The winter flew by!

Wow... so yet again I haven't blogged in forever!!!  I'll try to make an excuse and say that I was busy - which I was! 

Things that have made this winter go by so fast:

1. Putting an offer in on a house
2. A bad inspection on a house - all was resolved thankfully!
3. Cheering at IM Cozumel over Thanksgiving - no I didn't get a Thanksgiving dinner - eating double in 2012!
4. Moving out of my old townhouse into my new townhouse in mid-December.  My roommate Karin moved in the day after I moved in!
5. Christmas and New Years in Florida
6. Unpacking boxes - no they are still not all unpacked
7. Florida for another week - Hannah finished her first half marathon, I survived the half marathon.  Saw the parents and then celebrated Margaux with her bachelorette party in Miami.
8. Vegas - for a work conference (HIMSS).  I would tell you about it... but you know the saying!
9. Rehabbing my back injuries with lots of strength training, physical therapy, and not working out a whole lot.
10. Hannah's 21st B-day in DC!
11. Oh... and the best thing besides the house.  I bought a new bike!  It's a Cannondale Slice and I LOVE it!  I actually enjoy riding now!

Training is ramping up and I'm falling behind already... well kind of.  Met with Coach Ed at the track this AM and he ensured me I'll be ready for Ironman just keep at it.  The bike is my biggest problem.  In Z2 outside I go about 12mph.  (On Saturday I rode with my friend Katy and we did about 24 miles on beach drive, yes that is about 2 hours of riding.  It was the first time I was able to stay in Z2 outside for the whole ride!  I was thrilled!  Then Katy and I had brunch at our favorite after biking place - Fire Hook)  So as of right now if I were to do 112 miles in Z2 - yeah you figure it out (9 hours)... I would be pulled off the race course due to not making time cut offs.  Thankfully I have tons of time to train still and I won't be in Z2 the whole time during Ironman so I should be just fine!

Only goal this week is to not get injured and train smart!

Camping!

I know I know... it's been forever since I've posted.  What have I been up to you may be wondering? 
1) Physical Therapy - twice a week.  That takes up tons of time
2) Work - work work work and more work... I joined a new team to work on business development, as well as my client work.
3) Races - Savageman (I swam in a relay) and today I just got back from Waterman's (I camped all weekend with my friend Gretchen and her dog Kayla - we cheered our little hearts out all weekend).

This weekend I was at General Smallwood State Park in Indian Head, MD.  It was a gorgeous fall weekend with perfect weather (oh wait, except it was FREEZING at night!).  Every time I've camped this season I end up learning something new about this camping stuff...  A little background: I don't camp!  This past spring I decided it was a good idea to buy a tent, considering camping is always the cheapest and most convenient option at a lot of the races.  Thankfully, Team Z makes camping easy!  Ed (the coach) always has breakfast, lunch, and dinner cooked for us so we don't need to bring our own food and cook it over a fire.  Even though the team makes camping super easy, I've still had to learn to deal with the weather while camping.

RAIN: gross gross rain!  Note to self: put the rain fly on the correct way, not inside out or you will be bailing gallons of water out of your tent.
COLD: don't go camping in the cold and if you do put an extra insulated layer between your air mattress and yourself so the cold air doesn't suck the heat out of your body and you end up shivering all night and not sleeping.
HEAT: yes, I have a battery powered fan/light that I hang in my tent to keep me cool.  Worth every cent!

...and of course camping is always better with good friends! 

I did it!

Okay okay... so I haven't blogged in forever.  And my little sister (Hannah) bugged me the other day that I need to blog and update all my followers (haha... all maybe two of you which include my Mom and Dad).

