I finally have a chance to report in from plane flight number two of four en route from San Antonio to Florianopolis after a whirlwind trip for SMASH Ladies’ Night and some TeamHPB bonding. I love getting to see my athletes’ stomping grounds and meeting "their people”. This week I got to swim with Dawn’s lovely masters swim crew and Coach Susan at the JCC, check out a couple of her running loops, and even do some TT efforts on her bike TT route. I appreciate so much the tri and swim communities of San Antonio being so welcoming and I can’t wait to return.

That’s super SMASH ambassador and TeamHPBer Kona Dawn (doing our intros on Ladies’ Night), a San Antonio local. She and Jimmy Britton at Britton’s Bicycles helped us to organize an incredible event at the shop on Monday night.

I have been pinching myself all week because I remember so clearly, one year ago this week, I was in the airport on my way to Ironman Brasil when my incredibly talented business partner Michele and I decided to go for it—our dream of starting our own tri/ multisport apparel company for women. It was this convo after three years of talking during which we committed to this project. So it was pretty amazing to be in San Antonio exactly one year later, in person with the ladies who have been our biggest supporters since day one.

I loved seeing old friends and meeting new ones—putting faces to the names on some of the orders we have seen come through our system. Even better was being able to celebrate Ironman Texas with the irongals and guys, like the newly-minted Aixa (on left!) . . .

and Kris, on the right here—with Shelly, one of our fave Tucson campers, who will have something else to celebrate come November!

And guess what arrived in stock yesterday and quickly disappeared (if you want a tri kit now you may want to check for your size like this very minute—otherwise check back in late June/ early July) . . . Our sickest kit yet if I do say so myself! I was so involved in trying to ship all the orders out and not miss my plane that I didn’t even get to take any pics but hopefully we will have some soon—it is even better in person.

I just wanted to send a special message to all of my friends in Texas getting ready to crush that ironman tomorrow, especially our TeamHPBers and campers.

After a very successful Part One at Ironman Melbourne, Team HPB’er Marc Rubin (if you don’t know his story, check him out here.) is continuing his 2013 Comeback Tour in the Woodlands tomorrow. With support from Kona Dawn, obvi!

Then three of these gals are on track for a big day tomorrow: Aixa and Kris are going to cross their first ironman finish line, and Linda—well Linda is going to show off some skills that she learned on some mountains at camp here in Tuscon . . . I am hoping that they draw on those hard-earned deposits in the bank tomorrow—mentally and physically. It is going to be a great day.

And I cannot wait to celebrate with the Texas crew in person in San Antonio Monday night! If you are in the San Antonio or Austin area, or anywhere nearby, you are invited to join us! Come celebrate with the Ladies at Britton’s Bike Shop—hope to see lots of you there!

LET’S DO THIS!!

Before I went to Taiwan for the iron-distance race, I signed myself up for some torture here at home the following weekend: the Tucson 5000. For some reason, I had this sick compulsion to sign up just because I knew that running a 5k balls-out a week after ironman is the last thing my legs would want to do. Not sure what that is about, but I figured this little workout would shock my body out of “yay me I just did an ironman so now I can chill out” mode back into work mode.

It was indeed torture but I think it served its purpose. Although I was well off my PR ( I ran 19:53) and struggled to run an average of 6:20 pace, I finished feeling like I was going to vomit and knowing that I sure as heck wouldn’t have run that hard on my own that day if I hadn’t been on a race course surrounded by hundreds of friends.  And I replaced memories of ironman with painful, more recent ones—thus forcibly shifting myself from post-race recovery mode to pre-race work mode for the next one (see my last blog for dets on these different phases). Ouch.

Reward for mom post-race: my princess delivered her very own Mother’s Day card.

And kisses.

When my alarm went off at 6AM on Thursday morning, I was in a deep sleep; my first thoughts were, “Where am I, and am I being forced out of bed so early?” Apparently even though I was only semi-conscious, I instinctively felt that I was only a few days post-ironman and thus that I should have earned a sleep-in.

Not so much. A swim workout with the World Champ (Leanda) was on tap. Ironman Brasil is in less than three weeks now and that means that training must happen. I often get asked about this topic, so here’s a list of a few of my essentials when I am cramming big races into a short timeframe.

Here’s what I do to expedite the recovery process:

Active recovery: That is more or less what “training” is in the week post-race. It means to continue moving in all three disciplines, beginning the day after the ironman. This helps me to flush the race junk out of my body and not lose fitness (which I do very quickly otherwise). Luckily I have enough “other work” these days to keep me occupied, which helps me to avoid overdoing it this week.

Training: The harder/ normal work starts roughly a week post-ironman, depending on how I am feeling, and continues right up ‘til the next race—with a couple of easier days immediately before that one.

