where did THAT come from?!

Flexibility. That's the word of the year for me and its one of my weakest traits. I knew with my scheduling challenges that it would be a key skill I need to develop balancing the fellowship and training this season. So far I've done really well rearranging, letting go, getting in what I can and being pleased with that. The biggest challenge I've had is when I have full days of work on the weekend (which I have usually 3 out of every 4 weeks). If I get 50% of my weekend training load in on those weekends, well, thats a huge success.

With very little expectations of myself, we did some test workouts at the end of my first 4 week block of training. Last Friday morning, I headed out with one of my students that I have been looking forward to training with. She ran cross country and track for my alma mader (University of Wisconsin Madison) and also has a 2:50 marathon pr. While I love a push from training with someone faster than me, I was pretty scared of running with her at all since she is so far out of my league. We set out to do the 5k test with a plan to start at a conservative 6:30 pace and see what happened. I had almost zero confidence in my fitness and I have a severe dislike of 5k's :)

2 minutes into it we are feeling our pace stabilize, strong and steady and we both look down at our garmin which is telling us we are running 5:15 pace. shit. I knew this would inevitably lead to a blow up but somehow it didn't feel that bad. We went through the first mile at 6:06 and just shortly after that first split Meghan started pulling away (mind you this is threshold pace for me and like her marathon pace...). I hung on her hip for maybe a quarter mile and after that it was all about keeping her in sight. The worst part of a 5k is always between that first and second mile. Somehow I managed to keep her in sight and die way less than normal and clock a 6:34 and 6:48 mile to finish up at 20:10. It took me until after the warm down and shower to realize, wait a minute.... that was like really solid! Less than a minute off my open 5k pr and about 2 minutes faster than I ever ran in training!

My power numbers on the bike came back a bit higher than they would have last year as well and I'm finding myself needing to bump up the pace on my speedwork to hit my heartrates! I'm most definitely shocked and excited to see progress! I'm glad that my first race in 3 weeks is an olympic though. My training has definitely been more suited to shorter distances due to my time restrictions so we will see what my legs have for the 70.3 distances coming up in just a few short weeks.

My legs haven't felt this snappy and fresh in a long time. I'm getting pretty excited to race! Like Dirk said, maybe I just need to work more and train less! Ha! It seems to be working for the moment anyhow...

the big 3-0

This is the year. Come June I will no longer be a 20 something. I used to laugh at people who got so upset over age. Really? Its just a number, get over it. You should be happy you got to live long enough to experience so much life!

But here it is on my very own doorstep and at the very least, it does give me pause for a little reflection. Mostly what I have felt is a great joy for all the amazing people in my life, for my soulmate whom I seem to love more and more and in different ways all the time, for all the things I've gotten to experience, see and do.... I have been really stuck with the thought that if I could have written out life's plan when I was a dramatic teenager, I could never have even dreamed of all the awesome things I would do in life before I even hit 30.

I have a student right now who will be about my age when she graduates PT school and she was asking me about the fellowship since its something she is interested in doing in the future. But she was so fraught with anxiety about how that would fit with the life plan she had scheduled out. I think the biggest thing that gets in the way of success, happiness and fulfillment is having too rigid of a life plan. When you are so busy planning life, you close your mind to all the opportunities that present themselves. Had I stayed in Wisconsin instead of taking my brother's offer to live in the virgin islands with him, I would have never met Neil and I would have missed out on so much life experience, traveling and growth that occurs when you live in a different culture. Being open to life's opportunities and never saying no to a door that is opening is definitely the way to live.

I would have never gotten to dive every morning and party every night and island hop with the likes of Kenny Chesney. Yup, that's him right next to me.

As far as USAT is concerned, I turned 30 already. On January 1st... So what 30 REALLY means is that its time to race with the big girls. yipes.... There's a certain lack of confidence I've had with goal setting for the season with it being my first step into what I think is the toughest female age group on the ironman circuit. Before I could confidently hope for podiums and qualifications and pretty much know what to expect out of my competition. This season is totally uncharted territory but I really look forward to the chance to step up my game to the level required to be competitive in 30-34. New Orleans should be interesting!! Good thing some of the toughest ladies I know (beth, beth, kim) are racing pro this year! And by the way, I am so over the top excited for all of them. I cannot wait to watch their pro debut and watch their years of hard work and dedication hit the road. You guys are going to destroy it this year!

