well, first day back at it. we have a long way to go to just get back in bad shape too!
just starting to write again after a long 4 months off. i am out of shape, heavy and pretty darn happy. ran 5 miles today. was pretty brutal. but that was our start for the next year... we are a bit behind last year at this time, but i think with a good 2 months of effort we will be ahead of last year. if that makes any sense. :-D
well, here we go again. if at first you don't succeed - tri tri again! and again!
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
2011
ok - the next year is kinda set up...
Eric – walking another couple of halfs, maybe run a quarter.
Tummel, D-Willi – just riding around town
Clark, Mike M, Rick, Jeeva – running a full, or several half marathons.
Mike Skibby, Maria – trying a half iron.
Dave, Nic, Brook, Bruce – doing some half ironmans ( all you are faster and stronger already than us – so consider upgrading! )
Sheila, Cpad – getting ready for Ironman Wisconsin
Mark, Amy, Ken, Resa, Tammy, Ron, Julie, Sheila? – worlds hardest ironman – the Las Vegas Silverman Death Ride. Fock!!! – if this don’t make your booty move, your booty must be dead!!!
Now, watch a video and then return to reading. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8Waqxg3vU
In January of 2009 the Resa and I decided to get in shape to run an ironman race. 2009 was about getting up from about a five mile run to doing a marathon later in the year. 2010 was mostly about getting ready to do the Canadian Ironman. We did meet our goals of finishing those things. But not much more than that… This next year is about getting a bit faster at what we are doing. Stronger, faster, lighter more!
So, year 2 of our 6 year plan to become Old Athletes is now coming to a close. The rest of the year – November, December and January will be spent inside mostly. P90X workout to get our core and muscles stronger. Stationary bike and some outside runs. Maybe back to the pool now and then randomly.
2011 is going to be a busy year ( as was this year ).
The only reason I got out of bed most mornings to workout was that I was too worried I would not finish the ironman if I didn’t – and I was right. I think now I could just show up and finish so a lot of that fear is gone. To bring back the fear we have ramped up our races / events for next year.
Sending this e-mail out because several of you wanted to know what the plan for next year was – to walk a half marathon where we are running a full one. Or to do the ironman we are doing in about half the time. The plan is not for you guys to do what we do, but to be there doing what you do when we are. ( if that makes sense! )
Another video for all of you to see… then back to the email: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnqpYKx8Fvk
So! Here is our current 2011 schedule of events:
March 22: The Martian Marathon, you can dress up as marvin the martian. They have full and half distance runs/walks. Dearborn to Northville and back: http://www.martianmarathon.com/ triple T (4 triathlons in a weekend) is also this weekend – if we get super motivated. But plan on the Martian.
April 23: on site in Wisconsin riding the course – plan on a “lazy” full ironman.
May 7-8: TOSRV 50th anniversary 200 mile ride. 100 out and 100 back ( plus 10 bonus miles ) Columbus to the river down south and back: http://www.tosrv.org/10/index.htm
May 14-15: Towpath Century: Ohio – Cleveland to about Canton, ohio and back I think – it’s a very easy bike ride for charity.
May 20-30: on site in Texas to volunteer so we can sign up for the 2012 Texas Ironman. Texas in almost June. Probably be chilly. http://ironman.com/events/ironman/texas/memorial-hermann-ironman-texas-is-newest-event-in-global-series#axzz13r9bfVll plan on doing a “lazy” full ironman.
June 11: Michigan Mayhem: hill climbing event. You ride up and down steep hills for 15 hours. Going to need it for vegas! http://www.michiganmountainmayhem.com/
July Sometime: Blue Ridge mountains for biking and run training. Probably be a 3-7 days – so come on out.
