Running The St George and Nike Womens Marathon Back to Back

After 2 weeks I finally am sitting down to document my experience running 2 marathons 8 days apart. For some who are  crazier than I, know that this is possible with a lot of dedicated training and an attitude that says "I run to see what I'm really capable of achieving". Those of you who are not as crazy might think this was a stupid idea! Well stupid or not, it is finished :)

For anyone knew to the idea of the marathon and distance running a marathon is 26.2 miles long (blame her Highness the Queen for the .2) and is quite the feat. Yes, 26.2. It is far. Drive it sometime on the freeway going 65+mph and imagine running that distance. But with a lot of work and preparation the hugely impossible distance seems somehow possible (although perhaps not easy). If you are interested in learning the why behind someone would want to run a marathon I highly recommend the documentary The Spirit of the Marathon.

I have spent the last 7 months planning, training, and preparing for these two events. They were to be the highlight of the year. It was my third time running the St George Marathon (STG) and first running the Nike Womens Marathon (NWM) in San Francisco. And let me just say they were both fabulous!

So in order to redeem myself a little bit let me explain how I ended up running both races a week apart as it wasn't my original intentions. Early March I became involved with Team in Training (TNT). TNT is the fundraising, run-for-a-cure, organization of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. After coaching them for a few months I decided I wanted to get involved and fund raise the money and complete the NWM (Interested in donating to a the cause? You can still donate to help me beat cancer! Click Here to donate.)

For anyone who knows me knows I'm not always as detail oriented as I should be. When I committed to the race Josh and I had already decided to try to get into the STG again. We entered their lottery and got into the event. We were thrilled! The one problem was the NWM would be only 2 weeks later, or so I thought. It took me about a month to realize the STG was on Oct 6th and the NWM was on Oct 14th which meant they were only 8 days apart! Gulp! By that time I was already committed to both and so I figured, what the heck, why not try? I believed in myself at this point that if I was able to complete the training I would be able to do both races and live to tell the tale.

As I previously stated I have spent the last 7 months training for both of these events and I can honestly say it was such an amazing experience! I would do it again in a heart beat. STG marathon is definitely one of my favorites for its beautiful scenery, wonderful race organization, and support. The NWM offered awesome energy, tons of estrogen power and an extremely coveted medal, a specially designed Tiffany's necklace. That's right the medal was a Tiffany's medal! HOW cool is that? Be jealous, be very  jealous ;0)

St George Marathon in St George, UT

Oct 6 was absolutely perfect weather for running! It started off a little chilly, 48 or so deg F at the starting line. We started in Snow Canyon outside of St George, UT and followed SR-18 all the way till we reached St George. Running through red rock country in the early morning hours is breathtaking and awe inspiring. I couldn't help feel sorry for the runners who were stuck running around a track or on a treadmill. I have yet to find any other experience that leaves me feeling so empowered and strong as it does to know that my own two feet and legs can travel that distance.

Josh and I stayed together off and on throughout the run, I left him once and he me. But we managed to meet up around mile 16 and finish the race together. We managed to forget our water belts and so had to use every aid station, which always slows you down a little. Not to mention having to use the bathroom. It was hard, but we did really well and finished in a time of 4:03 mins a PR! Josh was mad because he didn't beat my sisters time of 3:59. Next year Anna, next year.

Crossing the finish line I still felt pretty strong, tired, and some sore spots but not like death like I would have expected. Guess that means I could have gone faster ;0) We definitely tried though. One of the biggest challenges of a marathon is knowing how to pace yourself so that you do your best, without failing and fatiguing to soon.

After the race I was only mildly tired and sore. Which was definitely a good sign. Josh was in a little worse shape than I was, mainly because he doesn't ever train as well. Sunday I was a little more sore and stiff so I forced myself to walk around lots. Monday we left for our San Francisco fun and did TONS more walking, which I won't get into here, but it really helped me recover for NWM on Sunday.

Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco, CA

Sunday started out a little chilly, about 55 F. At 6am I was making my way to the starting corrals to get in with my pace group for the race. When the gun went off it was just like watching a slug move across the sidewalk. It took me 7 mins to get 2 blocks to the starting line from where my starting corral was.

