What Drives You

I am often asked what keeps me motivated, my mom to start with who should be the one person who understands me best still can’t figure out how almost at 40 I spend countless hours ‘punishing my body’ (those are her words literally).

I’ve met people through this sport from different backgrounds and ages and I often wonder if I would have come to this sport earlier…  how long would I have lasted? It is not a secret that this sport is very demanding, yet most of us manage to find time for training in the midst of our busy lives. If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be back at training on my 40s I would have told you you were crazy.

Growing up as a competitive athlete I learned so many things about life at an early age; among others, hard work and dedication pays off, your body and mind are not always in synch and most importantly if you don’t enjoy doing what you are doing, you wont be able to do it for long.

I am one of those people who can’t do things half way, I either do it and put everything into it or I don’t. After a long hiatus from swim meets, long training hours and active life in general I lost myself. I started swimming at a very young age and everything about my life included or was around a swimming pool. I went to a school just for swimmers and was lucky enough to be part of the best swim team in Spain at the time.

Yes that meant a very unusual childhood; no TV after school, not much play time after swim practice and busy weekends going from pool to pool missing out on bday parties and get togethers, in general I would qualify my childhood as a ‘rare social life’. No, I am not saying I didn’t do any of that but I did it less often than most of my non swimmer friends, actually I didn’t have many of those, other than neighbors and family members. And yet I LOVED every minute of it.

I felt accomplished when most people my age didn’t even know what that meant, I was lucky enough to have found my ‘call’. God knows if instead of swimming my parents would have registered me for basketball my childhood would have been a completely different thing.

I owe so much to my past and those that helped defining me as a person. For some strange reason I have been thinking a lot about my swim coach lately. His name is Paulus Wildeboer and is originally from Holland, if you saw Paulus on deck you understood why he was so intimidating. Among other reasons the guy is probably 7 feet tall or at least that is how tall he looked to a group of middle schoolers. Not to mentioned the fact that yelling was his normal tone of voice, I would go crazy if I ever tried to count how many times I got yelled at in any given practice. To this day Paulus holds a very special place in my heart, he was a role model to us, we spend more time with him than our own family, he was definitely a second father figure. As a matter of a fact I would argue he had more to say about how I was running my life at the time than my own parents.

So my swimming days came and went and I was lost for many years, I did not know what to do with my life, I felt as if outside of the pool I had no identity. I found my way through life and ended up in the USA, got married and started a new life.

Fast forward to 2009 when I did my first triathlon. All of the sudden I am an adult, with an adult life; had a job, a husband and most importantly children, as a mother you are never the same person once you have kids. Your children is what define your live and the word ‘me’ no longer exists, you always do things for everybody else other than you.

And then I started racing… I discovered that while I am out there racing or training is ‘me time’, the more that I push and the more I succeed the happier I am. Out of respect to my fellow competitors, the sport and my family I owe to give it my best everytime I am out there. Why would I spend 10-15hours away from my family and my kids who are the most important thing in my life if I am not going to make the best out of it??

So, that is what drives me. The hunger to fill my competitive edge, the will to teach my children that if you put your mind to it all goals are achievable and that the harder you work the more successful you are.  And some people will ask, what about having fun? Well that is how I have fun, I cannot imagine anything better to do with my time than to ‘better myself’.

I am not saying everybody should do the same, I am saying that is what drives me. Everybody has that one thing that drives them and once you find it the sky is the limit…. Or isn’t that what they say? ;)

New Years Resolution

My first post of the year was not a New Years resolution post which seemed to upset some people. Truth be told back home we don’t do the whole NY resolutions thing. Yes ending a year is a huge milestone, but like my sister recently said I don’t really feel as if it has to be a specific day or time of the year to set a bunch of goals.

