New Bike Trainer!

I have been searching Craigslist and local stores for a bike trainer for almost a full year, and I finally found one for a decent price! :) The brand is Kinetic by Kurt and it is a fluid trainer. Basically there are two options for bike trainers: magnetic and fluid. Generally magnetic trainers are cheaper, but louder. Since my trainer is going to hang out in our office, I figured I should go with the quieter option if at all possible--I don't want to drive D crazy while he's trying to work.

Kinetic by Kurt: The Road Machine

I like using the spin bikes at the co-rec, but I love that now I can knock out a workout in no time at all (since I don't have to even leave the house), and that it gets me used to riding on my actual road bike. It's still important to do rides outside to get used to wind, hills, and other natural influences of being outdoors, but it's nice to be able to get some extra riding time in such a convenient way.

Part of the reason that I pulled the trigger to buy the trainer at this particular point in time is that I am thinking about doing an Olympic distance triathlon this fall. The Purdue Triathlon Club sponsors one at the end of September, which means it's a local race, it's affordable, and it's at a great time (far enough away from now so that I can train properly, but still 6 weeks before my half marathon, so I'll have time to recover and refocus my training). I haven't fully committed yet, but I created a training plan that is a mixture of a half marathon training plan and an Olympic triathlon training plan, and I have been following that this week. Hopefully I'll feel confident enough within the next few weeks to actually sign up. :)

In other news, tomorrow D and I are going to Brown County State Park to go mountain biking for the day! I have never been mountain biking, so I am extremely excited. :) We are going to camp in the park Saturday night and then maybe do some hiking or exploring on Sunday. It should be a great weekend!

Race Recap: Eagle Creek Sprint Triathlon July 2015

My friend Bethany recently completed her first triathlon, and she had suggested we do one together at some point this summer. I had done the Eagle Creek Sprint Triathlon in the past (two of them in 2013), so we decided to complete the July race together. Since I had been in Spain, I was slightly worried about being undertrained (D and I had run in Spain, but not nearly as much as I had been running previously, and I didn't do any biking or swimming), but I figured it would be a fun experience either way.

We woke up at 5 am to leave by 5:30 since we had to pick up our race packets before the race. Standard breakfast of oatmeal with pb and brown sugar--no bananas though because I had completely forgotten to pick them up the day before. Boo. We got to Eagle Creek State Park with no issues, got checked in, and were ready to go. At the Purdue Triathlon I did in April, I found that french braiding my hair was very convenient for all three events--I talked Beth into letting me braid her hair as well before the tri started. :)

Very important pre-race business

Beth and I ready to go!

The swim portion of the tri is 500 meters long in a reservoir. I was a swimmer in high school and am very comfortable in the water, but open water swims still are very challenging for me. It's difficult to spot properly and there are so many people in the water around you that getting kicked is common. I just kept moving my arms and eventually I made it through the swim. :)

I ran to the transition area, grabbed my bike, and off I went. The bike felt really great! Typically I think biking is my weakest leg, but at this race I seemed to be doing quite well. I passed a lot of people, and even tackled hills without feeling like I was going to quit. :) When I got back from the bike, I was the first one to my rack, and so I popped my bike on the rack ready to go out for the run when all of a sudden I heard a loud clang....the bike rack had collapsed! I was so embarrassed and didn't know what to do! After a few seconds a guy at the next rack over ran over and helped me set it back up. I was so glad that only my bike had been on it, because some of the bikes are so expensive and I would have felt awful if I had knocked other people's bikes over. :-| A volunteer came to the rack as I was pulling on a tank top (needed it because it had a my number attached for the run portion) and told me not to worry and it happened a lot. I am sure he was lying but it made me feel a little better. :)

The run was disappointing for me because I just felt so exhausted. It was starting to get quite hot and humid by this time, and my legs were just not wanting to move. I ended up walking briefly twice: once near the top of a hill and once while getting water.

Luckily the race ends downhill so I at least had a strong finish!

