The show must go on…

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Shayla

This time last year I was hoping to have a wonderful year in 2011.  I had high hopes for my triathlon career.  I was ready to really spend a lot of time working on improving.  I was only a few months into my new job role at work, so I had high hopes for that, as well.  But sometimes life doesn’t always go according to plan.

In 2011, I got divorced.  One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through in my life.  Needless to say, I was an emotional wreck for the better part of 2011.   I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past 7 months, and I’d like to think that I’ve become a better person as a result of everything.

Now, for 2012, I’m hoping for a much better year, and I can’t see how that can’t happen.  I have high hopes, and so far so good.  Hopefully, I’ll be posting here more often, too!

In the meantime, I’m working on my New Year’s resolution.   After living in Austin for 15 years, I’ve realized there are a lot of Austin I have yet to experience.  Austin is such a beautiful and incredible city, and nothing like San Antonio or any of the other big cities in Texas.  So, I’m going to work on doing something Austin-y at least once a week.  Either do something I’ve not done before in Austin, eat at a local restuarant, participate in Austin only events, etc.   Check it out!

Posted in personal | Leave a comment

Life.is.Hard.

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Shayla

I haven’t posted much in a while, my apologies for that.  I had high hopes for 2011, but it’s proving to be one of the worst years of my life.  We’re only 6 months into it, and I’m ready for 2012!  I’ll be back soon, I still need to write a race report for the HCRA I did in April.

Posted in Anytime | Leave a comment

Lonestar Sprint Triathlon

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Shayla

For those that remember the disaster that was the 2010 Austin Olympic Triathlon (you know, where I totally freaked out in the swim and ended the race by being pulled out of the water), I wanted to make sure I was totally prepared in 2011 with wetsuit swimming and cold water.

Doing the Lonestar Sprint Triathlon in Galveston was one of the ways I would hope would get me ready since it would be cold enough for a wetsuit swim.

Friday
I took the day off and left really early and arrived in Galveston at 11am.  Got to packet pickup at noon, and got all checked in.  I was a little bummed because I couldn’t buy anything at the Expo.  All the merchandise either had the M-dot (Ironman) logo on it or said 70.3.  Since I was doing neither, I couldn’t buy anything.  I just can’t buy anything or wear anything from a race that I didn’t do, don’t want to be a poser.

Heather, Ingrid and I then set out to get in a swim.  The whole reason for getting in early on Friday was to get in the water.  I had no idea what the water temp was going to feel like, and I’d never swum in salt water before, either.   We get down to the water, wetsuits almost on, and we’re told there is no swimming.  After a tiny bit of internal panicking, we decide to find another location that isn’t within Moody Gardens to go for a swim.  We find a place where some scuba divers were and get in the water.  A little more panicking as I realized I forgot my goggles.  As a contact lens wearer, I can’t swim without goggles.  Ugh.   Heather was nice enough to let me borrow hers, and I got in the water just long enough to see how the water temp was, how the wetsuit fit, and how the water tasted (yuck!).

Afterwards, we headed back to ‘the coach’ where Heather was staying and relaxed for the rest of the day:

Race Day

Transition opened at 5am.  Since I was staying next door, getting to the race site took 5 minutes tops.   Of course I was up before my alarm went off, and as soon as I woke up, I realized I forgot my throw-away flip flops! Yikes! I hate walking around in my bare feet, and I knew transition was quite a ways from swim in.  The only thing I had were my $90 Keens, and there was no way I was going to leave them behind.  (Thankfully, Heather agreed to take my Keens when I was done with them.)    As I was getting the rest of my gear packed, I also realized I forgot my chip strap at home.  I had taken the nice neoprene one I have out of its safe keeping place, but forgot to bring it with me.  A little more panicking because I wasn’t sure if they would have spares available.   At this point I was starting to have a lot of negative thoughts about the race if so much had already gone wrong and it wasn’t even 5am yet!   I get all my stuff in the truck and drive over to transition.