I am a goal oriented person as it is, I think I would go crazy if on top of all my existing goals I had to come up with a whole list at the beginning of each year. I celebrate the end of the year and welcome the new one the same way everyone does, actually we have a couple of ‘cultural differences’ that I thought it would be fun to share…

New Years Eve of any given year,  if you were a fly on the wall in a Spanish household while everybody gets ‘dolled up’ and pretty to go out and celebrate with friends and/or family, you would notice one thing .. red lingerie, and I am not just talking about women, men do too wear red undies to welcome the New Year. It is no surprise to anybody that us Spaniards identify with the color red, I am not really sure why that is, and I don’t even know if that is even related to the whole red underwear tradition for NY, but I know that 15 years away from home have not been enough for me to break that tradition.

A very common scene at Spanish local markets on the last week of the year

We also toast with champagne, like here, but we put a gold piece of jewelry in our drink for good luck. In addition we make a point to cross our legs with the right leg over the left, and as soon as we toast we step in with our right foot, I am sure you get the idea but for those lost out there is to start the year with ‘the right foot’. Lastly, as the clock strikes 12 we eat 12 grapes, I remember being a kid and having the hardest time to fit all 12 in my mouth, apparently as we get older not only our mouth gets bigger but I have become a lot more efficient at chewing and swallowing and eating 12 grapes in less than 15 seconds doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore.

The very last thing we do in the hopes of having a successful New Year, is to burn our red underwear. Basically symbolizing the end of the old year and starting fresh.  Raquel and I added one more tradition, since we never know for sure where we’ll be for New Years Eve, we always celebrate the Spanish New Year. So by 6 o’clock we have already done all of the above with our family in Spain, celebrating over the phone is far from perfect but is better than nothing.

Everybody celebrates the New Year differently, and everybody sets their goals differently. I have known people who like to share their goals with the world, me on the other hand I am a bit more reserve, I will share some but there is always something on the back of my mind that only me and me know. That is why this time of the year is so fascinating to me, I see people talking about what they are planning on doing for the New Year, and not that I have anything against it but there are sometimes a  consequently some people who amaze me.

I do respect those that follow the ‘reach for the moon and you might hit a star’ philosophy, I tried to stay true to the quote but there seem to be a million different  versions, that one for some reason sounded like the ‘right one’ to me. I have always admired positive people, I try to be as positive as I can myself. I set goals that sometimes I can’t reach, those are the ones that keep me real, they remind me how human beings can have an off day, but I always try to be realistic.

You might set the same goal that your next door neighbor, but the way you position it plays a big part on how the outcome can affect you. We all know that by setting a goal we are automatically taking a risk to failure. Sometimes we don’t have control of everything (trust me, I have tried hard but somehow there are things that are just out of our control). So, why waste your time setting a goal based on something you have no control of? Since most of the people reading this are triathletes or have been competitive  athletes in their past (ex-swimmers, ex-gymnasts, ex-water polo players…) I will make it easy on everybody … lets say I have a race coming up, and I want to do great, I want to have the best performance yet, yes as a competitive nature person we would ALL want to be 1^st but there is only one first and the place you will end on a race is something you have no control over.

 You might have the race of your life, but others racing might do as well. You never know who you are going against and have no control on their performance, their training and/or their luck. I see people setting their goal at being ‘1^st’’, this usually works for professionals who know exactly who they are going against, but for an age grouper as myself I choose not to set a goal that might destroy my chance of having a great performance. If I keep focus on my race and somebody passes me, it is not the end of the world I will do my best to keep up but ultimately I have a plan which could be very well shut down if my goal for the race was to be 1^st in the first place, you can know your competition or at least you think you might know but don’t shut down your chance to reach the stars just by relaying on things you have no control over.

Nutrition vs Diet

As type A personality people, triathletes are always looking towards perfection. When we do something we do it to the best of our abilities, when we go hard we want to go so hard that we’ll make ourselves throw up and feel proud of it, where we put our mind we put our heart.

Let’s be honest only a handful of people outside of the triathlon world think we are ‘normal’, and that small group probably includes our spouses and/or parents, and the only reason why they think we are ‘normal’ is because they’ve lived around us long enough to know is just easier to agree with us than to disagree, at the end of the day there is only one way; ‘our way’. As insanely sick as it might sound to them to be out there for 2, 3, 5 or 10+ hours putting our bodies to what we put ours through, they know how important it is to us and by now most of them have given up on us and finding what they seem to think a ‘normal’ life.