Until June, I'm just going to work on soaking up the last moments of my 20's. Finishing off this decade super satisfied with life and having total confidence that I'm right where I'm supposed to be in my career, my marriage and my personal life is a pretty sweet satisfaction to enjoy.

2 weeks deep

I assure you I'm still alive :)

And still cross fitting it up (not so successfully with the giant rope, holy lack of core strength)!

Life is great actually and I've been filled with a constant sense of fulfillment and joy for a lot of reasons. Now that I'm knee deep in my fellowship and the anxieties of its newness have worn off, I realize that despite how busy I am, I've never felt such intellectual and personal fulfillment from my work. I always used to hear people who really love their job say that it doesn't feel like a job or it doesn't feel like work and I thought they were pretty full of it. I'm starting to really feel like this isn't a job- its really just a series of some seriously awesome opportunities that I have been soaking up. Every day I get to work one on one with awesome patients and super expert clinicians who challenge me to think in different ways. I get to take a ridiculous amount of continuing education that is all paid for and I'm being given more and more opportunities to teach and get to know my students even better. On top of all that, I've amassed about 200 running related research articles that I have been dying to get my hands on. Now I have a librarian at my disposal who has access to all of it and just whips it all into my email. Seriously. You should see me a 6 am with the giant university copiers printing off books of running research totally giddy with nerdy excitement. I'm such a dork but its so awesome. I can think of nothing better than spending a week at a great coffee shop with my volumes of research that I can't wait to review. On top of all that, I think I just may have gotten permission to do a special hip dissection which will help me prove a lot of my theories on hip dysfunction. Basically if I'm interested and I ask, someone will make it happen. Whoa. That's a whole lot of access to some pretty great learning and knowledge.

Sorry, enough about the fellowship....

On the training front, I'm at two weeks in! Coach Dirk came up with a masterpiece of a schedule that somehow has pretty much worked for me and I've been able to fit it all in so far. It's been really different from my previous workouts and has been just the right amount of challenge at the right time without any huge hours. I'm totally loving it!

I've had a lot of realizations, one of which is that I was burned out after last season. I'm totally admitting it. Somehow in my mind, I was on this accelerating train and once the train rolled through Kona, the only option was more. Stronger, faster, harder, longer, more training, more ironmans.... but my all or nothing self didn't really consider that I could be happy doing olympic's and 70.3's and toning the training down 5 or 6 notches. BUT now that I'm doing just that, its amazing and I'm so glad I didn't pass up the opportunity to race this year. I'm learning that I can enjoy training at a much lower level and not death grip my training schedule to the point of anxiety when life comes at me. I've been really good at being flexible and adjusting to work, friends, social commitments and not stressing out about missing a workout here or there. I'm super happy with what I HAVE been doing and not focused on what I miss.

I'm coming back from a stupid little foot injury and its been much better overall. I can actually run workouts now with just some soreness whereas a month ago I could barely limp to the end of the block. I have an inflammed little bone in my foot called a sesamoid (which is ridiculously important given that you push of off it with every single foot fall). It turns out that you can be a really smart PT and a really stupid patient- hill repeats at 10% on tuesday definitely put more strain on a big toe that doesn't want to extend dummy....

I'm anxiously awaiting a big box of wattie ink/kswiss love and I get so sad every day I come home and its not on my door step. Soon I know it! I'm going to do my first race of the season in Clermont towards the end of March so its time to step it up the next few weeks then onto New Orleans! I so cannot wait to race!!!

A more holisitic approach to training: Diet

Most incredible sunrise from work last week

I just got my first weekly email from the dirkinator. This can mean only one thing... starting tomorrow I am officially training again. I will be an athlete with a coach, goals, races....

And I can't freaking wait to be back at it!

The last few weeks I have been craving a training schedule and my old triathlon routine but after waiting out a few little minor injuries and a nasty cold, I'm finally ready to roll just shy of February 1st. Better late than never huh?!

