First Race of the Year and Ragnar Planning

Ok, so it seems my plans change pretty frequently.  Once again as with before, my idea of making my year focused on qualifying for Boston has taken a backseat and Ironman has taken over.  I haven't completely decided on the exact races I'll do yet, however, Ironman Louisville or the Rev3 at Cedar Point are the choices for the 140.6 and I'm thinking of doing Half Ironman Racine.  This also depends on how well I do with my foot injuries...yeah, I've got some battles to overcome first.  It's not something I'm completely worried about since the worst thing I can think it is is a stress fracture, but even that can heal in like 6-8 weeks.  In the meantime I'm planning on putting a real effort into getting faster on the bike.  I had some decent speed in 2012 but it's still my weakest leg in triathlon.  Maybe in the future I'll post up some numbers that show some actual gains on the bike since I've started using TrainerRoad and collecting power data from it.  Well, on to the actual topic of this posts title!

Sorry for the blurry photo, a third party took it I swear!

Polar dash was the first race this year both for myself and for Fit Lifestyle as a group.  The race had a 5k, a 10k, and a 14 miler which we had some do the 10k and others do the 14 miler.  It was a little tough since it rained the day before and a lot of the snow melted creating some unavoidable puddles throughout the course.  One of the puddles was right in the beginning of the race so you had to pretty much run with cold, wet shoes the whole time.  Going into the race I knew I wasn't going to be able to come anywhere close to my PR from 2011, but I wasn't worried about it, I was just craving a race!  So, the race started and got my feet wet early on, which actually wasn't all that bad.  I was feeling pretty good the whole time, keeping my heart rate where I wanted it, passing people up, having fun.  But then my foot started hurting with about 1.5mi to go.  I kept running, hoping it wouldn't feel any worse but it came to a point when I had to just stop and take my foot out of my shoe to stretch it out.  Started running for a little bit and had to stop again.  It was pretty bad but I was going to finish anyhow.  I started getting passed up by a few I had already passed and encouraged them on.  I got to about the last half mile where I just did whatever my foot allowed and finished up the race.  I can't complain too much, and I'm not!  Ended up with 15th overall, not too bad for being relatively out of shape and having to stop mid-race.












It may have seemed like a bad race, but I had fun.  Definitely good to get out and race again with friends!  After waiting for our 14mi runners to finish, we headed over to Adrian's bar and hung out to have a few drinks.  Nothing like doing what you love and being around good company!  Another good thing is we had 5 out of 6 of our Ultra Ragnar team there so we started to talk up the race a little bit and planning out a few broad details.  We're pretty excited to get the team started up and planning things out early.  It's going to be one crazy race doing the ultra and also having a second team running a regular 12-man team.  I can see the excitement as we sat there talking about it.  Thanks Adrian for opening up your place for us, it sure is a great place to chill out after a race!

Well, that's all I've got for now.  I'm not exactly sure what the next race will be since I'm having foot issues but when we do something I'll be sure to post it up!

The girls warming up in a moving truck after the race!