In the athlete guide, we were told we’d be able to park right next to transition, but that wasn’t the case when I arrived.  They weren’t letting anyone in the transition parking lot and made us park in the parking garage instead.   Since I had so much stuff, I just walked my bike from the garage to transition.  As soon as I got to transition, I realized I had forgotten my wetsuit back at the hotel!!!  AAAHHHHH!!!    By this time the traffic into the race site was backed up, so I decided it would be much quicker to just ride my bike back to the hotel and get my wetsuit.  But, of course, I had left my hotel key in the truck, so I had to ride back to the parking garage, then back to the hotel, got my wetsuit, then back to transition.  Oy!  By the time I got back, Heather was already up and helped calm me down and made me realize that I still had plenty of time as it wasn’t even 6am yet.  Whew!   This is where always being early really paid off.   I had plenty of time to calm down.

Got my stuff set up in transition, and thankfully, Elle let me use her chip strap.  Whew, one less thing to worry about.

Shayla & Elle

Made my way over to the swim start and put on my wetsuit.  Did a little moonwalking per special request. :)

Swim
Headed out to the swim in.  We had to jump from the pier into the water, which was maybe 5 feet above the water.  Everyone was just jumping into the water, but I was a little worried about what would happen to my goggles since I hadn’t practiced jumping from the pier.

Being a scaredy cat, I sat down on the pier and just plopped in.  It wasn’t terrible and my goggles didn’t move.  Whew!  We had to tread water for a full minute.  Normally, that would be a long time, but being in a wetsuit and in salt water, I was pretty bouyant and it wasn’t hard at all.   Before I knew it, we were off!   As in every race, I stay towards the back and on the inside of the pack.  I like swimming as close to the buoys as possible because I don’t want to swim any more distance than I absolutely have to!   Even though I had some wetsuit swims under my belt, this was still very uncomfortable.  I haven’t figured out how to breathe in a wetsuit and I had a hard time breathing normally.  The wetsuit is so tight on my chest and around my neck, it feels like I was choking.  It was hard to make a lot of forward motion without stopping.   Half way through the swim, I realized the water probably wasn’t that cold and I could have done without the wetsuit.  But, I didn’t panic, and just did the best I could.   I was so happy when it was time to get out of the water, I really didn’t care about what happened the rest of the race.  Compared to the swim, I knew the rest would be cake.
Swim time was 16:11, which was a lot slower than I had hoped, but I wasn’t the slowest in my age group, amazingly enough.  22 out of 42 in my age group for the swim.

T1
Since I decided to use Sandra’s wetsuit for this race, taking off the top part was a piece of cake.  And this was my first experience with wetsuit strippers and that was fun!

I know I should work more on my transition times, but they help me catch my breathe, so I take my time and sit down to put on my socks.

T1 time was 5:33. Yup, slow.

Bike
It was a pretty windy day.  Thankfully all the bike rides I have been doing this year have also been in the wind, so I knew exactly what to expect.  Good thing, too, because if I didn’t know what to expect, I probably would have cried.  I was also excited that I only had to go 12 miles!  I could do anything for 12 miles on the bike!

As we started on the bike course, there was a no passing zone.  NO PASSING ZONE?!?!  WTF?!?!   I’d never heard of such a thing before, and it was a little annoying because I was ready to ride and the woman in front of me wasn’t going very fast.  Ugh.  I still don’t know the reason, but I can only speculate it was because of the condition of that stretch of the road.  It was pretty bumpy and uneven, but still.   In case you didn’t already know this, but Galveston is FLAT.   Within the first mile of the bike, we had to go up a “hill”.  Lots of people slowed down, but this was really just a bump.  I didn’t even have to gear down, and just got out of my saddle for about 5 seconds and I was done with the “hill”.