So, it is not surprising to me to see many of us obsessing about everything. One of the things I have always been in wow of is how triathletes change their lifestyle to welcome a much healthier, and at the end faster ‘me’.

We all come to this sport from different backgrounds but at the end of the day we are made of the same ‘material’. I always find it quite interesting to read how different backgrounds define us on this sport, cyclists are usually small, and so are runners and it is no surprise that their biggest opportunity is swimming.  On the other hand it is often that you read how one of the bigger changes swimmers need to make when they come to this sport is that they need to ‘slim down’.

I am no different, I come from a family of four girls, and other than Raquel we all swam growing up, our adolescents’ years were full with visits to doctors, dietitians, nutritionists, you name it. A combination of peer and coach pressure made us very conscious of what we ate and what effect that had in our bodies.

After my swimming days I took a hiatus from exercising and as most people the diet fell through with it.  Put a bunch of weight on and for years I struggle to lose it. It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I made the conscious decision that I needed a healthier lifestyle, I stopped thinking about ‘diets’ and started thinking about ‘fueling’ my body.

Going back to type A personalities, I meet so many people in this sport who never have enough, they are not fast enough, they are not thin enough, they are not … you name it. We can’t have Gisele Bundchen’s body and perform like Chrissie Wellington. We often forget that one thing is to be thin and a different thing is to be ‘fit’. Yes, I agree with the common opinion that the leaner you are the faster you’ll be, nothing like being a lean mean machine on race day, but I also think that there is a fine line between being lean and being too lean.

Some of the goodies we've been enjoying this Holiday Season

Coming off the Holiday Season most of us have some work to do before our first race of the season, I personally have 16 weeks to get to that ‘lean machine’ body. I don’t use the word diet, haven’t use it or done one of those for many many many years, instead I am planning on a top notch nutrition plan, I am fueling my body with the best out there by choosing yummy whole foods instead of the not so healthy treats I have been indulging on this past week. So if you are on my same shoes, don’t forget we are going after the perfect fit not the perfect body.

Wishing you a New Year full of Happy Training and Healthy Eating!

Where Have I been...

It is pretty unbelievable how attached we grow to this thing called ‘technology’. You have not seen a post from me in a while, truth be told I have been busy with life, training, kids, getting ready for the Holidays but most importantly I had no computer. Yup, in a matter of two weeks we lost two of our PCs. At the end of November I was getting ready to send Xmas cards when all of a sudden I realize my PC upstairs was fried. I still had my laptop but the whole idea of sending Xmas cards early this year kind of fell through the cracks since my file with addresses was in the so called fried PC.

Less than a week later my laptop decided to join our PC and the screen just went blank. We were able to hook it up to the screen upstairs but let’s be honest having your laptop downstairs where you spend most of your days is a lot more convenient than having to go to the office, not to mention I would have to trust my kids to be by themselves for a long period of time which we all know when it comes to 3 and 5 years old that is NEVER a good idea.

Somewhere in there was my new laptop

So, thanks to Sami and Santa Clause I got a new toy. I am back on the blog wagon and hope to have this new puppy for a while. With that said not much has gone on in my life since my last post, if you ever wondered what I was doing during that time the answer is probably running. As I put the highest run volume ever (for me) on the last couple of weeks, I feel as if my body has just been trying to recover from one run to the next.

We have also added a second swim, which it started with a shorter one and this past week just got up to my regular 4K. I have been doing 99% of my rides indoors, nowadays my longer rides are 2hours max and sometimes with the kids and the Holidays is just easier to get on the trainer and get it done early in the am rather than waiting for the craziness starts.

I think I mentioned on a previous post how I never get sick… well apparently my body decided to get better at that; back in November I got sick when my asthma flared up, it was a short downtime and I think I only end up missing one day (two workouts), the second time was two weeks later, the kids, Sami and then Raquel took their turns at the stomach bug. I thought to be invincible but I guess that is not the case, end up in bed for a day and sick for four days, this one kept me off the workout routine for a day and a half; With all the running I’ve been doing I just thought to be ‘normal’ that my legs were to feel like concrete blocks, so yesterday when I went on my long run I thought the feeling of having bricks instead of legs was just normal. Unfortunately when I got back from my run I started feeling achier, so for the third time in a row I am sick.