This year is all about a different approach to training for me all the way around. I'm looking forward to taking triathlon from the desperate "I will do anything to be on the start line at kona" me to a more holisitic, healthy approach to training and racing. One big part of that is going to be taking a step back and further reassessing my goals. I have a few season goals in mind but the one that matters most is to have fun. That will most certainly guide me in all my decisions for the coming year.

Another big change I want to make is to integrate training into my life in a way that is more healthy. Prior to this season, workouts took priority over a lot of things in my life, sometimes to the detriment of relationships and work. But this season I plan on just enjoying being an athlete and having the health and fitness to be out there representing wattie ink. Being an athlete (and more specifically a triathlete) has always been an important part of my identity but I'm looking to bring it back in line with the other parts of my identity as well. Ah the old cliche we all love to blog about... wait for it... here it is..... balance :)

The other big change I'm hoping to make this year is in my diet. And yes *disclaimer* I've been sipping on the crossfit kool aid. I've always enjoyed trying different diets and been super interested in how food affects our bodies and our health. For the most part, I've always just focused on eating "healthy" all while still enjoying a hefty does of whatever the hell I wanted to eat. This was of course exacerbated by my lack of time while ironman training and working a busy full time job with a long commute. So while I might have prepared a few healthy dishes over the weekend to eat for the week ahead, the reality was that when I was hungry, I ate whatever was closest to me. At the office that was cake, donuts, chocolate covered popcorn, cookies.... after my power kale whatever salad I had made for lunch that day.

Enter crossfit into my life post kona and I was opened up to the realm of paleo and zone and the general lower carb side of the nutritional spectrum. I had discarded the whole idea of "low" (or even deemphasized) carb diet after doing two weeks of atkins while I was in australia and nearly collapsing when my legs gave out on me on a hike through the blue mountains. This girl was raised on pasta, waffles, pancakes, cereal.... all carb all the time.

Well for new years, the crew at the gym did diet challenge and I joined in. The first week we did a diet called greenfaces. Bascially all you could eat was green veggies and anything that ever had a face on it at one time (ie. animal). We all know its extreme, its only meant to be for a week before reintroducing a diet with a heavy focus on protein, good fats and basically just whole foods. A modified paleo with allowance for good quality grains, healthy protein, loads of veggies and well timed fruit intake. Nothing crazy (except that first week), just clean eating.

I made it 6 full days on greenfaces before I caved which was nothing short of a miracle given that I'm a former vegetarian (we aren't going to talk about how much my stomach loved all that meat). BUT I learned alot! I really realized how much sugar and processed foods affected me and as I've slowly begun to change the macronutrient content of my diet, I'm floored at how much better I feel. I don't crave as much garbage food and I don't get ravenously hungry between meals like I used to. I'm still a work in progress and I've been far from perfect but its been a huge learning experience for me and the positive benefits I've felt from just a few short weeks with this nutritional strategy are most definitely self reinforcing. Its been amazing to see that I can actually have BETTER body composition with this type of diet and high intensity strength training versus massive hours ironman training complemented with a high sugar/simple carbohydrate intake. I thought for sure that I was in the best shape I would ever be in in my entire life when I was ironman training but now I can see otherwise!

I cannot wait to apply my new found fueling strategy to my training and racing this season. I'm planning on attempting to cut out a lot of the simple sugars I used to use in training as well. No more gatorade, gels or sugary semisolids. I've been on the hunt for good whole food recipes for use while I'm training and while I may use some of the simple stuff while racing, cutting out a lot of the crap we use when training is a big goal for this year.

Bring on the first week of real training in 2012!

Broiled salmon with salad of acorn squash, cannelini beans, kale, garlic, shallots.... Lunch!

almond butter and oatmeal balls rolled in dark cocoa powder from Alida's kitchen thanks to my amazing friend Chloe!

The Start of Something Good

Well, the news is out! All that it took to get me back into racing this year was the opportunity to rock the W :) How can I say no to sick kits, edgy design, a laundry list of amazing sponsors and a fun team to race with?!