August 14: Benton Harbor ½ Ironman: http://www.ironmansteelhead.com/
A: Sept 11: Wisconsin Ironman ( 10 year anniversary of the world trade center thingy ) http://www.ironmanwisconsin.com/ ( sold out – but come cheer us on!!! )
Sept 17: Savageman ½ or ¼ :-) should be a bit gassed from the ironman a week before – so this very challenging half should be good for a lot of tears. If you don’t put your foot down on the bike you get a brick with your name on it. so get super climber gears and practice going back and forth across the road. Comes with TDF devil: http://www.savagemantri.org/
Oct 16: Columbus Marathon: http://www.columbusmarathon.com/
A+: Nov 5th: the Las Vegas Worlds Hardest Ironman. The bike portion is seriously unfinishable. But if you can do it under the time limit ( 1% chance ) then the run is also unfinishable. Should be great fun! http://www.visithenderson.com/todo/special-events/silvermantriathlon we are signing up for this motherscratcher in about 3 weeks. How hard could it be? At least the temps should be under 100… ( if not the windspeed )
Also non-event weekends we will be running and biking some fun rides around Canton. So if you would just like to come over for some fun… send us a note!
And a last one to watch :-D : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0iblRHmRZ8
Let us know which ones you guys would like to meet up for… :-)
“You only get one life, but if you play it right… it’s enough.” Joe Louis.
Eric – walking another couple of halfs, maybe run a quarter.
Tummel, D-Willi – just riding around town
Clark, Mike M, Rick, Jeeva – running a full, or several half marathons.
Mike Skibby, Maria – trying a half iron.
Dave, Nic, Brook, Bruce – doing some half ironmans ( all you are faster and stronger already than us – so consider upgrading! )
Sheila, Cpad – getting ready for Ironman Wisconsin
Mark, Amy, Ken, Resa, Tammy, Ron, Julie, Sheila? – worlds hardest ironman – the Las Vegas Silverman Death Ride. Fock!!! – if this don’t make your booty move, your booty must be dead!!!
Now, watch a video and then return to reading. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8Waqxg3vU
In January of 2009 the Resa and I decided to get in shape to run an ironman race. 2009 was about getting up from about a five mile run to doing a marathon later in the year. 2010 was mostly about getting ready to do the Canadian Ironman. We did meet our goals of finishing those things. But not much more than that… This next year is about getting a bit faster at what we are doing. Stronger, faster, lighter more!
So, year 2 of our 6 year plan to become Old Athletes is now coming to a close. The rest of the year – November, December and January will be spent inside mostly. P90X workout to get our core and muscles stronger. Stationary bike and some outside runs. Maybe back to the pool now and then randomly.
2011 is going to be a busy year ( as was this year ).
The only reason I got out of bed most mornings to workout was that I was too worried I would not finish the ironman if I didn’t – and I was right. I think now I could just show up and finish so a lot of that fear is gone. To bring back the fear we have ramped up our races / events for next year.
Sending this e-mail out because several of you wanted to know what the plan for next year was – to walk a half marathon where we are running a full one. Or to do the ironman we are doing in about half the time. The plan is not for you guys to do what we do, but to be there doing what you do when we are. ( if that makes sense! )
Another video for all of you to see… then back to the email: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnqpYKx8Fvk
So! Here is our current 2011 schedule of events:
March 22: The Martian Marathon, you can dress up as marvin the martian. They have full and half distance runs/walks. Dearborn to Northville and back: http://www.martianmarathon.com/ triple T (4 triathlons in a weekend) is also this weekend – if we get super motivated. But plan on the Martian.
April 23: on site in Wisconsin riding the course – plan on a “lazy” full ironman.
May 7-8: TOSRV 50th anniversary 200 mile ride. 100 out and 100 back ( plus 10 bonus miles ) Columbus to the river down south and back: http://www.tosrv.org/10/index.htm
May 14-15: Towpath Century: Ohio – Cleveland to about Canton, ohio and back I think – it’s a very easy bike ride for charity.
May 20-30: on site in Texas to volunteer so we can sign up for the 2012 Texas Ironman. Texas in almost June. Probably be chilly. http://ironman.com/events/ironman/texas/memorial-hermann-ironman-texas-is-newest-event-in-global-series#axzz13r9bfVll plan on doing a “lazy” full ironman.
June 11: Michigan Mayhem: hill climbing event. You ride up and down steep hills for 15 hours. Going to need it for vegas! http://www.michiganmountainmayhem.com/
July Sometime: Blue Ridge mountains for biking and run training. Probably be a 3-7 days – so come on out.
