savagesnow's Fitness Profile

savagesnow's Journal

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  This and That

  It's been several months since I posted anything here, so I thought I would get back into the swing of posting occasionally. Where to start, well my knee surgery went well and I am better for it, it gave me a chance for my muscles to recoup and repair. I have more movement and my core strength is better than ever. I'm slowly introducing running back into my workouts. I ran a 1/2 mile last week during one of my visits to the gym and it went much better than I thought it would. I still can tell the difference in my right knee (scoped one) and my left knee, it is still a bit more stiff, but it isn't preventing me from doing what I want. I think I may have found my next bike, and it surprisingly isn't as expensive as I thought it might be. It is also a Trek bike, I'm waiting until the snow clears so that I can go visit Treads in Parker and take the bike for a nice long test ride on the paths that are near the store. In the meantime, I upgraded my current Trek with clip pedals and I scared the crap out of myself at the gym giving my shoes a test ride. Haha, I went on an evening when no class was being held and practiced clipping and un-clipping while spinning for an hour. While I was out of the seat I forgot that my feet were now attached to the pedals and nearly toppled the bike onto the empty bike to the left of me, basically the bike i was on leaned a bit too far to the right because I tried to pull my right leg up to much when I was out of my seat, it was quite the experience. My friend Jon from Seattle suggested I come out and do the Seattle to Portland ride. I don't know about that this year, we shall see how the 2 triathlons that I am doing this year go. The first one I am doing is the Tri Your Way and I have chosen to do the bike (14 mi), swim (.5 mi), bike (14 mi) then 2 weeks later I'm doing the Tri for the Cure again. That is just an awesomely fun event. It has a lot of personal meaning to me too, one of my best friends lost her mom to Breast Cancer, just last week my friend called me to let me know she had to go in for special testing and was afraid it might be bad news. I have my fingers crossed that she is okay and I will continue to support this cause. For now I am just trying to tone back up from taking time off from the surgery and getting ready to do the fun run in May with my dog, if I think she can handle the 5k without being overly hyper with all the other dogs, I've taken her to the dog park and she is good with other dogs so I think it shall be fun, Jaime is running with her dog and invited me to join her. I am in hopes I can run the whole event, however, I'll be okay with whatever life brings my way. Well until next time, take care and remember to enjoy life.

  Posted over 2 years ago by savagesnow

  
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  Unplanned Knee Surgery and Surviving

  I planned on competing in more than one tri this year, Really I did!!! However, fate had other plans for me... About 2 months after my tri, when I would walk my right knee would give out on me or lock up. I kept ignoring it, but Emily made me tell Jaime (our trainer) about it. Jaime said she would not allow me to continue until I went to the doctor's office to check it out. So I went and had a consult with an orthopedic sports doctor. He took some x-rays and had me do an MRI. The results of those lead me to decide to have surgery. Apparently, I had degenerative meniscus tears and a loose body floating around under my knee cap. Lovely, the good news it wasn't major but should be taken care of. Now two weeks post surgery, I am back to walking almost normal, able to carefully climb stairs and the doc says I can even start some of my workouts again. Once the doctor scoped my knee he found that I had an extra strand of tissue that only 10% of people have that causes false feelings of meniscus tears, so he removed it. I'm hoping to heal and be able to perform better while I take some time off from hardcore triathlon training to turn my attention more to strength training and just plain old cardio. I am amazed at how quickly I am feeling back to normal, I just am a little over protective of my knee at this point and I need to overcome that fear. Time will heal all things, I say.

  Posted over 3 years ago by savagesnow

  
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  Traveling Again

  Once again, I am preparing to do some business travel back east. I am anxious to see how it goes this time. Last time I traveled for work I was in the height of tri training, now that the season is over (for the most part) I guess I'm a bit more nervous. I guess we shall see in a week and a half how things went while out in Annapolis.

