Carlsbad, Here I Come

Well...so much for that resolution to be a better blogger...GAH!

Just wanted to check in with this:

You can completely see the months where I did a significant number of bike miles...no?

And also with some pre-race thinking related to running the Carlsbad 1/2 this Sunday...some thoughts brought on because Clarence posted a link to this article on her FB page this morning. It's mostly about raising children and the author's annoyance with the Carpe-diem or "Sieze-the-Day" philosophy she often hears from people who see her with her three young children. Those of us with kids often hear things like this...your kids are doing something that you find particularly annoying and some stranger says something like "enjoy every moment, it goes by so quickly!"

Uh...yeah. I hate that too.

I agree with the author. She compares raising children to climbing Mount Everest and notes that there are moments during a climb that are sheer joy, but most of it is hard work. Mona would agree. She climbed Kilimanjaro a few years ago and her tale is full of "it was the hardest thing I've ever done." and that much of it was painful and difficult and just plain hard work. She tells about how there were moments when it was all she could do to take another step.

I've certainly compared long runs to childbirth, how there's a lot of hard work, but finishing the marathon was one of the best moments of my life. There were lots of moments during the race that were not fun. at. all. BUT, I really enjoyed finishing the race, and there were parts of the race that I remember with great clarity because I was having so much fun...

Or like childbirth, maybe I just remember it that way. That kind of rose-colored-class 20/20 hindsight is certainly what leads many of us to thinking we could have two or more children.

The author notes that mountain climbing (and I say running) and raising kids are like this--lots of hard work and repetition broken up by both little and big moments of complete amazement at life and the joy of raising kids.

These moments of hard work mixed with joy and beauty will undoubted be part of the story I end up telling about running this year's Carlsbad Half

The other story I will end up telling will be adventures related to some of the herd (Mik, Elsie, Betty, Wilma & possibly Clarence and some other friends) riding their bikes from Carlsbad to San Clemente and back as I run Carlsbad that morning and the ridiculousness that will ensue as we try to meet up with each other.

In any event, regarding the race, I feel quite prepared for it. I have some time goals in mind, but I really don't want to write them out because I have an ego the size of Montana and on the chance probability that I don't make a time goal, I don't want to admit it or explain it or justify it.

But I have been running really, really, really well lately and I think I can PR. No matter what, I'll take on the Mt. Everest/Childbirth/Childrearing philosophy - there will be some difficult moments during the race, punctuated by moments of fun and absolute joy, and at the end, I'll be really happy that I ran the race!

I thought you might need a photo of San Diego bay to make your day. I took this one a couple weeks ago when I met Irene and some SDTC peeps for a long run from Glorietta Bay Park (near Coronado, on the strand). It was a beautiful morning!

Full Disclosures... Big Waves, Running in January Heat, and Zipp Fizz

On Friday morning(ish) I decided to go run at the beach. There's been some big surf due to the latest southern swell (10-20 foot waves), and I thought it'd be a good distraction while I did a 4 - 5 mile run.

Full Disclosure - It was really closer to 11am by the time I got to the beach, so it almost doesn't count as a morning run.

The other reason that I went to the beach is that about a month or so ago, I got some samples of Zipfizz with a request to review the product. I don't do many product review for several reasons including, 1) I don't get asked to; and 2) even when I do get asked to, I don't blog with enough regularity to feel comfortable agreeing to do a review in any timely fashion.

When Zipp Fizz contacted me the first time, I was busy (remember November? Me either) and didn't answer the email, but when they contacted me a second time, I said sure...send me your stuff and I'll try it out.

For those of you who don't know, Zipfizz is an Energy Drink powder that you add to water. It makes the water a little fizzy and is supposed to give you 4 to 6 hours of energy. It comes in a groovy little tube that makes transporting it convenient. It does give water a little bit of a fizz, but not as much as a soda. If you want gobs more info about what's in Zipfizz, you should go here.