It stayed dark for the first 30 mins or so but the sun never came out. The infamous SF fog was thick and seeped all across the race course which ran along the bay, or as close as it could get for the majority of the race. It was awesome weather! I was so grateful for the fog, even if it did spoil the view of the ocean and could hardly see the Golden Gate bridge at all. At mile 4 I stopped and waited for my friend Nicole to catch up. She had started two corrals behind me so we decided we'd just meet up after the crowds had thinned up some (which by the way, with 25,000 runners it didn't thin till we split from the 1/2 marathon group). It took her a while, apparently the starting line was slower than snails for her, and we continued on our marry way, taking pictures as we went. I have included some of those pictures for your amusement :)

Starting line ahead! poor SFers trying to sleep in on a Sunday morning!

The crowd behind me

Ready and pumped to start!

It was truly impressive how many women were out there! The race is obviously geared towards women, and while there were some men it was only about 1-2% of 25,000 participants out on the course. We had no problem enjoying ourselves and the views, despite Nicole having serious fights with an ankle that was giving her a lot of grief and caused us to do a fair amount of walking. I must say she was a trooper. Josh joined us at about mile 16 and finished the race with us. He's such a swell guy. Nicole and I finished the race together in 5 hours and 40 minutes! It was awesome! We crossed the finish line, received our Tiffany's necklace and enjoyed eating our post race snacks on the beach watching the waves roll in. No better way to end a race I do believe!

Beach at the finish line

Goofing around at the TNT Finishers tent 

Ahhhh.... sweet success :)

So, two marathons in 2 weeks. I did it. It was a challenge, but we took our time during the NWM and so that definitely helped and made it so I felt relatively good post race. I was hardly sore at all! and I'm thankful to report No blisters, missing toenails, or excessive chaffing! Woot!

Hope you have a great run yourself!

Creating Your Own Endless Pool: Product Review

So a long while back I received a fun opportunity from a company called AquaGear. They are a family owned company based out of Florida that specialize in water sports such as swimming, water aerobics and scuba diving. And they were looking for blog authors (like myself) to test out and review their site and one of their swim products. So of course I couldn't say no and took them up on the offer.

 

I spent a fair amount of time perusing their site looking for something... some fun toy that I don't already own. I looked at a variety of things, including underwater cameras, paddles, and swim fins. Their inventory is quite extensive and really well organized. As you can see when you visit their site along the left hand column there is a variety of options for searching for what you need and want. They have their products organized by activity, as well as by brand. I must say I always appreciate a straight forward, easy to navigate website and theirs was just that.

I also liked that they sell a wide variety of styles for each product, so its like shopping on Amazon or some major retailer, but is a family owned specialty shop. Their prices are also very comparable to other specialty shops and the few times I've been on their site they also seem to have sales quite frequently.

Once I picked what I wanted I placed my order and it came within the time promised ~ 5 business days. I was thrilled when I received the package! It always feels like Christmas a little not to mention I always love new training toys.

I am sure you are all intrigued to what I picked? Well... Dun Dun Dun!

 

Training Leash by Water Gear
Item # 68757

Ok so you may be wondering what it is? Well, its a training leash! Basically its a resistance band like you would use in the gym but it is obviously made for swimming. Fun Huh? So there are two reasons why I chose this item 1: as a resistance band I can use it to help improve stroke strength and efficiency. And 2: when rigged correctly I can use it to create an endless pool for swimming in hotel pools or when I am training for Tri's and don't want to bother with turning at the wall. So while this product is not necessarily designed to be rigged for shorter pools, it can be safely done and that is what I used it for this week.

Josh and I were staying in the Hilton Hotel (I know I know fancy right?) in San Francisco before I ran the marathon and we a cold, cloudy day to test it out in their outdoor heated pool.

The leash is 20' long and comes with an adjustable belt that wraps around the waist and a yellow strap on the end that can be used to loop around the ladder or blocks (in a competitive use pool). Their are three resistance options, yellow, blue and red. Yellow being the lightest of the three. After testing it out, I think I would go with at least the blue for anyone who has had significant swimming experience, technique and training like myself. The yellow is appropriate for Josh a more novice swimmer however.

 

Josh attempting to swim laps in this ~5yd pool

 

Pertty ain't she?

 The leash is 20' and therefore took a little rigging to make it small enough so that it would allow for adequate stretch without reaching the other end of the pool. This took making a loop knot around the ladder and then fully wrapping the leash around the ladder 1 1/2 times. We then attached the leash to the belt and then to Josh.