  Posted over 3 years ago by savagesnow

  
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  Notes from my Triathlon

  Two weeks ago I completely my first ever triathlon, I wanted to share some things I learned and give props to those that led me to accomplish my goal. A frozen washcloth is wonderful during the event. When I was telling my mom all the preparation I was doing, she suggested I wet a washcloth and fold it and put it in my small cooler to have for the bike or run portion of the race. It was awesome, I used it during the run and placed it on the back of my neck, had a worn a baseball cap rather than a visor I probably would have placed it in the top of the baseball cap. I brought 2 since Emily and I planned on staying together for the whole race. Something not as good that I learned was that if you run and tend to land on your toenails, they can have so much trauma that they tear the tissue underneath and your toenail will turn black and fall off. Pretty much sucks, cause now I can't get pedicures (I know, I know you're think girly, girly... but not really). Other than that it was awesome and I can't wait to do the final one of the season at the end of September. I need to start training again or at least start running again. If you haven't read my other posts, I rally don't care for running, but since I am such a driven person and always try to excel regardless of my dislikes, I have decided that I will push myself and so my new goal is to do the Boulder Boulder next year. Since I really really really loathe running, it will probably take me 9 months of running to really get prepared for it. So that is my next goal and challenge... run, run, and more running... I am now addicted to triathlons and have already picked 2 that I want to do next year, of course, the Tri for the Cure again, and then the Tri your Way. The second one allows the participant to choose which order to do the events in and the participant can choose to skip one and do 2 of the other. Since I really don't like to run, have I mentioned that before? I think I will choose to either bike swim bike or swim bike swim for that one. But who knows with all my training that I have planned. Okay now to give props to all those that helped or drove me to do this. My trainer of course, she rocks, my co-worker Emily who was by my side the whole time, a guy that I met last summer who said "keep going to the gym" as I left his house (you know who you are), my kids (I wanna provide an awesome mentor), my family, and all my friends who I didn't go drinking with cause I was training.

  Posted over 3 years ago by savagesnow

  
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  I did it, I'm a TRIATHALETE!!!!

  The day, August 2nd 2009. This day will forever be etched into my memory. I don't even know where to begin, I guess maybe the night before the race would be a good place to start. I thought for sure that I would struggle with sleeping but the pre-event massage must have been exactly what I needed. Cory, at Massage Envy in Southlands is wonderful, he does a lot of sport related massages and he stretched and relaxed my muscles so they would be ready for race day. Needless to say I didn't toss and turn all night like I thought, I went with my partner in this adventure (Emily) to Carino's and we had a big bowl of pasta and just talked about other things besides the event. Then I came home and got all my gear ready and froze a couple of wet washcloths and half bottles of grape G2 Gatorade (YUMMY) and added my Recovery powder so that when I poured the cold Gatorade in over the frozen Gatorade that it would mix. I slept like a baby, I wasn't nervous at all. Hard to believe, I know!!! Woke up at 5AM and got the bike in the truck,. my PB&J sandwiches ready and off to Emily's I went. It was crazy parking near Cherry Creek Reservoir, but we managed to find a place and walked our bikes and gear into the transition area. Of course since this was both of ours first time we didn't know what to expect and exactly what to do, but the volunteers were awesome. Being in the buddy group meant we were going to be in one of the final four waves so we got our sunscreen on, ate a roast beef sandwich from Arby's (compliments of Emily) and chatted with tons of other women. It was great and no nervousness yet. We debated on moving our transition area a bit closer to the starts of the bike and run portion and decided we didn't care (in hindsight, we probably should have) so when they announced they were letting wave 22 into the water we decided it was time, so we stood in line with over 400 other anxious women ready to GO! Finally it was our turn to hit the water (the last wave) and while we were standing there in knee high water I was totally calm, but once the horn went off for us to start and I glided into the water and tried to get a good start off I freaked out a bit, so it took me until the second buoy to get my stride, Emily was cool with it and struggled a bit at first as well, we had decided prior to the race that we would stick by each other no matter how slow the other person was, so after that second buoy I mentioned to Emily "Let's start picking people off" so that is exactly what we did. We finished ahead of some people and behind others but we did it in 26 minutes not bad for having a slow start. BTW we didn't know our results until we got home and checked them out online. So we ran all the way to the back of the transition area, like I said we probably should have moved and got our socks and shoes on and took off to the bike start, we had to walk our bikes through the transition area. Once we were across the start we mounted our bikes and off we went, however a mile into the race Emily's chain came off her bike and I was just about 5 or 6 bike lengths ahead of her when she called to me. I stopped and people passed and asked if she was okay, but when she told them what was up no one would stop as I was walking towards her, I guess they thought I was already helping. We got the chain back on and took off, finishing in 58 minutes. Next was the run but we had to put our bikes all the way in the back again and at first we were running towards the start but then realized we had a hill to start off with so we decided to conserve energy and walk to the entrance of the run. We took off running at first, but my feet were hot and on fire so we decided to walk the hill then run the rest but that didn't work so we walk ran it. It took us 47 minutes. So overall we finished the race in 2 hours 26 minutes including 17 minutes of transition and time to replace the chain. Not bad for our first event. Emily and I can't wait to do another one.

  Posted over 3 years ago by savagesnow