Terri Hayes – Page 4 – No Crappy Excuses

Christmas in August – 8.1.15

Yes, I’m well aware that Christmas falls on December 25th. However, it’s now figuratively Christmas Eve… in August.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the media piece started as just a print article, then grew into print plus video. Yesterday, I was told that the snowball has grown. Tomorrow on ABC7 Marie Wilson will be sharing my story! She is the reporter that I met with, and who has helped to continue growing this.

I am extremely grateful to her and Bev for everything that they’ve done and continue to do for me. To re-cap for everyone:

Triathlon @ Centennial Beach (Naperville): 7A Start
Daily Herald Print Article – Sunday Edition
Daily Herald Video Piece – Online on dailyherald.com on Sunday
ABC7 Piece – On TV @ 8:45A, online on abc7chicago.com at some point on Sunday or Monday.

Hope to see a lot of you out there tomorrow! 🙂

The Most Important Bike Ride – 7.28.15

For those of you that have been following the blog, the title and date may look odd. You may be thinking – ‘Isn’t the Tri on Sunday? (making that the most important one?)’ While Sunday will be an important bike ride, last night was the most important one.

It was the most important for this simple reason — it was the first time we’d been able to make it out in more than 2 weeks. The last two times had been complete scratches and total frustration. And last night started off the same way.

But we were able to get things going, figure out a plan for Sunday, and get 6 miles in. I’m feeling much better after that bike ride. We’re all set for Sunday now. 🙂

For those of you that are planning to come out — Centennial Beach in Naperville. Race start is 7A, but we should be starting 10 minutes early so we’ve got a little distance before the masses start. I’m grateful that the RD is doing that for us.

Blindsided at the Beach – 7.27.15

Earlier this year, I was asked about doing an interview related to the Naperville Tri that is this Sunday (in relation to me being the first AWD to participate). I said yes, and thought it would be at some point in June. We did the interview last Monday, but since I was unable to practice for a few days last week, the photo shoot was moved to last night.

So Terri and I showed up thinking it would just be a photo shoot. And then it turned into a video interview (about 15-20min) followed by about 30-45 min of the photographer taking photos while we practiced. While it wasn’t planned, there should be a LOT of visibility for several of those who have provided support and sponsorship throughout this process. 🙂

The article will be in Sunday’s Daily Herald, and the video should be up on dailyherald.com the same day. I will post links to Marie and Bev’s work once it’s publicly available. I am excited to see how it all turns out!

One other very cool thing happened at the end. After Bev had left and Terri and I were drying off, a group behind us struck up a conversation with us. Very nice people and they were extremely supportive of what we were doing. 🙂

Some Good, Some Bad – 7.26.15

On Sunday, we took advantage of Adult Float to swim the course. There were still some obstacles (ropes, lane lines, floats, etc.), but we made it through. We did 1 M in wet suits and 2 without. The non-wet suit went well, and I’m in favor of going that way on race day. But I will listen to what my coach says.

After doing 1300m in the pool, we headed to Oswego to do some bike training. It did not go well – the balance just wasn’t there. The frustration pushed me to a breaking point (but not past it). I was grateful to have a friend help put everything in perspective and give me additional long-term advice as well. 🙂 Oh, and ice cream makes everything better. 😀

We will be back in Oswego tonight to give the bike another try.

A Bad Day – 7/19/15

Last Sunday, we headed to Oswego for a bike/run brick. Since we were an hour early to do the bike, we went for a run first. Everything seemed fine until we turned around at about 2.5 miles. At that point, I got some kind of heat exhaustion/heat stroke. I’m confident that it was caused by heat, humidity and dehydration, as I was fine by the time we walked back to the bike shop.

While that was bad, the training day got worse when we got back to the bike shop. We’ve done a minimum of 10 sessions on the bike (both here and in WI), and in the past it’s takes maybe 2 – 3 tries before we’re on the bike and off. However, on this day, I had to give up after about 35 misses.

While this was not a good day, I’ve moved past it. I know that there will always be bad practices, and bad days. But you need to move past it. And hydration is key.

A Cloudy Fish Bowl – 7.13.15

I know that any beach / lake will inevitably have ‘crap’ in the water (leaves, sand, sticks, etc). But when it gets bad, some sort of management comes along and cleans it. Centennial Beach is getting to that point with lot of leaves and other things in it. I know it’ll get cleaned up before the Tri on 8/2, but for the meantime, it’s like a cloudy fish bowl.

