Did everyone have a good 4th of July weekend? I certainly did! As I mentioned at the end of my last post, my family and I headed to the Branson area of southern Missouri last week to visit my parents. We’ve been parked there since last Tuesday but will be moving on to the fields of Iowa this week.
**This was to have been posted on Tuesday, but because my parents live in the sticks and it was raining, we had no wifi. Gasp! So here it is, two days late.
I had some major swim/bike/run plans in my head for when we were here. Nothing was going to get in the way of my Ironman training. Until we got here and started to relax.
The first day we were here, we slept in. It was glorious, especially considering we had gotten up at 4 am the day before. But the road was calling and I wanted to get some hill running in. When I say hills, I mean HILLZ. Steep friggin hillZ. We took off and within one mile, I was heaving up a big hill, ready to throw in the towel and give up. It was almost as humid as in Wilmington, which I certainly wasn’t expecting. Seven point three of some of the most miserable miles later, I was done. I had wanted to go ten miles, but I didn’t have enough liquid left in my body to be able to sweat it out. I figured some of the fatigue was due to the 100 mile bike ride and heavy training week the week before that, but I was really pissed off slightly irritated about not having a good run.
The towel was SOAKED when I got done.
The next day, I went to the local gym and hopped on a bike. Five minutes later, I was drenched in sweat, dreading the remaining hour. Here’s a suggestion to every gym everywhere: USE FANS. No one wants to work out in a pool of their own sweat. It was so gross. After that suffer fest, I hopped on the treadmill for a mile or two. Funny, there were fans on the treadmills so I cranked those babies up and the run ended up being relatively comfortable, and I ended up going 3.1 miles. Not too shabby. I’d planned to swim whenever I could, but with the weird weather and pop up storms, we ended up at the pool that day. No swimming for me.
The next day, we all headed out on the lake. Table Rock Lake is absolutely gorgeous. It’s less clear than last year, due to all the rain they’ve been having, but it’s still very clear, especially compared to what I normally swim in. I had my cap and goggles, and when we got anchored in a nice little cove, I took off to swim. Evidently the plethora of shark attacks off MY coast has gotten to my head, because I kept seeing big huge sea monsters on the bottom coming up to get me. I was freaked out, to say the least. Then I saw a pretty big log sticking up from the bottom and in my mind, it literally was a sea monster coming up to get me, and I actually freaked out. I did the exact same thing as when I saw all those jelly fish (stop, dog paddle like mad, and gasp for breath), but this time, it was worse. I tried three times to get myself started and saw sea monsters logs on the bottom, and three times, I totally freaked out. I swam back to the boat, shaking. WTF was this all about? I’m a tough girl who doesn’t freak out about things like this, especially dead logs that have been there for eons, but I was scared. I decided to just stop, and try again another day.
On July 4th, my husband and I were signed up to run the Firecracker 5000. Well, I was; he was signed up for the 10k. We got up super early (compared to the late mornings we’d had so far), got ready, and headed to the race. We laughed at the timer chips that were to be secured on our shoes with “bread bag” twisty ties.
Must be the new “thing” in timing chips. But it held strong!
There were probably 600 total runners, the shirts were very nice, and packet pickup was easy since we got there early. We warmed up about half a mile, found the can, and lined up.
The race started a few minutes late, but we took off in the middle of Branson Landing, a cute little shopping area. The bad thing is that they didn’t even play the national anthem before the race, something they should have made sure to do on that important day.
I fought some traffic as we started, but soon, it thinned out and I was on my way. I wasn’t sure what pace I wanted to keep, and soon, I figured I needed to just GO and not worry about what pace I was going. We ran along the Taneycomo Lake, which is a very cold lake, which made for some very nice cool air as we ran along, probably ten degrees cooler than even twenty feet away from it. Crazy. We wound around a campground and neighborhood, and I felt my pace was holding pretty good at 7:20ish. I ALWAYS slow down during the second mile, but felt I was doing well and would have a good finish. We backtracked towards the landing again, ran past it, and wound around the parking lot, which was annoying, but heard the course had to be made up that morning due to flooding on other parts of the course. Oh well, I knew the end was near!
