Craig and Catherine's Ironman Journey

We are Ironmen!!

2008-07-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

We still can't believe it but it's over and we are now Ironmen! We haven't been able to sit down and really think about what all we did, it's been so busy since the Ironman. The day after the race we went into work (only for a short time) then left the following day for California for Craig's brothers wedding. It was a busy week but we really enjoyed being a part of the wedding and visiting with family. Once we got back it's been busy as always at work so that's why the update is coming so late.
So, here's how it all went down. Craig's sister came out a couple of days prior to the race and we are so thankful she was out here with us, she really helped out and was a huge support for both of us. We were supposed to register by Friday at the latest, you're supposed to register two days prior to pick up all your materials and get all the required information. Craig was added on to an exercise at the last minute that lasted from 4am on Friday until 8pm that night so we were pretty worried that he would be unable to register. Carla and I went to Coeur d'Alene after I got done with work on Friday and explained the situation....everyone was so helpful and allowed Craig to come by on Saturday and do his registration. So after a bit of a scare everything was coming together. Saturday he registered and we drove the bike course to get an idea of what we were up against....A LOT OF HILLS!
Sunday morning began at 3:30am, after some breakfast and one last check we were driving out to Coeur d'Alene. We got there just around 5am and began the process of checking over our bikes, all of our gear, nutrition, getting numbered, etc. Craig had a little scare at first because he lost a screw on his bike tube so the tire would not stay inflated. After some help from the bike mechanics that were available he got a new tube and we were getting our wetsuits on. At 7am the swim began and it was insane....2,000 people all starting on the beach, there were people everywhere. We started next to each other but then never saw each other after the first minute in the swim. Both our swims went well, Craig finished in 1hr 15min and I was done in 1hr 28min. After our transition we were on the bikes...Craig was awesome on the bike, he was up in what he said was the good athlete pack. He later said that he was looking around and kept thinking "these guys are in a lot better shape then me!" He finished his bike ride in 6hrs 6min with a minor glitch at the end. The last 20 miles he began to feel pretty upset and with the last 5-10 miles to go he threw up. Once that happened it was downhill from there for him. Along the run his legs and body felt great but his stomach was feeling awful. He could not keep any fluids or food down, he tried everything they had at each aid station and nothing stayed down. During this whole time I was dying on the bike, my first loop was great but then the hills really got to me and I had a much slower second lap. I finished the bike in 7hrs 22min and couldn't wait to be off that bike!! I started my run and like Craig my stomach wasn't feeling great either but nowhere near as bad as him...I was able to keep foods and liquids down but after 12 hours of non stop go your stomach just doesn't want to eat the power bars, GUs or gatorade. My legs were so tight that I had to do a walk/trot the whole time. I'd been having problems with my right achilles tendon for a few months prior so I expected it to be a little sore and problematic, which it was...but mainly my legs were just dead from the bike.
I saw Craig three times during the run, we passed each other going opposite directions and the last time I saw him he said he may need an IV because he could tell he was getting very dehydrated due to nothing staying down. He mostly walked and jogged just a bit for the remainder of the marathon and finished the run in 5hrs 40min....almost two hours slower than his last marathon! But he finished the entire race in 13hrs 13min 22sec!! He ended up going to the medical tent right after the finish line and after trying a few things they gave him three bags of IV!! During this time I was finishing up my run, so sore and miserable! I finished the run in 6hrs 6min...almost two hours slower than my last marathon! My overall time was 15hrs 15min 40sec...the finish was amazing, people lined up down the street cheering you on even at 10pm, it was incredible!!
Craig is feeling much better now, he was real sick almost the whole time we were in Santa Barbara for the wedding but he's doing much better now. We took a whole two weeks off since the race and went on our first jog today. The whole experience was amazing, the training leading up to the race and the race itself was incredible! While we both had a rough time, Craig being sick and my legs making the run awful we both agree it was still a great experience overall! So much so we actually signed up for next year! So, maybe in a few months we'll start up another blog and let you know how are second crazy attempt goes!
We've attached a few pictures from the Ironman, the one of both of us is just before we made our way down to the beach for the start. The video that's attached is of my finish, we have a video of Craig's finish but it's on our other camera and we can't get it uploaded yet. Enjoy the pictures!
We want to thank everyone that has e-mailed, called, posted comments and given us support and encouragement. We really appreciate everyones support and it definitely helped us along the way, thank you!!

