't one of those days. I feel like kicking myself for not giving this race my all, even with the "technical difficulties". However, I guess that would be just letting those mental demons beat me again. The smarter thing to do, I think, is to just write it off as a bad race day and move on. The next race is bound to be better.

This was amazing!

2007-08-19T23:51:00.001+03:00

Ok, here I am, getting all impressed by a silly watch again. I can't help it -- this is the coolest training gadget I've ever owned!

I've decided that I'm un-injured enough to start running again (actually, I've been running, but not much). So tonight, I decided to do the workout my coach had left us (he's in France), minus one repeat, as I still don't want to run over 5 km or so. The workout was a 2 km warmup followed by 3 times 1.5 km at race pace. This was my chance to try my first "advanced workout" with my Garmin. Here's what it looked like:

1) 2 km with heart rate between 130 bpm and 148 bpm (this was the warmup)
2) 2:00 rest (enough time to get my heart rate down to 120 or lower and to do some stretching
3) 1.5 km at target pace of between 4:58/km and 6:12/km (yes, sadly, this is my race pace, even if my Garmin calls it a "fast jog")
4) 2:00 rest
5) 1.5 km at target pace of between 4:58/km and 6:12/km

The 2 km warmup turned out to be quite a challenge. It wasn't easy for me to keep my heart rate below 148, especially going uphill. At times, I felt like I was running in place. For the most part, I managed it, though (my Garmin did scream at me a few times). I ran the warmup at a pace of 6:56/km with an average heart rate of 143 bpm. This might sound very slow (and it is, but it was just a warmup!), but it's actually faster than the pace that I ran my first ever 5k in 2002 and I thought I was going to die during that race. Tonight, I thought I was going to start moving backwards if I didn't pick up the pace a bit. I never knew that a warmup could be such a challenge!

The rest was easy, of course, and then came the first 1.5 km repeat. It wasn't easy, especially the uphill section, but I managed to stay within my goal pace for the entire time and finished with an average pace of 5:33/km (and an average heart rate of 170 bpm). I'm sure that if I hadn't had the Garmin, I would have slowed down. The "fear" of being "yelled at" for not maintaining my goal pace kept me going (and apparently, I am capable of running at that pace or I would have died, right?).

I was very happy about the next 2:00 rest and also glad that I had the Garmin on and that it would only be 2:00, as without a watch to yell at me, I'm sure I would have cheated on the break and made it longer.

Then it was time to run again. Once again, I didn't want to be yelled at, so I maintained my goal pace. This time was slightly slower, thought not by all that much. I finished with an average pace of 5:35/km and an average heart rate of 178 bpm. Yes, that was the average! My maximum heart rate was 188 bpm. So much for the heart rate formula that tells you to subtract your age from 226 (220 if you're a man). Either I don't know how old I am or the formula doesn't work (or I can't do math -- 226-42=184, right?)

That was it -- the workout was over! I'd achieved my goals and I felt great (but a little bit tired -- it was only 5 km, but the last 3 km were hard!).

Yes, I could have done this workout without my gadget, but I'm pretty sure I would have cheated here and there. The silly beeps and messages motivated me to stick to my goal. This is one great training aid.

A Saturday that would have been better spent in bed

2007-08-18T10:05:00.001+03:00

There are great Saturday rides and then there are the ones that I later realize I should have skipped. Today's was the latter.

The truth is, I shouldn't have ridden at all today. I've been having a lot of flats lately and I knew that there was a hole in my tire. It looked particularly bad when I pumped my tires last night. I haven't had time to buy a new tire. It's just plain irresponsible to go out riding with faulty equipment, even if it's just a tire.

The ride started out great. We had about 60 km planned, including a few nice hills. The first hill was about 4 km long. Two of the guys riding with us were already way ahead when we got there, but the rest of us were pretty much together. At the start of the hill, two men passed me, but they never managed to get more than 100 meters or so ahead. Then, the only kid riding with us passed me (actually, I'm not sure what he was doing behind me -- he must have been riding really slowly in order to chat with his dad). As we approached the top of the hill, the two men started getting tired. I passed one and then, just before the top, I passed the other. I was "queen of the mountain"! Well, sort of. The kid was still in front of me, as were the two guys who had long since broken away from the rest of the group. There was a short flat section and then a long downhill. I was feeling great. I got to the very beginning of the downhill section and then...

Pssssssssssss...............

Ugh. The air was slowly leaking out of my tire. I stopped, fixed it (actually, one of the men did) and continued on down the hill, but I had a really bad feeling. It had only been about 40 km since the last flat. I was only 16 km into this ride.

I got to the bottom of the hill and turned left at the intersection to where everyone was waiting for me. I downshifted and stopped my bike. Just as I was about to start moving again, one of the guys pointed out that I'd dropped my chain. Not only had I dropped the chain, but it was stuck in my derailleur. This has happened several times lately -- I think I need to do some minor screw adjustment -- it should take a whole five minutes to get it right. I need to stop being so lazy.

Got the chain out of the derailleur and back on the chainring and started riding again. Then, 8 km after the previous flat...

POP! Psss....

This wasn't a slow leak like the last one -- by the time I got off my bike, there was absolutely no air left in the tire. This was when I decided that I'd had enough for the day. I was holding everyone back and it just wasn't fun to keep thinking about how long the tube would hold out before the next flat. Plus, I was out of tubes. Actually, I'd only taken one spare (because it was all I had at home) -- I had to borrow one to fix the second flat. I was going to just have my husband come pick me up, but then someone suggested I turn left at the next intersection, cutting the ride about 20 km short. That sounded good to me and there were two other people going that way, so that's what I did. I managed to ride the next 16 km without a flat.

So my 60 km ride turned into a very aggravating 40 km ride. I'm not getting back on my bike until I have a new rear tire. And while I'm at it, I need to adjust that front derailleur.

Practice race report??

2007-08-11T12:51:00.001+03:00

Since I'm still not sure I'll be doing the race, I figured I might as well write up a practice race report...

This morning, we did a "dress rehearsal" for the Lehavim Triple Super Sprint, which is certainly one of the stranger and more interesting triathlons in the world. I've done this race before and written reports on it here, but for those who don't remember or who haven't been reading my blog all that long, I'll give a quick summary. It's three short rounds of swim/bike/run, each round in a different order:

Round 1: run 1.5 km, swim 200 meters, bike 6 km
Round 2: bike 6 km, run 1.5 km, swim 200 meters
Round 3: swim 200 meters, bike 6 km, run 1.5 km

During the actual race, adults have up to 40 minutes to do each round. If you go over 40 minutes, you're disqualified (because the rounds start exactly 40 minutes apart, so if you go over, you miss the next start). The youth have 35 minutes. For today's practice race, we only had 35 minutes (because we had to finish before the pool opened).

As I've reported several times, this has not been a good summer for me physically. I've been struggling with shin splints and back problems and, in fact, I've done almost no running and my swim workouts have been shorter than usual and not of very high quality. The only thing I've been able to do painlessly is ride my bike. I wasn't even sure if I should do the practice race, but since it was a whole kilometer away from my house, I figured I'd ride down to the pool and then decide. So at 5:45 this morning, I headed out the door.

I got to the pool and discovered that they had watered the grass during the night (and apparently right up to a couple of minutes before I got there) and it was very wet. Our usual transition area is on the grass, but that was out of the question. We just kind of found spots along the fence of the kiddy pool, on trees, wherever. That was fine, but then I realized that I was going to have to run with my bikes through the wet grass to get out on the road which meant that my tires were going to be very wet (and slick). More on that later.

So after getting set up in the "transition area", I decided to put on my running shoes and do a short run so that I could see if it hurt. I ran 500 meters and nothing hurt, so I decided I'd do the first round of the practice race and then decide whether or not to continue. That 500 meters was my entire warmup, but I had no intention of running quickly, so that was fine.

Round 1:

Run: I set out at my very slow pace. I knew everyone would pull way ahead and it was a real effort to keep reminding myself that I've been injured and that I don't want to re-injure my leg and that I have to run slowly. I just let them all go and kept running at my snail's pace. The nice part about it was that it wasn't hard. I didn't love being dead last, especially when I was pretty sure that I wouldn't be if I would just run at a normal pace, but I reminded myself that this wasn't a real race and that I had to stick with my plan. So yes, I finished the 1.5 km DFL (dead f*ing last).

Swim: The swim was rather uneventful. I hadn't done any swim warmup at all and I could feel it right away when I got in the pool. No big deal -- this wasn't a real race. I soon realized that I had forgotten to remove my number (which is allowed in this race, but it's kind of annoying to swim with it flapping). The pool was fairly empty, as two of the kids had actually finished the swim by the time I returned from the run and the rest of the kids were finishing up. I took it slowly, concerned about my back. My back wasn't too bad during the swim itself, but getting out of the pool was painful. I just did it very slowly.

Bike: This was the only part of the race that I actually intended to "race". I grabbed my bike and headed out, making sure to get on very slowly, as I was afraid I would slip. I don't remember much about the bike part of round 1, apart from the fact that I passed people going up the long hill and no one was going to catch me going downhill -- I just got down on the aerobar and soared. I do remember that going up that hill the first time was a bit difficult and I remember thinking that it would be easier the second time, because I'd be warmed up. I do remember getting off the bike. I did it slowly, but even that wasn't enough. When I swung my right leg over the bike, I missed and my foot caught the saddle. Oops. I got it right the next time. Round 1 was over. I was still feeling ok, so I decided I'd try round 2.