Sleep: With the jetlag coming home from Asia typically being quite brutal, this posed a special challenge for me this past week. But as a rule, I try to log plenty of sleep at night and allow myself naps in the week post-race. I also find that I need 1-2 nights of “hibernation”—or about 12 hours sleep—in the week post-race to complete the recovery process.

Eating: Especially in the two days after an ironman, I try to eat tons. This week, for some reason, the hunger persisted, so I went with it. I always try to consume at least one Vega Shake each day to be sure I am replacing all the minerals and nutrients I lost during the hard effort as well.

Magic Boots: Using these religiously has been a game-changer! Beginning right after the race, I try to log a good hour per day in the Recovery Pump, which—along with the active recovery—helps to flush out my legs. In case you are one of the last remaining folks without the magic system, this is my discount code: A11021. You’re welcome.

Happy racing!

Some of my all-time favorite ironman adventures have the Asian ironmans, and since the WTC had done away with all of them by last year (Japan returns in a different location this year), I was so excited to discover that the Challenge series was offering us a full-iron-distance option in Asia. Challenge Taiwan was a first-year race and did not disappoint.

We swam in this man-made “lake,” which was basically huge, 1100-meter long swimming pool. Of course I loved the non-wetsuit action too. We went out and back along a lane line sort of thing twice, and I was literally by myself behind the first 4 or so men the whole way. I felt good start to finish although I could “feel” that the swim was a bit long, which in the end I think it was.

The highlight of the swim was the run up and through transition, as I relished how fresh my legs felt and the fact that I didn’t want to fall over. I had a flashback to running up from the swim in Cabo and feeling like I was going to pass out and having legs of lead—barely being able to run up the hill. While that was not a pleasant experience at all, going through it meant that simply having the normal after-ironman-swim feeling gave me a burst of extra energy in Taiwan. I could truly appreciate just not feeling awful!

I am constantly reminded of the value of toughing things out on a rough day.

Again, the bike was a pleasant surprise, as I knew I had strong cyclists Kate Bevilaqua and Belinda Granger behind me and I expected to see them soon. But I got all the way to the first turnaround on my own, so although the bike hurt and I was pushing hard, I figured I must be riding alright.

Finally just over two hours into the ride, Team Granger came past, so I went with them. It felt like a break from what I had been doing on my own. Mentally just being able to follow someone means I can zone out, and furthermore with a 7-meter draft zone in this race, there is no doubt that there was a physical advantage as well. My “break” only lasted for about 30 minutes, unfortunately, as I got dropped while grabbing my special needs bottle and could not catch back up despite my efforts.

Still, as is pretty common for me, I actually had better legs during the second half of the ride. I just felt like I was seriously bonking, which made zero sense because I took in about 2100 calories over the course of the ride. So I just told myself that there was no possible way I was *actually* bonking, as mathematically it just wasn’t possible! And tried to be super heads-up as we were riding on an open course with plenty of traffic, including the typical Asian-race obstacles of scooters and stray dogs going every which direction.

And while I initially thought if I had a great run, I might have some hope of making up time on the lead, this strange feeling persisted through the early miles of the run. I was running 8-minute miles and these were not easy, so I decided that I should probably keep the run steady and try to hang onto second versus doing something stupid and losing a great finish position.

The run was a massive head-trip because after the a little out-and-back during the first four kilometers, you never see your competition again until the finish. And clearly in a race like this there was no one on the sidelines to give me splits, so in one part of my mind I was running scared, sure that the girls behind me were going to appear any minute. Although I had a significant gap on Kate in third and the girls behind her (whom I also knew were good runners) at the start of the run, it’s amazing the tricks the mind plays on a blind course.

But I was able to mostly stay quite methodical and focused, and just tuned into my splits on the garmin, knowing that even though I was feeling pretty darn ill and was not speedy, if I could just run around 3:30, the girls behind would have to do their best-ever marathons to pass me. I had to fight for those 8-minute miles in the end!

But I made it, and in the end the girls weren’t as close as they were in my imagination. My reward was going 1-2 with my dear friend Belinda for the first time ever! It was an awesome day.

Apparently the live coverage and results were not easy to come by, so here are the top five with splits for those who were searching:

1. Belinda Granger (AUS) 1:01:16, 4:55:34, 3:21:10, 9:23:15
2. Hillary Biscay (USA) 54:53, 5:09:54, 3:27:18, 9:37:40
3. Kate Bevilaqua (AUS) 56:26, 5:24:00, 3:39:14, 10:05:09
4. Shiao Yu Li (TWN) 1:09:46, 5:27:46, 3:28:44, 10:12:08
5. Yasuko Miyazaki (JPN) 1:06:00, 5:39:21, 3:32:37, 10:23:50

Thanks so much to all my supporters for making this adventure possible:PowerBar, SMASH, TYR, RecoveryPump, Zipp, ISM, Brooks Airbush Studio, Rudy Project, Vega, and Saucony. Next up I will be celebrating my 60th ironman finish at Ironman Brasil in less than three weeks now! Can’t wait!