9 July 09: Frankfurt and Ironman Germany

Last weekend Maiki and I took a little trip to Frankfurt to watch Ironman Germany and support our friends who were racing. Maiki was also supposed to be racing in Frankfurt, but had to change his plans shortly before the race because he spent what was supposed to be his last big 10 days of training being sick. Sooooo he will be joining me in Lake Placid, and I cannot wait to see him annihilate that bike course! But back to Frankfurt: I have to say Ironman Germany is perhaps the biggest spectacle I have ever seen on the ironman circuit. I had heard a lot about this event, but couldn’t fully comprehend the amount of hype surrounding it until I was there in the midst this race that had totally engulfed the center of this big city. Just watching was an incredible experience, and the race is now definitely on my to-do list.

The pro swim start–with a couple hundred of the fast age groupers just behind.

Fifteen minutes later, a couple thousand more age groupers started . . .

Watching the swim start with my friend Nicole, the better half of Mathias Hecht (8th at Ironman Hawaii last year), who is one of Maiki’s teammates and was our sentimental favorite of the day.

A special bit of the bike course–uphill on cobbles. Yes I nearly killed myself trying to take this picture while Nicole and I were riding the course on Saturday.

Mathias giving it to himself on the run. He held strong in fifth all afternoon, and finished in 8:11. It was a great race.

The run was four laps along the Main River, which was awesome for spectating because we could run back and forth across the bridge to see the guys twice each lap. And standing on the side of the path, our view was really close-up. It truly gave me a new appreciation for these top guys, as the men’s race amongst the top three (Timo Bracht, Eneko Llanos, and Chris McCormack) was very tight, and seeing the pain and suffering on their faces during the battle was incredibly impressive. It was a great reminder of how I should be feeling during the last bit of that ironman marathon–next time I am out there I will remember Macca’s face on Sunday and ask myself if I could be pushing harder!

The finish in the middle of the square in Frankfurt was insane. You will have to settle for before and after photos because on race day, the square was so packed that I could hardly even get a glimpse of the jumbotron that played the video of the guys running down the finish chute. We had to settle for seeing a quick glimpse of the guys’ heads through the crowds as they ran past us, and then seeing a fraction of their video on the big screen. The noise as the guys ran in was deafening. I was bummed not to have a better view, but to see this much hype surrounding an ironman finish was worth it!

After the race, my cousin Greg flew into Frankfurt for a business trip, so I even got to have a little family reunion while I was there. It was a treat! Here we are in the square, so you can see a bit of the finish setting.

3 July 09: More Birthday Presents…

My athletes are crazy. As most of you probably know by now, one of my favorite hobbies is helping a few age-group triathletes challenge their physical and mental limits in the process of pursuing their goals in the sport that we love. Because I can only work with a few athletes, I fill my group with super-determined, hardworking, and focused individuals. They all start with these requisite qualities–and hopefully a little bit of crazy–but during the course of our relationship, they often seem to become really crazy in a way that makes me both proud and somewhat frightened–like, “look at the monster I have had a hand in creating!” 

Check out these two…

 

I always find that one of the best ways for my athletes to get the most out of themselves is to pair them up–to form them into little training groups, if at all possible. All of my coaching is done online, so my athletes aren’t in one central location. However, I have recently discovered that even a virtual-training cohort can be effective.

I took one of my athlete’s business trips as an opportunity for a little cold-water bonding in Lake Michigan for my two midwesterners. The forced quality time in the 55-degree water was apparently was traumatic enough to forge a bond between Zody and Bob, my compression-sock-wearing students above. (Note how well Zody rocks the schoolgirl look with the socks. I might have been as proud of that as I was of her ironman finish there in Coeur d’Alene.) Although they actually live hours apart and both train alone on a regular basis, it seems that they have established a virtual-training-partner-ship, which has spurred them both on through an unofficial who-is-more-hardcore contest. Or as they like to say, who can “HTFU” more than the other . . .