Round 2:

Bike: Round 2 did not start out well. I'm really bad at starting on the bike -- something goes wrong at the beginning of this round every time I do this race. Today was no exception. The team manager screamed "GO!" and everyone got on their bikes and took off. I got on my bike and fell right off. Well, I didn't actually fall, but I found myself with my feet on the ground, straddling my bike. So I got back on and eventually got moving, but at that point, everyone was way ahead of me. Goody -- now I could catch people on the bike! That's actually one of my favorite things to do, so I wasn't all that upset. And catch people I did. I caught all of the women, apparently (although I didn't realize that until later). For some reason, I felt a bit slower this round than I had during round 1 (though I had been sure it would be easier), but I still managed to pass people, especially going uphill. When I finished, my coach yelled out something like, "Way to go, Bari!" and I knew I must have done pretty well, as he's not always all that generous with the words of encouragement (and if he's reading this, let me just say that that's fine -- I'm good at encouraging myself).

Run: The truth is, I almost didn't make it to the run. I got to the transition area and said (out loud), "Maybe I'll quit now." I mean, it was a practice race, there were no trophies at the end and there wasn't even a real finish line. But on the other hand, I'd gotten up at 5:15 on a Saturday morning to do this thing and I wasn't in excruciating pain, so I didn't have a really good excuse to stop, so I did a very very slow transition (so slow, that after changing my shoes, I actually took the time to try to fix the insole that had come out of my cycling shoe when I'd taken it off) and then set out at something that resembled a slow jog. I had run slowly the first time. This time, I ran painfully slowly. I mean, I'm not even sure I knew it was possibly to run so slowly. But I realized that I'd already run 2 km and that the most I'd run in one day in the last few weeks was 3.5 km and that I'd paid for that the following day. I didn't want anything to hurt, so I just chugged along. All those women (four of them, I think) that I'd beaten on the bike passed me on the run. Actually, two of them had already passed me in transition, which is something that never happens to me -- my transitions are usually very fast. That was fine. It wasn't a real race.

Swim: The pool was almost completely empty, of course, so the swim was at least calm. I swam slowly, but I tried to pick up the pace for the last 50 meters. My back was starting to ache, but I'd made it this far and I wanted to complete the last round, so I didn't want to overdo it. Getting out of the pool was painful again, but at least the round was over and I had a few minutes to rest before round 3.

Round 3:

Swim: This swim did not resemble the first two in any way, shape or form. We all started in the pool together and right away, I could see that it was going to be a disaster. In the actual race, the lanes are divided in such a way that you swim with the people in your age group (and if there aren't enough in your age group, then they'll put two same-sex age groups together). So when I do the race, I swim with 40+-year-old women. Today, everyone just got in the pool wherever they felt like and I found myself in a "lane" with the fastest kid in the race. Great. And why "lane" in quotation marks? Because there were no lane lines today. That made the whole thing a big mess. We were supposed to be swimming in a counterclockwise ellipse, but it was really hard to tell where one lane ended and the next lane started, so you can imagine what happened as soon as we got spread out enough to be swimming in two different directions (which didn't take very long). I turned at the wall at 25 meters and halfway across the pool, BANG! I had not only hit one of the kids head-on, but his arm got linked in mine and he just kept going, taking my arm with him (in the wrong direction). Apparently, I was the gentler part of his collision. He'd bumped heads with the woman in front of me. I looked up and saw swimmers everywhere, swimming in both directions. I decided to just take it easy for the rest of the first 100 meters, figuring that by the time I finished that, the fast kids would finish 200 meters and get out of the pool and it would be easier to swim. And that's exactly what happened. Once again, getting out of the pool was painful (swimming hadn't been so pleasant, either) and, in fact, I wasn't really sure I wanted to go on, but I really did want to get on my bike, so...

Bike: Remember the wet grass? Well, it was still wet. I got my bike out to the street and tried to get on and found both my bike and my shoes slipping all over the road. A teammate who wasn't "racing" today was helping out on the bike route and I called out to him that I was slipping all over the place. He started coming towards me to help me, telling me to just take it slowly, and by the time he actually reached me, I was on my bike. This was actually kind of scary, as I'd never felt my bike slip like that before. Once I was riding, though, I got over it quickly. It was time to pass people again. I'd only left two or three people in the pool behind me, so there were plenty of people ahead of me to pass. Again, I overtook most of the people that I passed on the hill. This was, I think, my best round on the bike. I gave it my all, knowing that all that was left was a measly 1.5 km run, which I was going to do slowly regardless of what I did on the bike. The "race" was almost over...

Run: Actually, as far as I was concerned, the race was over. Once again, I took off at my super-slow jog and let everyone pass me. It was actually kind of fun. I had plenty of energy to encourage one of the slower kids who decided that she was going to walk instead of running. I told her to just run with me and chatted with her almost the whole time, until we were almost at the end and I suggested that she might actually want to run fast now that she was about to finish. It was kind of funny -- I can't even imagine being able to hold a conversation in a regular voice with no huffing or puffing during a race (I can always talk when I run, but this sounded like I was lying on the couch talking to a friend on the phone). I had no intention of running any faster, though. My leg was fine, but my back was actually hurting during the run, which hasn't happened before, apart from some very minor pain during a brick workout on Wednesday. Jarring my back and doing more damage than I already have concerns me even more than the possibility of the shin splints coming back, so I just plodded along for the entire 1.5 km and then it was over.

Slow as I was, I managed to easily stay within the 35 minute limit (and remember, at the race itself, I have 40 minutes). And I finished in one piece. Despite having "run" (it was more like a crawl on two feet) a total of 5 km, my shin was only the tiniest bit sore (something that I wouldn't even have noticed if I hadn't been concerned about it already). My back, however, was very sore. I found a shady spot on the grass and laid down on my back with my feet up on a chair. After a few minutes, I got up and walked around and then I grabbed a towel and went back to lying on the grass and stayed that way for quite a while. This helped my back and when I got up, I felt a bit better, though I suspect my back will be very sore for the rest of the day and probably tomorrow, as well.

I still haven't decided whether or not I'm going to do the race. I mean, why pay money to do it again when I did it today for free? ;-) However, at least now I know that despite my injuries, I can do it if I want to and even if I take it slowly, I'll finish with time to spare. And maybe I'll get some good photos from the race -- there were no photographers at the practice race (there weren't even any water stations!). In any case, I'll be there -- if I'm not racing, I'll be volunteering (there will be no excuses for getting out of that -- what can you do when the team manager is the race director and his right-hand man, the other team manager, is your best friend?).

This is why I get up so early on Saturday morning

2007-08-04T10:09:00.000+03:00

Today's ride was great -- 60-ish kilometers, a few hills, great weather and good company (well, when I could actually see him, that is). I got home feeling like I could have done another 20 or 30 kilometers -- that's my favorite feeling after a ride.

Here's the map of today's ride -- it was an out and back and notice that the turn-around point was very close to Sderot, right in the area where Kasam rockets fall pretty much on a daily basis (I didn't hear anything while we were there, so I guess this morning was quiet).

I don't know if you can see the distance under the Google logo, but it's wrong, anyway. I forgot to start my Garmin at the beginning of the ride and then forgot to start it again after a break. that second time messed up my map for some reason, too. You can't see it here, but when I zoom in, it looks like I rode home way over on the wrong side of the road.

Here's the elevation map (the part at around 48 km where it looks like we went straight up is where I remembered to hit the button on my Garmin):

And the grade map (again, that very steep grade towards the end is a mistake):

Here's an aerial view of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's Sycamore Ranch, which we rode past:

The bad news is that I could feel the soreness in my left shin while I was riding. It didn't make it difficult for me to ride, but I don't think that means good things for my running. My back, on the other hand, didn't hurt at all on the bike (in fact, that was probably the longest period of time I spent all week with no back pain).

Good day, bad day

2007-08-03T13:20:00.001+03:00

The week started out well. I swam 1500 meters on Sunday, including 1000 meters without a break and although my back hurt a bit, it wasn't too bad. On Monday, I ran a whole 3 km with no shin pain during or after (how's that for starting slowly?). On Tuesday, I swam 1600 meters and my back felt much better. Then, on Wednesday, things started to fall apart...

My back was bothering me so much on Wednesday that in the middle of the day, I started wondering how I was going to do the evening brick. Although my back doesn't generally hurt while riding my bike or while running, I was having trouble imagining the transitions -- getting from the hunched over cycling position to the upright running position. A couple that we're friendly with solved my problem when they invited us to go out with them that evening. I ditched the workout.

On Thursday, my back still hurt (and around 5 hours of sitting in my car driving to Jerusalem and then to the Tel Aviv area and then home didn't make things any better. I decided that instead of swimming, I'd do the workout I'd missed the previous night, but instead of doing it outside on my road bike in that hunched over position, I'd do it in the gym on the recumbent stationary bike and on the treadmill. When I got on the treadmill to do the running part of the warmup, my left shin started hurting right away. It wasn't too painful, though, so I kept running. I ran a grand total of 3.5 km (starting slowly...), but I did do some of that at a slightly faster than normal pace. The pain in my shin never got worse during the workout and when I got off the treadmill for the last time (I was switching back and forth between the treadmill and the bike), it was very mildly sore -- no big deal. In fact, I really enjoyed the run -- I don't remember when the last time was that I enjoyed running on the treadmill so much. I was even tempted to do more, but I was concerned about my shin, so I stopped.

