Collegiate Nats has always been a challenge for me.  In the past, the timing has never been quite right in order to get in adequate training.  For my senior year, I had hopes that things would be different, but alas, life throws you curve balls.

Just getting home and still painted blue. One of the two entry points... this was the cleaner one

I had surgery to fix my heart defect on January 6th, 2012.  I had a cardiac ablation done to remove the extra pathway in my heart.  They burned out eleven 2mm sections of my heart in order to restore its normal pattern… and yes, I was awake the whole time.  I was off my face on Valium, but am not forgetting the experience in a hurry.

It was pretty slow going for a while, and I had to sit out of the water for my longest time yet (3 weeks).  With my whole new heartbeat, I had to slowly train my heart up to full strength again.  I got a lot of funny beats at the beginning, but things have started to even out as time has gone on.  One month after surgery, I was even cleared to swim in one last meet for the Illini!  First up was the 500 free (naturally), and I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to finish a race.  Later in the weekend, I was even able to eek out a life time best in the 100 back.  Not exactly how I pictured my last swim meet, but memorable and emotional none the less.

Fast forward three months, and I find myself on the start line of the USAT Collegiate National Championships.

Fighting Illini Triathlon, family pic!

It’s been an honor and a privilege to compete with some of my best friends on the team, even though I don’t get to practice with them much.  I’ve been tooling around with some of the kids on the team since middle school when we were still on mountain bikes riding to swim practice.  We are entirely self coached and self sustaining and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Friends of the team were able to loan us some sweet wheels, and things like aero bars and helmets are passed down to younger/new members.  It’s very much a family.

While I may not always be in peak form for the spring, I always want to represent the team (& other Illini) well: capitalizing on my strengths to compensate for my weaknesses.  I wanted to have a great race, be free of strange heartbeats, and get my racing back where I think it should be.  After all I’ve been through this year, it was a complete surprise to be leading the swim.  I knew there were a bunch of girls around me, but if I was able to keep focus I could squeak across the swim finish first, and win a fabulous prize

Swim prime in the bag, I set out to the bike.  Armed with my hand-me-down aero helmet, borrowed wheels, and sweet blue tires (thank you to Trisports.com— BIG LIFESAVER!), I set out to take an unusually chilly Tuscaloosa by storm!  The rest of the race went smoothly, and I was able to drop 7min off my time from last year.  One of my teammates even remarked “Hey, you should have heart surgery every year!”  Ha, no thanks…

Waiting to get in the water again

After a short rest, our team geared up for the Inaugural Mixed Relay event.  This was my first drafting event in a good many years, and good prep for the future (hopefully).  Determined to wear my slightly baggy Illinois uniform so we all matched, I didn’t have quite the swim I hoped.  As a result, I ended up in the second pack of bikers.  No matter, drafting was still a blast and I was able to have a good run too.   Super exciting to watch our team fight for positions after I handed off.  We ended up 9th out of 41 teams, not a bad showing!

Big thank you to everyone who has helped out our team over the years, in particular: Trisports.com, Body n’ Sole Sports, Champaign Cycle, University of Illinois Student Activity Fund, DeSoto, Noodles & Co, Tyler Ackerman for building us a spectacular trailer and many more.  And last but not least to all our parents who have helped a few crazy college students with some very ambitious projects

Training had been going really well, up until a few weeks ago. I started to feel progressively more tired and lose all power in the water. My heart rate would also get pretty high, and I would not be able to get it down again. We suspected it might be a virus, so I took a couple days off to try and recover. It didn’t really help. I was sent in for some blood tests, and as a precaution, an EKG. The blood tests turned up alright, but the EKG showed unusual behavior in my heart. I was pulled out of practice immediately. I’ve since been to the cardiologist, and he has confirmed that I have something called Wolff-Parkinson-White Disease. Basically it means that I was born with an extra electrical pathway in my heart, and one part of it is contracting faster than the others.

I’m scheduled for a procedure called cardiac ablation in early January to remove the extra pathway, which should get my heart beating normally. I should be perfectly fine, and perhaps even better, after the procedure is done. Recovery should be fairly quick, but because of the risk of tachycardia, the doctors don’t want me to willingly get my heart rate above ~140 BPM until I have to procedure done. So any training I’ll be doing up to the procedure will be strictly neuromuscular, and done at a pedestrian pace. After the surgery however, we’ll be all cylinders go!

From talking with my cardiologist, I’ve been experiencing symptoms my whole life and the “episodes” of elevated heart rate are coming closer and closer together. The spacing of these elevated heart rate “episodes” is particularly worrisome. I continue to feel progressively worse, even with the added rest. It sucks to be out of hard training, but as my body constantly reminds me, it could be infinitely worse. I do have to find the energy to keep up with the little training I can do, pass all my classes this semester, and apply to graduate school. The next month or so will be a bit rocky while I wait to get the procedure done, but I should be all better after that. My heart should be more efficient than it was before, which can only be a good thing. I have every intention of getting right back in the water after the procedure and perhaps getting to swim in a couple more NCAA meets. Tri season will also be just as jam packed with fun as well!

