Horribly Hilly

Last Saturday, by the numbers...7 total hours in my car, 250+ miles driven, 5+ hours on my bike, 80 miles ridden, 2 cups of coffee to make it up to Wisconsin awake, 1 tank of gas at $3.87 a gallon, 32 oz of diet mountain dew consumed on the way back to make it back to Chicago awake, 2 scoops Culver's frozen custard eaten, at least 15 times questioning own sanity.

Horribly Hilly is aptly named. It is pretty damn hilly. One might say Horribly so. Rather than expounding upon how much that course sucked, I will continue the list theme started above and share the iron-randomness that I came up with on 80 miles of hilly-suck.

1. There is a time and place for Ke$ha. I thought this was never, but it is actually a useful tool in staying awake behind the wheel. So is a test of the emergency broadcast system. But they play Ke$ha way more often.
2. There is a time and place for Big-Gulps of Diet Mountain-Dew. See #1
3. Driving past bars that are still open on the WAY to my workout makes me vacillate between feeling super lame and really superior over and over again. 
4. There is something about a hill that goes on for a mile straight that will make you question the existence of a benevolent god.
5. The most useful advice I was given on Saturday: "When you ride past roadkill, you're gonna want to make sure to keep your mouth closed for a little bit before and a little bit after."
6. It took me four hours to realize that Blue Mound State Park is actually really pretty (and it had to be pointed out to me). I was too busy swearing under my breath to notice.
7. There is something about a bad day cycling that makes me want to throw my bike and scream. Why is this? I've never had a tantrum in the middle of a long run.
8. Ending a long hilly ride with a super steep mile-long hill is just cruelty.

Break

I am a teacher, which is why that it is especially interesting that my mother asked the question that she asked me today. She didn't ask me what I was going to do this summer (I think she knew the answer, to be fair, which is to journey long and far to the exotic lands of Wisconsin and Iowa), but what I was going to do with my time after Ironman. Since it's a rest week and I already have more time than I know what to do with ("only an hour workout and only a few papers to grade? What am I going to do with the rest of my evening?"), I've been pondering what she asked.
This is an interesting question for a couple of reasons. First of all, I know that a lot of people in my training group are already thinking of doing another Ironman next year (I got an e-mail from a friend today that said " I'm so confused as to what to do when Ironman madness is over!"). I'm not going to lie, the thought has flit through the transom of my mind, but I don't think that I can justify spending all the money again (I know I'm supposed to be saving for something), nor do I think that I can justify dropping out of life for another year.
The second reason I find this to be interesting is that, as school winds down and I go into rest week mode, I've started to wonder what other people do with their free time. Without something to train for (or a job where you bring home up to five hours of work a night), it seems like one would have a ton of free time- what are people doing with all this free time (I would ask people at work this question, but I already know the answer- grading, planning, calling parents- teachers don't really have all that much free time)? I like to think that everyone is learning how to knit a sweater or cooking their way through Julia Child's cookbook, but somehow I doubt this.
So, to get back to my answer to my mother's question: I'm not entirely sure. I'd like to do another Ironman, but I don't think that that's a healthy option for me right now for a lot of reasons. I'm thinking that I'll probably concentrate on marathoning. I might hire a coach and see how fast I can go (and if I can widen the gap between my PR and Brian's) if I actually really work at it. I might do a half-iron after I'm through with that. I'll probably do another marathon next year just for fun. Who knows? Maybe I'll cook my way through Julia Child's cookbook for a year and blog about it.
Been done?
Hmmmm....maybe I'll try ultras...

Mc200

This weekend, instead of following the regular training block, I ran the Mc200. The Mc200 (which isn't really called the Mc200 anymore since it was taken over by Ragnar) is a relay that runs from Madison, Wi to Chicago, Il. Typically, the teams are made up of twelve people in two vans. At any given point during the race, your team has a person running with your baton (which is actually a reflective slap braclet). The vans follow the runners, provide support when needed, and stage the next handoff. Each runner runs somewhere between 15-20 miles total, broken up into three different legs. I've done this race before, although not quite in this setup. Last time I did it (with Brian and some friends) we did an ultra group, which means that instead of having tweleve runners, you do the same course with six. It also means you run a hell of a lot more.

This year, I did the race with eleven other girls. I knew about half of them before the race started, but didn't know the other half at all. There are several interesting aspects to doing a relay like the Mc200. The first is that you spend almost 24 hours in a van with half of your team. The second is that, in order to have a runner running at all times, you run through the night (which typically also means that you don't really sleep [and when you do, much of it is in your van- see Billie, the pink unicorn van above]).  This means that not only do you have to run your distance, but you have to run it on tired legs, oftentimes with little to no sleep.  It also means that those in the van have to coordinate pick-ups of the other runners and figure out how to keep hydrated and fed with little to no sleep. 
All in all, the race was super fun. Everyone ran strong and we only had one logistic snafu (in the middle of the night, of course): we went to the wrong exchange station at about 1 am and waited and waited and waited for our runner while she stood at another exchange station and waited and waited and waited for us. We eventually solved the problem and got back on track.  The rest of the race was a blur of running, trying to naviagate, annoying people with our megaphone and loud cheering, trying to sleep in the van, and meeting (and tagging vans of) other runners from all over the country in the exchange station. Despite the fact that I know that I personally didn't run my absolute best on tired legs from ironman training, this is the kind of thing that reminds me why I'm a runner in the first place.

Ironman is Sexy

This weekend marked another decent ride (I rode 80 miles of organized ride in Illinois feeling pretty good the entire time). I've been following coach's advice: I took a couple of workouts easy and have been trying to eat more (anyone who knows me well knows that eating more than I already do is a feat of epic proportions [I may actually eat myself out of house and home]). Since then (despite a really hot, humid run where my heart rate was 165 the whole time [translation: I was running sloooooow, my heart was beating like I was running a 10k faaaast]), I've been feeling a lot stronger: my heartrate has been down a bit, my bikes have been strong and fairly fast, and I've been feeling much better in general.
I spent the last couple of days feeling pretty good about feeling pretty good. And then some weird stuff started happening today. One of the teachers I work with commented that I looked "really toned", which was fine, until a student mentioned that my calves "looked huge today" (On a side note: I usually deflect these types of comments by asking "would you like me to point out the parts of your body that I think look funny"? That usually quiets everyone down pretty fast), and then another student told me that I "used to be pretty when [I] did [my] hair" (it's been in a pony tail pretty much everyday since February).  That's when I realized: I work out tons (which should mean that I look better, right?) and all of a sudden my hair is a chlorine-y mess, I have sunglasses and bike short tan (nothing like that first day in a bikini with bike short-tan: tan legs, white thighs), and apparently my calves are now "huge" (frankly, I think I might be developing Popeye arms as well), and I'm pretty sure that I now own way more athletic clothes than real clothes.
Oh well, at least I feel good. And, in the long run, I guess I'd rather be badass than look good (or so I need to keep telling myself for the next three months).