Good thing I stopped. I woke up a few times during the night because of the pain in my back (kept rolling over onto my stomach, which makes it hurt) and when I got out of bed this morning and took my first step on my left foot, I immediately felt the pain in my shin. It's not terrible and I can walk without limping, but it's hurting again. Ugh. I hope the pain is short-lived and I suspect it will be, but I have no idea how to progress with my running now. I took a two week break before Monday's run and I was pain free for almost the entire time. It seems that no matter how long I rest and how long the pain has been gone for, it comes back immediately when I start running again.

I'm not going to complain

2007-07-27T12:34:00.001+03:00

I just want to say that it's good that I'm not training for anything in particular, because now I don't have to be disappointed about my plans going down the drain. Yeah, there is that pesky Olympic distance tri that I want to do (it doesn't matter which one -- any Oly distance will do) and that will get done eventually -- when everything stops hurting. Not that I'm complaining or anything. At least I got some sleep last night -- I took a pill before going to bed and that seemed to do a nice job getting rid of my back pain.

In any case, if I had to pick a time of year to be injured and/or just in general pain, this would be the time. It's way too hot outside to do anything (it's supposed to be 41°C today -- that's 106°F). There aren't too many races in the summer -- just the Lehavim Triple Super Sprint on August 24th and if I can't race then I'll volunteer, since it's right here in town. We've got a training break coming up anyway, so I don't have to train (thanks, coach Yigal). I'm buried in matriculation exams again, so I really don't have time to train (or eat or sleep or even breathe for that matter). The pool is gross in the summer because of all the little kids who use it all day long.

So you see? Nothing to complain about!

My bike has a story

2007-07-24T19:44:00.001+03:00

My bike has a story. Yeah, I'm sure every bike has a story, but my bike's story is so typical of me that it's just downright funny. Anyone who knows me personally will understand.

My bike saved my cell phone. Really. Here's the story...

I bought my bike in January 2006 after totaling my previous piece of junk in the Eilat Triathlon. Funny how things happen. I really hated that old bike. It was too big, the Sora components gave me a lot of trouble and I never really enjoyed riding it. I wanted desperately to replace it, but I'd only had it for just over a year and I couldn't justify the expense. Well, at least not until I totaled it. Flying over the concrete road block wasn't fun (I've still got a scar on my knee) and I'll even admit that I cried over my one and only DNF, but in the following weeks, it became clear to me that that road block had actually been my friend.

There was this woman who had been on our team and had quit triathlon for various reasons. She had purchased a new bike not long before she decided to leave the sport and she was no longer riding it. Actually, another teammate, the one who had advised me on my first bike purchase (I should have paid more attention to details), had picked out the bike for her. It was quite a bit nicer than the one I'd destroyed. And now, she was selling an almost unridden bike. An almost unridden bike that was just my size. An almost unridden bike, just my size, that she was willing to part with for about half of what she'd paid for it because she needed the extra cash to plan a wedding. And I needed a bike.

So I bought the bike that was to become my best inanimate friend, the bike that would make cycling the best part of the race for me instead of the worse, the bike that would make me look forward to long rides. But there were a couple of hitches along the way...

Since she had had no success selling the bike on her own (she had originally asked for a lot more money and there aren't too many people around here looking for a 50 cm road bike), she'd decided to bring it up to Israel's only triathlon store in Rishpon, which is about an hour and a half north of here. I had to drive up there to pick up the bike. So on a rainy Friday in January, I made the drive in my Fiat Punto (for those who aren't familiar with it, it's a very small car, especially by American standards). In order to take the bike home, I had to remove the front wheel and fold down my back seats. No big deal. While I was there, I bought myself a brand new helmet, too. I took the bike and the helmet and put them in my car, which was parked on the side of the road. Then I set off for home.

There's an exit for Rishpon on the northbound side of the main road, but not on the southbound side (or not that I know of). To get back on the road going south, I had to actually go north first, up to the next exit. After finally heading south, I suddenly had a strange thought. Had I put the front wheel in the car??? Oh, come on, of course I had! Who would forget something so important??? (Can you hear all my friends shouting, " You!"??) So I peeked back and I didn't see a wheel, but it was hard for me to see anything. It was drizzling and there was a fair amount of traffic and I was on the main road, so I thought maybe it would be a good idea to pull over before taking a better look. I pulled over, turned completely around and there was no wheel.

"Ok, don't panic," I told myself, "Just call the store and ask them to go outside and pick up the wheel. It's right there at the side of the road. It hasn't been that long since you left -- chances are it's still there and hopefully no one has run it over." So I went to take out my cell phone, but it wasn't in my bag. Not in my bag? It had to be in my bag! I knew I'd taken it because I'd used it while I was in the store. Where could it be??? I dumped out the contents of my bag. No cell phone. No wheel, no cell phone. And no exit. I had to drive all the way down to Herzliya, get off, turn around and then drive back north up to the Rishpon exit. It was going to take me at least another 15 minutes or so, if not longer.

"Don't panic, don't panic!" I kept repeating. "It's just a wheel and just a cell phone. How much does a new wheel cost? How much does a new cell phone cost?" Now I was really panicked! I'd barely scraped the money together to pay for the second-hand bike!

It was still drizzling. I was thinking about my wheel and my phone lying out there in the rain. Or not... I don't remember much of the drive. All I could think about was how, exactly, I was going to explain this to my husband.

I got to Herzliya, turned around, drove back up to Rishpon, got off and drove through Rishpon in the direction of the store. As I was approaching the store, I saw a car coming in the other direction. The car stopped right around where my wheel and phone should have been and the driver got out. He bent down and picked something up. My phone!!! I kept driving towards him as he took my phone and started to get back into his car. I was screaming out the window, but he couldn't hear me (I'm sure all the rest of Rishpon could, though!). So I started honking my horn like a maniac. Now people were looking at me and at him. I screamed out to him, "That's my phone! I dropped it!" This time he heard me and since people were standing around looking, he looked at me innocently and said, "Oh, I wasn't going to take it, I was just going to try to figure out who it belonged to." Yeah, sure you were... In Israel, if you leave a cell phone lying around unattended for more than a minute or two, chances are very good that it will disappear forever.

So the guy gave me back my phone. And then I saw my wheel, lying on the side of the road. I rushed out of my car and picked it up. It was completely unharmed. All of the stress that I'd been feeling for the last half hour or so just flowed out of me. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes, my bike saved my cell phone. If I hadn't forgotten the wheel, there's no way I would have noticed that my phone was missing. There's a continuation to this story, though. A few months later, my phone suddenly stopped working. It turned out that there was corrosion inside the phone. Water damage. Since my phone had met no water apart from the rain on that drizzly day, I have to assume that that's where the damage came from. It was insured (it wasn't insured for water damage, but I have a very convincing husband) and my cell phone provider replaced it. The next one fell in the toilet...

Why do these things always happen to me???

Are these people really in need of mental health professionals?

2007-07-24T09:52:00.001+03:00

Check out this article from the New York Times (I grabbed the link off of Vertical Man's blog). If you ask me, the people who needed psychologists were perfectly normal. Who in their right mind would want to swim in the Hudson River with rats and debris?? Honestly, I wouldn't care if the rats knew how to swim or not -- just knowing they were there would be enough to keep me away!

To run or not to run?

2007-07-23T19:42:00.001+03:00

That really is the question.

I've been suffering from shin splints for about a month now. I've drastically cut back on my running (not that I was running all that much before) and I think I've managed to get rid of the problem in one leg, but the other still bothers me after every run. The last time I ran was a week ago. I did 6 km and had pain in my shins for a couple of days afterwards. Now it doesn't hurt. Do I try again tonight?

Between my shins and my back, I think it may be time to have this old body serviced. Anyone know where the nearest human body garage is?

The last 10 km

2007-07-21T15:46:00.000+03:00

Today was did a 90 km ride. As you can see from the graph, the first part was basically downhill and the second half... well... obviously, we had to get up to where we started:

This was a tough ride for me, maybe because I didn't sleep well last night and I was tired. We left at 6 a.m. and I got home at around 10:30 or so (we took a long break in the middle). For the first 80 km or so, I managed to hang on, but those last 10 km might as well have been 100. It was really hot (around 100° F) and we were just trudging along uphill at something like 20 kph. In that short distance, I managed to have a flat, to almost fall off my bike when stopping at a red light (I had clipped out, but I was so tired that I lost my balance while trying to put my feet down) and to drop my chain, which then got stuck (I didn't actually drop it while riding -- when I almost fell, I must have kicked it off the chain ring with my ankle, which now bears the mark of chain ring teeth). In short, it was one of those rides when all I could think was, "If I can finish this, I can do anything."

I've found a better way to save my route maps (so that the names of places on the way show up). Here's a map of the route we did today:

And so that you can get a better idea of where I actually am, here's a slightly bigger view of the area -- notice how close we are to Gaza (oh, and the red line on the right is the "Green Line" -- the "border" with the West Bank -- that's even closer than Gaza):

Now here's an interesting graph. Despite the heat and being exhausted, my heart rate wasn't at all elevated at the end of the ride. In fact, even the elevation (marked in red) had almost no affect on my heart rate, apart from drops in heart rate during longer downhill sections.

This seems really odd to me, as you'd think my heart would work harder as the ride gets harder. By the way, the big dip in heart rate just before the end is where my training partner (my favorite training partner) decided we were going to coast down the hill without pedaling. I don't normally do that, but at that point, I would have even been willing to just grab the back of a car and be pulled home.