Yes, that says BIG NASTY.  I cracked up, because that’s really how “big” the hill is as I am standing at the bottom of the hill taking the picture.  Maybe a 15-20 foot climb for about 50 yds.  Could be less.    After you get up BIG NASTY, you’re on the seawall, and it’s an out and back for about 5.6 miles each way.  There was a strong crosswind the entire time, with and angled head-wind going out and an angled tail-wind coming back.  I felt good on the bike and passed a few people going out and a lot more coming back.   But, even though the course is flat, it’s still on the difficult side because flat means NON-STOP-PEDALLING.  With no hills, there is no downhill for recovery.  You just pedal, pedal, pedal until the end.  Oh well, there was a tad bit of recovery down BIG NASTY.  :)
Bike time was 49:05 for 12.5 miles, 15.3 mph average pace and 21 out of 42 in my age group. (During the race I felt good about the bike, but never looked at my watch, and was a little disappointed about my time after I found out.  I really thought I had done better than that.  At least I didn’t know that during the race.)

T2
Again, a little slow, but I need to catch my breathe and take some shot bloks before the run. T2 time was 3:23.

Run
This has always been by far my weakest leg.  I never was a runner, and never liked running.  But, I’ve been working hard on my running all fall and winter.   I was excited to see my hard work pay off.  I started running at the beginning, and for the first mile or so, it was rough.  However, since I had actually been doing my brick workouts, I knew this feeling was to be expected.  I walked through all the water stops and got water at every stop.  I did have to stop once to tie my shoe (I know, I know, I really need to ditch the laces!), but other than that, I ran the whole time.  At mile 2, my legs started feeling a little better, and I decided to pick it up a little.  Coming up towards the finish, I was happy to see my teammates and Coach Jen cheering me in.  I love this part!   Coach Jen even ran along side me for a little bit, and I picked it up a little more to the finish.

Even though I was wearing my Garmin, I had it set to multisport mode, and I had no clue what my running pace was.  I thought for sure it was on the really slow side because it felt like I had been out there on the run course for-ever!  I would soon find out that my unofficial run time was 39:59! That is pretty fast for me, especially after a swim and bike.   Officially, the time ended up being exactly 40:00 for a 12:40 pace and 35 out of 42 in my age group. I was super excited about this, you have no idea.  I’m pretty sure this is my fastest 5K time, ever!  Sure, it’s slow to most of you, but I seriously expected to do the run no faster than a 14:30 pace.

Post Race
I was surprised we got a medal, and the post race food was great with pizza, beer, bananas, cookies, pretzels and other stuff I didn’t eat.   I’m pretty happy with the race overall.  Even with all the crazy mishaps that happened before the race, it turned out to be a great day and a great start to the the beginning of what I hope to be a great tri season.  I’ll be working more on my wetsuit swims and definitely more on my running.   I have a lot of room for improvement and hope to have enough willpower and determination to get it done.

Del, Kim, me, Bob after the race.

Total Time: 1:54:09
Age Group W35-39: 30 out of 42

Thanks to all of my Trizones teammates and the Trizones coaches for all the encouragement along the way.  Sometimes they have more confidence in my abilites than I do, and without them, I wouldn’t be where I am now.  And last, but not least, thanks to my husband, Corey, for always being supportive with my crazy, new lifestyle!

Stay tuned….

Posted in triathlon | 1 Comment

Move over Campbell’s

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Shayla

We started our swim class today.  Imagine 45°-50° and rainy.  That is what it was during our swim workout.  Luckily, the outdoor pool was heated, and since we were in the water, we didn’t care if it was raining or not.

Trying to think back and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been in a swimming pool since Sept ’10.  Sure, I swam at Barton Springs a few times last month, but that wasn’t any real swimming, but more wetsuit practice.   Since it had been months, I was a little worried this morning.  Wasn’t sure I’d even be able to swim a couple of hundred, much less an entire workout.  It wasn’t pretty, and my arms and shoulders were tired by the end, but I did it.   I’m still working on the numbers, so I’m not quite sure how far I swam, but I’m thinking it was close to 1,000. My buddy, Carolyn, tells me I did 32 laps which comes out to 1600m.  Not too shabby for first time back in the pool.

Learned a new drill today, and even though it hurt, I kinda liked it.  Ask me about the ‘superman’ swim drill sometime.   I was lucky to get my own lane, today, which was nice.  That helped take away from some anxiety about the swim, because I really don’t like circle swimming with people because I’m slow and I always feel like I’m slowing everyone else down that is also in my lane.   During part of our main set, I actually used something that I learned in my running group this season.   I tried to find my ‘forever pace’ in the water, and it actually worked!  I used to only know how to swim at mostly at one pace, but I just tried this technique and it worked.  Not sure why it took me this long to realize that, but I can’t wait to use it again.