Before I tell you about the stunts that this little “contest” has precipitated, bear in mind that I am not talking about seasoned or professional triathletes here.  I am talking about two age-groupers, both of whom just did their first ironmans last year, and who have full-time job commitments, etc. Zody, in fact, hadn’t even done a triathlon or owned a proper bike or swimsuit before last year!

When we had our first meeting upon beginning to work together in January, Zody asked if I thought she might be ready again for a half this summer. I told her if she wanted it, she could do another ironman this summer. “You really think we could be ready by June?” she asked (She had done her first ironman in Madison last September.) . . . We put Coeur d”Alene on the calendar for June. A few weeks before setting a 40-minute PR in Coeur d’Alene, Zody sent me a “Please, Coach!” email asking to add Ironman Wisconsin to her schedule for this year.  I obliged–it was the least I could do after she had frequently been driving from Chicago to Madison to get in some “hill training” on the ironman course. I knew then that I had a transformation on my hands, but wasn’t aware of the extent of it until last week when Zody decided that she wasn’t going to be content to just go to Ironman Louisville to cheer on her new “training partner.” She wanted to join him. Two weeks before Wisconsin. I wasn’t in any position to be denying her the opportunity to tackle this challenge.

In fact, to further exemplify the sickness to which I may have contributed, I just received the following reply to an email asking Zody if she minded if I talked about her and her “double” on my blog: “Sure . . . but I didn’t think it was a double or anything special as there are like two weeks in between.”

Not to be out-done by his training partner or the GCM, for that matter, Bob sent me the following surprise via email last night:

Subject: What Do You Get the Girl Who Has Everything?

Hi, Coachie!
Couldn’t think of a B-Day gift for you this year. Came-up with a good idea after reading your latest blog.
Just got done with YOUR Birthday Set! 100 x 100 @ 1:45 PBB. Great way to spend 3+ hours! Wasn’t that bad, really.
Let GCM know he can’t let an old American guy from the Mid-West match his swim workouts LOL.
Happy Birthday, Hillary!
ISM
(Illinois Swimming Machine)

Indeed I must admit that the ISM’s feat is even more impressive than the GCM’s–he did this solo, too!

Now the GCM and I are hitting the road to Frankfurt for the weekend to cheer on one of my other crazies (Hopefully by now it is evident that I use this term only with the utmost endearment) , Marc Rubin, and of course to support the GCM’s Commerzbank teammates, at Ironman Germany.

1 July 09: True Love, or The GCM Swims the Birthday Set

Monday was my and the German Cycling Machine’s three-month anniversary. I am not usually one to keep track of such things, but they were on my mind since Monday was also my parents’ THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR wedding anniversary. And they still like each other and go on dates and stuff! So in an attempt to wrap my head around this feat, of which I am in no small degree of awe, I was wondering how long I had been with the GCM. This is how we came up with three months, which in my world, is a long time–one-fourth of a year, or three ironmans, long, in fact:

The conversation went something like this,

Hillary: “Babe, when was our first date?”

Maiki: “Mooloolaba?” (referring to spectating at the World Cup which was just down the road when we were living in Noosa, Australia)

Hillary: “I think so too . . . “

Maiki: “I missed my sixty-k (km) bike and you missed your two-k swim.”

Desperate times called for desperate measures, as he was leaving Noosa–assumedly for good–the next day. What was a girl to do? Workouts were missed by both parties so we could go out to dinner. This was March 29th.

So Monday I received a card which read, amongst other things, “I enjoy every moment with you.”

While I was looking over at the poor guy underneath the water during our 10-kilometer swim, I was thinking about how he probably wished he could take back those words just then! As I have previously mentioned, the GCM and the pool are not friends. The boy loves to train, and he would bike and run all day, every day if he could; but swimming just seems to be something he does so that he can get paid to do the other two. He grudgingly swims nearly every day when I am around, but last weekend, when I was in Belgium, he didn’t set foot in the water. In fact I think he and his mates even met for a poolside coffee, but there was no swimming involved.