It’s been very humbling to realize what a difference the health of one little organ can make in my life, but I intend to take care of it the best I can. I’m glad I knew my body well enough to know that something was wrong, and thankful to the doctors I’ve had that helped me catch the disease. This story could have ended much worse than a few weeks off training, and I’m thankful to be able to have a future to plan.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Links for more info on WPW:

-http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/wolff-parkinson-white-syndrome/DS00923

-http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/disease/wolff-parkinson-white-syndrome/overview.html

I’ve needed a bit of reflection time for this post because a) I was fairly disappointed and b) I dove straight back into school afterwards.  Don’t get me wrong, USATAGNC is a terrific race and I got to meet lots of incredible racers, I just didn’t have the day I wanted.

Montreal Olympic Park

Traveling to a race is always stressful, particularly if you’re flying.  I flew in to Montreal a few days before the race to get acclimated.  I swam,  biked, and ran a bit to make sure everything was in good order.  I got to do a bit of exploring, and spent most of my time scouring the markets for delicious grub.

I had some time to get my bike adjusted back into the states, and rolled into Burlington on Thursday.  And for those that don’t know, Burlington VT is HILLY!  The bike course reflected this, but fortunately, the run course stayed fairly flat becasue it kept to Lake Champlain.

We stuck with the Collegiate Recruitment group for pre-race spin outs and activities, and had a great time meeting the other kids in the program.  I get really lonely out here in the cornfields being the one of the only NCAA/Triathletes in the area, so getting to hang out with kids with the same training woes, goals, and aspirations as me for a weekend was quite refreshing.

Swim Finish

THE RACE: I felt a bit sluggish on the morning of the race, I was a bundle of nerves the night before and only got a couple of hours of sleep.  The day itself was beautiful and I took off immediately on the swim.  I held a comfortable lead throughout most of it, until things started going wrong.  I turned into the sun on the last buoy, and completely lost the line I was following.  While trying to find where I was going, the pack caught me, and I got a nice sock in the jaw before tucking in behind them (hoping they knew where they were going).  I ended up giving up the swim prime, which we ended up being the fastest group on the day.  As luck would have it, I stepped on a pretty large rock on my way out of transition, and received a nice bruise on my heel to go with my bloody lip.  Not exactly how I envisioned hopping on my bike…

The bike was definitely rough, I felt sluggish, and couldn’t get a good pace going.  I hadn’t felt that bad on a bike since collegiate nationals, and I was barely trained then.  It was frustrating and upsetting, and I wanted nothing more than to get some flats on and hit the run.

When I finally got off my bike, I was in full chase mode on the run.  My body was deeply tired, and I just concentrated on keeping my tempo up and getting to that finish line.  I was able to pick off a few runners, and set a PR for the 10k.

Some of the Collegiate Recruitment Group Post-Race

I ended up 10th in the final Age Group Results, but still, not quite the day I was hoping for.  Looking back, I should have listened to my body more while tapering, and rested instead of doing stretch out rides.  It’s a classic self training mistake, and it’s one I’ve made before.  My bike average was the slowest of the year, and I wanted so badly to improve in it. Erring on the side of more rest has always been difficult for me, but this race provided another hard lesson for me, and I don’t want to forget it.

Swim season is now in full swing, and tri training has been moved to the back burner.  I will do one more race this year, our club’s Tri-the-Illini Sprint triathlon (http://www.fightingillinitriathlon.com/tritheillini.html) to gain some points for Nationals qualification.  It’s hard to step away from tri’s when I feel like I haven’t gotten the dividend I wanted from my training, but there are other opportunities that could be lost.  I’ve got one last swim season left, and after 15 years, it will be time to say goodbye to the black lines and starting blocks.  It’s bittersweet, but swimming has gotten me to where I am, and I owe it to myself and my teammates to give it a proper sendoff, and put everything I can into my last season.

This past Sunday I headed back down to Tennessee to race the Music City Triathlon.  This was originally going to be my big midsummer race, but becasue of the collegiate scoring system, Evergreen took over that role.  So this was just a nice bonus race on a new course.  Fortunately, I had lots to learn!

I knew it was going to be a tough turnaround to do two Olympics within a week, but with my usual training load, I figured it would be no problem.  Wrong.  Nearly impossible to fit in “recovery” workouts when it’s hotter than tarnation out in my cornfields.  Nothing quite like heat training.

Race day dawned on the Cumberland river, the morning air a crisp 81F, and it was go time.  Music City has a time-trial style start (not my favorite) in the Cumberland river and you get to swim both with and against the current (one of my favorites).  With seeding, I was able to get into the front fairly quickly and find a nice pair of feet to tuck in behind.  I considered passing and letting the nice fellow draft off me for a while, but he swerved every time I tried to do so.  Not one to resist a free draft, I just stayed put.  We both came out over a minute over the rest of the field, so I wasn’t too worried.

