Leadwoman – July 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In July, I ran ~161 miles and rode ~423 miles.  This is the month things really started to fall apart in my personal and work life. I was no longer useful at home.  I was brain dead all the time.  I was forgetful.  I was sooooo tired.  I was going to bed at 8:30 right after I put the girls down.  LP and I never saw each other because I’d leave at 5 a.m. to train for several hours before work.  Definitely not the way you want to be living a newlywed life.  We all loaded up for 4^th of July weekend and headed to Leadville for the 50-mile bike race, Silver Rush.  We were turning the holiday into a mini vacation since they’d moved the race to Sunday. Generally, the ride was on Saturday.  [Read more about the race weekend in a separate post.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The week after Silver Rush, recovering from the crashes was a rough week.  Moving was hard.  My body took at beating.  I was so sore but not muscle sore from training.  The kind of sore like people explain after being in a car crash.  That Tuesday, I just did an hour on the treadmill.  That was painful.  I ran just over 10 the following day.   I rode on Thursday.  Friday was supposed to be a big ride at Reveille Peak Ranch again close to Austin.  I left Fort Worth early to TRY and beat the heat, which is impossible at this point.  That day must have been one of THE MOST MISERABLE 5 hour rides.  I spent the first hour on the wrong part of the trail, miserably walking and reopening my wounds running into shrubs, etc. I get back to the car and want to leave badly.  But, I bandaged my wounds back up, sucked it up and went back out there.  I can never find my way at that trail.  I was trying to find the supposed 25-mile endurance trail, but I could never stay on it.   I ended up with only 30 miles.

This was the weekend I was going back to do the night run close to Austin again.  And run it I did.  It was a good training run and that’s exactly what I needed.  [Read more about the race in a separate post.]  I was getting close to tapering by this point.  It was almost surreal that the final races were so close.  I still had a few more 100’s to ride.  Those were no fun on your own.  And my riding buddy Eugene was gallivanting across the country.  Kristin Moore has just done Triple Bypass and agreed to do 50 of 100 miles with me one Friday.  Tiffany Dearman (whom I just met at Leadville in June) took the last 50 with me that day.  Again, pretty amazing that people will come out for these rides and runs.

 

 

I had a big run training weekend planned at the end of July.  I was not exactly sure how I was going to pull it off.  I had to call in help from my Longview peeps for this one.  I needed a 20 miler in the morning, 10 miles in the afternoon and 15 miles the next day.  My family had to entertain the girls while Gary Cassidy and the Longview running crew helped me get the 20-miler in.  By this point, he was talking about doing ultras.  What really ended up happening that weekend was 20 miles on Sunday, 15 miles on the treadmill Monday morning.  I never got the other 10 in.  There had been some really stressful moments leading up to this point in training.  But the meltdown came that Monday.  It wasn’t the only meltdown I had, but it was one of the most notable.  I needed to get the 15 miles in and get back to Ft. Worth to work that day.  I was running by 6 a.m.  My mom was feeding the girls breakfast and helping get us packed up so we could leave by 11 at the latest.  The time came to leave and I couldn’t find my jeep key.  If my brain would have been even half working at this point (which it hadn’t in a while), I could have clearly thought through where the key could have been.  But, 3 hours later, after everyone on the hunt, calling a locksmith, and having a complete meltdown, my brain came through for me.  I had taken the key off the key ring to run the 20 miles the day before.  I walked in my brother’s house (clearly distracted and tired), set my things down on the kitchen counter and started pulling the trash out of my run pack and throwing it away.  This is exactly what I had done so many times.  However, this time, I had my single key in my hand and threw it in the trash as well.  My brother takes the trash to his shop if there’s a lot of it from the weekend.  Luckily, his shop is less than one mile from his house.  The girls and I trekked over (100 degree heat and all) to his shop and I proceeded to dig through the 3 trash bags that we had filled over the weekend with watermelon rinds and the like.  One of his employees (can’t remember the sweet man’s name to save my life) came over and started helping me.  It was pretty disgusting to say the least.  We started chatting about my training.  He used to live in Colorado and went on and on about Leadville and some of the other events in that area.  He said that race was such a big deal, etc, etc.  I was quickly brought back to reality of what I was training for. It was a big deal.  And sometimes I forgot that.  It’s amazing how he was there in that moment to tell me that message.  We found my key.  I canceled the locksmith.  And, I was ONLY 3 hours late for work.  Ha!  Madison and I had a conversation several months prior about stress and how it affects your training and recovery.  I think the stress I endured that day was well over the stress a 10-mile run would have caused.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following weekend was Goatneck.  I needed extra miles to get as close to 100 as possible.  Stacy Barton was so kind to start early with me.  Bike lights and all.  I had run 20 the day before.  Those had really become the norm.  But, they certainly didn’t lend to easy 100’s the following day.  I ended up have a fantastic day with a 1 mph improvement over previous long rides.  I just felt strong on all the hills while everyone else was complaining, I was thinking…what hills?  Try to ride in the mountains!  I had a lot of people comment on me doing it on a mountain bike.  I remember that happening at Honey Tour 3 years before.  Around mile 50 (for me) I ran into some others training for Leadville.  They were super easy to spot because we’re the only idiots that would do a road rode on an mountain bike.  It was the Rockwall crew.  Nathan, Rudy, and co.  I met Nathan at Silver Rush 3 years ago and he was doing Leadville this year!  So much fun “riding” with them for a little while.  It was more like they left me in the dust and I passed them at aid stations because I wasn’t stopping as much.  Repeat over and over until the end.  I got 87 miles that day and we went and had a beer together after. Fun times.

In July, I also fortunately met massage therapist, Kimberly Lawler.  How on earth we’d gone this long without meeting, I have no clue.  She started working on me very regularly.  It was so necessary at this point and I’m so thankful.  She was very flexible with my crazy schedule (and last minutes requests) and was able to work on the kinks in between my appointments with Dr. Mulhall.  There were several times in my training that I would think, “Wow, I don’t know how professional athletes do it.”  Especially ones that aren’t getting paid a lot and have other jobs.  And families.  It was borderline insane the amount of time and money that had gone into this.

Below is my wound progression from the Silver Rush crashes.  It took a solid 2 weeks and I took VERY good care.  I will carry those scars with me forever.