I'm super stoked to have this opportunity and I can't wait to have fun with it. I would be lying if I didn't admit that I have occasional bouts of panic trying to figure out how I am going to manage training and the fellowship but truth be told, its a great learning experience in balance. I'm going to just have to take it one day at a time and do what I can and keep it all in perspective. I think sometimes we all take some risks in our career to carve out the time for the love of our sport and I know I certainly did that in my previous job in order to get to Kona. Now that the Kona monkey is off my back though, I'm getting a whole new perspective on the place of training and racing in my life. I'm not stressed about it like I tended to get when it was all about Kona. Now that I've accomplished that huge goal, this year is all for fun (and for rockin that super cute kit!)

It's really refreshing to attempt to let go of the uber focused type A triathlete mentality I locked into in years past. I'm still thinking about race scheduling for the year but I know that I will mainly focus on 70.3's, olympics and a few local sprints and try to see if I can find some speed again! I think I am the most excited for the huge get together thats starting to form for New Orleans in April! It seems like all my favorite blogging triathlon buddies from around the country are coming to race.

The fellowship has been going really well. I am thoroughly enjoying getting to work around some of the top people in our profession and absorbing so much of their knowledge. It is so fulfilling to me and I continue to be super grateful and happy every day I get to go back to school. The first week felt a bit like trying to run and catch up to a moving train but now that I feel like I've caught up to the flow of things, I feel my confidence, excitement and passion for my profession building daily. I even get excited to go assistant teach on the weekends both because I really enjoy relearning the material at a higher level and I am loving helping the students to learn and appreciate it as well. I wondered how I would feel about working on the weekend rather than swimbikerunning with friends all day long but, so far, I haven't minded it at all.

Next week I will get to do my first real solo teaching for a small part of an orthopedics lab and I'm so curious to see how I handle it. I love that I'm constantly being pushed just far enough out of my comfort zone to grow and I can't wait to see what the entire year brings.

I had point this week where I wondered if I was really ready to return to training. I guess its the anxiety I get before I start a training season again. Since I start with Dirk this week, I felt like it was my last chance to assert my laziness if I chose to do so. But I woke up this morning and couldn't think of anything better than going for a run (a short one, I have a little mechanical issue in my foot I'm need to fix 100% before I go too crazy). I took my ipod for the first time in ages and pumped some good tunes and at the end of the run, the perfect song came on. Let me preface this by saying I'm kind of a music snob. I float somewhere between the indie/punk/alternative snob with an affinity for hip hop and the occasional soft heart for country. BUT I've been known to fall in love with the occasional pop song and I'm sorry, but I LOVE Kelly Clarkson (I know, a couple years too late right?). That "my life would suck without you" song came on and I just sprinted home with the biggest endorphin rush and the guilty pleasure of thoroughly enjoying the pop power ballad that you want to sing at the top of your lungs. I felt amazing. Everything felt right and I all I could think was that this is the start of something good....

the end of an era

Wizard of Oz Halloween 2010

Halloween 2011 where Steve accurately predicted I would flake out and saved me with the uber comfortable dementor costume

What they say is true. You really don't know what you've got 'til its gone. Its funny how you can't fully appreciate what you've had until you are looking at in retrospect.

Almost exactly 4 years ago I began my job at an ortho/sports clinic about 40 minutes north of my house. I didn't think it was my dream job at the time; it still seemed so far from home. But slowly my patients and coworkers grew on me and we all became a really phenomenal team. We worked our tails off, we were really solid at what we do and we made a ton of people's lives better through our knowledge and hard work. And what's even more amazing is that we laughed our way through everything. We really truly had a good time at work.

I spent a lot of time these past four years focusing on what wasn't right. The drive was too far, this little annoyance was killing me, X decision the company made pissed me off, where am I really going with this job?.... those thoughts dominated my daily consciousness. The closer I came to leaving though, the more those negatives turned to positives. My coworkers had become some of my closest friends and allies, they had helped me achieve my dreams and had nursed me through some tough moments in life. They were who I shared every day with and they are who teamed up with me to battle through daily toils to create a successful clinic and happy patients. They were who I laughed, cried and smiled with every day.

I don't know that I will ever have the opportunity to be as happy and successful as I was at the job I just left tonight. But I know I'm making the right decision to move forward towards my career goals and what's more, my coworkers know I am too and as sad as goodbye was, they wouldn't let it really be a sad moment. They have always seen and believed in my vision and that has been a really powerful inspiration in my life.