I crossed the finish line at 22:01. Whew, I was happy with that, even though I think the course was a teeny bit short. I walked with my water to catch my breath, hid it by White House Black Market, and jogged backwards along the course to find my husband and get some more miles in, of course near the lake where it was nice and cool. I found my hubs and he was going along at a good pace, so I cut through and waited for him at the finish line. He finished in 50:36, which is a new PR for him since he hasn’t run a 10k in forever. Whohoo!
We cooled down as much as we could and waited for the awards. In the meantime, tons of door prizes were awarded, some of them being big packs of fireworks, the kind that are as tall as I am. How cool is that?! Tons of kids were called to get some mini packs, big packs, and plenty of big kids won them, too. I was happy to win first place in my age group and got a cool gold medal to bring home. We changed into dryer clothes and walked around, finding some little trinkets to bring home.
First place in the “thirty-something and above” age group (40-44)
When we got back, we got headed to the lake, unbeknownst to us this would be our only nice lake day. It was great! We relaxed, drank, cannonballed, floated, and hung out. Perfect. Then it was back to the house for food, back to the lake for fireworks, then back to the house again for our own firework show.
Boats piling up to watch the firework show.
There were so many going off all over and echoing in the hills, it was like what I imagine Beirut is like except we were having fun. I love those little novelty fireworks, like tanks, fire trucks, the parachute ones, and fountains. The boys loved everything else. We had a blast (pun totally intended).
My dad and the kids with our show stoppers.
The next day, we slept in til about 9:00, which is so unusual for us, but with the dark and quiet room, soooo nice! We couldn’t really do much outside due to the strange storms, but we hung out and relaxed.
On Monday, I ended up running 6 miles of hillz again, and then we all headed to the shooting range for a gun safety class and some guns! I have to admit, I’m not a gun person. I have never really been around them, but I’m definitely not against them. My dad has been collecting interesting sorts of guns for several years, and wanted to teach my boys about guns in a safe way. They loved it! I loved it! We all loved it! Feeling the power of a gun going off in my hand was, oh, let’s say it was scary in a good way. If that makes any sense. After over two hours of shooting various rifles and a 9 mm, we headed to lunch and then the boat.
9 mm Diamondback
Wait, crappy weather again so the pool. Wait, storm popped up so once again, we were trapped in the house for the evening. We played some games on the deck as we listened to more thunder and rain. My husband and I ended up going to have a few drinks at a total dive biker bar and picked up some fried green beans on the way home. I love those things.
Every time we went out, it was like this.
I was planning to get a swim in on Tuesday. Since I was a little freaked out, I needed to face my fears anyway, so figured I could go to the campground swim area that’s right around the corner from here. Nope, torrential rain with no sign of ending. So I went back to the house of sweat (the gym) and thankfully, this time it was a little “less hot”. I went an hour and 20 minutes hard on the bike and then did some strength on the machines. My husband was desperately trying to get internet connection, but was finding the equivalent of 12k dial up, so I didn’t get any treadmill running in this time. We headed back to my parent’s house. My mom and I took the kids for a walk around the campground during a rain lull, and of course, it started raining again before we were done. Damn. Everything was starting to flood and the lake level was rising, which is crazy since the lake is ginormous.
This was the norm for the entire week we were there.
On Wednesday, we will be heading north to Des Moines, Iowa, and I’m planning to meet up with Kickass Kecia from Push My Limits sometime on Wednesday afternoon, assuming our travels go as planned. We are then going to Field of Dreams so my kids can say, “Dad, wanna have a catch?”. Then we’re headed to our old stomping ground in Sioux City to visit friends until we head back to Kansas City for our flight home on Tuesday. Whew. I’m tired even typing that. Meanwhile, at home, my yard is dying because there’s no rain and it’s still hotter ‘n a whore in church, my cats are dying from the lack of attention, and it still as hot as the gates of hell. I guess that’s what we’re going to get when we arrive back home. I’m hoping we get just a tiny bit of dryer air in Iowa. Just a little less humidity would be just what the doctor ordered. I can only hope.
How do you manage training when on vacation?
Running Boston And Beyond 
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