Full Disclosure - I'd used Zipfizz prior to being asked to review the product. In fact, it was one of the reasons I agreed to use it. That beings said, Zipfizz did send me some product to review.

Generally, I use Zipfizz in the afternoon when I'm feeling especially tired instead of drinking coffee. Even though (according to their their website) it has some caffeine (about 1/4 the amount in a Starbucks Tall Coffee), it doesn't seem to affect me like an afternoon cup of joe does. I find that if I drink coffee after 2pm, it's guaranteed that I'll never fall asleep before 1am, but Zipfizz didn't seem to have that effect on me. 

But I'd never used it as an energy drink or electrolyte replacement beverage during or after running. The San Diego Track Club uses a product called Vitalyte at its aid stations, and I've gotten rather used to using that. Vitalyte reminds me of  how Gatorade used to be when I was a kid. Not very sweet...and I like that. 

In any event, I decided to give Zipfizz a try during a run on Friday. 

Here's how it came packaged for me... I think it was supposed to be like a holiday gift.

I'll be honest...I'm really excited about the BP free bottle. I needed one of those (for work...for water with Zipfizz) 

They also sent me a flash drive...along with five different flavors of  "the fizz." I think there was grape, lemonade, orange, citrus, something called orange cream and some others. 

I decided to use the citrus flavored, thinking it would be the least sweet. Because my hand-held running water bottle holds 12 oz, and the directions say that one tube of Zipfizz is enough for 16 to 20 oz of water, and because I know from experience, the stuff can be pretty strong, I used less that 1/2 the tube.

If you use this, be warned...it does fizz up, so if you put it in bottled water, make sure the water bottle isn't 100% full, or you'll have fizz all over the place.

And I was off...first I ran south, toward South Mission Beach. Although it wasn't as warm as Thursday (it hit about 80F at the beaches on Thursday...crazy January weather here...who says there's no Global Warming?), the sun was in my face, but still running at the beach always makes me happy.

It's about 1/2 mile to the Jetty at South Mission, so I stopped to take some photos.

The important thing to know about this photo is that those waves are breaking in an area that is between two jettys (A jetty is built to protect a beach from violent waves.

There are two jettys in this area...one that protects Ocean Beach (in the photo) and one that protects Mission Beach (which I'm standing on). There's about a 1/2 mile area between the two where the San Diego River dumps into the ocean.) For the most part, waves don't generally break between the two jettys unless they're pretty big and really strong...which was the case on Friday. 

Not like this they don't

Full Disclosure: I stopped to take photos for several minutes. Do you blame me? 

As I headed North, back toward Mission and then Pacific Beach, the sun was at my back, and you would think that would be fine, but I was also running with the wind, which made it HOT. I started sipping from my water bottle, and was pleasantly surprised that, even though the Zipfizz made the water a little fizzy, I didn't immediately burp it up.

However, it was still pretty sweet. When I got to Mission Beach, I stopped at a water fountain and filled  it to the top with more water (I'd drank about 4 oz at that point), which made it about perfect strength wise, but because it was in a hand held water bottle, and probably because it was getting warm outside, the water/Zipfizz mixture also got warm, and I'll be honest here, it wasn't very pleasant.

By the time I got to Pacific Beach (I'd run about 3 miles), I decided to turn around and head back to the car. It was hot. I was tired of running. Maybe it was the heat, but the Zipfizz wasn't settling so well. I filled up my water bottle with more water (it was down to about 10% Zipfizz at this point) and headed back. Running back into the wind made me feel much better.

Full disclosure: I stopped one more time to take some more photos...I mean really...do you blame me?

As I finished running, I let out a HUGE BURP.

Full disclosure: I do this after every run. Ask Betty or Walter. I can make the walls shake with my burps, so I can't really blame that on the Zipfizz.