After swim, most of us headed over to Jody’s place where she had a bunch of soup, breads, the best cornbread in the whole wide world, cake and hot beverages waiting for us.  There were 4 kinds of soups to choose from, but I only had enough room in my belly to try two of them.  The chocolate cake was aahhhhh-mazing!

Even though I didn’t mind swimming in the cold, this sure did make it worthwhile.  I know I ate way more than I burned in the pool, though.

And for those of you not in the know, my teammate Jody, is the same Jody from last year’s Amazing Race.  She was part of the grandmother/granddaughter team.  She is also a 72 year old triathlete who is part of the Team USA triathlon team and earned herself a gold and bronze medal in last year’s Worlds Championships in Budapest!   She’s also won numerous awards at local triathlons and running races.   Check out her wall of achievement:

Jody is the greatest, and also makes a mean soup that Campbell’s couldn’t even shake a stick at!

Posted in training | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Baby, it’s cold outside!

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Shayla

Last night was a run workout with my Trizones Training group.   My vehicle said it was 37° outside.  I had 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of gloves, shorts, running pants, short sleeved shirt, 3 long sleeved shirts and a face mask on.  Just call me Ninja Shayla!   I never did get cold while running, but I never felt the need to shed any of my layers.  Of course, while running was fine, it was really tough when we were just standing still.   I tried to convince my buddies that taking a picture would keep their minds off how cold it was and they’d get warm by being so close together.   Not sure they believed me, but they obliged!

Check us out:

I know, we’re nuts!

Posted in triathlon | Tagged , | Leave a comment

2011 is gonna rock!

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Shayla

Again, many months since my last post.  I did mention how last year and this year would be the years of triathlon for me.  I’m thinkin’ next year must be, too!   I’ve got a lot of work to do to get ready to kick ass in 2011.  Well, when I say kick ass, I mostly mean do better than I did last year.

Determined to rock the Austin Tri this year since I DNF’ed last year due to the freaking out in the swim incident.   That will get conquered this year, fo’ sho’!

I’ve spent the fall working on my running.  Trizones had a new program this year called Finding Your Inner Runner.  I’ve been learning a lot about running and started out from square one.  I can consistently run 3 miles now, with my longest run being 5 miles.   Almost every time I go for a run, I see some kind of improvement.

We had a mile time trial on Wednesday.  My goal was just to run and not look at my watch for pace or heart rate.  It was a tad bit faster than I wanted, but finished in 11:43!  The last mile time trial was 2 months ago and that was 12:58!  Over a minute improvement in 2 months.  Awesome!

It’s still on the “slow” end compared to most of my teammates, but it definitely helps keep me from being DFL!   So, just wait for me …

Posted in triathlon | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Is this thing on?!

Posted on April 23, 2010 by Shayla

Holy smokes, its been almost 8 months since my last post.  Sheesh.. I bet no one is even reading this thing anyways.

Lots and lots has been going on.  The whole weight-loss thing really took off.  So far I’ve lost 44 lbs and Corey has lost 55 lbs!  We’re doing great!   I am back full swing into my triathlon training.  That is also going really well, and I’ve kicked things up a notch since I’ve been training with the super fast people. :)

This is the year of triathlon for me.  Well, this year and next year.   This year’s goal is an Olympic triathlon in September.  Until then, I’ll be doing Danskin, Marble Falls and maybe Rivercities to prepare.

I’m still playing pool, but decided to put all tournaments on-hold except for the OB tournaments and BCA Nationals in Vegas, and maybe the Houston Open.   I’d rather spend my money on my health instead of playing pool right now.  But, with the OB tour having something like 10 stops this year, might not be saving too much money. :)

Ok … back to the grind!

Posted in Anytime, pool, triathlon | 3 Comments

Speedy, speedy!