 As you can see Josh is able to get almost all the way down to the other end where he can stay in place with a moderate amount of resistance which will increase his workout intensity only slightly.

Another pic of the set up

As you can see this is really quite easy to use. I did film Josh using the leash... you'll have to pardon my mouth in the first few seconds... My bad...

We spent about 1/2 hour testing out the leash and playing around with it. I was successfully able to use it for all 4 of the competitive strokes (front crawl, backstroke, breast stroke, and butterfly) and while the leash is a little bothersome as you tend to kick it and what have you it wasn't so bad that it drove me crazy. I do have a very steady kick however and Josh found it to be more of a nuisance than myself. Another point, which I brought up before is that the yellow is very light. And while you can put a significant amount of stretch on it, the band is so thin I'd be worried that a strong swimmer would wear out the rubber leash much more quickly. The band is made of the same rubber material as therabands/tubes you'd use in the gym and if you've seen those they crack and tear with age, friction, and use. I am interested to see how the material holds up in highly chlorinated pools but as of now have no idea what the life span of the rope is. 

The Water Gear Training Leash is right now on sale for $39.95 which is a pretty standard price for something of its quality. They do sell another training leash that is quite a bit more expensive ($80) that also looks fun to try. For the price, I'd definitely say this training leash is a good deal and would recommend it to anyone interested in either the endless pool or increase resistance functions. 

Check out AquaGear.com for more info on this as well as other swim products for all your swimming needs!

Discount on Massage

Hello!

So my friend Holly, a licensed massage therapist is offering a discount on massages for the month of October just for you! See below for more info!!!


ROCK-TOBER"

Always wanted to try a hot stone massage and see what it was all about?

Well now you can at an affordable price!!

October Special

is $75 for 90min hotstone

Save an additional $5 if you book your appt online at

www.symmetrymassage.net

$70 for 90min of Heaven!!!

call or visit our website today!!

Benefits of a Hot Stone massage include:

deeper relaxation

 muscles and tension release with ease.

Feels fantastic!!

Holly Crofts LMT
Symmetry Massage
3900 South 715 East Suite 212
Salt Lake City, Utah 84107
801-897-7929
www.symmetrymassage.net

Conquering the Half

So as always these posts are long overdue, I can't help it! :) I'm just that lazy.

On August 25th I completed my very first Half Distance Triathlon, more specifically the Bear Lake Brawl Half Distance Triathlon. For those of you unsure, triathlons come in a variety of distances most commonly known as Sprint, Olympic, Half, and Full. Each of these distances is roughly 2x's the distance of the one prior to it. The distances of each sport in the half is 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and a 13.1 run.

Training for this race was a little haphazard as I have been training for multiple events this year including smaller distance triathlons, marathons, ultra-marathon, and bike century ride. Due to how the schedule worked out as well as some of my other hang ups with biking I really neglected training on my bike, simply hoping that the outrageous numbers of miles I was putting in running would help me squeak by on the bike. I did however spend a significant amount of time training the swim which really helped me to feel prepared and confident to be able to race the swim. Thanks to two previous triathlons and several outdoor swim training sessions I had also gained better control of my anxiety in the open water that had somehow still managed to plague me at the start of the year.

So I guess you could see that I was at least decently prepared in 2 of the three events. Which only left me the tiniest bit nervous about my overall performance and time to completion. Not to get ahead of myself, but I did manage to do better than I expected on the bike.

Friday we drove up to Garden City/Bear Lake from our house in West Jordan. What should have taken only 2 hours took us 4 freakin hours! The traffic was awful! Between the Utah/USU football game, LOTOJA, and rush hour traffic we just couldn't get ANYWHERE fast. Josh was so cranky by the time  we arrived in Garden City that it took all the effort that I had to not die of laughter when he saw the condition of the motel we were staying in. Ha ha ha oppsss...

Josh, like everyone, has his hangups of things he does not tolerate or like very much, and one of those things is nasty hotel rooms. I found this out on our "honey moon" which, was not really a honeymoon but that is neither here nor there.  I booked the motel a few weeks before thinking that with the race it would be dreadful to find a place to stay and so I literally booked the first room that google showed available. It was dreadfully ironic because just the week before (Labor Day weekend) my sister had wanted to share a hotel room with us in St George and Josh whined and complained when he learned there were cockroaches in the room (heaven forbid). So when we arrived and saw this he was not pleased with me. However, despite its grubby outward appearance it was at least a clean grubby look on the inside. So he eventually forgave me for the indignity.

