Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Am I Out of My Effin Mind?!? TriState Tough Mudder Oct 20, 2012

Oh. My. God. I seriously just experienced the most awesome/horrible day of my life. The TriState Tough Mudder is a 12.5 mile mud-run obstacle course OF HELL! It was designed by British Special Ops because they became bored with running Triathlons and Ironman competitions and were looking for something more challenging. (That should have already been a BIG FRIGGIN neon warning sign telling me RUN (ok, jog) THE OTHER WAY!)
     What made me think I could do this, you ask? Peer pressure, my friends. Good, old-fashioned, peer pressure. Let me explain. My friends are nuts. No seriously, certifiable. Several of them have run this thing 4 or 5 times and have the tattoos to prove it. As you know given the title of this blog, I was Formerly Fat. Not a little heavy. Not pleasantly plump. Severely overweight. So I was never really eligible to even attempt something this monumental, in fact, I was never even asked. I'm sure it was my friends being sensitive to the fact that I could never, ever have participated in a challenge like this 100 pounds ago. Never. I had a tough time NOW.
       So fast forward almost two and a half years - I was asked and somehow they convinced me. They said, "If you can do Triathlons, you can SO do a Mudder." I wasn't convinced. But I did see it to be great motivation for me to continue my training. An end goal, if you will. Therefore, I continued to train for my Tri's (my last one of the season was mid-Sept) which gave me one more month to push my training to the limits to prepare for this "race". I quoted race because it is not a race, not at all. In fact, you have to take an oath to not even consider it a race, but more of a challenge - to challenge yourself, to challenge your teammates, and to work together to get everyone to cross the finish line. It was for that reason that I signed up. I wanted to be apart of the camaraderie and force myself out of my comfort zone, and that I did.
   Four o'clock wake up. Out the door by five. To Jen and Brian's by six. To get to the parking station by 7:30. To get to the event by 8:30. Start time 9:00. Ugh. And then we were going to have to run/climb/crawl/carry/dig for 5 hours after that!? Oh god. Well, needless to say, our mighty team of 5 (Me and Jen, the only kick ass girls on the team!, Brian, Pat and Ted) totally lived up to the challenge. Seriously, I did 20 of the 22 obstacles. I overcame some serious fears. I was stronger than I ever thought I could be. I ran a good majority of the 12.5 mile course. I was tired. I was cramping. I was hungry. I was physically fatigued. But I kept going. I rolled my left ankle. I strained my hip flexor, dislocated my right shoulder, and wore my toes down to bloody stumps, but I did not stop. I did not give up. I kept fighting until I crossed that God-forsaken finish line, and I can, without a doubt in my mind, say that I have never been more proud of myself in my life.
    I feel like this weight loss journey has been like a road through hell and back. I fear, literally, to the point of anxiety sometimes, creeping back up to my original weight, redeveloping those old habits. I'm terrified. But it is moments like this that make me realize that I AM NOT the same woman that I was back then. I am stronger. I am more proud. I feel like I have something to lose and something worth fighting for. I never felt like that before now.
     I will also admit, pretty confidently, that that was the first AND LAST Tough Mudder that I'll ever do. .... Maybe I should watch what I say, I've heard you should never say never.
*Note: Most of the images in this video montage are mine, but the ones that aren't belong to the Tough Mudder organization. I'm not certain how liability whatnot works for copyright material, but I just wanted to give credit where credit is due! 

Atlantic City International Triathlon (Sept. 15, 2012)

Here we go - Triathlon #3 - (Damn, these things are addicting!) Let me start by saying that I have only ever raced in July, which is clearly far different than racing in September. The water is colder, the air temp is colder, and it is pretty much a crap shoot as to what kind of weather you'll face. So that was a bit of a wake up call. (Haha... pun intended!)
   I arrived into Atlantic City Friday evening to pick up my race packet/bib. My whole family was coming to meet me so that they could cheer me on the next day, which was totally awesome. When I arrived in AC, Karli and I picked up my sister Laura at our hotel who had arrived about an hour ahead of us, and together we went to pick up my information and scope out the scene. We were dressed in jeans and hoodies and we were freezing our asses off. The wind on the water was wild and, like a fool, I wanted to test the water temp just to see what I would be facing the next day. Thankfully, my better judgement kicked into gear and I figured I better not since, if it was too cold, I probably would change my mind and not show up. 
   So I enjoyed the evening with my sisters and my parents; we hung out and walked the boardwalk, until it was time for me to tuck in. Now, I had weirdly pulled a muscle in my back about 2 days prior and was still nursing the injury as best as I could. Not fun. So between the muscle pull in my back, and the imminent freezing water, along with the crack of dawn wake up call, I was already dreading the next morning. According to our race info, all competitors had to be checked into (and out of) transition by 6:30am NO EXCEPTIONS and the race began at 8:00. So I planned to leave our hotel at 5:00, which was only 10 minutes from the venue, leaving me plenty of time to set up and stretch and relax before my heat. 
    The alarm rang at 4:30 (ugh), I got dressed and grabbed my bag, prepped to meet my dad in the lobby at 5:00. I gave the valet our car slip and waited for my dad. Time ticked. 5:05. 5:08. My dad arrived and we were ready to go... just waiting on the car. And waiting. And waiting. 5:15. 5:20. I'm having a mini-heart attack, but am trying to remain calm. I'm thinking, "I might just have to cab it on over, but MY BIKE IS IN THE CAR!" Frick! The valet and his manager return and say that they can't find our keys and therefore, can't find the car. Are you freakin' kidding me? 5:30. 5:35. It is now a quarter to 6 and I am about ready to cry. I am a ball of nerves and anxiety, not what you want to be before a race. We FINALLY locate the keys (they hung them on the wrong rack, dumbasses!) and we jump in the car and SPEEEEED like lunatics over to the race. Now, I want to vomit. I wasn't nervous before, but now I only have like 30 minutes to get marked, get my transition set up, and get out of transition with everything I need. Yeah, no pressure. 
Freezing my #@$% off before start time!
     Did I mention that it is like 50 degrees outside and windy as all get-out. Seriously, I'm having trouble standing up straight, that's how windy it is. And all I'm thinking is, "There is NO WAY that I'm getting in that water!" I was freezing just standing there - how on Earth was I jumping into freezing water and then back out to finish the race? Impossible. I was tempted to just grab my dad and say "eff this, let's go to breakfast!" But my conscience got the better of me and reminded me that I am not a quitter. Ugh. Stupid conscience. I was also the second to last heat to go. So I'm standing there in my hoodie, shivering and trying to stay loose, but to no avail. And all the while thinking, "Forget this, I'm going home." Too much time to psych myself out. Long story short, my heat's horn blew and we got in the water and oddly enough, the water temp was higher than the air temp, so the water actually felt WARM... like really warm. Now I wanted to stay in the water and feared how cold I'd be getting out. Yikes, what a head-game!  