Final Update

2008-06-20T05:08:00.000-07:00

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates...we weren't able to access our blog while we were deployed and once we got back it's been super busy with training and work. We're two days away from the Ironman, yikes! Craig's sister, Carla, just arrived yesterday...she's going to be our moral support and our ride home when we can't walk Sunday night after all the activities!

Our deployment went well, it actually flew by. When we weren't busy flying we were training almost all the time and we even knocked out a masters class while we were out there as well. It was the quickest deployment yet! We got a lot of training accomplished while we were out there though, unfortunately no swimming. We had to improvise and do a lot of core training and light lifting to try and compensate for the lack of swimming. While we were deployed our wing commander got word of what we were doing and thought it'd be a great article for public affairs. Just near the end of the deployment we got an interview with lots of pictures, the article ended up coming out and making it's way around the base and back home very quickly. The two pictures of us in our PT gear at Manas are from the interview, don't be fooled by the green woods like look in the running picture....that was a very tiny area and the rest of the base doesn't look like that! The picture of us on the bikes is just outside my building and when Craig and I had the same time off we'd bring our bikes outside so we could bike together and not be stuck in our rooms biking...very boring after two months! If you haven't seen it yet, here's the link to the article that was written: http://www.manas.afnews.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123097583

Once we got back from Kyrgyzstan it was lots of biking and swimming to try and make up for the lack of hills on the bike and no swimming. We had our first try of our wet suits a couple weeks ago and the water was freezing!!! We swam in a smaller lake nearby and the water was 58.5, brrr! Unfortunately, Lake Coeur d'alene is a lot bigger body of water and a whole lot colder...it doesn't help that we had SNOW June 10th...insane!!! We have a neoprene hoodie and boots though that was just authorized for participants to wear because the water is going to be so cold. The third picture is Craig getting our bikes together two weekends ago during one of our last long swim, bike, run sessions out at the lake nearby our house.

We are super excited about this Sunday, we'll try and update everyone after we crawl across the finish line, hahaha! We'll be heading out to Santa Barbara, CA two days after the Ironman for Doug and Jill's wedding...the plane ride may be a little uncomfortable that quickly after all day Sunday but we're really excited. So look for an update shortly after we get back from the wedding and hopefully we'll have some pictures to send out to everyone as well.

It's been awhile!!

2008-03-05T19:52:00.001-08:00

Well, as you can see it's been quite some time since we've last updated our training. Don't worry, we've still been training!! Craig has been doing really great, I had a little bit of a slip up. I've been having some problems with my reoccurring foot problem so I did more cross training for awhile until I saw a doctor. I've got some new inserts and the last few runs have seemed to be going well so I think I'm back!
Overall, Craig has been doing great training. He's been in New Jersey at Fort Dix for the past week and a half and managed to get in a lot of workouts between studying, class, and visiting with friends. We've both been pretty tired lately with the training, up until last week it was a lot of base building, nothing too tough or too long throughout the week. These past two weeks though have been up to 10-13 hour training weeks so it's really starting to add up now.
I'll be deploying in a few days on Monday so we probably won't be able to update the blog for awhile, I don't think we'll have access to the site while we're out at Manas but keep checking back, we may be able to. Craig will try and get one last training update written before he leaves at the end of the month. It'll hopefully be a great time training while we're at Manas, we won't be able to swim at all but we just bought some cases to bring our bike and trainer out so that we can do all our bike workouts in our room on our tri bikes as opposed to the stationary bikes there.
Other than that, not a whole lot going on new. We've been really busy at work and starting our first Masters class (hence the lack of postings) but we're trudging along with the training. It's finally started to warm up around here enough to run outside without the feet of snow in the way, which is nice! We hope things are going great with everyone and we'll keep you updated on our training....and if anyone wants to plan a early summer get away to Spokane around June 22nd we'd love to have some support out here for the Ironman, haha!