The other thing that seems really odd is the fact that no matter what I do (and no matter what I'm actually looking at on my screen), I can't save the graph of the entire ride -- this graph ends about 5 km before the end of the ride. If anyone is using SportTracks and can explain why that is (note that I can see the graph of the entire ride in the program), please let me know!

My aching back

2007-07-20T19:00:00.001+03:00

I've been suffering from lower back pain for several weeks, most likely due to sitting on my bed for hours at a time checking exams last month. I won't be stupid enough to sit that way again, but I can't seem to get rid of the pain in my back. Today, it was so bad that I had to stop my swim workout in the middle. I was barely moving in the pool because I couldn't properly rotate my hips. Ouch. Strangely, my back only bothers me while swimming -- I don't feel a thing while running (not that I've been doing much of that) or while cycling. That's a good thing, because tomorrow I have a 90 km ride planned. Of course, if my back doesn't get me, the heat will -- it's supposed to be close to 100 degrees tomorrow (again).

What is it about the gym?

2007-07-19T13:32:00.001+03:00

I need to get to the gym. In fact, I've needed to get to the gym for well over a year. I go there once in a while when the weather is bad to use a treadmill or a stationary bike, but I need to start using the weight machines. So what's keeping me from going? I don't have a clue.

Maybe the gym is too far away? Uh... No... It's exactly a 1 km drive or about a 600 meter walk. I think I can handle that. I manage to get to the pool several times a week without a problem and it's in the same place.

Maybe I don't have time? Well, this would be a good excuse at certain times of the year, but right now I'm not doing much of anything, at least not for the next week, and it's been like this for three weeks. I think I can find an hour in my not-very-busy day.

Maybe I don't know what to do there? This is partially correct, but not a good excuse. I used to work out at the gym regularly, so I'm not completely clueless and, of course, we have trainers at the gym who are there to teach me what to do. I know all of them personally, so I'm not embarrassed to ask.

Maybe I can't stand the smell? Well, I can't, but I manage to deal with that when I'm running on the treadmill. I've even managed to breathe those nasty sweat vapors for 15 km on the treadmill -- I think I can handle them for an hour or so.

Maybe I'm just being lazy and looking for ways to avoid doing what I need to do so that I'll have excuses for not being stronger/faster/whatever? Yeah, maybe.

The perfect goggles?

2007-07-18T19:37:00.000+03:00

I must have a strangely shaped face, because I've unsuccessfully tried more different brands and models of goggles than anyone I know! What follows is a list of all the goggles I've tried and what I liked and disliked about them. Maybe this will help someone else with goggle woes.

For a while, I swam with the AquaSphere Seal Mask. I liked these goggles for a while, but for some reason, the lenses started popping out on me once in a while and they also started leaking a lot sooner than I would have liked, as they're not cheap and not easy to find around here. I didn't particularly like the big mask and when these finally gave out, I decided to try something smaller.

Since the Seal Mask had been ok, I tried its smaller version, the Seal XP. These were good at first, but they started leaking a lot sooner than the Seal Mask had, and like the Seal Mask, they're not cheap and not easy to find here. Oh, and they're still a lot bigger than "conventional" goggles.

For my next pair of goggles, I decided to try something that would be easier and cheaper to replace. I went with the Arena Vulcan. I was pretty happy with these goggles for a while, apart from the fact that they left me with ugly goggle marks around my eyes. I figured that was the price I had to pay for leak-proof goggles. Eventually, they did start to leak, of course, so I bought a second pair. I wasn't as happy with those -- they started leaking a lot faster than the first pair. It was once again time to search for different goggles.

This time, I went with TYR Technoflex 2.0. These goggles almost never leaked, but the gaskets dug into the skin around my temples and they left even worse goggle marks than the Arena goggles. However, I could even do flip turns in these without them moving, so I swam in them for a while. Then one day without any warning, they started leaking and nothing I did would stop the water from coming in. I borrowed a pair of goggles for one workout and then went out and replaced these with a second pair, despite the fact that I hadn't liked the way they'd died in a single day. I lost my second pair at the Tel Aviv Triathlon and then decided to look for something else.

The next goggles were Speedo Futura Ice. These goggles came highly recommended by several teammates. When I tried them on in the store, they seemed fine -- they had good suction and were comfortable. In the pool, though, they were a disaster. No matter what I did to them, they leaked. And because I kept making the straps tighter to try to stop the leaking, they left really bad goggle marks. Eventually, I gave them to a teammate because I couldn't swim with them. They worked great for him, so it was just my weird face that they didn't fit properly.

The goggles I am currently swimming with are TYR Technoflex Vision. So far, so good. These are probably the most comfortable goggles I've ever worn. No matter how long I leave them on my face, I don't get anything more than very faint red marks under my eyes -- barely noticable and painless. And they have yet to leak on me. I am very very pleased with these and I think I may have found the perfect goggles for me, but it's still too early to say for sure.

So what goggles do the rest of you swim with?

Running and shin splints

2007-07-17T12:29:00.000+03:00

I don't think I've posted about my shin splints (maybe just in passing). Even I'm tired of hearing about my injuries! Anyway, I haven't been doing much running for the last month or so. It started with pain in both shins. I took almost two weeks off from running, waiting until I was pain-free and then went out and did an easy 5 km, which led to pain in my left shin. I took off another week or so and tried again. This time, I only ran 1.5 km and stopped because my shin hurt. *sigh* Last night, I managed to run 6 km with almost no pain (just a few twinges in my left shin during the first kilometer. But today, my left shin hurts. Ugh.

Anyway, despite the pain in my shin today, I do think I'm healing, as it's nowhere near as bad as it was. The 6 km was slow (on purpose) -- I ran an average of just over 6:30 minutes per km. I have to admit that I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever be able to run "fast" (it's all relative!) again. Right now, I'd settle for a run with no pain (during or after). Of course, if all I can do is walk from now on, then that Olympic tri that I have planned for someday will be a piece of cake -- I can walk 10 km!

Swimming and stuff

2007-07-16T11:05:00.000+03:00

It seems that lately, all I've posted here are race reports and course maps. That really wasn't the reason I started this blog. So why did I start it? Why do I feel the need to "reveal myself to the world"? Well, I don't, really, but I've always enjoyed writing and I also like the idea of having a permanent record, complete with pictures, of my progress in something that has become such a major part of my life. It's mainly for me, not for other people (but please keep on reading!).

So, swimming... Swimming used to be my favorite of the three sports. Not anymore. In fact, I went through a real swimming crisis not too long ago and just getting into the pool became a real effort. My times have gotten slower and my motivation to improve them had gone out the window. I'm not sure how I managed to "get over it", but I did. One day I decided I was going to "JFS" (just f*cking swim) and I did.

Last night, the main drill was three times 400 meters. I try to avoid posting my times here, as I know that to many people, they would be considered very slow, but I'm not a born athlete and speed has never been my strong point, so at the risk of being laughed at (and who cares, anyway? I can't hear you all laughing!), I'm going to start talking about my times again. My fastest ever 400 meter time was 8:04. This was more than a year and a half ago and I assume I was drafting off of someone, as I've never come anywhere near that time again. My "normal" time (not drafting) is 8:42. I have repeated this exact number more times than I can count. I hadn't gone below it in a very long time.

So last night, after doing the warmup, I did the first 400. I tried drafting for the first 50 meters, but that didn't work out because there were three of us in the lane and we kind of got into a "traffic jam" at one end of the pool and by the time we got ourselves sorted out, the guy I wanted to draft off of was too far ahead. So I did it on my own, not pushing too hard, as my coach said I could do 9:00. Imagine my surprise when I finished, looked at my watch and saw 8:35. Even drafting for 50 meters wouldn't have taken 7 seconds off my time and that first 50 meters wasn't slow, but it wasn't incredibly fast, either. I may not have swum at lightening speed, but it was an incredible confidence booster for me.

For the next two 400s, I drafted off of my favorite training partner (and no, I didn't just say that because I know he reads my blog sometimes). He missed the last 50 meters of the first one, meaning I could only draft for 350 meters. I finished in 8:23. The last one we did in 8:16. Drafting is so much fun -- I hardly had to swim! In fact, I think I spent more energy trying to keep his feet out of my face (and trying to avoid hitting them as much as possible, as I'm sure I was driving him nuts) than I did trying to move forward.

So now the obvious question is, if drafting is so easy in the pool, why is it so hard in a race? Why do I never seem to find the perfect person to draft off of???

And yes, I know that drafting off of other people is not going to improve my own swimming or make me faster, but I like the feeling of moving faster in the water and seeing the faster times (and keeping up with someone who is faster than I am) is very motivating to me. I will get those swim times back down (and then make them even faster).

Another Saturday, another ride

2007-07-15T19:15:00.000+03:00

Yes, I know that Saturday was yesterday. I did an 80 km ride with the team. Here's the map (and yes, I know that they all kind of look the same, but I still think it's cool) -- note that the strange part at the end is where I rode all around town to finish up 80 km.

This was mainly downhill going out, but uphill on the second half, as you can see by the elevation graph:

And as you can see by the grade graph, those hills might be annoying, but this sure isn't the Tour de France:

Interestingly, everything after the 70 km mark was inside of town -- notice that that's where the biggest hill was! I knew there was a reason why the coach has us run and ride up that hill about a million times a season!