After the burp, I felt much better, and I walked back to the car, grabbed some dry shorts, shirt, and bathing suit top, went to the restroom to change, then grabbed a beach chair and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the beach, watching the waves and the crazy tourists in the ocean (water temp wasn't nearly as cold as I thought it would be), and was mostly entertained by a mother who let her kids run into the waves, but who hadn't brought any towels or dry clothes with her. ((shakes head))... Rookie mistake.

Ahhhhh

So...some notes on running with Zipfizz

• It's super sweet...too sweet for me to use full-strength while running. If I'm going to use it, I will dilute it to only about 30% of the suggested strength.
• I like it better when it's cold which makes me think that I should try it when cycling. On my bike I use a Camelback insulated water bottle, which should help it stay cold.
• I don't like it much when it's not cold. 
• The packaging in the tubes is really convenient, which is why I want it to work! On long runs when I have to carry my own water, I'd like to be able to carry an electrolyte replacement with me as well.
• I will continue to use it as an occasional afternoon energy drink when I go back to work....and I LOVE the water bottle Zipfizz sent me.

As for the rest of the afternoon at the beach?

Let's just say, it wasn't painful 

But that water...was still cold! For all of you, I went into the water so that I could get a better shot of the waves (the tide was a negative tide and the waves were breaking pretty far from the beach)...the things I do...

Full disclosure: The cold ocean water was sort of like an ice-cold whirlpool bath for a twitchy tendon that has been begging for me to pay more attention to it.

Later that day, Walter, Turbo and I went back out to the beach to see the sun set at Sunset Cliffs (south of where I was earlier in the day)

My boys

In the background is south side of the Ocean Beach jetty, and the Ocean Beach Pier... Waves, typically, do not reach the bottom of the pier when they are breaking. 

Full disclosure: It wasn't high tide yet, which made the size of the surf that much more surprising. 

It really was quite beautiful

A bit of self-indulgence...Looking back at 2011 and ahead to 2012

In 2011, I sorta fell off the blogging bandwagon...only 58 posts for the whole year. That being said, a few posts back, I did pass the 400 blog milestone and in fact, in two days, the Hefferblog will be 4 years old.

However, even though I wasn't blogging about running, I apparently was actually running. I've been watching my running/riding numbers on Daily Mile for the last few weeks and was surprised when I saw that I was nearing 1000 miles total, which was one of my goals for the year... Full disclosure, I'd actually forgotten that I'd set it as a goal, but it's nice to know that I'd met it anyway...maybe it was subconscious.

Here are my 2011 numbers

• Running: 691 miles
• Cycling: 459 miles
• Total: 1150 miles

Last January, when I wrote a year in review/looking ahead post I'd logged 875 miles total...and I was sorta bummed about that. Apparently the previous January, I'd set a 1000 mile goal for myself and just like this year, I'd forgotten that I set the goal, so then I whined about not meeting a goal when you only kinda-sorta set it for yourself.

Fast forward to 2011 when I ran about 100 miles more (691 vs. 589 miles) than in 2010, which I find kind of surprising since I actually ran fewer races this past year, but the thing that really put me over 1000 miles is the cycling (459 vs. 154 miles) which means that in 2010, I barely rode much at all.

Mostly, I think the increase in mileage can be mostly attributed to the fact that I just wasn't injured this year (woot! woot! woot for that).

So, in looking back at 2011, there were some other things that seem especially worth remembering

The Herd Stuff

• I helped Elsie, Betty, and now Wilma buy new road bikes (so expect that cycling mileage to increase even more this coming year).

Elsie gets a new bike in November

Betty gets a new ride in December

Wilma's new ride (OK...it was January 2012...but it was the 2nd, so it counts)

BTW...the local Trek store completely owes me a commission! I have complete and udder bike-envy over their carbon bikes now...but I will be a good girl and wait a while longer before plunking down some moo-la for a ride.

• Mik, Betty, Elsie and I ran two destination half-marathons this year - The Napa-to-Sonoma half in July and the Nike Women's half in October.