We got about an hour in the water, including laps in both shallow and deep along with a start practice. It was a very odd feeling to swim those first 5-6 strokes with my hands hitting the bottom, but good practice. We will do the full out-back practice before the Tri.

During the run, the dogs were out in full force, which meant a few manditory puppy breaks (aka the walk part of our interval training). A couple of the ladies that we met said that they’d be there cheering for us on the 2nd. 🙂

Crazy Wheels – 7.12.15

Today’s forecasted temp was supposedly in the low 80s, and they claimed the ‘feels like’ was 86. It may have been 82, but with the humidity, I would have put it closer to 95.

We headed over to Oswego, checked out the tandem from Osweg Cyclery, and did our normal ~9mi trek. It’s got a few steep inclines and one major hill. Normally, it’s not too bad — I’m able to stand up and push until we get to the top. But with the humidity, that just wasn’t possible. It was a challenge a couple of times to make it up, but we always did. 🙂

One other note about the bike ride — I think SOBOBJ123 on BirdBook told all his orange-winged friends to follow us. Two days in the forest, and 3 orange-winged blackbirds. Thankfully, the one today just stayed where it was. In the humidity, I’m not sure how well we could have outrun it.

Normally on the bike->run bricks, while it isn’t easy, I’ve still got something in the tank. But today between the humidity and the extra exertion on the bike, it was fumes of fumes as we started off. We still went two miles, but more than half of it was walking.

Here’s to hoping that Mother Nature gets all of her pissing and moaning out of the way overnight so we can get a swim in tomorrow afternoon.

T minus 20.5 days… 🙂

The Birds! – 7.11.15

As it wasn’t the greatest of days for a swim or bike yesterday, we went for a 5 mile run. It was raining a little, but nothing serious. And unless it’s thunder or lightning, the race goes on — and so does practice.

So we set off for a run through the connecting piece (over the dam) and into the forest preserve. The wildlife was out in full force because of the rain, and not all of it was friendly. Specifically the orange-winged blackbird. That bird is one extremely fierce thing when it thinks you’re trying to go after it’s young.

While that was physically impossilbe for either of us (as the next was 100 feet+ up in a tree), that didn’t stop the blackbird from trying to divebomb us twice as we were running the out-and-back. It made for some very interesting speed work. Oh, and then it decided to follow us back about half a mile and perch on another pole, waiting to dive bomb again.

The pace was about 6 min slower from the last time I had done a 5 mile run. Learning experience from this run is that I either need to get a fuel belt or find a larger bottle that’s easy to carry. I continually run out at about 2.5-2.75mi and there wasn’t a place to fill up on this route.

And while 5 miles was plenty for me, Ms. Bad Ass went and ran another 3 miles after we parted company. 🙂

Unexpected Fun – 7.10.15

Earlier in the week, I was told that the next practice session would be Saturday afternoon. So when I woke up Friday morning to an e-mail offering a swim/run Friday night, I was extremely happy.

I also got my wet suit back on Friday — Urban Tri did an AMAZING job on patching both of the holes (major on upper right leg and fingernail tear on left thigh). After getting in the wet suit, we headed for the water in the standard ‘golden tether.’ As we were entering the water, a couple of ladies stopped us and asked ‘who’s teaching who to swim’ to which we had to reply – ‘we both know how’.

We ended up doing about 300m in the pool and then going for a 4mi run/walk. I made the mistake of grabbing a cotton shirt and was thus overheating at about 2.25mi. Lesson learned.

We’ll see if Mother Nature wants to cooperate for the weekend or if this will be our only session. I’m starting to wonder if the group that’s usually at the beach shouldn’t start collectively building an ark…

Fish in a Storm – 7.6.15

Sunday was such a perfect day for a swim; Monday was not. I thought that Mother Nature would scratch Monday night’s swim like she’s done so often this summer. But we were fortunate enough that the storm held off until we were done.

We got in about 600m during the swim, both in deep and shallow water. I still need to work on the breathing part, as my head is coming up too much at points and taking me off course. It was interesting to swim the laps back as the storm kept threatening and would then move around us.