Now just one more picture. I know that you can't really see much in the maps of my routes, or at least they don't really give any indication of where I am. So here's a map of the whole area -- you can see all of Israel, plus Egypt (mainly the Sinai Desert), Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the Mediterranean Sea and more. And there in the middle, marked in yellow (you may need to click on the map to see a bigger version), is the route we rode yesterday:

Congratulations to the newest Ironmen

2007-07-09T13:01:00.000+03:00

Our little town of about 5,000 now has four new Ironmen and a total of five Ironman finishers at Ironman Austria yesterday. Congratulations to Kobi, Itai, Ohad and Yuval on finishing the grueling 3800 meter swim, 180 km bike ride and 42.2 km run for the first time (and to Frenkel for finishing another Ironman). That makes a total of seven Ironman finishers (that I know of) living in this little place in the middle of the desert. Well, that plus the current Israeli youth champion, three kids who have participated in the European youth championships in the last two years, one who was at the world championships last year and a few other kids who have competed in a number of European races. If we count the number of triathletes here relative to the total population, we might be the triathlon giant of the world -- and the nearest body of open water is 55 kilometers away!

Another Saturday ride

2007-07-07T10:28:00.000+03:00

Another great ride today. We did a few hills (well, my training partner did one more than I did -- I had no idea he'd turned to ride up my least favorite hill of all time and once I realized where he was, I was already at the top of the next hill, so I waited for him there). I'm actually starting to like hills. Maybe there's something wrong with me... Anyway, there was this one hill that I was afraid to do, as the only time I'd ever tried riding up it before, I'd ended up getting off my bike and walking. That was in the winter in a lot of wind. It turned out that this isn't a very big hill and I didn't even realize it was the same one until I reached the end of the road and there were no more hills. Piece of cake. I can now take that tiny little thing off my list of things that need to be conquered.

Here's the map of today's route:

And here are the elevation graphs:

It's always nice to do your warmup on one of the longer hills of the day... Well, maybe not, but notice that the first five kilometers are almost entirely uphill. However, the second half of the ride was mainly downhill, which is definitely the smarter way to do things in the summer when it gets hotter and hotter during the ride.

These graphs are very helpful. I've just noticed, for example, that my cadence counter stopped working at 40 km (well, either that or I didn't pedal at all for the next 25 km). Hmm...

My heart, fortunately, did not stop beating during the ride (and my heart rate monitor didn't stop working). The dip in heart rate is because I spent 10 minutes or more waiting for my training partner at the top of that hill and then we did a nice long downhill section (the Garmin was autopaused while I was waiting, but when I got back on my bike, all I did was sit there until the bottom of the hill):

Oh, and the Garmin says I burned 1,882 calories. Time for a nice, big breakfast!

Playing with my new toy

2007-06-30T09:22:00.000+03:00

I could get so addicted to the Garmin that I might not have time to train anymore! Here are the stats from today's ride. Ignore the time on the ride -- I only remembered to put it on autopause in the middle of the ride, so that includes a couple of stops.

Here's the map:

Elevation/distance:

Grade/distance:

Heart rate/distance (with grade marked in red -- you can see my heart rate climb when the ride gets steeper):

I could go on all day, but I need to take a shower, eat, talk to other family members, etc. This is so much fun!

How cool is this?

2007-06-24T18:21:00.000+03:00

Ok, so it doesn't take a lot to impress me. I found some time to play with my new Garmin 305 which finally arrived a week and a half ago. The following is a picture of the route that I ran on Wednesday (marked in light blue). Note that the loop is 2.5 km -- I did that three times, plus the parts outside of the loop for a total of abut 8.5 km. I've marked my house, too. Unfortunately, Google Maps doesn't have highly detailed maps of this area (which is why my route is such a small part of the picture -- any closer and everything starts to become a blur), but I still think it's pretty cool.

Tel Aviv Triathlon - 16 June 2007

2007-06-24T18:03:00.000+03:00

I wrote this a week ago, but I haven't had time to post it until now. Enjoy!

Before I even get to the race report, I have to say that this is one of my least favorite races. The course is generally crowded and it's always very hot. The first time I did it, two years ago, it was a nightmare. Last year was better, but still hard. I decided to do it again for a couple of reasons: 1) it's one of the bigger races of the year and 2) for the challenge.

Even after having made the decision to do the race, my mental state going into it was not great. I've been very stressed out due to exam grading and I knew that this time, it was going to be unbearably hot during the run because the starting time for 40+ sprint was 9:00 (an hour later than last year) and the bike course had been lengthened, meaning that it would take longer to get to the run. If you've ever been to Tel Aviv in mid-June, you know why it's really not a smart idea to go running at 10:00 in the morning. On the coolest of June days, that would be about five degrees above unbearably hot and humid. However, the race organizers had decided on the late start time in order to spread out the heats and have fewer people on the course.

Had we actually started at 9:00, it might have been nice. There was a delay in getting permission from the police to start the race in the morning, so all of the heats were delayed. The 40+ sprint started at 9:10. For the first time ever, they decided to have separate starts for the men and women. This was really great for the swim, though it did have a disadvantage that I will get into later. Anyway, the women started at 9:12, two minutes after the men. It was wonderful -- no pushing, no getting beaten up, no nothing. We just got to swim (well, after running a very long distance into the water). So I don't have a good excuse (or even a bad one) for my lousy swim time apart from the fact that I just didn't swim very fast. Enough said. At least I enjoyed myself (apparently a bit too much).

T1 at this race is very long -- a 600 meter run to the transition area. The only part about it that I remember was when we had to run across the sand at the beginning. That was tough. The rest is a complete blank.

I do, unfortunately, remember getting on my bike. After actually being able to find a spot to mount my bike on the very narrow course, I couldn't get my feet clipped into the pedals. This happens sometimes during a race, but today was particularly bad and I was weaving all over the place, praying that no one would ride into me. Once I finally got clipped in, I took off at a nice pace and all was going well until I decided to take my first gel. I reached for my gel flask and got... nothing. It wasn't there. Gone. No gel. I normally take two gels on the bike and this gets me through the run. All I had today was water -- not even a sports drink. Just plain old water on the long course in the hot weather. I was surprisingly calm about this. I was a bit surprised, but I just kind of took it in stride and said to myself, "Ok, I can do this with just water. I just need to drink a lot." Later on, I would see my gel flask lying in the road. I have no idea how or when it fell off my bike.

This was a draft legal race, so I set off to look for someone to work with. Here's where those two minutes that separated the men and women at the start of the race worked to my disadvantage. There was not a single woman on the course (or at least none anywhere near me) that I could work with. I needed a man (and yes, this is legal -- you're allowed to draft off of anyone, regardless of age, sex or even race distance). The fast men were two minutes ahead of me or more. I worked hard to find one and eventually, I did manage to rest a bit while drafting off of other people, but I suspect that these were not ideal partners for me, because every time I tried to take the lead, they would fall back almost immediately. What that says to me is that they weren't as fast as I was and I was wasting precious time drafting off of them. Finally, on the last loop, a group from the up-to-39 sprint (who started half an hour after us -- I was glad to be old today!) passed me and I tagged onto the back of the group and worked with them until the end of the loop. They continued on and I was finished. I'd averaged around 31 kph on the bike, which is very good for me, but I know I could have gone faster if I had been able to find riders closer to my own ability on the course. My bike split was the third best in my age group, only 40 seconds slower (for 25.4 km) than the woman with the fastest split. I should have been at least as fast as she was. If we'd started with the men, I would have been (note that she came out of the water about three minutes ahead of me -- I'll bet she found more people to work with on the bike).

T2 was over way too soon. I was completely freaked out about the run before it even started. It was HOT out, the course was 400 meters longer than other sprint courses here (when you're a lousy runner, 400 meters counts -- believe me!), all I'd had on the bike was water when I'm used to taking gels, I'd barely slept the night before the race and I had bad memories from this run course. This was not destined to be a good run. The only good thing I can say about it is that I ran the whole thing. It was slow and ugly (almost three minutes slower than last year on the same course). This was the first time in a long time that I was unable to pick up the pace before the finish line. I had nothing left.

I finished 7/18 in my age group. I guess the run was hard for other people, too, as I was 8/18 on the run, even with my lousy time. It wasn't hard for the woman who had the fastest run in my age group, though. She finished 5.4 km plus the transition in 23 minutes and change and had the second fastest run split of everyone -- men and women. I would think this was a mistake if she hadn't done the same thing in every race this year. I saw her whiz past me today (she was slower than me on both the swim and the bike). Man is she fast for a 40-year-old woman!

Next year I'm doing the Olympic distance. They started at 6:40 and the bike and run courses were both short. Seriously, I think that it would have been easier for me to do the Oly distance today than it was to do the sprint. It certainly would have been cooler.

That's it for triathlons in the first half of the season. There's supposed to be a "triple super sprint" some time in August, but the date hasn't been set yet. The next "regular" race is in September. That gives me lots of time to work on my running.

Just another boring post

2007-06-09T20:29:00.000+03:00

Since I have full control over comments on my blog, I guess I should just delete offensive ones like the ones I received to this post, but this was just so silly that I decided to leave it. I mean, if my blog is so boring, then why is Anonymous not only reading it, but coming back for more? And I'm pretty sure that I've never behaved in a repulsive manner towards anyone.

