This month included Borrego Springs climbing the Montezuma grade within a 50 mile ride and 4500 feet of total climbing, 4 Disneyworld theme parks in 4 days with a half marathon on day 3, and my 2nd foot surgery with a volunteer shift at IMAZ 3 days later, so again; this means do as much as possible in the shortest time frame in case you can't do it later!!
Let's add one more kink is this craziness...a total wrench in my life...I started my new job October 28...bittersweet and chaotic emotions ensued. I couldn't turn down great benefits and my highest salary to date and an actual path to promotion..more than I have ever been offered in my career but... I had just planned my next chapter after 18 months of unemployment. I had accepted it with the destiny of full time Ironman training for IMAZ Nov 2014. I had one last interview to go and then I expected my final rejection. I had decided to return to school full time. I wanted an AS. My BA/MBA had none of the sciences. I wanted to go into the medical field; maybe Cardio technology, maybe nursing? I had to start from the beginning of science regardless so I ordered all my transcripts and talked to counselors at National University and Grossmont College. I need 2 more GEs?? oral communication and a PE class since my degrees are old ?? fine... I added it to the science pre-req list. They waived Algebra for my chem class because I took Calculus..haha like I remember that from the 80s!!! I registered for Bio and lab courses starting the end of November. oh YEA!!! I love a good plan.
oh NOOO!! a full time job with a 25 mile commute each way? that wasn't expected at all. Hell the puppy wasn't even 4 months yet so she didn't have her rabies shot so she could go to daycare when Marcus travelled! When are we getting her spayed now? What about foot surgery planned Nov 14? What about our 5 day Disneyworld vacation planned and paid for!! OMGGGGG!! Seriously I felt like I was hyperventilating around the clock. My job said.. no problem with the time off!!! wow my brain hurt trying to reconfigure my future. Here's my list of things to do in November.
1st. I hate commuting. It is such a waste of time. Let's move. Well let's sell the house. Ummm crap there's a lot to do to get it ready. Got our realtor on board and he gave us the to do list. Marcus cancelled his business trip and we hired contractors which turned into a living nightmare and drove us nearly to drink. We packed our "clutter" day and night and pushed the contractor to work faster. We decided on an open house Nov 8 while we were at Disneyworld and the dogs were at my parent's house. We did our best in 7 days and we kept our Nov 2 plans for Borrego Springs. It's a ride I refused to miss.
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| Quark Riken compact powermeter |
3rd was the Borrego Springs 50 ride which had been planned for a month. It was a ride I never would have completed without the group. I am so grateful for the last 6 months I spent riding every Tuesday with Steve's Valle Velo group ride. He showed me North county and now my job is center in this area! It was meant to be! The 2 hour climb was brutal for me. It really strains my neck and knees to push that hard for so long. My cadence is far too slow. The power meter worked well and proved I have a lot of work to do so I am more efficient. However, my altimeter did not work at all so this is the 2nd 910XT watch that has broken in 13 months. Unbelievable..why do things break on the most important days? Had to order a new Garmin before DW and had no elevation for my big climb. Marcus showed 4500 feet of climbing. It was a great accomplishment for me mentally, although we lost half a day of prepping the house.
4th was to see as much of Disneyworld as possible in 4 days. OMG I didn't realize this was nuts at the time. We arrived Wednesday night, dropped our stuff at the Shades of Green resort and took a bus to Downtown Disney immediately that night. It was 11pm and one store was open but at least I got my breakables and didn't need to get stuff later at the park.
Day 1: We woke at 6am (3am SD time) and spent the next 15 hours at Magic Kingdom. When we left, I felt like IMAZ couldn't feel much worse on my body. In fact I welcomed the thought of a 7 hour bike ride in the middle of the day just to get off my feet! It was well worth the magical fireworks over the castle that night!
Day 2: We woke at 7am and went to Epcot all day for 12 hours plus the race expo and returned fully exhausted again. We walked the entire park and the international food loop. This was a great decision although we didn't know it at the time. The half marathon ends here. We thought the food was included in the after party but it was not. We had no incentive to walk this loop again after the half marathon at 1am.
