What Ever

Ft. Worth

Today was a long run and then I hit the pool.  I did tomorrow's planned swim today so that I could get out of town at a decent time after giving some massages.

Badwater-  I am not done watching my video yet of Badwater but I have seen some crazy people.  It is funny to think that I am just like them in a way. On the video they are showing what some people did to train for Badwater and I am not planning on copying them.  One guy was jumping up and down in a sauna and another one had his treadmill next to his dryer and was putting the vent hose on him. I am going to hop in the sauna starting next week but I am just going to read my books while in the darn thing.  I am planning some nice weekends to DV to train and will get some heat training in outside.  i won't be riding my bike in a wetsuit either.  I want to do well at the race but I think I can do without some of these things.

Mt.Whitney--  Iona from Ultraman is all about doing the hike up to Mt.Whitney and is already doing her homework.  She is doing primal quest and so this will be good training for her.  Turns out that we need permits to go up the side we want to go up.  She checked on them today and there is a lottery for them that has to be in by February.  She sent off to see about getting a pemit on some of the weekends we selected so that will most likely decide when we will be having the girls weekend up the mountain.  I need to see about gettting one for after the Badwater race for Michelle and I but I dont have a printer that is working at the moment.  Maybe Michelle will get a form printed out and sent in.  I won't try to climb Mt. Whitney without a permit.  I dont want to get the Rangers mad at the race.  We will see.

Ft.Worth-  I am headed to see my cousin Donna and ride with the Randonnuers this weekend.  I am going to do a 200k or 300k bike ride and then run something longer than a marathon on Sunday.  I might have a social life this weekend and actually go out to eat both nights...I am really looking forward to the trip

I am not taking a computer but will blog if I get the chance

Thanks for reading

Posted: Feb 28 2008, shanna

Le Tour Ultime 2006

Today I was not so motivated and my neck was bothering me.  This is something that is a chronic pain that I have and the main reason I am looking for another career.  I did get my workouts done and had a great day at work.

Mt. Whitney-  I think I have a weekend selected that us girls can all make.  It will be in the beginning of June so it is a ways off.  We also might shoot for a weekend in May but we will see.  I am looking forward to trying the mountain out.  I have been reading this book and it sounds like it will be very painful to get down from climbing Mt.Whitney after the race.  My toes will surely be bruised and the steep downhill will only bang my toes up even more...yikes.

Brevet ride and run in Ft.Worth-  I am planning on going to Ft. Worth again this weekend.  There is one ride a month that I plan to do with my buddies and it will be a 200k on Saturday.  Sunday I have a really long run and was going to go to a race but I have plenty of people to run with in Ft.Worth.  I have hopes of picking up my last crew member this weekend.  There is a guy there that has crewed at Badwater and really knows a bunch about ultra running.  He is a friend of my cousins.  She is going to try to get him to run with me.  The weather might keep me in Lubbock but I keep checking it...we will see.

Le Tour Ultime 2006-  I did not go into all the details on how hard it was to get the car out of the ditch.  When we went back to it all the men attempted to get the car out of the ditch and almost got run over trying to rock the car back and forth.   We had one guy with us that was in his 60's that was really thin named Frans.  He is lucky that he did not get run over. The car only got further in the ditch.  We drove up the road and found a police station but were unable to talk to them.  One of the riders knew someone in the states that could speak French so he called her and had her talk to the police.  As far as we knew someone was going to arrive in the morning to help get the car out of the ditch.  The rider we left behind never had anyone show up so he was walking down the road and trying to get some help.  He actually stepped in some poop with his sandles and was thinking "What now?"  He then came across some French people and it turned out that a common word both the French and Americans use is "tractor."  He managed to get some French people to help him pull the car out with a tractor.

Thanks for reading

Posted: Feb 27 2008, shanna

Le Tour Ultime 2006

Today I had one heck of a long trianing day before work.  I had some track work to do and it was a hard and long workout.  I also had a long bike ride that I planned on doing outside but I wanted to watch a video that I had on Badwater. 

Dr.Cooper-   this guy is an amazing guy.  He wrote me a personal letter that was really nice.  I had a really good time getting to know him.  He is 77 years old and is really beleives in preventative medicine and has a great deal of concern for the obesity that we have in Texas as well as the U.S. I do hope that someday he can get something going here in Lubbock and I want to be on the bandwagon.  I spoke with a woman today that works at a great coorporation here in Lubbock and one of the things they want to do is team up with Dr.Cooper to fight obesity in children.  I am working in getting in this circle and think I might be in it.  I have my fingers crossed.  She liked my idea of showing people how to eat healhty but cheap.  This is something that she and I do not know how to do but one reason people might not eat healthy is because it is so expensive.  I am writing a nice letter back to Dr.Cooper.