My girls...

• DramaGirl and Millie (Betty's daughter) joined us as our chauffeurs and general good sports when we went to Napa. 
• Much of the rest of the herd joined us in San Francisco in October to help celebrate Elsie's birthday. 

Happiness is celebrating with the Herd!

The Silly Stuff

• Of course, there is the plethora of lost keys, flat tires, too many mimosas to count, inside jokes, and just downright ridiculousness, that comes when a group of women spend (according to some of our spouses) way too much time together. 

Running in the pouring rain with Betty and Irene

Getting on the wrong early train for the SDTC Train Run, which we got away with despite not having tickets, but because we had shoe tags!

4am - San Francisco International

I have no idea why I took this picture... The toilet seat was really low 

Alberta boxed

We made friends with The Conjugator

Karaoke Night (no link...one of the many things I did not blog about this year. We're in a pool bar. Use your imagination...)

Sometimes we have too many pseudonyms

There is humor everywhere

The Family Stuff

• These three people really are the center of my universe. We too had a really wonderful year full of with some fun vacations, some of them elsewhere in the world, many of them near to home. I look at these and cannot believe how incredible lucky and blessed I am to have them in my life.

Sunsets with Walter

Ditto

Running with Walter and DramaGirl (Thanksgiving morning Turkey Trot) 

Transportation and Sports Day - Turbo, Walter, and I drive to the Stadium, trolley to Cox Arena for an Aztec basketball game, trolley back to stadium for an Aztec football game, drive home 

My boy 

Carving pumpkins with friends

DG plays varsity field hockey 

Before going to Lazz's Mad Men Party

The crew - from LA

The most you'll ever see of me in a two piece swimsuit! (in Vegas

My guy

Sleeping beauty (she'll kill me for that...but isn't she beautiful?)

Turbo in The Music Man last fall (third from the left) 

My beautiful sisters (oh...and me)

Walter pretending to play golf 

DG learns to drive (GAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!)

The Active Stuff

• The best thing out of the year, really, is that I just didn't get hurt. I want to attribute this mostly to not overdoing it and part of it to cross training. I tried doing some weight work this year (far to sporadically), but I think that helped, as did riding the bike. Rarely did I run more than two days in a row.
• Most surprisingly, it was a year of PRs. Five in all, at all distances I run (5K, 10K, 15K, Half-Marathon, and an odd 4 mile race) -- Sue Kren (15K) - 1:37:42 (10:29);  SuperRun (10K) - 1:01:55 (9:58); Rock and Roll 1/2 Marathon - 2:22:58 (10:55); End of Summer Fire Run - 38.22 (9:31); Run for the Hungry 5K - 28:26 (8:52). 
• In fact, I didn't have, what I would consider, a bad race all year. I think this is, again, because I didn't overdo it. I only ran three half-ms (the last several years, I've done 4) and that seems to give me enough recovery time between races to...well...recover. 
• Of course, after every race, and many other runs, there are mimosas, recaps, laughs, and stories....which is really why we do all this, and why I continue to try to write about it.

Looking Ahead
I am among those who do make annual resolutions or set goals for myself. I write them down, and then pretty much forget that I made them, but not really. I do think that the act of writing them down does, somehow stick with me. So looking ahead I'd like to:

• Run/Ride 2000 miles. This seems very doable if I continue to ride regularly once school starts, and more frequently during breaks and in the summer. I am so lucky that I have flexibility in my work that allows me to do this.
• Not be injured again, by continuing to cross train and to not overdo it.
• To run at least two half-marathons this year. The first is in two weeks (Carlsbad 1/2), but after that, I don't have anything planned. There's a bit of a schism in the herd right now as we become more invested in cycling (much easier on the body), and less in running long distances. But, I'm really not ready to quit the half-marathon thing yet. Carlsbad will be the first half-mary I've trained for on my own since the Vegas RnR half two years ago. It's been a challenge to do the long runs on my own. I'm not sure I've done such a stellar job.
• Continue to be a faster-fitter runner. I do think there's a relationship to my recent increase in speed and my overall fitness. I don't write much about my weight, but I am down about 8 pounds. Less weight is certainly less pressure on the joints. 
• To do a century ride. It'll be a new adventure for the herd, training for a century, but we are still in need of a plan.
• To blog more. I like writing about our adventures and my family. It certainly has helped me seek balance in my life (a huge fail this year), but writing regularly forces me to recognize how lucky and blessed I am to be surrounded by great friends and a loving family. When I feel myself getting all self-centered and cranky about what I don't have or what I can't do, I turn to this little blog to remind myself of all I do have and all I can do, and then I bitch-slap myself out of my sulkiness.
• To give back more. (see above)
• To not overbook myself. This is probably the biggest challenge for me. But too often, I have a tendency to overbook myself with work, with play, with family. When we run at Balboa Park, Mik and Betty and Elsie have been crossing over Park Avenue to run through a rose garden on the other side. Mik says: "It doesn't count unless you stop and smell the roses." She's right, it really doesn't.

Happy New Year to all of you! Enjoy the view!

Sunset from La Jolla last week just as the fog rolled in.

And the next morning (from Del Mar - just North of La Jolla)  after the fog rolled back out.

Yep...it doesn't suck to live here - Taken from the Coronado Ferry after Sunday's New Year's Day 29 mile ride. A nice way to start the year!

Flats, Falls, and Lost Keys

Wait a minute...what is THIS?

Two days in a row? What kind of nonsense is this Alice?

It's the kind of nonsense that occurs after an epic ride...one that should have been completed in about 2 hours, but which took about 7 hours start to finish.

To begin... Elsie, Betty, Wilma, the newly dubbed Dair-lyn (more on that latter) and yours truly set out at 8  o'clock this morning for the five cities tour--San Diego - National City - Chula Vista - Imperial Beach - Coronado. We've done this ride plenty of times. It was a completely gorgeous morning for a ride! It was Wilma's first ride with us (yay! first of many to come) and Dair-lyn's naming ride (only we wouldn't know that until later).

But before we even began riding, Betty handed me the tip of her presta valve...which she apparently had broken off when she was pumping air into the tires. While the OTHER part of the tip was holding air in the tire, I knew this wouldn't last for a long ride (or at all), so we decided to change the tube... After all, I'd brought my pump!

Yes...more adventures of the herd changing flat tires. We are good at that, remember?

Admit it...you're loving the Ugg boots, aren't you?

Betty removed the tube, without breaking a nail!

Since we weren't quite sure how long the whole tire changing episode would take, and since Dair-lyn and Wilma were on commuter bikes, and because we ASSUMED they'd ride somewhat slower than us on road bikes, they took off while we were changing the tire.

This turned out to be not such a good idea BTW.

In fact, we changed the tire pretty quickly (maybe 20 minutes...which is a world record for us), then we set off. It was a little cool, but I wore my arm warmers and a new INCREDIBLY YELLOW bike shirt (that tank top was under the bike shirt. You can see the a part of the bike shirt in the photo above...it's the yellow thing GLOWING in the corner. I'd taken it off so that I wouldn't get bike grease all over it).

The first five miles were relatively uneventful, although the first five miles of the ride are probably the most treacherous. Harbor Blvd is a well used road in the morning. It crosses both the entrance to the Naval Base at 32nd Street as well as the NASSCO shipyard. It's not very scenic and the road it pretty rutted up. Also, once we get past NASSCO, there are train tracks running at funny angles on the street...all in all...BUT once we get past the first 5 miles, it's a nice ride around the south bay.

Even though we weren't being very speedy, I figured we'd catch up to Wilma and Dair-lyn, and as we passed into National City, I could see Wilma waving to us from the side of the road. We pulled up and learned that poor Dair-lyn had gotten her front tire stuck in one of the train tracks, fallen, and clunked her head...pretty badly.