We rested at the hotel about 5 hours and then went to ESPN to enjoy the pre- race dancing festivities and started the half marathon at 10:15pm. My legs were very tired and my GI track was very pissed off from eating crap for days and not enough water. I had 2 bathroom breaks during the run which considerably slowed our overall time but I just could not help it. I hate stopping during a run, however, it was required! Our pace was about 10:30 without the 2 stops so I guess that's not bad considering 3 days of walking and pictures. We finished about 12:45am and tried to enjoy the after party but we were so tired and so we didn't walk much of the giant Epcot loop with international foods since we had done this the day before. The prices were all the same which gave you basically a 2-bite tapa for $3-$6 each after waiting in line for a long time. Try getting a meal out of that and you are looking at $20 over a couple hours, after finishing a half marathon at 1am. We were less than thrilled. I loved running through 3 theme parks and the difference in the Disneyland half and DW half is that DW owns about 20000 acres so there is electricity everywhere, even between the parks, so we were entertained even if we were not inside the park. Lights were everywhere, huge megatron TVs showing cute cartoons, music, loads of volunteers..it was absolutely gorgeous and entertaining for the entire 13 miles. DL doesn't own the property outside of the theme park so there are dead zones although they do their best with antique car shows and cheerleaders along the way to the Anaheim baseball park. DL half is in August so it starts at 6am in total sunshine. Tinkerbell starts in January so from 6-8am it's totally dark and without owning the land, the electricity is only available in the park so I felt Tink was too dark and would recommend Disneyland half over Tinkerbell on the west coast due to daylight savings time.
There was a fun dancing warmup to lots of funny songs before the run which I really appreciated since it was 10pm. We ran from ESPN to the Animal Kingdom park 1st,which was like running through a forest with little lights hidden in the shadows..just loved it. Then it was a few miles to reach Hollywood Studios but it was my favorite section because the park was so lit up and the Spectacle of Lights made me slow down just to take it all in...It was incredibly beautiful. There were billions of lights everywhere.
We then ran into Epcot. This was a bit irritating and needs to be rerouted somehow. You go through the center path but the party is the opposite direction. You have to walk all the way to the end of the park (where you just entered) but are blocked by the runners still heading to the finish line. It's a huge backlog of people trying to crossover the runners' path. They let finishers go a few at a time which caused huge delays and no one wants to be packed like salmon swimming up stream with a bunch of stinky runners at 1am.
We stayed a little while, had a snack, and walked the longest route possible to the shuttle to take us back to a DW resort where we had to walk another 1/2 mile to get to our resort. We arrived at our door at 3am to find our door key did not work. I collapsed in the hallway while Marcus walked back to the front desk, (not close to us by a long shot), to find keys could not be reprinted at that time because they were doing an audit (at 3am???? seriously??) Marcus and I waited for who knows how long for security to arrive to let us into our room. I did the Julie Moss crawl from the hall to the bed and THAT was my IM DW finish...I was absolutely delirious. Lesson Learned: BRING BOTH KEYS. No alarm was set for the next day! I hoped that I would never wake up. Our Coast to Coast medal with Walt and Mickey is beautiful although it probably cost us a small fortune to earn.
Day 4...it's 9am...with one eye open, we decided to eat a good breakfast buffet at the resort before starting our final day at Hollywood Studios. We stayed for about 8 hours seeing as many shows as possible. If there was a line or we couldn't get a fast pass, it was skipped. This was one of my favorite parks because I thoroughly enjoyed learning about Walt Disney's Dream, the history of inventions and how Oswald The Lucky Rabbit became Mortimer the Mouse to all the Mickey versions that followed. It was beautiful to
see the Princesses of Disney all in one place!
We took great pictures each day and tried to enjoy each park but it was tough on the body to cover it all in 4 days. We really shouldn't have done anything on marathon day. I have a new level of respect for nutrition and taper week before an endurance event.
I have 2 days of work, and workouts, before my foot surgery on Thursday Nov 14. I have a fast pass shift at IMAZ on Sunday from 10-11:30pm so we will just drive to Arizona on Sunday. I get my entry for IMAZ 2014 on Monday morning and we drive home. Let the training begin...oh, after 2 weeks when I get my stitches out. Then, I keep the aircast another 2 weeks which means 100's of miles in the lounger spin bike at the gym in the meantime. It also means basically soup and salad for months to lose this extra 10 lbs I have packed on with two vacations in 6 months. UGH vacationing is HELL!!! Training for tri`s is so much easier! I am so looking forward to handing off my Ironman training to Julie Dunkle!
THE END of Ironman Disneyworld