Le tour Ultime 2006-  This is another race like the race across America but it is on the Tour de France course (4000k non-stop).  I had the chance go in 2006 on a 4-man team.  We ended up a 3 person team with 2 crew members at the finish line but I can get into how that happened later.  We had two vehicles and 3 riders so there was only one place for a person to sleep.  This meant us riders were crewing as well so it was a very hard race.  One rider would ride and rotate into a two-seat car alone occasionally.  This two-person car was a berlingo and I am not sure how we ended up with it (it reminds me of a miata here in the states). We called it jail since it did not have any food in it and it was uncomfortable to ride in.  Anyway I got stuck back in jail one time and I was really sleepy.  It was sometime around 3am and I was starting to fall asleep. The two cars stayed together since we only had one GPS and the route books were not right.  We had one road that we were going to be on for a while so I pulled up next to the pace car and told them I was going to drive ahead to the turn and try to get some sleep.  I drove ahead and pulled over to get a nap.  OOPS...I pulled over and the tires dropped down into a ditch.  I got the car stuck in France.  When the other rider caught up with the pace car I told them what I had done.  We were unable to get the car out of the ditch so we decided to leave it on the road and keep going.  We made it another hour or so and came to our senses.  One of the guys had a wallet in the car so we had to go back.  This was about when we were all ready to quit the race but one of the riders was like a knight in shining armor and told us the race had to go on and he would stay back with the car.  We were now a two man team and had two crew so it was looking really bad.

All of us stunk and two of us were with only the clothes we had.  The 4th rider was missing in action with our clothes and food.  We carried on as a two person team but the guy we left behind was still trying to figure out how to get the car out of the ditch and did not know French.  This guy had long hair and a hole in his shorts along with the oder of riding for over 4 days or so.  What is funny is that he managed to get the car out of the ditch when morning came, go to the store and catch up with us in 8 hours while the 4th rider claimed to have been looking for us.

I was part of the two-person team that went ahead and what is sad is that we ran completely out of water and were out of food.  We kept going cause we were afraid that if we pulled off the course that the rider behind would miss us. We had no communication so we had to stay on route until we saw a store right on the road.  We finally saw a store and stopped to go grocery shopping.  We left someone outside to keep watch for the person behind and raided the store.  When you have are on a team these stops are not supposed to happen but that is how desparate and hungry we were.  About an hour after the stop we were rejoined with our 3rd rider.  The 4th rider and a crew member remained missing until the last part of the race....Crazy huh?

Posted: Feb 26 2008, shanna

Mt.Whitney

I spoke with Michelle Santihano last night.  I am planning to go to the top of Mt.Whitney at the end of Badwater with her.  I am still going to give it my best shot at the race.  I just think it would be fun for some of the crew to hike some and enjoy Death Valley after the race.  There is always the chance that I get to the finish and change my mind but we will see. I have been thinking about it and the idea gets more appealing to me the more I think about it. 

We are planning a training weekend in Death Valley before the race and will be trying to summit the mountain then.  Who knows I might change my mind after that.  I am hoping to get Iona Mackenzie from Ultraman, my best friend Christina and her husband to join us.  Christina and her husband tried it before but got altitude sickness so they want to give it another try.  I am not stuck on the idea.  I have not desire to get stuck in a lightning storm.

Congestive Heart Failure-  My little toy pomeranian was coughing like a smoker so she got taken to the vet today.  I own two poms and one of them is deformed.  I took her in feeling sorry for her and she is my pride and joy.  She has a little heart problem and the heart is smashing against her wind pipe so she can't breath.  She is going to be ok for a while but it still is a bummer thinking that she might have trouble from now on.  If something happens to her brother won't know what to do with himself. I always keep them together and it really is not fair.  Both of them went to the vet today but the boy just went along for moral support....I am not sure if he liked it. They both also get spanked when there is a mess as well.  They remind me of my favorite book ...Where the Red Fern Grows.  If I ever get settled I do want to get two toy yorkies added to the family.  I like the idea of having dogs keeping each other company when I am out of town.

Career Coaching-  I have a client that does this and we are trading services for while.  I seem to always get a lot on my list and it might not be so bad to have someone help me organize my list of things to do.  She also does branding and logos for a company so I am going to get some good things out of these sessions to start a business.  I guess in a way I just added one more thing to my list of things to do.

Corporate Wellness-  I have been doing my homework and I think I found someone to team up with on getting some health assesments done cheap and who can help me understand more about this field.   We will be meeting regularly and bouncing ideas off of each other since this feild is so new.

No stories tonight...Michelle Santihano kept me up on the phone. She is trying to talk me into a race that is like 5 ironmans.  I am not getting sucked in this year.  I have enough on my plate and still need to add skating in somewhere to be ready for the gigathlon next year.

Posted: Feb 25 2008, shanna

Badwater

I had a great training day today.  My  buddy Keith came out and mountain biked with me.  He fell down twice but is getting the hang of it.  I also did a fairly long run afterwards.  It was a beautiful day here in Lubbock.

Badwater-- the roster is posted and there are 23 women in the race.  There are some really fast women so that has me a but nervous but I will be happy to finish.  It looks like all the past champs signed up again this year.  I also just figured out that I booked the wrong hotel rooms for the finish. I can be a blond sometimes so I will be correcting my mistake tomorrow.  I figured this out when I was talking to Michelle Santihano earlier.

Mt.Whitney-  Michelle is a mountain climber and I have another friend named Christina that wants to climb Mt.Whitney.  We are trying to organize a training weekend to climb to the top before the race.  Michelle is planning on going to the top after the race so I might as well do it with her.  We are also cutting our expenses by sharing some of the rooms at Badwater.  Training and doing Badwater is going to be a lot of fun.  I race really well when I am having fun.

RAAM 2008-  I just found out that Michelle is doing RAAM as a 4 person team.  I have been getting some emails from her crew and did not know it was her team.  I am not missing planning RAAM for myself this year but I might lend a hand to Michelles team if they need it.    I am sure Michelle told me about this but I must not heard her the first time.

Time for bed

Posted: Feb 24 2008, shanna