Journal of Pier Luck

Let me take you back a few days to when I only had one issue-my feet! That was Wednesday, when we met Roberta, Caulie, and Lisa at the beach and ran 3 miles and then did an ocean swim. My feet felt pretty good while running, but hurt while walking on the beach. We did better in our wetsuits this time because we pulled them up further, so it restricted our shoulders less, so that was good. We practiced swimming over and hitting and kicking each other in the water like it will be for the Ironman start. Then, we went to Carraba's with the group and had some good food and good conversation. Then Thursday rolled around and I had a good day at work, came home and got a few things done, then Dustin and I got in my Nissan Murano and left for the Yates YMCA on Riverside for spin and swim class. Dustin was making a left hand turn on a solid green light. One lane of oncoming traffic was backed up so the guy stopped and waved us on, but there was another car in the far lane coming oppos...

Ok, well now it's 21 days left. I'm making it a habit of writing in this once a week and then I forget all we did during the week. Sorry about that. Allow me to be a little negative for a minute and then I'll try to finish with positivity. All of you know I'm not a very negative person usually.............but.................. I have plantar fascitis for sure! The bottoms of both of my feet are killing me! There are plenty of people who suffer from this, but in all my marathons and other shorter tri's, I've never had any problems, so why now, why when there are only 21 days left until the race of a lifetime, does it have to show up now?????? It hurts like hell and it started after our 18 mile run (not during it) and has gotten worse each day. I haven't really run on it because I was scared to, but yesterday after our 90 mile bike, we ran 5 miles. It hurt pretty bad for the first 2 miles and got better. This morning, Dustin and I ran with Joy (who is doing he...

We did 100 mile ride today in the hills of Clermont. It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life! It was close to 100 degrees, very little shade, no wind and a bunch of freakin hills! There is so much I can say about this ride, and during it, I have all these thoughts of what I'm going to write in my blog. I'm thankful that I have this blog because it actually makes me think more when I am out there training. Of course, some of those thoughts escape me by the time I get to the computer though. Some of what I remember is as follows: It was hot. It was humid. Dustin was there. There were a lot of other bikers out there. We ran into 2 fellow Hammerhead Tri Club members, Teresa and Minya. We found a bike path and explored. It was hot there too. There was some shade. We were around a lot of pretty lakes. There were a lot of hills. I had a 70 mile bonk, but recovered about mile 75. My heart rate strap wasn't reading my heart rate. I was breathing very h...

Well, another productive day! We started running this morning at 6:30 AM from our house. Our intention was to run at least 16 miles. Dave came over to test Dustin's mountain bike out for his first tri next weekend. He was nice enough to take a backpack with him full of water, gatorade, gu, endurolytes, and bodyglide (all of which we used). We wanted to do a long run today after doing a long workout yesterday, because we have heard it is similar to how your legs will feel during the Ironman. I don't know that it was that bad, but they were definitely fatiqued and sore and got more fatigued and more sore as the miles went on. We went up Girvin to Wonderwood to the bridge hills to practice for the Wisconsin hills. We ended up doing 18 miles and didn't feel too bad at all! It was hot and very humid. We were pretty much soaked from 10 minutes into it all the way until we were done 3 hours later. Dave on the bike as our "personal servant" worked out pretty well...

Wednesday night, we went to another Hammerhead Triathlon meeting and learned some more stuff about running and mingled with fellow triathletes. It's great to be around people who are so supportive of what you are doing. We didn't have time to fit in a workout that night, so we decided to double up on Thursday. Thursday, after work, we headed to the Yates YMCA for two straight spin classes for 2.5 hours and then went running over the bridges (hills in Jacksonville) downtown with our new friend, Martin. We kept a really good pace for the bridges (8:15 pace) for almost 5 miles. It was drizzling a bit, which actually really felt good. Our legs were pretty dead afterwards, but we felt good for working out for over 3 hours on a weeknight. We didn't get to eat dinner that night until after 10:30, but we fixed a great salmon and rice meal that was worth the wait! Friday, as usual, was our day off, so after work, we picked up our boat with Dustin's new wakeboard tower on i...

We are back from Wisconsin and I have some catching up to do on this blog. However, I'm not going to go back and tell you everything. I will tell you that we feel a lot more ready for the Ironman now after our extended weekend trip. Besides getting to play in the very fun golf tournament that Jeff and Kendra throw with all of their friends, we got in some good training. We got there on Thursday afternoon and our bikes had been shipped already. We got right to putting them together in case we had problems. All was going well at first (until I got frustrated that I'm just not meant to be a mechanic). So, basically Dustin did everything while I cleaned the bikes! Jen, Kendra, Jeff, Dustin and I ate a good spaghetti dinner and Jeff and his neighbor tried to diagnose my bike. After no success trying to figure out the gears, we decided to head to the bike shop. Problem was they closed at 8, not 9 and didn't open until 10 the next morning. So, we hung our heads as we entered at 7:...