I have often wondered if there was such a thing as a boy who does what he says he is going to do, even if it means doing something he doesn’t want to do . . . On Sunday, while I was driving home from my race in Belgium, my mind turned immediately to what physical challenge I could look forward to in my near future. I knew I would be taking it relatively easy for a couple of days after the race, so I thought this might be the perfect time to cash in my “voucher” for a birthday swim (100×100s), as the session would make me feel like I’d done some real training without totally smashing me or digging a hole for these legs.  Unable to wait until I got home, I shot a message with my idea over to the GCM. After some facetious complaining, he ultimately responded by saying that I had a voucher (part of his birthday present to me), and that whatever I decided, he would oblige. After permission from Coachie, it was on for Tuesday. . . And this is how Hillary learned that the aforementioned type of guy does, in fact, exist.

He even recruited his friend Clemens (Coenen, top amateur in Kona last year) to join us. Clem was excused after 50, though,  since he is racing Challenge Roth next weekend.

He did, however, leave us this lovely note upon his departure.

The Cycling Machine completed the Birthday Set like a Swimming Machine. For my part, I pretty much felt like I was drowning beginning at #1, all the way through #100; I’ve been sick since my race on Sunday (Yes, I know what you are thinking: “Surprise, surprise!”), so having the Cycling Machine swimming stroke for stroke next to me for 10 kilometers defnitely kept me on task. I knew I had nothing to complain about, since he was in the process of adding the distance of an ironman swim to his previous longest single swim session.

The “after” photo: note that the GCM’s pained expression from the “before” photo has disappeared….

The highlight: newly-acquired tan lines–not easy to come by in Germany, even in the summertime.

30 June 09: Bonus Race in Belgium

On Sunday I had a little week-after-ironman bonus race at the ITU Long Distance Series race–which means double-olympic distance– in Brasschaat, Belgium. Long story short, let’s just say I prefer to race an ironman the week after an ironman;  because, first,  to be honest, I have a little bit of difficulty getting excited about non-iron-distance races, and second, because, well, it turns out that shuffling through a marathon at ironman pace is one thing, but running 20km at half-ironman pace is another thing entirely . . .

Still it was great fun to mix it up with some girls that I don’t often get a chance to race with, like Charlotte Kolters (2nd at the ITU Long Distance Worlds last year) and Nina Kraft (many-time Ironman champ). I had an average swim but quickly made up for it on the bike, and enjoyed being able to just smash myself from start to finish and feel like I had the power to keep pace with anyone who came by. I haven’t done a race this flat–dead flat–for a long time. The only problem was that it was Belgium, and those who have watched Belgian cycling races on TV will know what I am talking about when I say that there were a whole lot of turns onto little roads and blind corners. And those who have ridden with me can imagine that I lost a bit of time on those. I did the best I could on a technical course and am generally really happy that my cycling legs seems to be a permanent fixture in my life right now–perhaps not a coincidence with the German Cycling Machine also being a permanent fixture . . .

The good news is that my running legs managed not to escape from my T2 bag while I was on the bike. Despite the fact that I had done everything I could to bury myself on the bike from the word go–because that’s what you do when it’s less than iron-distance–I put on my K-Swiss and started running on legs that felt fresh. I did the first 5 kilometers in 21 minutes, which is about right for my non-speedster self  for a half-ironman-type pace. The bad news is that at that point, my run legs decided to have a rest on the side of the road while watching me pay the price for this silly little stunt I had requested of them for three more laps . . . Like I said, I have never asked anything above-ironman-pace of my legs one week post-ironman and now I see what sort of capacity they have for it: approximately five kilometers. I spent a very painful last 15 kilometers reminding myself that this was my first proper training day for Ironman Lake Placid (July 26)–or more accurately, the Ironman Lake Placid-UK double!