August 14: Benton Harbor ½ Ironman: http://www.ironmansteelhead.com/
A: Sept 11: Wisconsin Ironman ( 10 year anniversary of the world trade center thingy ) http://www.ironmanwisconsin.com/ ( sold out – but come cheer us on!!! )
Sept 17: Savageman ½ or ¼ :-) should be a bit gassed from the ironman a week before – so this very challenging half should be good for a lot of tears. If you don’t put your foot down on the bike you get a brick with your name on it. so get super climber gears and practice going back and forth across the road. Comes with TDF devil: http://www.savagemantri.org/
Oct 16: Columbus Marathon: http://www.columbusmarathon.com/
A+: Nov 5th: the Las Vegas Worlds Hardest Ironman. The bike portion is seriously unfinishable. But if you can do it under the time limit ( 1% chance ) then the run is also unfinishable. Should be great fun! http://www.visithenderson.com/todo/special-events/silvermantriathlon we are signing up for this motherscratcher in about 3 weeks. How hard could it be? At least the temps should be under 100… ( if not the windspeed )
Also non-event weekends we will be running and biking some fun rides around Canton. So if you would just like to come over for some fun… send us a note!
And a last one to watch :-D : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0iblRHmRZ8
Let us know which ones you guys would like to meet up for… :-)
“You only get one life, but if you play it right… it’s enough.” Joe Louis.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Marathon Man
the resa and i set a personal best in the Detroit Marathon. we were shooting for under 11:00 min miles and hit 10:55, for a 4:45 finish. about 28 minutes faster than our last best.
great news that.
great news that.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Wiscons-In
tried to sign up for Ironman Wisconsin on monday. but the site crashed and i was tossed out.
Wiscons-out.
so did it again about 30 minutes ago when they fixed the site.
Wiscons-in!
Doing it again. ( till we get it right! )
Ford Focking Iron Focking Man Wisconsin. 9-11-11
Thanks for all the great comments everyone on the last writeup. this year i dont think i will go into the sweaty details as much. but it sure is a great way to be able to go back and remember events. so - who knows, you might get to read way too much again!
Of course Sheila and the Resa are doing it again too. Mark is taking 2 years off to pay for grad school, by the time he gets out he will be too old to keep up with us.
Wiscons-out.
so did it again about 30 minutes ago when they fixed the site.
Wiscons-in!
Doing it again. ( till we get it right! )
Ford Focking Iron Focking Man Wisconsin. 9-11-11
Thanks for all the great comments everyone on the last writeup. this year i dont think i will go into the sweaty details as much. but it sure is a great way to be able to go back and remember events. so - who knows, you might get to read way too much again!
Of course Sheila and the Resa are doing it again too. Mark is taking 2 years off to pay for grad school, by the time he gets out he will be too old to keep up with us.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Ironman
on Jan 1, 2009, 600 days ago the Resa and I were sitting down by the pool in Alabama…
i told her i wanted to run a triathlon. she sighed. as we don't say much about what we want to do, as we just about always make a go at it. so this kinda thing only comes up once every few years. "Let’s build a house." was her last one. took us 3 years of solid non-stop work. so it was my turn. "Lets run an ironman."
she paused a second. "Ironman."
"Yeah. how hard could it be?"
"The full-on motherscratcher Ironman?"
"Yeah hun."
we sipped our beers for a few minutes.
"Seriously?" she asked.
"As serious as a cat in a microwave." i replied.
she nodded. "Okay. i am in."
"Awesome." i said as i opened a fresh beer. i sat back contented. we were already pretty much done!
"Bummer you hate to run..." she mused from the chair next to me.
"Yeah, running sucks. but at least we like to bike!"
"I think its longer than we have ever gone before."
"But how hard could it be?"
we were quite a while.
"Bummer you can't swim honey." she hinted.
"Look, if all you are going to see are roadblocks, then... uh, swim eh?"
"Miles of swimming."
"Miles?" i sputtered.
"Miles. you can’t swim a hundred meters."
"Well, we aren't doing the race next week sweetie, i can learn."