Hopefully wont be seeing much of this guy again

As we start the New Year it just makes sense to me that I ask for a healthier one, obviously I rather get in all my sick time now than once we get closer to race season but it would be nice to be able to go more than two weeks without ending on a virus or anything that keeps me away from having to skip a workout.

Tis' The Season

Not sure who came up with that expression, but I like to think that they were thinking on people like me who just happen to love this time of the year.

Growing up Christmas was a big deal, we are a big family and during the Holidays we always had an even bigger crew. I always wish the Holidays lasted longer, but it just seem as if the older I got the shorter those were.

Moving to the States changed things a bit, instead of starting the Holiday Season a week before Christmas we get to enjoy it a bit longer with Thanksgiving.

 Following the tradition Pilgrims...

and Indians

For the last four or five years we’ve driven to Baltimore to spend Thanksgiving with Sami’s family. Traveling during Christmas is not an option for us, our kids are little and we want to make sure their Christmas memories are at home, with mommy and daddy and not packing suitcases to visit either side of the family.

So for the fifth year in a row we got in the car and made the drive up the weekend before Thanksgiving. Every year on the way up I tell myself how I am going to behave and not stuff my face with everything is in front of me. And every year I do the same… stuff my face with everything is in front of me, or in the pantry :).

So for the fifth year in a row we drove back with some extra weight and sick as a dog. I try to do as much running outdoors as I can and while up there that is all I did since there is no treadmill available to us. Somehow I always manage to get a cold and by the time we got back home my asthma flaired up.

I am a grown up woman, I will be 39 Christmas Day, I hate whinny people and I can assure you that I would NOT like ‘me’ when I am sick. I always miss mom and her cooking, but when I am sick it seems as if she is the only one that could make me feel better, well her and her chicken soup of course.

It is very VERY rare that I skip workouts, some days are easier than others, but they always get done. Sunday after Thanksgiving though was one of those days that I just couldn’t get myself to run or swim as I was suppose to. I was out of breath just getting out of bed and I was using my inhaler way too often. I decided to stay in and try to cure what I had.

Four days later and I am still fighting it, my workouts this past week have been all but pretty. A combination of my inhaler and the antibiotics has had some crazy effect on my HR, my muscles ache and I just want to be done with the medicine. So, right now, I am just looking forward to get and feel better.

 

Happy Training,

Carmen.

Love - Hate Relationship

As a child I grew up with the smell of chlorine imbedded into my skin. When I walk into a swimming pool I feel right at home, and swimming up and down following the never ending black line just comes as a second nature to me. But you already knew that!

What you probably didn’t know is that we trained countless hours with our swim team and part of our training, especially during the off season, was spent running trails and countless loops around the pool. Back then running was my number one enemy; I would do ANYTHING to escape that part of our work outs. As a matter of a fact, I was notorious for walking as much as I could, out of sight out of mind… or so I thought. I would keep an eye on my coach and as soon as I was out of his sight I would start walking. At times we were 40+ people training and guess who was the last one to make it back from all those runs… yup you guessed right, it was me. If it was not the last one I was pretty close to being the one.

As a teenager that was one of the ‘medicines’ we had to take if we were to come back from the off season with some extra lbs. The rest of the team would get to play soccer, basketball or any fun sport, while ‘us’ would go around, and around, and around the pool. I think that is when my love-hate relationship with running started, to start with I already despised it, but during those years it got even worse because I saw running as a punishment.

After my swimming years were over I had no desire to step back into a pool for a long time, I would coach swimming but you would not see me swimming. This lasted for almost ten years and even then it was pretty sporadically. It wasn’t until I got pregnant with my son Marc that I started swimming again on a more regular basis.