It was actually rather scary. She was a little disoriented and kept asking us what happened over and over. Wilma had gotten some ice and some water from a recycling place nearby. (good Samaritans...I think they have some on hand. They told her that bikers fall on the railroad tracks pretty regularly). The good news was that she wasn't throwing up, and although she couldn't remember falling, she was talking to us and was making sense. 

After a few minutes of trying to figure out what to do (should we call a cab? should a couple of us ride back to get the car? Her car was back in San Diego and she certainly couldn't drive). We pretty quickly decided to call her husband, who came with their son to get her and take her to a doctor (good news...she texted me that she went to the ER and had a CAT scan and is OK... but is probably going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow).

Her biggest concern at this point was that I made sure she looked good in the photo...that's our girl!

But...while we were waiting...and trying to make jokes to keep all of us from freaking the heck out, several other groups of riders stopped to make sure everything was OK. And best of all, Dair-lyn got her heffer-name, something she'd wanted since she went to San Francisco for the Nike 1/2 with us! 

We told her to be patient...at some point a heffer name would present itself to us...and it did today when one group of (shall we say) Senior women rode by and stopped to check on us. We talked to them for a bit, and one was named Dair-lyn...or maybe it was Darryl-Lynn, or maybe it was Darrylin...or maybe it was a woman with a really serious southern twang saying "daaarlin." In any event, we decided it was the perfect heffer name for the woman previously knowns as Cindy. 

Dair-lyn's husband arrived and took her home, then to the ER (ER Hell she texted me.) And like I said, she says she's fine. Her husband's new helmet will have to be replaced...and it shook all of us up a bit. 

Wear your helmets people...trust me!

So...two bad things had happened...what else could there be? Someone mentioned that we could just head back...but it was Wilma's inaugural ride...so we decided to go on. Needless to say, we rode very carefully back down the bay and over to Coronado, but like I said, the roads on the rest of the ride are in pretty good shape, and one of the best things about this route is that most of it is dedicated bike path..the kind where you are NOT sharing with cars.

Once we got to Coronado, we were STARVING (as it was by then about 11:30), so we went to our now favorite Coronado breakfast place, the Firehouse Cafe...unfortunately, it was no longer breakfast time.

Yes, we still had mimosas...and toasted to Dair-lyn

We ended up inadvertently having a pretty leisurely lunch...which was OK. We needed to catch the ferry to get back to San Diego, and the ferry from Coronado to San Diego leaves on the 1/2 hour...so 12:30 came and went...and we finally got on the 1:30 ferry.

Wilma and Elsie looked VERY happy about not being on a bike seat at that moment

A truly spectacular day

I can't explain....

I'd pretty much predicted that I'd have a parking ticket when we got back because I'd parked in an unmetered 2 hour area. Even when I parked there, I was mostly hoping that I'd get lucky and get three hours without a ticket, but five hours? I thought that was pretty unlikely. I figured the parking ticket would be the third episode of back luck for the day (since bad things happen in threes), but that wasn't the third piece of bad luck...

LOOK MA! NO TICKET!!!

Nope...the third thing was Betty saying "Hey! Where are my keys?"*

SHUT UP!

This is why we have AAA

Because sometimes we lock our keys in the car

All in all, it was a pretty good ride. The weather was absolutely stunning...even for SoCal. We were lucky that we've learned how to change a flat. We were very lucky that Dair-lyn** is OK. And we were really, very, lucky that Betty had locked her keys in the car and not dropped them somewhere outside the car. 

____________________________

* Elsie would say that the fourth bad thing is that when she got back to her car, she didn't clip out of one of her pedals fast enough and fell again... that's twice. I hate to tell her about the bad things happen in threes rule.... shhhhhh

** BTW...Dair-lyn is a pain in the butt to type...so look forward to me calling her DLyn for short.