Anyway, since this is a triathlon blog, I'll post something tri related. I had a great ride today -- we rode to the beach and I managed to hang on to the back of the lead group for quite a while. This was the first time that's ever happened, so I was on cloud nine. After the ride, we did a short run and then went swimming. The sea was a bit rough and I just heard on the news that someone drowned in Ashkelon today (which is where we were). We managed to swim, though, and then spent the rest of the time just playing in the waves.

Sorry to bore you all to death. Now I'm going to go take my own advice and do something productive (like grade a few hundred matriculation exams).

Goodbye, Terence

2007-06-09T17:41:00.001+03:00

Terence was this really funny Malaysian guy that I knew online through the Penguin Runners and Penguin Athletes mailing lists. He was originally a runner and was later inspired to try triathlon. Terence was always joking and always had a positive attitude, even after being diagnosed with two brain tumors in early 2006. After his first surgery, his doctor ordered him not to run in the marathon he had been planning to do. So, being the good patient he was, he listened to his doctor's orders and did the half marathon, instead. That was Terence.

Today, I received the news that Terence is no longer with us. I never met Terence in person, but this picture (grabbed off of his own site) is exactly how I like to think of him and how he will remain in my memory.

Proof that I don't know how to run

2007-06-03T19:58:00.000+03:00

Now that I've finally figured out how I can post video here, I can show this. It's from the Lior Triathlon in April. I really hate this video for a couple of reasons. The first is simply that I hate the way I look (and I think I've taken off a few pounds since then -- my bottom looks particularly big here relative to the way I normally look). The second reason I hate it is the same reason I have for posting it -- because my running is terrible. I barely pick up my feet and I look like I'm sitting down. This was at the very end of the race and I was pretty tired, so my form had deteriorated and looked worse than usual, but it doesn't get a whole lot better. Any suggestions on what I can do to fix it are welcome.

It takes a few seconds before you actually see me, but once my husband focuses in on me, you'll know. The quality isn't great because he filmed this on my cell phone. Oh, and if it says "image coming soon", just ignore that and hit the play button.

Ok, deep breath... Here goes...

Women's Triathlon, Herzliya - 2 June 2007

2007-06-02T17:58:00.001+03:00

Thanks to 4sport for the picture

After not training for a week (apart from one day) because of a yucky cold and still having a cough on the morning of the race, I didn't have any high expectations of this race. All I really wanted to do was to have fun. This is one of my favorite races and I was just happy to be there.

The warm up:

After getting myself set up in the transition area and then, after leaving, realizing that I had no idea where I'd put my bike, I had to go back into the transition area to find it. It took me quite a while to locate it in a sea of over 600 bikes (Where did all these women come from???), but I eventually found it and made a mental note of the row number and then head out for a short warm up. I figured I'd run the first km or so of the course that I'd already done two times before. I knew it was an easy run and also probably shorter than the 5 km that it was supposed to be because I'd always done it quickly. Well, imagine my surprise when I got to where there was supposed to be a turn and discovered that I had to run straight, instead. They'd changed the course! Ok, I could handle this. I ran to the end of the street and asked one of the volunteers what the rest of the course looked like. He said it was all on the sidewalk and it was easy. Then I ran into one of the referees, a woman I know well. She had just ridden the course on her mountain bike and she told me how hard it had been for her to bike up the hill. The hill? What hill?! There's not supposed to be a hill!

Anyway, I finished running, did a very short swim and then listened to the briefing. I heard something about running on a dirt path. Dirt path? Didn't the volunteer say it was all sidewalk? Ok, I can do a hill. I can do a dirt path. No problem.

The swim:

The swim was very uneventful. I got hit and kicked a lot less than last year. The only problems I had were the long run in and out of the water and the fact that I got stuck between a bunch of women swimming very fast breaststroke. I find it incredibly annoying when people swim breaststroke as fast as I swim freestyle. Oh, and I think I zigzagged a bit, too, but nothing too terrible. After running/skipping/stumbling out of the water, I took a look at my watch and saw that my time wasn't too terrible for 750 meters (especially considering how much running there was in the water). It was slower than last year, though. I suspect that the course was short last year, as I remember having a lot more trouble swimming.

Thanks to Shvoong for this and the following pictures

T1:

The run to the transition area is across sand (the kind you sink in up to your ankles) and then over a small bridge. I was prepared for this, as it's been the same all three times I've done this race. I hate running in that sand, but it went by quickly. I found my bike, got my stuff on and headed out. Lately, I've taken to running a bit past the mounting line because I hate it when people stop dead in front of me and I don't want to do that to anyone else. It's easier to run just a few more steps and then get on the bike on the side of the road. The referee (another woman I know) found this rather amusing, though, and she yelled at me to get on my bike. LOL.

The bike:

I had some pedal problems at first (my feet kept slipping off the pedals and I couldn't get my left foot clipped in -- I had to pedal up the hill at the start of the course clipped in on only one side). Once I was properly seated on my bike, though, I soared. I passed so many women that I couldn't even start to count them. The bike course is five times around a 4 km route. With several hundred women on it, it was very crowded. And since half (or more) of those women had no idea how to ride on the right, it was also fairly dangerous. I did a lot of screaming on the course and even that didn't always help. I narrowly avoided several collisions with women who decided to drift left just as I was passing them (and after I had loudly announced that I was passing them). I also got stuck behind women riding abreast of one another several times. Overall, though, I had a very good ride. I got passed by a very few women, but I passed many many more and I felt strong and really good. I don't know my exact final time for the bike (the timing mats weren't all working today), but I can see by my 4 km splits that I was one of the faster women on the course today. All of my splits were under 8 minutes.

As fast and pleasurable as riding my bike was, I had certainly had enough after five times around the same boring course and I was more than happy to get off.

T2:

Getting back into the transition area was a bit problematic. There were women from one of the later heats (a shorter race distance) just coming out of the transition area and I couldn't get in until they'd passed me, so I actually had to stop. I don't remember that ever happening before, but this race has really grown in the past few years and I guess there are still a few things that need to be worked out now that it's become so big. Once I'd racked my bike, I changed shoes, probably a lot slower than I could have -- I was glad to be off the bike, but I wasn't particularly looking forward to the run (Did someone say hill? Did someone say dirt path?). Once I had running shoes on both feet, though, I didn't have any more excuses to be in the transition area, so off I went.

The run:

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was tough in the beginning, but I stuck it out. At some point, I started coughing (stupid cold that won't go away), which made breathing a bit difficult, but I kept running. I got to the hill and ran up it (slowly). I got to the dirt path and slowly ran down the small hill with the soft, kind of sandy dirt. Then I ran harder on the path until the turnaround. 2.5 km already run. I was halfway there. I don't actually remember much about the way back. It was easier than the way out (the dirt hill was very short and I got to run down the longer hill). I had no idea what the route was to the finish line, so I just followed the women in front of me. The nice surprise was that unlike last year and the year before, there was no hill just before the finish line. I came around a corner and saw it about 100 meters ahead -- the rest of the run was flat as a pancake. Seeing the finish line always does something to me. I took off at sprint pace, hoping I could run that fast to the end. I did. It was over. Quite a few women had passed me on the run, but I'd managed to pass a few, too, so it hadn't been all that disastrous. If I could have held off the cough for another half hour or so, I would have been able to breathe more easily and maybe I would have run a little bit faster. But honestly, I didn't care all that much. It was over.

My final time was 1:31:24. This was about four minutes slower than last year, but I'm pretty sure the swim and run were short last year. They weren't this year and that was reflected in most of the times that I looked at -- almost everyone was slower. Assuming that the distances were correct this time, this was a very good sprint time for me. In fact, I think it's a PR.

In any case, my goal had been to have fun and I did. It was a great race. I'll be back next year.

What I got for my birthday

2007-05-17T19:47:00.000+03:00

Let me preface this by saying that I have a thing for colorful cycling jerseys -- the louder, the better. And I especially like cycling jerseys that are actually made for women, which are harder to come by around here. So a few weeks ago, I was at a bike shop and spotted a jersey that I really liked. I just couldn't justify buying it, though -- it wasn't cheap and I really didn't need another jersey. Anything goes on one's birthday, however, so my husband drove back to the store this week and bought it for me. If you don't like pink, you won't like this, but I love it! If you do like it and since I grabbed the picture from their site, check out Pace Sportswear.In addition, my uncle in Australia bought me a Garmin 305, which will soon be on its way from the US (a multi-continental gift -- bought from Australia from a store in North America and sent to Asia). I am obviously really looking forward to its arrival.

Oh, and how old am I? I very young 42. Happy birthday to me!

Why I won't be mountain biking again any time soon

2007-05-15T19:16:00.000+03:00

On Saturday I went mountain biking with my team. It was supposed to be an easy ride to finish off "recovery week". Uh, yeah. Well, today is Tuesday. It's been about 80 hours since I returned from that "easy" ride. I just took these pictures (sorry about the quality -- I did these myself and it was kind of hard to get a good angle with proper lighting and to actually see what I was taking a picture of at the same time).

My arm (which looks much better than it did three days ago):

My outer thigh:

These beautiful sites are the result of not one, but two falls. Easy ride -- yeah, right.

I think I'll stick to my road bike for a while.

Jordan Valley Triathlon - 5 May 2007

2007-05-07T18:10:00.000+03:00

Thanks to 4sport for the picture

I had planned to do the Olympic distance at this race, but two or three weeks before race day, my coach told me that he'd prefer if I did the sprint, as my running volume was way down and he felt that I'd really suffer during the 10k run. This was a bit of a disappointment (although I knew he was right), but rather than getting discouraged, I decided to choose a new goal for this race -- to break the elusive 30 kph mark on the bike and go under 40 minutes for 20 km. That was my one and only goal for the race and it was all I could think about leading up to race day.