Those years in ‘hiatus’ from the pool I also took a break from working out for a while, but after I realized I had to do something I got into spinning, aerobics and even running. As a matter of a fact that is one of the things that got me and my husband to spend time together, who would have thought that something I used to hate as much as I hated running would be the one thing that brought us together.

Back then we just ran for fun, we would do 5 or 6 short runs a week, no HR monitors, no specific paces, no races… that is how I started falling in love with running.

Right before I started triathlons I thought I was an ok runner (little did I know), it was quite the eye opener when on my first season with TNT I realized that the only thing I was ok at was swimming.

After working on my run and bike with Jeremy, I improved quite a bit on both, but surprisingly enough (for me anyways) my bike splits seemed to be stronger when compared to the rest of the field. So, last season, being the second season working with J we focused on my run. And although my run has come a long ways I still didn’t feel like I could run forever (the same way I feel in the pool).

As I have mentioned before on this blog this year is about improving my run again, which means I’ve been running quite a bit, and this is just the beginning. I have notice a big difference from last year though, although I am not running with a Garmin (naked running is so much fun J) I have a bunch of different loops from my house, depending on how long I have to run I know what I should be able to do.

Last year I remember struggling with the off season running, not only I was running more than I had been accustomed to which means I hurt physically, but even mentally it was hard on me.

This past couple of weeks I’ve felt strong on my runs, being back on some structure was good the first week but took me a couple of days to get back into it. Being the excitement of going down to Florida or just the energy from the race has really lifted my spirits and I have seen a change on my running, for the best. I can tell I am running faster than last year during the off season and I am kind of looking forward to my daily runs. I guess what I am trying to say is that I am falling in love with running again and since I know J is got plenty of painful runs in store for me I hope I get to keep the hype for a while.

This brings me to week 2 & 3 of training; swimming has been good since I don’t have to force myself into the pool but once a week. With the trip down to Florida and Sami traveling I had to do most of my riding indoors and being shorter rides there are pretty manageable while watching TV.

Week 2 Total

Swim - 75 min - 4000m

Bike - 4 hrs

Run - 4.2hrs

TOTAL - 9.5hrs

Week 3 Total

Swim - 75 min - 4000m

Bike - 4.3hrs

Run - 4.4hrs

TOTAL - 10.1hrs

Live and Learn

Sami gets tired of hearing me say ‘Things Happen For a Reason’, but I truly believe it to be true. By that I don’t mean to make excuses for things I don’t have an answer for, instead I believe things might not always go the way you like but as long as you get something out of each experience you are moving forward.

Last weekend was a big one for me, but I would not be Carmen if I had not been taking mental notes throughout the day from athletes, volunteers and cheerleaders to use for next year’s race (YES my mind is always working J). Since I know I will come back to these earlier posts as my big day approaches I wanted to make sure I wrote some of those down, some of these are things I learned, others are pure observations that I thought I could benefit from if I found a ‘better way’, so hopefully  will have an answer for all of those that require one before Nov 3^rd 2012…

SWIM

-         To Swim or to Run: Some athletes got in the water right after completing their first loop, making their way to the start of loop 2 swimming. Others chose to run back to the swim start and then headed out for loop 2. For those watching from shore it was very obvious which was the fastest way… run the stretch instead of swimming it, 1^st you are always faster when running and 2^nd you can get a bit of a breather in between loops.

-          They have wetsuit strippers… use them, UNLESS you are in the middle of a big pack then it might be worth just heading to T1 and have volunteers peel it off there.

-          Long vs Short Sleeve Wetsuit; this one is a tough one for me. I can’t swim with long sleeve wetsuits, if you’ve seen me swim you know that I am like a windmill, which means I have a very HIGH turn over. My shoulders get very tight with long sleeve suits and feel very constricted. I own a sleeveless and love using it. Unfortunately Panama City has a lot of ‘visitors’ as I like to call them (AKA jellyfish). I can’t even remember the amount of people I saw at T1 who got stung by jellyfish and the people who got stung the worse were those with sleeveless wetsuits. I also know that purchasing one just for that one race is not smart as I will not be using it again. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

TRANSITION 1

-          Compression Socks: I am debating on using these or not. I use them for recovery all the time but I have never run on them, I was thinking it might be something good to try in training but there MUST be an easier way to put those on, specially on race day when you are wet. I think I have seen a video on the past (maybe in Twitter?) that shows you how to put those most efficiently. If you know which video I am talking about please forward it my way. I guess I will need to practice that before race day.

