The Last Day, phhhhewwww

This is it…if I can make it through my second run workout of the day…I’ve made it through the HARD part! I’ve already looked ahead at Monday’s training and it’s the start of the downhill to Alcatraz! That will be my motivation while I’m out on the trail later day doing a Fartlek run with 10 x 1 minute at 5K pace with 1 minute easy between!
My mantra will be “after this, its taper time…after this, its taper time…etc”. Hey, we’ve all got our methods of getting through the madness! I’ve started out today’s training pretty good…I had a brick workout in the morning: 1.5 hours on the computrainer with a main set of 5 x 8 minutes at race effort with 4 minutes recovery followed immediately with 10 minutes of running at 10k pace and 10 minutes cool down. I was really happy with how I felt on the bike and during the run…even though I’ve been tired, I felt strong and fast (good feelings since Alcatraz is one week away)!
I’ve got all my Alcatraz travel plans mapped out. I’m taking a different approach this year…last year I kinda turned the trip into a vacation and didn’t focus very much on the actual race…this year I’m flying to San Francisco on Friday morning and then hopping on the BART train into town. No rental cars this year (big expense since I’m not over 25 years old yet). I’m getting off the BART train right outside the Special Olympic Offices and Christine is going to meet me outside.
I’m staying with my friend Christine Wilson, she works for the Special Olympics, because she lives right up the street from the start of the race! We met at the Tiburon Mile in 2004…and she is still connected to the Tiburon Mile and has informed me that there’s a photo of me on the 2006 race poster! Christine just raced the Olympic distance triathlon in Wildflower and did awesome. Now she’s going to be at one of the water stops on the run with her huge triathlon team…same water stop as last year but I’m hoping that I am moving a bit faster when I go by them this year!
So back to traveling…I’ll stay at Christine’s place on Friday and Saturday night…race on Sunday morning and then pack up for my flight back to COS that evening. Last year I was in town for a whole week and missed out on a lot of training. Since the Pro Nationals are only 2 weeks later, I think it will benefit me to get back to altitude and focus on the Long Beach race. Yeah, that’s funny; I’ll be traveling back to California less than 2 weeks later…just a different city.
Here are some of my goals for my personal race at Alcatraz.
First: to be a bit smarter about the course now that I am aware of how much it can kick your butt.
Second: be the first woman out of the water…it’s always fun to lead the race!
Third: finish in the Top 10…because they have prize money 10 deep:)
Lastly: run under 1 hour!!!
Check out the website for the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. They’ve got a cool thing called the Accenture Triathlon Alert System that you can sign up and ‘track’ me on race day. Basically, you will be alerted (via email) whenever I cross over a timing mat and then you can watch a 30 second clip of me crossing the finish line. They have timing mats at all the major points in the race…swim finish, bike start and finish, run start, bottom and top of the infamous Sand Ladder, and race finish.