In Anatshell » Triathlon

Maccabiah Chai (MT Week 2/17)

anat — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:40:51 +0000

Me and Benjamin Netanyahu

No, it’s not a Jewish version of Indian tea… The Maccabiah Chai Games began this week with a spectacular ceremony at the stadium in Ramat Gan. I wasn’t there as an athlete but rather as a VIP right in front of the bullet proof glass that separated me from the big wigs.

I can only imagine what the Kazakhstan Maccabiah team, which consisted of two lone athletes, thought when they entered an arena packed with Jews. Without skipping a beat, my brother began with his Borat impression and before long we were all chanting Yichshimash. They didn’t quite blend in with all of the other nationalities but then again, neither did the Russians with their full on suites… I didn’t understand how they intended on trading their shirts with other athletes…

Now to business… I’m in week 2 of my marathon training and it was time to tackle some hills. Actually, it was morel like the one hill near the cemetery at the end of my street… over and over and over again. In this diagram , the thick red area is the altitude whereas the thin red line is my heart rate. You can see the correlation between altitude and heart rate really nicely. I did add a bit to the cooldown so that my workout would add up to one hour.

This is the description of my workout :

: Hill Workout

Hill workout

Warmup - 5 min walk, 10 min easy run
2 accelerations
main set -
1 min jog on a flat surface
5 x 1 min up the hill, recovery jog down
2 min jog on a flat surface like before
3 min recovery walk
30 sec run on a flat surface
5 x 30 sec up the hill, recovery jog down
30 sec run on a flat serfuce
Cooldown -- 3 min walk, 7 min easy jog and 3 min walk

Next I did one “long” run which was 1:10 of running. This workout was just steady aerobic

My pulse was a big higher than I wanted because I was running with a friend but it was worth it for the comradery. It’s fun to run with other people and I probably wouldn’t have woken up otherwise.

I also participated in the Maccabiah open triathlon and took first in my age group, second woman to finish. It took me 02:51:18.65 which is quite a chunk of time but it was HOT … oh so hot… Now I have one gold medal though

3 Triathlon in 1 month

anat — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:12:25 +0000

I thought about this during the bike ride in the Tel-Aviv triathlon

I’ve participated in three triathlons in the past month.
Click on the results page to see my results.

Photos from the Womens Triathlon

Photos from the Netanya Triathlon

Photos from Ness Harim Ride

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK WHEN I START TRAINING FOR… THIS

National Duathlon Festival Championship Thing

anat — Sat, 02 May 2009 00:56:28 +0000

I must have drooled over at least ten or eleven bikes in the transition area of the National Duathlon Festival. Not only were the bikes spectacular but the level of the athletes and the whole event was much higher than any triathlon or duathlon that I had participated in (minus the expo that left something to be desired). I completed the course in 2:41 and I was 16/30 in my age group.

Today I received an email from TeamUSA letting me know that “you have earned a spot on the Team USA Roll Down list for 2009 ITU Duathlon World Championships because of your finish at the 2009 Duathlon National Championship”. I blinked a few times, scratched my head to emphasize a thought process, and then realized that this email is the closest I will probably be to competing in a ‘World’ anything. After conducting further research I found that “The top 12 in each age group, rolling down to 16th place at the Duathlon National Championship, will qualify for the 2009 World Championships in Concord, North Carolina (Sept. 24-26) “. This means that I just made it to the rolling down point, whatever that means. If 4 people don’t want to go, I’ll be offered a spot. I wonder what t-shirt I’ll get if I compete in a world championship? Got to keep things in perspective.

Do you want the good news or the bad news? The good news is that I got to sleep in on race day (hi five). The bad news is that my wave was at 11:35 and it was going to be 90 degrees outside (cancel hi five from before). The issue is that, being the amazing team player that I am, I still woke up early to cheer on my fellow team mates who started at 8:30. That means that my spanking new well-fit triathlon uniform was nice and moist with sweat well before the race start. This made a 10k run feel like a very hot 10k run (That was a message from Captain Obvious). This run led me to think about how I need to develop a kind of mantra for my run in order to survive the half ironman in a few weeks. This mantra has to have a beat to it in order to keep my pace up and it needs to be something more powerful than my “left , right , left” mantra which made sense at the time.