-          Arm Warmers: I saw some people who had baby powder on those and it definitely made a difference. But again, some people took forever to put them on, like the socks, there must be a more efficient way. I saw some guys putting them halfway up I am assuming they pull them all the way up while on the bike, this would be of course the best case escenario if it weren't that my bike handeling skills are non existent.

-          Biking Shoes: so far I have not been able to master getting on the bike with the shoes attached to it, hopefully I will be able to do so before IMFL, but if not the best solution would be carrying them with me and putting them on by the bike since is a bit of a stretch you have to run til you get to your bike.

BIKE

-          Everybody I’ve talked to emphasizes on how important it is to change position on the bike every now and then, as the course is flat and you keep using the same muscles over and over again.

-          Changing tires: right now if I were to have a flat in the middle of a race I would have to call it a day. They came up with this spray thingy for tubulars but I yet have to learn how to use it. My friend went through 2 CO2 cartridges on race day and had to wait for mechanical support, 45 min. later she wished she had used the cartridges on training rides.

-          PACING is the big game here. I am an expert on blowing out the bike leg of a half IM and then not having anything left for the run. I better start thinking on something to keep my mind entertained for 112 miles so that I don’t find myself going too hard.

-          Set small goals so that you can break the course into small segments, thinking 112 miles ahead of you seems like very very long day ahead of you.

TRANSITION 2

-          Not much to do here, in and out.

RUN

-          Form, form and more form. The best way to be effective with your running is to have a good form. Mine is not pretty but is either that or it gets really, really, reaaaaaaaaaaally UGLY. So, concentrate on high knees, relaxed shoulders and face and keep checking yourself through out the marathon.

-          I have opted for not running a marathon before IMFL, which means my first marathon ever will have a swim and bike warm up. Being an out and back course, thinking I have ahead of me 4 times one stretch seems a lot more doable than 26.2 miles.

-          Pacing is also big here, stay on track with your pace for the first three ‘stretches’ and if you have anything left bring it home on the last one.

-          I loved seeing everybody out there on the run course, but let me tell you that big part of that is that everybody had a HUGE smile on their face. One person in particular didn’t (I am not saying names) but my bet is that this person made it a lot more miserable than necessary. I am not a smiler, I am one of those people that LOVE having support out there, but you will probably not get a hug from me in the middle of the race, or a very enthusiastic wave for that matter. Please know I appreciate your support and I NEED it, I just tend to stay focus on my ‘goal’ and I promise I am going to try and smile. I have even been smiling on my training runs this week just thinking on what is ahead of me.

Smilling on the Bike is so much easier than on the Run

-          If you have to go, you have to GO! GI issues is one thing, having to go potty is another and you can take care of that in no time.
-          Coke: everybody swears by it, I have used it on a couple of races but I think I did so when it was too late, I am thinking incorporating it as part of my nutrition plan might be a good idea.

-          Advil?? This was new news to me, I heard from more than one person that took Advil on their second loop of the run. If you have done this before or if you know of it, does it really work?

-          Lastly, enjoy the finish chute. Sometimes we forget to savor every little thing and when we realize we haven’t done it we regret it. I have been ‘known’ for pushing so hard that I can’t remember the last minutes of a race, I don’t know how many more IM races there are in my future so I need to make sure I enjoy this one and I can hear out and loud the ‘Carmen Brahim you are an Ironman’, isn’t that why we all do it?? Brian B mentioned to me how one of the only ‘bad’ memories he has of his first IM is that he can’t remember coming down the chute. His family was there and he didn’t even see them, I am sure he will make sure to enjoy every second of it next year and I am planning on doing the same.

 And this is what makes it ALL worth it

I think I have covered everything I can remember right now, if you have anything to add that think I might find beneficial please send it my way!!