"How hard could it be?" she agreed.
so we picked a race. Canada Focking Iron Focking Man. August 29, 2010.
And we did it.
Here is how the day went. Or, rather, let me back up a bit… around 600 days…
I was in decent shape from building the house. But over weight a bit. I was around 215 pounds. I could run about 3 miles, some of them without walking. I could swim about 20 meters in a row. Well, that might be exaggerating a bit, more like 15 meters. I could ride a bike around 40 miles without getting wrecked for days at a time. but the bike was the best, every year we usually rode the TOSRV 100 mile ride and thought we could get up to the 112 miles of ironman without much trouble.
So I learned to swim. The first 300 days I probably took my swim from 15 meters up to around 300 meters max distance. At that point I would run out of air and be holding onto the side of the pool. The running advanced from about 3 miles up through my first ever marathon and then ultra-marathon. The bike we kinda blew off altogether.
Then we started the actual training about 6 months ago. Long bikes and long runs and long swims. All of which were great learning experiences.
The day of the race finally arrives, and like a child counting down the days to Christmas I had counted down the days till the ironman.
The last few weeks before the event I don’t have much jump. I figured it was just using up nervous energy. Also the fear was gone, probably a few months earlier and I would have had about 3 major issues unresolved about the event, but over time I had them figured. And the day of the race I felt calm and confident. And “intestinally challenged”.
Woke up feeling like I had been punched in the stomach. We parked the RV and everyone headed to the start area. Except me. I headed to the bathroom!
I think I lost about 1/5th of my body weight over the next 10 minutes. The Poop Fairy was bashing me over the head with her magic wand. “You want some more?” bash! “How’s that feel bish?!!" BASH! BASH!
Wandered over to the start of the race feeling pretty odd as you can imagine. One positive was I had no worries about peeing in my wetsuit. I drank down a Gatorade and got marked up. They put your race number and age on your legs and arms. This is so when they later peal your wetsuit off your dead body they can tell who you were.
The Resa and I planned on staying together regardless of how we were doing throughout the whole day. To help stay together on the swim we took a marker and drew stuff on our swim caps. This actually helped during the swim as I could pick her out by the extra markings.
What nervousness I had went away as for no reason other than wonderful luck they played what is probably “our” song over the loudspeakers. We are not all the wound up in stuff like that but we both kinda looked over and smiled and all my worries went away when I heard it. Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. “We’ll do it all, everything… on our own. If I lay here, If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?”
We waded into the water and filled our suits with water and waited for the start. I felt very calm and confident. Odd that after all the months of getting ready I wouldn’t be more stressed. It was pretty nice.
Countdown from 10, and then air horns, whistles, a canon goes off and the rope start line shoots up in the air, people start screaming all around us and the water turns into a blender of splashing arms and legs.
We stood there watching it all for about 20 seconds. As we had planned on doing. Then we started making our way out to the deep water. After a few yards of walking we started swimming. “And for no paaartic-u-lar reason, I started swimmin!” I mumbled in my best forest gump voice.
Over the last year the swim had gone from the most nervy item to the least. And the bike had gone from the least to the most.
During training runs we covered the 2.4 mile swim in about 1:35 to 1:40. We got times in this range regardless of how hard we swam or whether it was in a pool or lake or whatever. This is a fairly slow but very usable swim time. they give you 2:20 to get out of the water and this time is more than fair. So barring complete disaster we figured we would be out in the high 1:30s. this took a lot of the stress out of the swim, as a bad slow swim would be in the 1:40s and still be plenty fast enough.
THE SWIM ( just a calm happy time )
We took a middle of the pack route. I think to do it again I would have been closer to the inside of the course as Sheila did it that way and didn’t have much crowding. Probably at the front of the pack there was huge crowding there, but the swim kinda spreads out in a V shape and the farther back you are the wider it gets.
Having learned a lot about lake swimming and wetsuits and other things the first thousand meters went very very smoothly. We were together and in mostly open water. Just getting warmed up to it and pushing away the worries. The water was pretty warm and somewhat clouded, you could only see about 10 feet in front or downwards. The lake gets to about 700 feet deep and obviously we didn’t see anything after the first few yards by the shore. We heard there are scuba divers under the water to help collect bodies but I never saw any. And I was looking for them as it would have been fun to see some guy down there waving at us. Two times I did see a massive bunch of bubbles come up from below, once right under me.