I finished the 5k in 29:06 which isn't horrible, but I just felt like I could do better. Also my GPS watch froze after about 1 mile of the run so in addition to not feeling great, I couldn't even check my pace. Bleh! But I know that it was just a bad run and I will do better next time. :) Overall I ended up with a time of 1:18:26 which was about 4 minutes and 30 seconds faster than my time on the same course in 2013. Woo for improvement!

Beth and I after we finished

Spain Recap!

Hello all! Sorry I've been absent for awhile--between travelling to Spain, catching up on research, and doing a tri (more on that soon!), I haven't made time for blogging. First I wanted to give everyone a recap of my trip to Spain.

We flew into Madrid on Wednesday, June 24 and stayed until the morning of Sunday, June 28th. While we were there we went to the Royal Palace, the Prado, Reina Sofia, and ate lots of good food!

D and I after arriving to Madrid

At the Prado--taking a break after seeing so many great paintings

Gardens outside the Prado

Madrid is all about its green space, which I love! There are beautiful gardens outside of the Prado, outside of the Royal Palace, and there is a huge park called Retiro Park in the middle of the city (similar to Central Park in NYC).

Outside the Royal Palace

I've been to Madrid a few times (this was my 3rd time), but I had never been inside the Royal Palace. It was quite incredible! Each room has a theme, and some of them were quite extravagant. There was even a room with about 4 different Stradivarius instruments which was incredible to see--each of them is probably worth about a million dollars!

There are lots of pictures from Madrid, but I think the one above pretty much sums up the experience. We spent a lot of time eating and drinking (wine, beer, and sangria). They are so social in Spain--dinner is late at night (around 11 pm), but often outside, so even though it's dark and seems like things should be shut down, there are people everywhere out and about. We enjoyed Madrid so much!

The next stop was Seville which is where I had the academic conference that actually brought us to Spain. I don't have any pictures :( because most of the time was spent inside listening to various presentations, but overall it was a good conference. I gave a talk which I think went quite well, and I was happy with the response from the attendees (lots of people came up and talked to me afterwards about it). From Seville, we flew to Santander which is on the northern coast of Spain. My adviser and his wife have a flat in Suances (about a half hour from Santander), so we went to visit them. I had never been, so I was very excited!

Landscape in Santillana del Mar

One of the first things we did in Northern Spain was visit the town of Santillana del Mar--a medieval town that is somewhat frozen in time. There were lots of neat things that we saw, but probably the coolest was the Cave of Altamira. There are cave paintings here that are 40,000 years old!! Unfortunately you can no longer enter the cave (because they are trying to keep it preserved), but they have made a really nice replica that you can walk through. It is about 3 km outside of the town, so we walked there and got some really great views of the countryside.

Another highlight of Northern Spain was hiking the Picos de Europa. We took a cable car to the top, and then hiked about 10 miles (mostly down, although there were lots of small, rolling hills) back to the starting point. The people who accompanied us (my adviser, his family, and several of their friends) brought several types of cured meats, cheeses, and bread on the hike, so we had a lovely lunch on the side of the mountain. 

About to take a cable car to the top

During the hike we saw several herds of sheep, goats, cows, and even horses! It was a gorgeous place, and I feel lucky that we had people who know the area well to take us on this fun trip. :) The day after the hike, we went to a cave that had cave paintings from 24,000 years ago. This cave we were allowed to enter, so we actually got to see the paintings first hand--the paintings were of deer, and although they seemed simplistic when you first looked at them, the tour guide pointed out that the artist had actually used perspective as well as several other complicated techniques. How incredible!

Before we left Spain, we spent half a day in Santander where we went to the beach and rented bikes to ride around the town. We took a train back to Madrid and had a couple days there before we left. We mostly just explored the city and made sure to try lots of different kinds of food. We left on Wednesday, July 8th after being in the country for 2 weeks. We had an incredible time and I can't wait for our next adventure. :)