Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 90)

My computer died over the weekend (won’t even turn on), so I’m using Ryan’s to get caught back up. 

John, thanks for the swim workouts.  I think those will come in handy!  My swim workouts lately have consisted of taking the kids to the pool.  I'm quite proud of my little 3 year old who has progressed tremendously lately in feeling comfortable in the water.  The baby has no fear though- he loves to put his head in the water.  There's no stopping him!

Dina, have fun teaching VBS.  It sounds like you are crazy busy this week, but I get the feeling you like that. 

Tony, nice job on your OWS.  It’s probably good to have a couple of those under your belt to build your confidence. 

Karl, remind your wife that a lot of people fall when they are first starting to ride.  The first day I rode with shoes and pedals was also the day that I got my aerobars put on my bike.  I wiped out pretty badly and cracked off one of my new aerobars.  Oops!  She’s not alone.  Sometimes it just takes a few falls. 

Jeff, what a sweet boy you have.  What a busy schedule too!  Good luck in your Xterra race. 

Jonathan, we will all come and watch you in the Death Race, ok? 

I have thought about a relay several times and even asked her (last year) if she might be interested doing one.  She said that she wasn't then bu if she were she would only be interested in the swim which would be more than fine with me. I like the idea of doing a relay  and it would be really nice to get both of my girls into a relay team at some point.

I may try to find a short sprint before the end of the year and try to get them involved.  I might be able to find a cause to do it for too.  Maybe Breast cancer since Lis just had that scare a couple of months ago.  I don't think the girls knew how scared Lis was so I might be able to communicate that to them and maybe we could raise a little bit of money for it.  That might be a little bit of motivation for them.

Jeff,  It sounds like you had a great time with your son.  As you know, my struggles seeing my oldest daughter getting older and moving in the direction of being on her own the times you are spending with your kids now are vitally important for them and for you.  The bad part about creating thememories with your kids at younger ages means that the seperation later on will be harder on us as parents.

I think the weekend away from training probabl sounds like it was a good thing for you.  You could recover from your training a little more than usual and really feel great for more of the upcoming WO's and maybe even nail some key WO's a little harder.  I am equally as disinterested in missing any WO's but it is becoming a little more routine than I would like and I am learning to accept it. 

Another thing, I am glad to hear you are giving a little bit back to the sport though volunteering at the race.  This is something I need to do but it's hard when I am so close to my key races and I feel under trained already.  I hope to find one after my last race of the season to volunteer at.

You are doing some incredible training.  I don't think I've done a 14 mile run in decades.  This fall I resolve to do so!

You will eat this up because you are a fighter, you come alive when the struggle gets hard!

Hey Junkies,

I'll be going offline for about a week starting tomorrow. Family vacation to Washington state and I'm not sure if I'll have opportunity to get online during that time.

I know the mentor program is about to wrap up and I imagine we'll get archived before much longer. Before that happens I just wanted to say to Dirk, Jeff, Warren, and Jonathan that I am so grateful for your mentorship of this group and the winter junkies group as well. You have each given me input these last 7 months that has helped immensely in both my training and racing. You guys rock!

For example: last September I swam my first race at 2:18/100 yards pace and in my most recent race I swam 1:42/100 yards, and the distance was twice as far as last years race!

I know we'll all keep in touch through the forums here and some on Facebook too, so this isn't a goodbye statement. I just wanted to give a shout out to you guys while the group is still so active.

Update on where I am currently: I recently started training in Kung Fu San Soo to help my overall fitness. This is doing some serious work on those upper leg muscles that needed strengthening to help my knees. Plus it is a lot of fun.

The knee injury I struggled with thru May seems to be completely healed and I'm getting back on track for building towards a half marathon in October.

Swim is doing well. My hard effort 200 in the pool last week was 3:22 down from 3:37 earlier in the year.

Still need to focus on the bike more.

That's it for now. Keep on training!

I have been keping up with the competitor vs completer topic from earlier in the week, and wanted to drop my 2 cents worth.  I think that if you are in this sport then you are definitely a competitor.  Whether its against someone else, your own PR or you are just trying to complete the race there is some competition involved.