I SIGNED UP FOR IRONMAN WISCONSIN!  On October 12th I was sitting in a conference room with my clients and signed up for the race!  This took tons of planning actually because I was on a wireless card which is more than unreliable.  So the night before I called my Mom and Dad and provided them all the information I needed to get the hotel rooms at 9am.  Would you believe that getting into the team hotel is almost as hard as signing up for the race?  Well thankfully all went well at 9am after a few phone calls with my Mom, I had secured two hotel rooms in the team hotel.  Then at 12:30pm, after exchanging a few frantic "I'm freaking out emails" with my friends, I sat in the room with my clients and started refreshing the registration page.  Okay, so sign-ups weren't until 1pm but I didn't know what else to do!  I def. couldn't eat, I felt sick to my stomach.  My friend Jenny was on stand by to sign me up if my internet didn't work... Did I mention I was FREAKIN' out!!!  My coworkers kept bugging me - did you sign up? did you sign up?  As I sat there sweating, finally the registration page came up and I quickly signed up!  I got in!!!

So for those of you who don't know what this Ironman stuff is and why it's such a crazy sign-up process - well you can sign-up in person at the race site or online.  In person sign-ups happen first, and then online sign ups happen for the spots remaining.  So imagine hundreds of people online waiting to sign-up all at once and there are only 500 slots.

Long story short... I'm all signed up for Ironman Wisconsin!!!

The downs and ups of one week... Wisconsin here I come!

This week has been a roller coaster.  I went to physical therapy on Tuesday, in pain from my back injury.  After an hour with the physical therapist, Steve (he's awesome!), we came to the conclusion that my back might be worse off then expected.  Could be a disc issue and I was probably off to get x-rays next week.  So there I was... with montezuma's revenge from open water swimming in the potomac and a bummed back that didn't have a great outlook.  I was thinking - there goes my marathon in January and maybe I shouldn't sign up for IM. Needless to say I was disappointed and feeling miserable.

On Friday I head off to go to PT... not holding my head up high.  Well, I'm happy to report - progress has been made with my back!  My L5 segment decided to move back into place!  Yay!  So after 30 mins. of deep tissue massage I went and did my core exercises and had some great convo with the PT, Kerri (she's awesome too).  It's PT sessions like that, which make me realize I'm so lucky to have such a great support system around me.  Not only do I have the best family and friends, but I have great support from all my doctors that keep my body working.  As I was laying there with ice on my back I asked the inevitable scary question "Kerri, do you really think I could do Wisconsin next year now that my back is starting to get better?" and she said YES, if I was dedicated to it.  Welp, that's all I needed.  I've learned to read Kerri over the years - and that wasn't her response of "that's not a good idea".  Well, Kerri never actually says that... she just gives me the look of uhhh huhhhh sure Rachel???

Sign-ups are on Monday... scary!

The one week count down has begun...

Soooo... as many of you all know I'm planning on doing Ironman Wisconsin - September 2012.  I figured I would take my shot at this social media stuff and create a blog.  Why the blog?  Well, I wanted a way to capture my crazy journey and allow my family and friends to experience it with me.  I do have to say, I'm not the best writer out there - so just bear with me.

After a great labor day weekend, which included a girls night out with girls from Team Z, which included much talking of Ironman next year, I figured now would be the time to start writing.  We are a week out from sign-ups!!!  In less than a week I will be committing to a whole year of training to be an Ironman.  This is crazy! Now that this blog is up, I guess I can't question my decision of whether to sign up or not.  I've been going back and forth on this for the past few days.  With my back currently hating me, it might not be a bad idea to wait to make sure my back will be ready and rehabbed or choose a different flatter course to avoid the hills and the back strain they bring.  But throwing out any logical sense, I think I'm just going to sign-up and trust that in a year I will be ready to go!

Emotions: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, why am I doing this?  Can I do this?  Do I want to do this?

Bill of Health: #mybackhatesme - meaning at this current moment my Tri season is done.  No running and no biking until further notice.  PT 2x/week (http://www.fasttracktherapy.com/), personal training with Kavon 1x/week (http://www.functionalfitnessva.com/), core exercises, and swimming.