The bike, oh bike!  I thought I had you beat last weekend!  I really felt my lack of recovery here.  The course was on the closed-off James Robertson Pkwy which featured some spectacular road, with not a flat section to be found!  Still held a decent 20+ average, but lost enough time on my major competitors to be demorlized.

I was quite thankful to get on my feet on the bike, despite the leg sluggishness.  The temps were really starting to climb (up near 90F by this point) and the sun was blazing overhead.  The run was a two-looper and went over the river and into downtown Nashville, covering some pretty steep bridges.  With the time trial start, it was tough to tell what position I was in and who was doing the two loop course or the one (sprinters).  I just tried to pick off bodies and keep myself cool.  In the end, I finished 40 sec off the podium.

While disappointed, I was pleased with several things:

1. Really not too shabby considering my pre-race week

2. Another good swim in the books

3. Held the pace together well to finish strong in some pretty extreme conditions

I guess this is just not my year for racing south of the Ohio river. Now, just one more training block to improve for Age Group Nationals!

After over a month of without one, we’re back in the races! I finished 2nd for the women in the Evergreen Triathlon this past weekend, and had a blast with my fellow Illini.  In the collegiate division my teammate Stacy and I were able to go 1-2

We had a great day, rather cool and overcast with almost no wind, but the course is so open this was a great benefit.  Swim could have been better, I elected to try and stretch more use out of my goggles from Kansas (they had gotten pretty scratched up from transitions), and paid the price in lack of anti-fog.   I was swimming along happily until one of the volunteers threw a lifeguard buoy at me, to let me know I was swimming about 70 degrees off course.  I had to tread for a second to clear them, and then figure out where the heck that buoy went….  Luckily, finishing the swim, I still had over a 2.5min gap on the rest of the women’s field, otherwise I would have been really kicking myself.

This was one of my better bikes last year, so I really wanted to see some improvement from my last training block.  I knew the winner would likely be averaging 22mph+ so I set out to put myself in that range.  Hard for me to wrap my head around, considering last year I would have been thrilled to average >20mph.  I was able to hold on to the pace and hold off the other riders, save one.

After the confidence boost of holding off all but one of the other women from the swim, the run was looking pretty sweet.  Sure, my legs were less-than-peppy after pushing the bike, but I knew the course, and I knew there were plenty of spots to check out how my competition was doing.  In my cross country days, I liked to keep my competition where I could see them and then make the move when I could build it home; this was not the option today.  I allowed myself to “run scared” and constantly envisioned quick footsteps ready to overtake me.  The “phantom footsteps” got me through the beginning miles, and the drive for the finish got me through the last.  I was able to finish the 10k in just over 42min, which is right up there with my best in-season times.

Overall, it was a great race, and offered some really positive feedback from my training.  My time finish was over 10 minutes faster from last year, and much faster than Memphis in May.  So, everything is heading in the right direction!  Looking forward to getting back on the start line in Nashville this weekend!

I’ve been able to get all nice and settled into my summer schedule (found a great spin class too), and am starting to feel stronger across all disciplines.  Swim practices had felt a bit dicey for me ever since collegiate nationals, but I’ve been able to get my balance and tempo back, with the different body composition.  I’ve also been adding some hill work on my runs and doing about half of my running mileage on grass.  I seem to be able to recover faster on the softer surface, and it has the added bonus of improving form (lots of taller grass=High knees) and strengthening my ankles and feet.

From the top paragraph, you can guess that I was pretty optimistic with my training and was expecting to see some improvement.  My goal going in was to hit the 5hr mark at the finish with about 27swim/3hr bike/1.5hr run, and, of course, finishing.  Overall, I was fairly pleased with my race through the swim, bike and part of the run.  Swim was messy, literal waves and my wave was in the middle of the field, resulting in lots of bodies to swim around, but was able to get on the bike quick enough.  I made the freshman mistake of not taking in enough calories on the bike, and my run suffered.  I was able to start out at a good clip (first 3mi was right at 21min), and then started to fade (next 3mi in 24min), and then everything went to hell in a hand basket.  Was reduced to walking until I could get some calories processed, oranges and warm coke never tasted sooo good!

Chrissie stayed to hand out all the finisher's medals; Such a class act!

I figure I was about one powerbar and a few Gu’s away from getting close to my goal.  The bike was hilly and a bit windy, but I actually had quite a good time out there. Pleased to be in the 18mph range for such a long distance, and discover that I’m really not too bad at climbing (passed quite a few people on those parts).

When it comes down to it, this race was all about gaining experience for me. Seeing the love and support that pours out of the Ironman community, seeing faith and self discipline help individuals accomplish their goals, was inspiring. What’s more, seeing the effect these individuals have on the lives around them, inspiring others to become better versions of themselves, was simply wonderful.  And a special thanks to race directors and all the volunteers who made the event possible, it’s a true gem!

This week is a down week intensity-wise, and my next training cycle starts Monday.  I get to start throwing some speedwork in, and try and re-familarize my legs with sub 6 pace