For me I have always competed against myself.  Starting with kicking some habits, to making it the 1 mile down the road and on to the half marathon's I've completed and hopefully finishing a HIM.  But as I get faster and slowly move up in the results its hard not to compete against other athletes.  Which brings me to my new goal.  At my last race I was chatting with Dirk and a friend.  My friend has been running for several years so he is much faster than me.  In my glory days though I was always more athletic and faster, of course that was before 15 years of smoking and too many Bud lights!  I think he relishes the fact he has passed me.  Anyway, during the conversation  we started talking about me getting to the point I pass him back.  His comment back was

"If I ever let you beat me, I will kick myself"

Twice this week I have thought about this comment during a difficult section of a workout and it gave me a bit of a push.  I will make sure he gets to kick himself!  Especially since he has to LET me beat him .  I have definitely turned into a full blown competitor!

 How long/high is the hill climb?

mambos - 2012-07-26 7:33 PM

owl_girl - 2012-07-26 10:00 AM Today, I'm going to do my last long run before the Hill Climb.  I'll be running about 14 miles.  The Hill Climb is in 9 days.  Yikes!

I think you made a mistake on your post, Hill climb and run should never be in the same sentence!   During runs I avoid hills like they are a plague, I would rather add 5 miles to the run instead of running up a hill.

 How long/high is the hill climb?

LOL!!!!

13.5 miles and 5100ish feet of elevation gain.  Let the pain begin!  Or, as the race director pointed out.....pain means bread in French.  I don't know French.  I'll eat lots of bread. 

You've done awesome!  Rock on neighbor!  Have a great vacation.

Thank you.  I think you're right.  I love challenges but I'm tentative in training.  I don't want to hurt myself.

JoAnne glad to hear that your training for the IM is progressing well. You are getting pretty close about 6 more weeks left. Keep working hard it will certainly pay off come race time.

Matt good for you for finding some motivation from that comment. I think I would have been pretty insulted by that and the way you are progressing you will probably be able to give your friend a run for his money sooner than you think.

Well I can finally say I have a race this weekend. While I enjoy hearing about everyone else racing and I really enjoy reading the race reports I feel I have not contributed much since I haven't done anything. It has been over 9 months since I ran the Hartford Marathon which was my last race so I am dying to get back out there this weekend and see what I can do at this Oly Tri. To be honest it has been by design as I wanted to get as much training and work in before giving it go. I hope this strategy pays off for me. I was thinking about what I would like to accomplish for my debut so to speak and I came up with a few goals for this weekend:

1- Have fun and enjoy the expierence

2- Finish the race in the best time you can without killing yourself

3- Make sure and thank the volunteers, there'd be no race without them

4- Encourage others while out on the course

5- Meet as many others as I can especially some of the BT'ers who will be there.

If I can do those 5 things then I think my debut would be a big success and hopefully all this training will be worth it.

another dumb ????

I was trying to post some pics and it says they are to big.  Is it an adjustment on the computer or camera.  Sorry but I am so computer challenged it if horrible...  That is why I do all my training computer free...lol

Here are a couple of pic I promised to post a month ago.

Hopefully they will come out well because I haven't used this site.  I only remember Dina posting from it a while ago.

(Junkie Dirk.jpg)

Karl, Dirk is right Dina did post a while back on how to do this. There are a bunch of online web sites that you can use if you search on "resize photos online". I did this the other day using http://www.resizemypicture.com/ but there are a bunch of sites out there you can use. It's pretty straight forward.

Dirk great photo!

Ok.  I am going to try to get those pics up again.  I tried for a while when my pic got posted but it wouldn't size down far enough to be posted on BT.  I tried several different options and was unsuccessful until Tony posted the other link.  I was trying tinypic.com and it's not as friendly as resizemypicture.com

So, here they are.  From June 23, Warsaw sprint triathlon. 

I added a pic of Lisa and I that Allison took after I received my award because Lis is a big part of Team Junkie and my biggest supporter.  I'll get the actual file pictures to Allison and Brenda via email soon..................Like I promised to do a month ago.

I think it is good to point out that Brenda's picture is one of my favorites.  If any of you outside of Indiana get the pleasure of meeting her you will find that she is ALWAYS smiling.  Those of you on FB may already have seen this picture there and noticed that I titled it "the smilingest triathlete ever" because of her smile.

Allison told me after the race that she was suffering during the run and when I took the pics of her she was looking up at the top of the hill she was about to climb, so she doesn't appear to be quite as happy as Brenda.  If I were to post a pic of me climbing the same hill I might look worse than Allison.  Of course that would be the case even if I weren't racing and in pain.

(Warsaw Junkies (2).jpg)

(Junkie Brenda.jpg)

(Honorary Junkie Lisa.jpg)

(Junkie Allisonjpeg.jpg)