Following some very hot days, race morning was surprisingly pleasant. The water in the Sea of Galilee was a bit cold (about 22° Celsius), but definitely not too bad. I used earplugs to prevent dizziness and I was fine. In fact, I found the cool water rather pleasant.

The swim went well, or so I thought. Leading up to the first buoy, I pretty much swam alone. I'm fairly certain I swam in a straight line, as I lifted my head often to check. Going around the buoy, I got stuck in a crowd of swimmers and it took me a minute or so to break loose and find an empty spot. For the rest of the swim, I was more or less alone. There were people swimming around me, but they weren't hitting or kicking me or swimming on top of me, which was a nice change. And I kept lifting my head to make sure I was swimming in a straight line. So imagine my amazement when I looked at my watch when I got out of the water and saw 20 minutes and change. 20 minutes?! It was only a 750 meter swim. A week earlier, I'd swum 750 meters in the pool in 16 minutes. I did this same swim last year a minute faster and I thought that was slow. I didn't have a lot of time to ponder this strange swim time, though. It was a long, uphill run to the transition area and I had to concentrate on what was coming up next -- I was about to prove that I can meet my goals.

The transition went quickly and I was off. My total time for swim plus transition (very long run to the transition area) was 24:31. I was 8/14 in my age group, 14/42 for all 40+ women and 65/172 overall in the 40+ wave (men and women). Note that I am now absolutely positive that the swim was long. Every single person I spoke to did a much slower time than usual and there is no way I could have been in the top 40% of my wave with a time like that if the swim was really the right distance.

Pretty much the only thing I remember about being on the bike was that I passed a lot of people. A few people passed me, but not too many (and quite a few of those were doing the half Ironman distance). I'm pretty sure that not a single woman passed me, apart from one that I had passed earlier and who still ended up with a slower bike time than me. At the 5 km mark, I saw just under 10 minutes on my bike computer. At the 10k mark, I was at 19 minutes. If I could keep up the pace, I was going to meet my goal.

Coming towards the end, I knew it was going to happen. I was really psyched and I started urging myself (out loud) to go harder. When I reached the dismount line, I saw 38:something. I finished with a huge smile on my face. I had done it! My bike computer read 39:26, but that included running in and out of the transition area with my bike. Even with the run in and out of the transition area, that was a 30.9 kph average. I didn't even care what happened on the run. I had done what I'd set out to do.

There was no mat at the bike dismount. Instead, it was about 200 meters into the run. My total time for the bike plus transition and the first 200 meters or so of the run was 40:29. I was 1/14 in my age group (note that I have had the fastest bike time in my age group at all three races so far this season), 4/42 for 40+ women and 50/172 overall. Last year at this same race and on the same course, I was 105/149 on the bike in the 40+ wave. Times are hard to judge, as they can vary according to weather and course conditions, but relative placement is a pretty good judge of progress, I think. From 105/149 to 50/172 in a year -- I think those results speak for themselves. I'm doing something right in my bike training. Now I need to figure out what it is so that I can use it in my swimming and running.

Back to the race... The run. Um... Yeah... Well, all I can say is that riding hard has absolutely no effect whatsoever on how I run. I run at the same pace at every single race. The problem is, I've been running at that pace for the last two years. The run wasn't any harder than usual. It was just a run. It was very frustrating, though, because I got passed a lot and unfortunately, several of the people who passed me were women in my age group. I pushed as hard as I could and ran the "entire" 5 km, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to get below 6 minute kilometers, or at least not at the end of a triathlon. The only exception has been the Women's Triathlon, where I ran just over 28 minutes both last year and the year before. I'm sure the course there must be short. Anyway, as I mentioned, the mat was about 200 meters or so into the course and my time for the run was 29:05. Ugh. That put me 9/14 in my age group, 20/42 for 40+ women (at least I was in the first half) and 128/172 overall.

My final time for the race was 1:34:07. I was 8/14 in my age group, 12/42 for 40+ women (yes, most of the faster women were in my age group) and 86/172 overall. Not bad, but not as good as I had hoped for although I did achieve my goal). The woman who won my age group finished in just over 4 minutes less than I did. I'm not even sure if her time was "real", as her run time seemed incredibly fast -- 20:12, which put her in 5th place overall, including all of the fast men. Since she was very slow on the swim and slower than I was on the bike, she would have had to have passed me on the run to win. I don't remember seeing her. Weird. This is the same woman, by the way, who was disqualified at the last race for only doing one loop on the bike. Second place was less than 3 1/2 minutes ahead of me. The third place woman and I came off the bike together. She finished less than 2 minutes ahead of me. I could have taken 30 seconds off my bike time (I might have started with a better mount and dismount -- I wasted a lot of time there). If I had run faster, I could have taken 15 seconds off my first transition. If I could take 15 seconds per km off my run time, that would be 2 minutes total.

It's time to start figuring out what it was that caused my dramatic improvement on the bike so that I can use it on the run. I'm getting really tired of being a "slow runner" or someone who "doesn't know how to run".

In any case, it was a fun race.

Lior Triathlon, Rishon Letzion - 14 April 2007

2007-04-23T13:45:00.001+03:00

This race report is a bit late -- I wrote it after the race, but I've been lazy about posting it.

My biggest concern going into this race was the water temperature, which was about 19°C - rather chilly without a wetsuit. Last year, I got really dizzy while swimming in the cold water in April and it was very frightening. I was afraid it would happen again. This is the last time I bother worrying about anything before a race, as you just never know what is going to be thrown at you on any particular day.

I got to the race site fairly early and had time to get myself set up, take a good look at the course and do a short warmup (wearing my Crocs -- my running shoes were in the transition area and I'd forgotten to bring a second pair). Then it was time to head down to the beach for a quick dip in the water. Yes, it was kind of cold, but not too bad, and two swim caps plus ear plugs seemed to do the trick for me -- I had no dizziness after my very brief swim warmup.

Standing on the beach watching the youth and elite waves start, I noticed that the sea was rather choppy. So did a lot of people. I also noticed that it took forever for the kids to actually start swimming -- they couldn't seem to get into the water. And watching them get out of the water was even worse -- they came out all over the place looking confused and exhausted. This was not a good sign.

I stood on the beach trying to drown out my negative thoughts and before I knew it, we had started. We ran, walked, stumbled into the waves. One hit me right in the face, water got into my goggles and up my nose and panic started setting in. I tried to start swimming, but I couldn't seem to get anywhere -- the waves were just pushing me all over the place. I ended up doing something between breaststroke and treading water, all the while, looking up ahead at the rest of the swimmers. This made matters even worse -- what I saw were people being washed up onto big waves or big waves washing over them. People were screaming like on a rollercoaster ride. Somewhere along the line, I just froze. I didn't know what to do. I was sure I was going to die.

As the other swimmers pulled further and further ahead, the waves still rocking them (and me) in all directions, I decided I was going to swim back to the beach. I was just too scared to go on. I turned around and looked back and almost started swimming in, but then I remembered that my husband, who rarely comes to races, was back there watching me. How disappointing it would be for me to have him see me DNF. And if everyone else could somehow manage to swim in that very choppy water, why couldn't I? I'm not such a lousy swimmer!

This is when I saw the first buoy (the turn around buoy for the 14-15 year olds) and remembered commenting before the race that the water seemed to get smoother after that buoy. That was enough. Finally, I started to swim. I was at least 100 meters into the swim at this point and it had taken me forever to get that far, as I'd actually swum maybe a dozen strokes.

The rest of the swim out to the next buoy wasn't too bad. There were still some waves, but they weren't as brutal as the ones at the beginning. The swim between buoys was the easiest part. That was the only time during the swim when I actually felt safe. The nightmare started again at the next buoy.

As I turned back towards the beach, I felt relief wash over me. The nightmare would soon be over. I swam next to the rope as I was having trouble sighting. I thought this would keep me in a straight line and it did, but it also caused me a lot of trouble. It was only going back towards the shore that I felt the current -- and it was pulling me left, right into the rope. The closer I got to shore, the worse it got. The rope was scraping my arm, my foot kept getting tangled in it and it even ended up on my neck at some point. I kept trying to swim away from it and kept getting pulled back into it. And to make matters worse, a guy came up on my right, also being pulled left by the current, and pushed me right up against the rope with nowhere to go. He actually stopped to apologize, which I found rather amusing.

I was exhausted. The stupid 750 meter swim felt more like 10,000 meters. It just wouldn't end. And it kept getting worse. Now, not only was the current pulling me to the left, but every time a wave came in, it was preceeded by an undertow that pulled me out away from the shore, making me feel like I was swimming backwards. And then, rather than throwing me towards the beach, the waves were crashing over my head. Finally, maybe 50 meters from the end, I saw someone standing and realized that I could touch bottom. This gave me a bit more confidence and I actually did stand for a moment -- I was tired and frustrated and did not want to swim anymore. I did swim more, though, of course, until it was just impossible to swim anymore. That's when I got up and walked out, slowly, just like every single person around me. It was impossible to exit the water quickly. At this point, I understood why the kids had looked so strange coming out of the water.