The bike section was nice because I had a team to cheer me on. In previous races, I was lucky if my friend, Rakefet, was competing because her brother came to cheer her on and I got a courtesy cheer every once and a while. Not only did the team cheer me on, but they actually waited for me to finish. Either Well-Fit is filled with great people or I have shitty friends (the ones who don’t read my blog). In any event, I did feel like I was apart of the team for that weekend. I had the luxury of roasting in the well-fit tent for a few hours and the Get-A-Grip “in tent” mechanic gave my bike a once over.

USAT thought it would be funny if they gave the duathletes beer glasses instead of medals at the finish line. It’s a nice thought but all I could think about was opening my suitcase in Israel and seeing my Carbo Pro mixed with slivers of shattered glass. Then I would have to throw away all of the Carbo Pro that made my bag overweight and cost me $100 to bring over and $20 to purchase. So was my $65 race worth it? I did get an awesome transition bag and hat and shirt so… what’s a few slivers of glass anyway.

Overall I really enjoyed myself in this competition and it gave me a much needed boost of confidence towards the 70.3 ironman on the 17th of May. I can’t say that I was particularly fast during this race but I see it as a kind of intermediate race towards the main goal. After the half ironman, I will be flying back to Israel and continuing to blog from there.

Some imagery and comments -

This was the well-fit tent -

The transition area -

Coach Sharone and myself :

I saw a bike that looked just like this ! Isn’t it cute?… I need to get a job…

It’s winter time with snowman

anat — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:57:37 +0000

Welcome to the Kramer blog winter triathlon special! (yay). Today we will be covering the elements of training in the winter – How to run in the snow, bike in the living room and swim in the … pool (boring I know). Now that I have a workout plan until May, I can relax and quietly prepare for my debut at the half ironman in Florida. They won’t even see me coming…

Run in the snow

We’ve all done it. Your running in the snow and you think that nobody is looking. Slowly you lift your head , panic and quickly make sure that nobody is around one more time. You lift you head a second time, flex your tongue out as far as it can go and wait for that faithful snow flake to hit your taste buds. This process isn’t complete without closing your eyes because, what if a snow flake falls in one?? Where would you be then?? Obviously the strange looks are soon to follow but, hey, I’m a tourist here and I can do whatever I want.

The bottom line is that running in the snow is slow but fun. It has the feeling of running in sand but not quite as messy. Your either a patter or a sinker. If you step right on the top of certain snow, you pack it down; whereas if you run on deep snow, you sink. It’s important to follow peoples foot steps and beware the slush if you want your toes to stay dry. At some point, if I keep this up, I will have to start looking at GORTEX running shoes but for now, a little bit of dampness wont kill me.

Bike in the living room

Winter means snow. Snow means ice. Ice means slipping, and slipping with your bike into the road and getting run over by a car and getting taken to the hospital and being revived and going through physical therapy and being in a wheelchair… isn’t a good idea. This is why we have invented the Livingroom Biking Event. The concept is simple – Everyone shows up at my house with their cycling trainers and we all cycle for several hours while watching previous Ironmans on DVD.
Sharone and Sunny showed up and we had a great workout in the comfort of my home. I guess this is the solution to the slipping problem and I can live with that.

Swim in the pool

It’s time to take my swimming to a whole other level. Now that I have myself filmed on tape, I can fix all of the issues with my stroke. I must become a water ninja by the time winter is over so check out my video :

Here is what I need to work on:

Rotation – Need to turn those hips more
Entry – Hand needs to come in deeper into the water and the tips shouldn’t go up.
Head – I look down too much and I need to look a bit forward
Right side breathing – My left hand comes back too quickly so my timing is off.
Kick – My kicks don’t turn along with me

Try watching the video again and finding these mistakes… I’m trying to work on all of them but I can only really concentrate on one or two at a time. It’s a process….