Here are a few shots of the room:

Sorry I couldn't figure out how to flip this. But this was our sinkfridgestove. Pretty nifty huh?

Settled right in! He didn't even require a sheet to lay on top of :)

Super modern and high tech TV, closet and bathroom.

Once fed and moderately settled we laid down to watch some shows on that killer tv set. All's I can say is I felt lucky to have DirecTV :p  We had found out that they had pushed back the start of the race until 9am the next day! And because I was in the 3rd wave of swimmers I wouldn't start until 10 am! I was bewildered not knowing what to do with myself! I had never done a race that started so late. Normally at 9pm I'm going to sleep because of how early we have to get up, but this time... I felt like we had all the time in the world. So I didn't feel the urge to go bed. So what did I do instead? Got myself pumped up by watching 2 hours of CSI before going to sleep.

The next morning we arrived to set up the transition area. Typically Josh is racing with me, but since he wasn't this time he got to play support crew. Lucky him. He helped me retrieve things from the car that I had forgotten and buy me extra food and what have you. Then... I had to wait. The race was super small. Only 183 people in all. Which is both frustrating and nice all at the same time. Typically races are so big that you feel very anxious and stressed because you are constantly being pushed around and kicked in the swim and there is no space for you in the transition. So having practically no one made the stress and anxiety levels much lower. However, fewer racers means that you kind of lose that racey feeling that you love so much.

By the time I was in the water warming up it was about 9:40 and I was still getting use to my new wetsuit (big no-no by the way, I should have practiced in it multiple times prior to race day). Luckily my wetsuit and I bonded quickly. Once the swim started I felt strong, but wanted to pace myself a little in the beginning. We ended up doing an out and back 2x's and it was so crazy but both times once I turned around and was heading back towards the beach I felt like I came to a stand still. No matter how hard I tried I didn't feel like I was moving forward at all. I can only assume it was either in my head or there was a weird current there. The swim went well and I was pretty quick out of the water and onto the bike. One thing I learned that I need to consider for future racing is bringing a water bucket to rinse my feet in... they were covered in sand. I ended up using someone else's water bucket :) and no I never said thanks.

Once on the bike it was really just the mental games, since the route was incredibly easy and beautiful. Basically I rode completely around the lake. It was SO pretty I am tempted to do it again. Mentally it was challenging for a few reasons. One, I was not 100% sure what intensity I should be holding. If I go to slow, I miss knowing what I'm capable of. If I go to fast I burn out and my run will suffer. The whole time it was like a game of slowing down, speeding up, etc. Not too mention I was also trying to get used to the aero-bars (another first time no-no). Then there was this whole getting passed by what felt like everyone... ok not quite, but it felt like it. No matter your reasons for signing up for a race it is difficult to not let the mental game of wanting to compare yourself to others get to you. However I did the best I could.

Once on the run I felt fatigued but still fairly strong. I wish I had my gps on me because I must have been going pretty fast, according to our best guess I hit mile 2 in about 15 minutes. Of course I wasn't able to hang on to this speed, but I did pretty well until about mile 7 when all of a sudden I started to feel something similar to COPD. Or in laymans terms I was hyperventilating. The pressure of my sports bra on my chest in combo with my rapid rate of breathing had increased the pressure between my lungs and the outer plueral layer which meant that I was not able to fully exhale and I couldn't then get enough air into my lungs. So basically it came down to only two options 1. slow down and walk or 2. take the bra off and finish without it. well... I chose option #2. So after taking it off I still had to go pretty slow while I attempted to recover, but it did get better. Well, that was until my abs then started to cramp :) I was able to hang on until about mile 10 then had to start walking on and off. At mile 11.5 a girl was trying to catch up and pass me which gave me the motivation to pick it up and push through all of the pain and discomfort. I managed to go fast enough that she never caught up!

I crossed the line at 6 hours and 3 minutes. Not competitively fast, but due to the small number of females and the fact that the top 3 females over all were in my age group I managed to come in 3rd place in my age group. Ha ha not something to really brag about but I'll take it.

Here are some pictures of the finish.

Swim Start!

Start of the run

Finish line! I wanted to die! :)