A glance at my watch proved what I already knew -- I'd swum a personal worst. My time for a measly 750 meters was so ridiculously slow that I'm embarrassed to share it. There were people behind me, though.

Note that every person I spoke to after the race said that the swim had been a nightmare. It made me feel a lot better to know that it wasn't only me. They actually cancelled the swim for the kids' races (the youngest kids to swim were 14) and turned the race into a duathlon.

Interestingly, the horrible swim didn't ruin the race for me or make me less motivated -- quite the opposite. The only thing I remember about the transition is that someone had thrown his socks into my back wheel and I had to remove them before I could move my bike. I got my number, helmet, sunglasses and shoes on, grabbed my bike and took off running faster than I have ever run before out of the transition area. I jumped on my bike and started passing people, determined to make up at least some of the time that I'd lost on the swim.

Apart from getting a little confused about the course (there were a bunch of traffic circles and a few strange turns), I had a very good ride. I passed a lot of people and felt very strong and confident on my bike and I think I loved this part of the race just as much as I'd hated the previous part. I finished the 20 km in a good time, especially considering the number of turns on the course and the annoying hill that I had to ride up twice.

I remember almost nothing about the second transition, either, apart from the fact that the rest of the sock guy's stuff now seemed to be scattered everywhere.

The run was four times around a rectangular course that went right through the parking lot. Weird. The first 500 meters or so of each time around were on an incline, but it wasn't too bad. I didn't feel great during the run, but I didn't feel terrible, either, and I managed to run through the pain that I had in my lower legs for the first 3 kms or so. A lot of people passed me on the run, mainly very fast guys who were already on their third or fourth time around when I started. I also saw one woman in my age group pass me, but I had no idea if she was on the same lap as I was or not, as I'd passed her on the bike and I didn't know how far behind me she'd ended up.

Before I knew it, the race was over. I finished with a huge smile on my face, only to discover several hours later that the camera at the finish line had apparently stopped working for about half an hour and that it hadn't taken my picture. Oh well! My final time for the race wasn't bad at all, considering the horrible swim time. I finished the swim 2/3 in my age group, the bike 1/3 (actually, the third woman only did one lap, but her time for that lap was two minutes slower than my time for each of the two laps) and 3/3 on the run. The woman who passed me finished a minute ahead of me and I ended up in second place in my age group. The woman who came in third was supposed to be disqualified (originally, she was listed in first place, but her 22 minute time for 20 km on the bike was completely unrealistic -- none of the elite men even came close to a time like that!), but for some reason, instead of completely disqualifying her, they moved her back from first to last place and I couldn't care less.

This was definitely not one of my better races, but what started out as a really bad experience ended up with me smiling at the end, so I guess it wasn't that bad! Oh, and was the water really cold? I don't have the slightest idea! I was too terrified to notice!

Nitzana Duathlon - 31 March 2007

2007-04-05T22:26:00.000+03:00

Thanks to 4sport for this photo and to Shvoong for the one below

It was a beautiful day for a race -- we couldn't have asked for better weather. Logic would suggest that duathlons should not be a big favorite of mine because there's no swimming, which I like, and I have to run twice, which I generally dislike (note that I did not say "hate"). And unlike in a triathlon, a duathlon requires me to bike on somewhat tired legs. What on earth could be enjoyable about that? And yet, I always like duathlons. Go figure.

Because I haven't gotten my running mileage back up since being sick, I decided to do the sprint distance at this race -- 5 km run, 20 km bike, 2.5 km run. This is generally a small race, but it was particularly small this year. There were only 40 participants in the sprint, as opposed to over 60 last year. I don't know why so few people came, but those who didn't show really missed out. This is one of my favorite races -- in a special place (right on the border with Egypt), well organized, a mainly flat course.

The first run started out ok. Everyone passed me almost right at the start and I ended up running with this other woman, who, at about 1.5 km or so, also ran ahead and left me alone (but by this point, we'd managed to pass a couple of the people who had passed us earlier, so at least I wasn't quite last). The first km was fast for me -- probably too fast. I looked down at my watch and saw 5:20 and wondered if I'd be able to keep up that pace. I wasn't. I kept running, though, frustrated at the gap that was opening up between me and the people in front of me. The course had a lot of small stones on it and one of them managed to get into my shoe, which was incredibly annoying, but didn't prevent me from being able to run. My time for the run wasn't stellar and was slightly slower than last year, but it wasn't my worst 5k time by a long shot.

When I got to the transition area, it was very easy to find my bike ;-)

The transition was so-so at best. First of all, when I took off my right shoe, I saw that there was blood on the back of it, where the stone had rubbed me. Maybe that was a good thing, as it reminded me to shake the stone out of my shoe before I had to put it on again for the second run. I don't actually remember much more about the transition itself, apart from the fact that I remembered to turn my number around, which is something I usually forget.

I knew that mounting my bike would be problematic and I was right. I haven't practiced transitions in ages. I decided to just do it slowly, but even that didn't go well. I was very wobbly and almost fell off and even had trouble finding the pedals. That was something new. I was all over the place and right at the start, some guy yelled at me to move right -- I still wasn't properly on my bike and I yelled back that I was trying. Ugh.

As bad as the mount was, the ride itself was incredible. Right at the beginning, I started passing people. First it was the guy who had passed me while I was still trying to get on the darn bike and then the woman right in front of them. There were maybe one or two other people that I could barely see up ahead at this point, so I just gave it my all and started picking off more and more people. I even tried counting. I lost count after passing 13 or 14 people (remember -- there were only 40 people in the whole race and quite a few were really far in front of me because they were mainly men who run a lot faster than I do).

There was a bit of wind on the out section, but I just got down on the aerobar and pushed. I figured that it didn't matter how much energy I used up on the bike -- I wasn't going to run fast with or without energy and I wanted to make up as much time as possible. This was a very good strategy.

The way back was a piece of cake. I did it about four minutes faster that I'd gone in the other direction (4 minutes on 10 km -- that's quite a difference). I was flying, still passing people.

The only "bad" part on the bike was that in typical duathlon style, my left calf cramped up. I had to stop pedaling several times so that I could stand up and stretch it and although it hurt a bit, I managed to deal with it pretty well and I don't think it slowed me down too much.

Getting off the bike was not as bad as getting on. I almost got run over by a kid, but apart from that it was ok. Mounting and dismounting are definitely not my strong points, so if I end up on my feet, that's good. When I got into the transition area, I was amazed at how much empty space there was on the rack. I knew I'd passed people, but it was still weird for me to see so many missing bikes. I may have to start getting used to that, though! Just before I set off for the run, a guy came in with his bike, looked at me and said, "Hey, you're not bad on the bike!" Needless to say, that made me feel good :-)

The second run was... Well... Short. 2.5 km. And thank God for that. My legs were tired, but I was able to run on them. As I was going out, I saw a woman who I know is very fast just finishing up. I realized that she was probably the first woman finisher, so I looked for some more. I didn't see a single other woman on the way out (there was one more, just up ahead of me -- I didn't see her for some reason, but I did hear them call her name when she finished). It suddenly occurred to me that for the first time ever, I might take a place in the overall results. This wasn't enough to make me sprint the rest of the way (I didn't have it in me), but it was enough to make me run fast enough to keep the women that I saw behind me away. My time for the second run was pretty bad, but none of the women passed me (even though I think that just about all of them ran better times).

Despite my slow run times, I finished almost a minute faster than last year. And I got first place in my age group. And I finished third overall (but they didn't give trophies for overall finishers in the sprint -- only in the Olympic distance). But the most thrilling part for me wasn't any of those things. When I went to look at the results, I saw that my bike split was the 10th best for women AND men. Out of 40 people on the course, only 9 had faster bike times than I did. Two of those people are my teammates who are pretty good cyclists. And the absolute best part? I had the best bike split of all the women in the sprint.

At the awards ceremony, I got another compliment. The woman who I'd run with at the beginning of the race was sitting behind me. When I turned around and noticed her there, she said something like, "You're really strong on the bike! You just whizzed past me and I couldn't catch you after that!" That made my day.

In the last year or so, I've made amazing progress on the bike. What used to be the weakest part of the race for me has become the strongest. My bike splits used to be among the slowest. Now they're up there with the fastest. And even the partial break that I took from cycling in the winter (once a week instead of twice) so that I could train for the half marathon doesn't seem to have caused any regression whatsoever. I just keep getting stronger and stronger. And unlike the run, where I always feel like I'm giving it everything I have and I'm about to die, on the bike, I always feel like maybe I can give just a little bit more and I always finish feeling like I could have doubled the distance at the same pace. Whereas I feel "stuck" on both the swim and the run, I feel like I'm only starting to get a glimpse of my potential on the bike. I look forward to continuing to test my limits.

To the person who asked about rentals...

2007-04-03T15:42:00.000+03:00

Sorry I haven't replied until now -- as you can see, I haven't posted to my blog in a while.

I'm pretty sure you can rent a bike, but I honestly don't know where. I suggest, however, that you contact the race organizers or the Israel Triathlon Association -- I'm sure they can give you an answer.

As for wetsuits, I don't know if they can be rented in Israel. You don't see them often here, as the water is rarely cold enough for them to be allowed. If you are doing the half Ironman distance, you'll find, however, that just about everyone is wearing one. If you're doing the Olympic or sprint distance, chances are they won't even be allowed (only if the water temperature is under 22 degrees Celcius, which it usually isn't in the Sea of Galilee in May). In any case, you can get a better answer from the ITA than from me.