Future Plus Update
When I have a detailed plan, I will post it and also I will try to post my actual workouts and comments as much as possible. To view my complete workout log : WORKOUT LOG

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“Look between your legs”

admin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:59:47 +0000

“If you don’t know how to swim or tread water then just let me know and we can have you do just a bike run”. I kid you not.

This is what the coordinator of the North East Triathlon said in the orientation speech. He also said “When your swimming, take a right , a right and a left. If you have done that, look between your legs. If there isn’t a bike there, something is wrong.” Orientation aside, I have officially participated in my first US triathlon and even (somehow) placed second in my age group.

Bright and not early on Saturday afternoon, I headed to ‘North East’ Maryland. Clearly, the founder of ‘North East’ didn’t have much of an imagination to say the least. He was probably friends with the discoverer of the town ‘1770′ in Australia. My sisters name should have been ‘Second’.

Anyway, we attended orientation and I got my participant pack. Unfortunately, I had to transfer from the Olympic to the Sprint race because my leg can’t take me 10km anymore… sorry 6.2 miles (It’s hard to get used to). This is still better than not attending which is a thought that may have crossed my mind when my physical therapist told me “don’t participate” but quickly vanished when a homeless stranger told me “you should do it”. So what if he was drooling? and was referring to something else… and smelled like…. (you get the point)

In the evening, my grandparents and I went to have pasta. Here is a photo of my pasta… after I had finished eating. I was full when this photo was taken and so was my grandmother.

After loading up on carbs, it was time to visit the (all mighty) Wallmart. My grandparents were quite excited when they saw that we were close to one and assumed this meant civilization exists in North East Maryland. It’s kind of sad that Wallmart = civilization. I’m sure columbus didn’t see and Indian Wallmart when he came. Ignoring my constant pondering I purchased some water, a 100 calorie pack of Oreos, some cinnamon gum and I was ready for bed.

Bright and early, I ate my breakfast of champions which consisted of a bagel and honey. I actually only ate half because I’m doing half the distance that I had planned and needed half the energy. If you had half a brain, you would have realized that. The race started at seven and a half… hmm… that didn’t work… The race started at seven thirty so I had plenty of time to get ready and head for the toilets. Not many people take photos inside porta-poties but when I saw the purel in my gourmet ‘hole in the ground’, I had to take a shot. This is one place where Israel could learn a thing or two.

Off to the dock for the start of the race. There is nothing like jumping into muddy water after singing the star spangle banner. Luckily, the ducks realized that it was dangerous to stick around and retreated to other areas of the river. I was glad because if anyone was to kill a duck with their swim stroke and get chased down the river by an angry pack, it probably would have been me.

Swim went by easily but slowly and I quickly ended up in the amazing bike course. The course was about 15 miles of rolling hills. During the cycle part, I began passing participants because of my advantage in cycling, it is my strongest part right now. The course was beautiful and was on country roads with forrest on both sides. There were some sharp turns but plenty of volunteers and police were happy to warn us. The transition was okay and I began running. On the run course I noticed that there weren’t many people running with me and after the turn around, that there were a lot of people running behind me. Soon, the finish line was in the distance and I had completed my first triathlon in the US.

Somehow I got second place in my category with a time of 1:41.46.

The key points of differentiation between US and Israeli triathlons are

Volunteers actually mark you before entering the transition area
Bathrooms are great
They sing the anthem before the race
There is a category called “First time” where first time participants can receive a medal

Thanks to my grandparents who would probably go to the end of the world for me.
Thanks to my leg that hurt but kept working.
Thanks to my luck
Thanks to a duck
Thanks to lucky duck for a buck…

Sorry, I miss dr. Suess…

Find me!!