A Whole Lot of Skiing

2008-01-21T14:53:00.000-08:00

The last eight days have been full of skiing! We had a squadron ski day on Friday and headed up to 49 degrees North for a day of skiing in some great snow. The following morning we left for Steamboat Springs, Colorado for a week of skiing with Craig's family. We got in around noon and we were on the slopes by 3pm (a little late because our skis didn't quite make it until later that night). After our first day of incredible powder, we skied another six days in amazing conditions! It was super cold most of the days but the snow couldn't have been better!!
We brought our workout clothes to go running but the skiing was so great that we stayed out until the last lift and ended up getting back to the condo by around 5pm. After six days of this we figured we got quite a leg/cardio workout so we weren't too upset about missing our run/bike/swim training. Now that we're back home though we got on the bike today and biked for just over an hour....we realized how tired our legs were from skiing, we couldn't bike much longer.
We had a great time in Colorado visiting Craig's family, my brother, and my sponsor mom Jane...it was a great vacation. Now that we're back home it's back to the training. We'll keep you updated!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2007-12-30T11:02:00.000-08:00

This past week has been a great workout week. While the base pool has been closed this whole week and until the new year we have made up by doing a lot of biking and running. Once the pool opens up next week we'll get back to swimming and try to make up for some lost time. The trainers we set up downstairs in our basement have really paid off. Now with the weather constantly cold, snowy, or icy outside it's been great to get on the bike inside and keep up our bike fitness. We've been watching a lot of movies or Seinfeld while biking for up to two hours. Our bums are finally getting a little more accustomed to sitting on the bike seat for over an hour...slowly but surely we'll get more and more comfortable with it so that the 6 hour Ironman bike portion won't be nearly as painful.
We've also been doing a lot of running outside. We usually run near our house and back behind where there's a few farms and there's not as much traffic. It's really been beautiful running, cold and icy though but great scenery with all the snow. Most of the runs we run together, Craig will sometimes run ahead a bit and then come back for me (I'm a bit slower but this way we can still run together for the most part). We'll try and get a few pictures outside next time we run, we hope everyone had a great Christmas and you have a wonderful New Years.

Merry Christmas (from Alaska and Spokane)

2007-12-24T11:05:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas! We started out this past week in Alaska, it was freezing cold! We were supposed to be up there for just over two weeks; however, we ended up back here in Spokane after spending only three days in Alaska and now we're on alert to go back at anytime. Alaska was so cold, luckily the gym on base was open 24 hours a day (with the exception of an cold weather day one evening when it dropped to -40 degrees....as if the -38 the day prior wasn't cold enough!).
We had a great start while we were there on our training, we had just gotten to working out twice a day and were really feeling great. The pool on base at Eielson was awesome, they had speakers underwater so we could listen to music the whole time we were swimming, it definitely made the hour of swim go by much faster! We thought over the next two weeks there we'd definitely get some great Ironman training in....then we came back to Spokane. We're continuing to work out here, on our indoor trainers and we're getting ready to head in to the gym on base in just a few minutes.
We've added a few pictures of us working out while we were in Alaska, we were doing a lot of core strength workouts (doing push ups, sit ups, and jump roping)...so there's a few pictures of that along with this blog. We're not sure if we're going to be going back to Alaska or not so for now we're just going to continue to ride our bikes and swim on base when we can until we get some more news from our squadron. We wish everyone a Merry Christmas and we'll update more when we either go to Alaska or next week after another week of Ironman training.

Winter Wonderland

2007-12-16T20:16:00.000-08:00

This past week has been pretty exciting. Craig turned 27, Happy Birthday! We also have been getting a lot of snow, we even went skiing yesterday up to "49 Degrees North." We had a great time, it's definitely been awhile though since we've been skiing, our legs were pretty tired after having biked during the week then hitting the slopes for a day.
Overall the training has been going alright. We've been spending a lot of time on the indoor trainers which has been fun, watching lots of Christmas movies, hahaha! Work and everything else has made it difficult to keep on track, as always, so we've mostly just been trying to get whatever workout we can in our free time. This next week will hopefully be a little better for us and give us a chance to get back on schedule. We did go running outside today, drove down to Riverside State Park (just a few minutes from our house) and ran together on the trails out there. We had a great time, it was gorgeous with all the snow, it looked like a scene from a postcard! It was difficult at times though running on the snow covered roads/trails...it's tough to get any sort of traction so we will probably try and buy some YakTrax sometime this week to help out with the winter runs.
Happy Holidays!

More fun, less training in Jamaica

2007-12-09T07:23:00.000-08:00

We just got back from Jamaica on Monday night and it sure was a great time! We spent most of the time scuba diving twice a day, even three times one day. Craig got his open water certification and after that it was non stop diving. We were able to go golfing twice also, what a great time!