My sisters, Laura and Karli, running me into the finish.
*Note: The time on the clock is the TOTAL time, not my personal time.
I was one of the last heats to go. My finish time was 1:36:28.
     Anyway, I did it. I drank a good amount of bay water because of the choppy-ness and the waves smacking me in the face. Yummy saltwater. I did well swimming, especially in such different conditions than what I am used to. I got out. Froze, of course. Toweled off and then just jumped right on the bike. The bike was the WORST. Always is for me, but this time the wind made me feel like a was pedaling backwards! My legs were going and going and I felt like I was on a stationary bike, going nowhere fast. We biked up the parkway, which was kinda cool. And it was a flat course which I was thankful for. Finally, after what seemed like a 13 hours bike ride, I made it back and began my run. It was such a scenic and beautiful course up on the boardwalk. I ran almost all of it, which made me happy. It turned out to be a gorgeous day and best of all, the last 100 meters or so, as I was coming into the finish line, my sisters snuck under the ropes, grabbed my hands and ran me through to the finish just as Eye of the Tiger blasted through the loud speaker. How triumphant! It was such a cool moment and I was so thankful to have finished, and even more thankful to have had my family there to support me.

STATS: Place overall: 411/502; Swim Time: 9:29 - Swim Rank: 205 (Whaaat!); T1 6:37 - T1 Rank: 352; Bike Time: 36:05 - Bike Rank: 397; T2 Time: 4:44 - T2 Rank: 382; Run Time: 39:33 - Run Rank: 444; Total Time: 1:36:28

New Jersey State Triathlon: Round Two (July 21, 2012)

    On July 21, almost two years after this crazy weight loss adventure began, I competed in my second Sprint Triathlon. I was a little afraid since I wasn't able to train as fiercely as I did with the first one due to three hospital trips in under a month.... Friggin' kidney stones! I still wasn't feeling my best, but I had registered, had trained, and had promised myself that I would do at least show up and go for as long as I could. Race day came and the weather was PERFECT, so much better than the 106 degree race we ran last year. My parents, along with my sister Karli and her best friend Carly, came as my cheering squad and I did great! I felt like a seasoned pro! In fact, as I was setting up my station I had the opportunity to meet some of the other women in my heat and socialize a bit while I was stretching and setting things up. One girl came up to me and said, "I remember you! You KILLED the swim leg last year! Totally destroyed it!" And I was like, "Uhh.... are you sure that was me?"To which she responded, "Oh yeah, I remember that we started together in the water and it took me like 20 minutes to finish and you were out in like half that time!" And you know what... she was right. I think last year's swim took me about 11:40ish minutes. This year I smashed all of my times by A TON. My transitions were so much better and I ran the whole run course! Overall I placed 1018 out of about 1150 competitors, which isn't wonderful, but as I said, all I wanted to do was finish and if I could beat my own personal records then it was a WIN for me.

STATS: My swim time was 11:48 with a swim place of 366 overall (that's freakin' awesome! 366 out of 1150! ow ow! So I am a beast in the water!). My T1 was 3:15, my bike was 47:16, my T2 was 4:20 and my run was 37:42. My total race took 1:44:21.



Lots to Fill You In On...

    So I'm going to start by NOT apologizing for my absence, seeing as I've begun more than half of my entries in such a fashion. It's getting old.  And I only have myself to blame. But between being a full time high school teacher, a full time Grad Student in an MFA Writing program, and a part time makeup artist... blogging (sadly) seems to be the furthest thing from my mind. But I must admit that I do LOVE going back and reading through the entries I have written, which was exactly the purpose from the start. Therefore, instead of apologizing, we're just going to chalk it up to "life" and move on.
    Now that that's cleared up, I have A TON to fill you in on. In fact, I might make separate entries for each event, just to keep it somewhat organized. Sooooo... keep reading, it's gonna get good!