Tonight we celebrated new beginnings and what's next. Onward and upward. Tammy, Steve, Kyle... I don't know that there was ever a better team. Thank you.

Need to perfect my champagne opening skills

Best coworkers ever

Goofing around pre celebration

The end was really a new beginning

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces towards change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."

-Helen Keller

Saint Augustine New Year's Eve. Fireworks on the Beach.

Well that didn't take long. Good thing I ended that last post title with a question mark :)

The past 10 weeks or so I feel like I've been going through a triathlon divorce and it was invigorating to break free from the ordinary and do something new. I became a crossfit junkie, chilled out, relaxed and became human. I started dreaming up other life goals like doing all the most bad ass races around the world and doing the crossfit games one day. Next on my list was learning about the Iditarod- I was just in the midst of figuring out how one trains to do a sled dog race. I decided my other new life goal was to finally get barreled which would require much more courage at dropping in on the bigger bombs (or sitting in the shore pound more....). The only reason Neil EVER gets mad at me is if I bail right as I'm about to drop in on a steep wave...

It was fun closing one door and starting to open others in my mind. I love knowing that I don't have to depend on any one thing in life to keep me happy and sane. Triathlon can be such an all consuming sport that I needed some distance to assert my independence from the sport.

To add to this evolution of thought and being, Tuesday I will be leaving my job where I have spent the first four years of my career. It wasn't an easy choice to leave with all the support and love that my company and my patients give me, but the opportunity to do a fellowship kept nagging at me. Shortly after Thanksgiving I received word that I was accepted into the fellowship program at my graduate school here in Saint Augustine. I don't quite know how intense my schedule will be during the fellowship so it was easier to keep triathlon at bay until I got my feet wet in my new job for the next year.

I love triathlon and I always will but all signs seemed to be pointing towards taking a little hiatus and letting life unfold just a little at a time for once. But as I've learned many times before, life is nothing but a series of incredible opportunities and you have two choices: sit back and watch them pass you by or grab hold and enjoy the hell out of the ride.

2011 was an incredible year. I'm still in shock of all the goodness it delivered. I wound up on the podium in St. George and fulfilled my kona dream. I raced my first elite race and earned a little cash. I completed my manual therapy certification after years of hard work and I received the manual therapy fellowship that I will begin this week. Wow, that's a whole lot of hard work coming to fruition in one years time and I'm kind of still in shock about all my good fortune.

On the very last day of the year, one more great opportunity presented itself to me very blatantly and well.... I would have been stupid to pass it up. I will write more about it when its time in the next week or so but suffice it to say, I will most definitely be racing in 2012 and finding the balance between fellowship and doing some fun training and racing is going to be a very big challenge. When I was hard pressed to make the decision to race next year, I realized I'm never one to back down from a new challenge and the excitement and joy I felt about the opportunity made it a fairly easy decision to make. I hope I'm not being naive in my attempt to take on both endeavors, but I'm a big believer in the power of a positive attitude and a peaceful mind to tackle so many great things at one time. I plan on meeting 2012 head on with abundant joy and passion. Life is much too short to do otherwise.

So its back to the blog, back to do some work with Dirk and most certainly back to the drawing board to dream up a race schedule for 2012 once I get into a groove with my new job.

I'm a big believer in the fact that experience shapes us. I had a healthy dose of life growing up and having lost a handful of good friends during my high school years, I learned very acutely to never take anything for granted; not a single special moment, an amazing place or a new opportunity. In a way, I began seeing my life in snapshots. I recognize special moments and try to hold on to them in my mind. I try to remember everything about these moments with friends, family and Neil by reliving them over and over in my mind. Remembering all the sights, smells, sounds and emotions so that someday when I am no longer able to be with that person, I can remember everything about them and the way they made me feel.

I also began to look for signs in my life. Signs that I felt my lost friends were sending me about what path to take in life and although I tend towards being a rigid person with a specific life plan in place, I've learned to ease up on the life plan in order to be open to these signs of fate. So far I've been faithful at following the signs and following my heart and doing so has lead me to some pretty amazing places.

So while I thought I had it all figured out, fate seemed to have another plan for me and, as always, I listened.

Time to rebuild the wattage cottage and hop back in the pool. I've got some work to do so that I can rock out 2012 ;)