Overall the vacation was a well deserved relaxing break, we certainly weren't looking forward to coming back to the cold and to work but it's nice being home. We kept ourselves busy with all the diving and activities they had at the Sandals resort and therefore didn't get a great deal of training done. We did do a bit of swimming, as you can see in the pictures. There was an area just in front of the hotel on the water that was sectioned off to make it a nice area for people to swim without any large waves. So, a couple of times while we were there we did about 30 minutes of lap swimming. It was actually much more interesting than swimming in the pool, you could see stuff on the bottom compared to seeing the same lane in the pool.

Now that we're back home we have gotten into training again. We've been spending a lot of time biking, getting used to that again. We'll write another update in about a week of probably our first week of real training in quite some time.

Family, Turkey, and Jamaica

2007-11-23T10:50:00.001-08:00

Once again our training week was not fully completed. We had a few obstacles, Catherine's family came out to visit spur of the moment. We were able to get a few workouts in but most of the time we spent visiting with the family and enjoying the time we had together. Once the family left we picked up our training where we left off. The few days that we stayed on schedule certainly tired us out...we slept for a good 10 hours after our workout days completely exhausted from the training but it was good to get back on schedule.

We had another set back...Thanksgiving!! Lots and lots of food was eaten and a lack of training! We did manage to get a run and bike in on Thanksgiving day. We went to Manito Park for the annual Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot. It was freezing cold outside, only 19 degrees outside when we were running, Craig really wanted to be back in Santa Barbara in the warm weather instead of in this arctic climate! It was a great run though, lots and lots of people, at least 500.

We also were able to get a little bit of biking in. As you can see in the pictures we set up our new indoor trainers. We have one unfinished room in the basement and decided that'd be the perfect spot to do our biking, it's nice and cool down there and no worries of messing up the carpet or anything else. After setting up the trainers (thank you Craig!) we brought our TV, VCR, and DVD player downstairs from our bedroom and set up a little movie area so we can watch movies while we're doing our long training rides. It really worked out great, we tested it out for about a half hour before we had to leave for Thanksgiving dinner. I think it's going to make the time go by nicely while biking indoor for the winter months!

We're going to finish our movie while biking today and then it's off to Jamaica! We'll be going to Sandals Grande Ocho Rios for a little over a week. We plan to do a lot of golfing, scuba diving, and of course Ironman Training so once we get back we'll update on how the trip and training went!

Tough Week

2007-11-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

Sorry it's been awhile since we've updated...we're going to try and update weekly (every Sunday or Monday) to let everyone know how our training is going. We had a bit of a setback this past week. I started to get sick then Craig and for a few days we had to cut back on the training and try to get better so we ended up having a pretty rough week. We're finally starting to feel better so we should get back on schedule soon, we're going to start slow though since we have been taking a few days off.
Our first week of training (before the cold) was pretty tough. We spent A LOT of time in the pool and on the bike, we've been taking some time off from running, slowly getting back into it, since we just finished the marathon and wanted to make sure we gave our legs a rest from the impact of running but we should start back up soon with some longer runs. The swimming has been very tiring, we went to a masters swim class on base that they offer twice a week in the evening and we were able to get quite a few techniques and it was good to swim with other people (there's even another triathlon couple--they're very good though, hahaha!).
Not a whole lot to write about this time but we'll update more after this week once we get back into our training plan. Thanks for everyone who wrote a comment, we enjoy hearing from everyone!

The Beginning of our Training

2007-11-04T19:24:00.000-08:00

So we finally made the commitment to race in the Ironman Coeur d'Alene June 22, 2008. Although our weekend began with a lot of laziness and relaxing we are motivated and ready to begin our training. We haven't decided on an exact training plan yet but we will start training tomorrow now that we've had a week off since the Marine Corps Marathon.

Today Craig and I went out to Fitness Fanatics and bought all the equipment for the Ironman, what an expensive day! Since the weather is getting cold quickly, winter is coming, we decided to buy indoor bike trainers for both of us so that we can do a lot of training indoors as opposed to the nasty weather outside. We each tried on triathlon wetsuits , what a workout that was to try and pull those suits on and off! We're pretty happy with the suits we got, I think they're going to be great...especially in the cold Coeur d'Alene water in June! Also, as a little treat...Craig got an early birthday present for me, new triathlon bike shoes and pedals that are so much lighter and better than the old "mountain bike" like shoes/pedals I had before.

We plan on keeping everyone updated on our training and how we're doing throughout the next thirty weeks leading up to the race...we hope you enjoy!