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Shayla

Back in March, I had my pool table re-done.  New felt, new rails, shimmed pockets, and even some work on the rails and slate.  It plays fantastic and possibly one of the best 9′ Gold Crowns in the city.

For the past 2 months or so, my good buddy, Rachel, has started to play pool again.  She’d stopped playing pool for a few years and I’m really trying to hard to get her back into it.    Rachel also has her own 9′ Gold Crown at home, so we’ve been having practice sessions once a week and alternating locations.

The problem with this is, the tables play completely different.  Mine is super fast and hers not so much.  She also had a couple of dead rails that usually haunt me.  I always forget about them, and she knows to play around them.

It always takes us a while to get used to the speed of each table.  It takes her longer to get used to the speed on my table than it does for me, not sure why that is, though.

Last week, I was in DC on a short business trip, but I still needed to rent a car.   When I got into my rental car, I immediately noticed the brakes were super sensitive.  I barely had to press the brakes and it felt like I slammed on the brakes.  I was a little worried because they were sooo sensitive, I thought maybe I wouldn’t get used to them.   It probably took me about 2 miles of driving the rental car before I was driving it like a pro, sensitive brakes and all.

Why is it so easy for us to get used to the speed of a new car and adjust very quickly to its sensitive brakes, yet takes us forever to get used to the speed of a different pool table?  Sometimes I don’t ever get used to the speed of a super fast pool table.  Why is that?   I would think I’ve have an easier time controlling something with my hands than I do with my feet?!  Why are these limbs so different?

Posted in pool | Leave a comment

Gone, Baby, Gone!

Posted on September 30, 2009 by Shayla

This summer sure has flown by so fast!   Tomorrow is the first day of October already, and I can’t believe it.   The heat this summer was so unbearable, but we are actually have some fall-like weather the past week or so.  This week the high temps here in Austin are low to mid-80s.  Awesome weather!

With the summer being so hot, I didn’t do as much working out as I would have liked.  The heat just made it to unbearable to go out and ride my bike even at 7am.  So, I spent the entire summer eating healthy in order to lose some weight.   The good news is as of yesterday, I’ve lost 26 lbs and Corey has lost 27 lbs!   We’ve been following the Weight Watchers plan for 18 weeks now, and cooking for the entire week all at once has been very successful for us in keeping up with not eating more than our daily allowance of points.

It just dawned on me that we never took before pictures so that way we could take some pictures afterwards and compare them.   Oh well, I probably don’t really need to see myself that fat anymore, anways.  I hope to never get that fat again, and my attempt to thwart that in the future is once I lose at least 13 more pounds, I’m going go through my entire closet and throw out all the fat clothes.  I usually keep the fat clothes for ‘just in case’, but I’m tired of being ‘just in case’!    I hope Corey will be up to that challenge, too.    I estimate that with 13 more pounds, I”ll probably be getting rid of about 70% of my wardrobe!  I’m actually excited about it, even though I’ll probably spend a fortune buying new clothes, but it will be totally worth it!

Posted in Anytime | Tagged | Leave a comment

Change.

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Shayla

After getting married in 2008, I put on a little weight.  Well, not really a little, more like a lot!  In 14 months I put on 30 lbs!   Hit the highest weight I ever had.  A lot of it was contributed to the fact that I hurt my back last summer and that put me out of commission as far as working out went.   I couldn’t do anything physically, so instead I ate everything in sight.

Fast foward to June 2009 and I was at my highest weight and a new emotional low.  I finally decided to do something about it, so Corey and I started following the Weight Watchers plan online.  I hired someone to put together a couple of weeks of meal plan for me and hit the road running.  We’ve been doing really well, and haven’t really strayed off the plan at all.   I’ve been doing a lot of cooking as you can see from all the food posts here on the blog.

Its been 13 weeks now and I’ve lost 19 lbs and Corey has lost 22 lbs.   I still have another 11 lbs to lose to get back to where I was last year when I got married, but that is still 10 lbs heavier than I’d like to be.   So, I’m shooting for another 21 lbs, and Corey is shooting for another 30 lbs.  Hopefully we can get there by the end of this year.  That would be awesome!

Posted in Anytime | Tagged | Leave a comment