I ended up finishing sixth, which earned me $700EURO, or the most anyone has ever paid me to do a half-ironman-ish distance (Now you see why I stick to the long stuff!).

It is Tuesday now and I have a voucher to cash in. More on that tomorrow!

27 June 09: When in Belgium . . .

Or anywhere near the Netherlands, apparently, do not ask for a coffee shop if you actually want coffee. I made that mistake this morning, when I woke up at 10AM in jetlag hell (story of my life recently) with one thing on my mind . . . So I went down to the front desk at my hotel to ask where I could find the nearest coffee shop; after all, I had arrived late-night last night and didn’t have much sense of my surroundings.

When the lady at the front desk responded to my inquiry by saying, “That’s not allowed here. Coffee shops are illegal in Antwerp,” I just figured that I had missed a coffee shop next door in the dark last night, and that she was poking fun of my really obvious question. So I laughed, but then we went over the same thing two or three times, and she kept insisting that “it” was not allowed here . . . And then she explained to her co-worker that I was looking for a coffee shop.

Eventually they told me that I “would have to go to Amsterdam for this.” And I realized that they were talking about the kind of  “coffee shop” that Snoop frequents on the Father Hood  episode (one of my favorite shows–I just can’t get enough of Snoop Dogg) where he visits Amsterdam, and is frequently quoted as saying, “I love the coffee shop . . . ” We all know what Snoop loves. And it isn’t coffee.

“Aaaah, you think I want to smoke . . .” I then felt compelled to explain to front-desk lady that I have in fact never smoked pot in my entire life, and that I was just looking for a caffeinated beverage. Finally she directed me to the city centre, where I enjoyed three coffees (It would probably take five to make one of my American-sized takeaways.) at a “tea room.”

I am looking forward to finding some legs tomorrow afternoon (12Pm race start–I am still not used to these Euro start times, but at this point I won’t complain about a sleep-in.), and then to finding my way back to Germany. I had just two days at “home” when I returned from Japan, and I am more than ready to have a couple consecutive weeks there.

26 June 09: Japan, Part Two

I am finally back in Germany after a two-day-long trip home, so I wanted to post a few more Japan highlights before we are on to the next country .  . . which will be Belgium, this weekend. Coachie is sending me there in the hopes that I will find my run legs in my T2 bag this time! I will do the ITU Long Distance Series (double-Olympic distance) race this Sunday. I am looking forward to another crack at a smashfest, and also to seeing a new country.

Monday I got to spend some quality time with my homestay mom, Yasuka. She is so cool, and I feel like I learned a lot about Japanese history and culture from her in just five days. First, she made me an awesome, healthy morning-after breakfast: miso soup, fresh fruit, rice with soybeans, and my first non-canned coffee in days. I thought I might have trouble finding my kind of food in Japan, but it might almost be vegetarian heaven!

Not because of this, however.  That would be whale meat. Yasuka told me that two generations ago, it was served in school lunches. However, now because of massive restrictions on whaling, whale meat is a delicacy. This little package costs about $21 USD.

Luke, Amanda and I had gone on a coffee mission during my first morning in Goto, only to conclude that a nice, hot, takeaway coffee in a sippy cup wasn’t an option. Desperate times call for desperate measures, however, and thus I quickly became accustomed to cold coffee in a can. There was no shortage of this stuff; the local convenience store had literally dozens of different canned varieties, and canned coffee populated at least half the space in the vending machines which appeared on nearly every street corner.

However, one of the many things Yasuka taught me on Monday was the finer points of coffee-in-a-can. In the machine above, the top row and half of the middle are all coffee…Note, however, that some have blue buttons below them, while some have red. Well, Yasuka informed me that blue means “cold,” and red means “hot.” That in fact is a hot can of coffee in my hand!

Silly Americans….and they sure dress funny, too!

21 June 09: Tough Day at the Office

Today was a tough day at the office. Actually it was quite a lovely and enjoyable day, as Ironman Japan is a beautiful race, my body was doing as I asked, and I was generally having a lot of fun–until I attempted to run. I led the race out of the water and had, I think, a lead of 5+ minutes off the bike. This was a pleasant surprise. But it turns out that my run legs RSVP’d for this event with a “decline.” Or “cannot attend event.” Not sure where they went because I am pretty sure I did not kill them off on the bike. I have done that before and I know what that feels like, but today, my legs just kept feeling stronger until the last kilometers of the ride. So I am not sure where that strength went when I asked them to run, but they did not want to move. I ended up fifth. As you can imagine, then, this was not real pretty. In fact every moment of the “run” was pretty much torture. Luckily–or not–I have had a lot of practice with the old “death march” in my day, so I got through it and didn’t violate my “no walking in ironman rule.” Although walking might have been faster than what I was doing….The good news is that this was my first decent ride of the season–first time leading off the bike this year–which tells me that all three pieces are back. I just need to figure out a way to put them together, and I certainly am disappointed that I couldn’t do it today.

I am now lying in my bed totally starving, yet physically unable to get up to do anything about it. So instead I will post some pics of the happier times during what has been a great little trip–except for the last 3:50+ minutes of the race!

Today’s highlight was my dear friend Lukey, or Luke McKenzie, successfully defending his title here in Goto. He had a tough men’s field to contend with, not to mention the not-insignificant added pressure of being a defending ironman champ for the first time in his career. For this reason, I have all the more respect for what he pulled off today. It was awesome.

My reunion with Lukey and his other half, Amanda, here in Goto was something that I’ve been looking forward to for months. I miss my friends so much while I am in Germany, so my reunion with the “adopted fam” was very eagerly anticipated. My first morning here in Goto began with being awoken (at 10AM, since I had been up half the night with jetlag issues) here at my homestay by the kids jumping on me. I can hardly find where I “live” here, and the kids had found my homestay and my bedroom! They are the best. We then set out for a day of course reconn, etc….

Tomie Beach, swim site

Their homestay has even adopted me as well, and took us to a traditional Japanese restaurant where they grill your food on the ground right in front of you.

Close-up…No I didn’t! See the cabbage and other veggies–those are mine.  My new Japanese friends entertain themselves by trying to watch me use chopsticks…I am useless with them!

With my very own homestay family, Yasuka and Yukio, who have been a highlight of my Japan experience. Today was their first-ever ironman, and they were beyond enthusiastic, cheering on the course with handpainted signs with my name on them and all…The people in this town have been just incredible. I was overwhelmed by the people from all walks of life who were out on the course cheering their hearts out for us–even in the rain.

18 June 09: On the road again . . .

I am currently in the midst of my 24-hour trip to Goto, Japan for Sunday`s ironman . . . This is not an easy place to get to, as I don`t actually arrive at my destination until about 11 hours after I arrived in Tokyo–and last I checked, Japan was a pretty small country!

On the long ride over, I came up with a list of my travel essentials. There are a whole lot of bonus items that I may add to the mix on any given day, but these are the ones that I am never without on an airplane:

Water bottles. I always bring two or three of the biggest water bottles I can find, and fill them up before I get on the plane, then beg for refills once they are empty. I am not sure it is totally possible to compensate for the dehydration that occurs as a result of being at 35,000ft for 11+ hours, but I do find that the more I can do to combat it, the better I recover from the travel.

Black K-Swiss hoodie (pictured above): It’s super-cute. It goes with everything. It has big pockets for quick-and-easy crackberry access, and to hold whatever is inevitably overflowing from my little Prada handbag and whatever other carry-on I have, which is also inevitably too small. And it’s black, so although it will be filthy after 24 hours of wearing, it won’t show…too much.

Crackberry: Gotta love flight mode. Sometimes I feel like on the plane is the only time I have to sit down and write proper catch-up emails to my friends. If I have have the energy, the plane is often a good place for a productivity binge. I can dominate over my ADD in this environment because I really cannot find many distractions–especially once I have consumed all of the food I have packed (see the last item on the list).

Reading material: Back home, I always hit the airport newsstand for a trashy celeb mag or two, which are always good for an hour or two of entertainment. However, good reading material in English isn’t so easy to come by these days now that I am based in Germany. So this time I used some self restraint and left a fresh new issue of Vogue untouched since my Boston trip: Cameron Diaz and Susan Rice. Loved it.

Compression socks: Of course I wear them on the plane. I wear them not on the plane, too. With mini skirts.

PowerBar Protein Plus Bars. Limit: 2. I used to carry my whole trip’s supply of PowerBar Protein Plus bars in my carry-on, because they are heavy and I am always pushing the weight limit. However, I had recently had to change this habit and enforce a ProteinPlus limit for the carry-on. Because whatever food I carry on will be eaten, and it will most likely be consumed during the first half of my trip, whether that trip be 24 hours or 4 hours. And I love ProteinPlus bars. Today I went with the Dulce de Leche 30-gram protein bar, and a Cinnamon Roll bar. 

14 June 09: A Champ in the House

Just a quick post to brag about the Champ in the house…It was a good thing I spared Maiki from the birthday special yesterday. By the way, thanks to all you lovely folks who dedicated your weekend smashfests to me. I hope to repay you by doing you proud next weekend in Japan!

Anyways, I received this picture from the Bonn Triathlon via email last night–as if I wasn’t already bummed not to be there to support:

GCM was the defending champ and would take on the likes of Faris Al-Sultan and a few other strong Germans today at their sort-of “Escape From Alcatraz,” or the Bonn Triathlon. This race involves jumping off a boat and swimming downstream in the Rhine for 4km (It took significantly less time than today’s Alcatraz swim, which was just over half this distance!) , then cycling 60km, and running 15km.

The Cycling Machine lived up to his reputation on the bike, came off the bike with a two + minute lead,  and won the race by three minutes. (Faris was second.) At least I got to see photos! GCM did us proud today.

13 June 09: Birthday Blog

Today is my 3-1. German Cycling Machine reminded me of this when the clock struck exactly 12AM last night. Luckily for him, he did so with the flowers above in hand. Because it wasn’t exactly great news. I tried to argue that I actually was not born until after 9PM, California-time. Give me a few more hours of 3-0. GCM is 28 so he doesn’t understand.

I did receive some nice consolation prizes in addition to the above . . . First, there was a matching pink ipod, because I can never have too many mp3 players (At the rate that I kill/lose them, I have to travel with at least 3 at all times.), and apparently I can watch videos on this one, which should improve this week’s travel experience.

Most importantly, GCM gave me a voucher (say “wow-cha”) for 100×100. As most of you probably know by now, this is a swim workout of 100×100 meters, or yards, as the case may be (American friends, note that the 100×100M set is actually 1000yards longer than the yards version.), and is what I call the “Birthday Set.” It is one of my favorite workouts and gifts to myself, or anyone else who wants to invite me to his or her party.  GCM is racing tomorrow, so I spared him the birthday set experience today, but he knows darn well that I will cash in my voucher; I am already trying to figure out an appropriate date in between our different race schedules, and right now this is seeming like a great activity for his “recovery week” post-Ironman Germany.  This gift is an especially altruistic one coming from the GCM when you consider that it will add 3.8 kilometers to his previous longest single swim session. That means adding one ironman swim.  And there is a reason we don’t call him the GSM. GCM and the pool are not friends. I am working on changing this. But we have not yet had a full conversion.

Anyways, I am sad to report that Coachie didn’t have a ”Birthday Set” in the plan for me today either, because I am doing some pretty specific stuff this weekend to get ready for Ironman Japan next weekend. I am saving up all of my mental and physical desire for a smashfest, storing it for my birthday present to myself at Ironman Japan next weekend!