To my right the buoys floated by one after another. There are about 12 or 13 on the way out, a few on the cross and about 16ish on the way back. The weird thing about wearing a swim hat – which I rarely do, is that you can hear the water whoosh by you as you swim, its pretty comforting. So the big 6 foot orange ball buoys go floating past one after another and we get about 70 percent of the way down the long out straight. Here we start meeting our first traffic. People that have started out too fast and are now a bit gassed start going backwards a bit. One after another we have to dodge people. This was the first annoying part of the swim for me. Up till this point I felt really comfy. But getting the feet kicking your hands and you stop a moment and then turn sideways and start swimming again. At least nobody was racing us directly. We didn’t have to put up with someone being all territorial or anything. Just dodged people. Also, since the Resa and I swam side by side she wouldn’t know when I was getting blocked and I would have to swim right up next to her to get past a person. I could have gone around the other way, but there was always the fear that once around someone – which takes a lot longer than you would think – the I would have lost track of where Resa was.
We come up to the first of the two corners, a house boat. We swim around it no problems. On the short second section the V shape all gets compressed into a pack and we have some real crowding for the first time of the day. I think about going wide, but that would just take more effort and make the course a lot longer so I just try to settle in and relax. The second house boat comes up and we are turned for home. I tried waving to the people on the boat as they sure were making a lot of noise and running around on it. but I quickly thought “Oh crap, they are going to think I am calling for help” and the next thing I would be in the hands of divers or something trying to explain ( probably for 10 minutes ) how I was really ok.
We turned the corner there and my only thought was we were heading home. And I gulped some water. Gads it tasted like crap! Just then a big set of about 7 large waves rolled through – some boat must have driven past. And I started bobbing and spitting out water. This is the only time we stopped swimming. Resa turned and motioned me to keep going. I felt the first feelings of motion sickness in the waves. Luckily the waves were not a permanent feature and after about 30 seconds we were back to being normal. I think though, that to do an ocean swim I will have to practice being out in the open water a lot more.
Now we were running into more and more people slowing down. It was a constant stream ( har har ) of people going backwards. We dodged this way and that, for a while I went behind the Resa as it was just getting too crowded. We started swimming a bit faster too. I think a lot of the passing people was just us picking up the pace a bit. All along I felt we were going at about a 4 on the ten scale for effort. Pretty lazy swimming. On the last half of the way back we bumped it up to about a 6 I would say. Still not close to out of breath, but for the first time all day I was taking a real pull on the water. The difference after about an hour of swimming was very welcome. Finally got to stretch out my arms a bit and pull.
At one point we were going around one guy, me following the Resa and I NAILED the guy square in the face. I could feel his goggles crunch under my hand. “Sorry!” I yelled, the guy had stopped, and I went on with “Are you ok?” thinking I would give him my goggles or something if I broke his. Not sure what I would have done about a nose swap if I had broken that. “I am ok, its cool.” He said back. So what can I do? The Resa was already a few body lengths ahead and we were moving a bit faster, so I got back to swimming. Did some serious pulls to catch up and then we pretty much counted the last 5 buoys in to the shore.
The shore was rocky, when your hand hits ground underneath you, you can stand up and start running. Well I stood up and it was on softball sized rocks, really hard to even stand. I laid back down and used the rocks as handholds. Just pulled myself from rock to rock for about 20 meters. Then the sandy beach!
Ta-da! Done swimming. We got out of the water and run under the timer gate at 1:28 – all-time best ever swim. I think we could have gone the bumped up pace of around effort level 6 the whole way and probably got a 1:20ish time. maybe faster if we had really made a big effort out of it. but!!! Out under 1:30 had us smiling pretty happy.
I smiled all the way up the beach to the strippers.
HA! Wooohooo, I love strippers. But they strip you, not themselves sadly. I ran up, and there were about 100 people ready to help you out of your suit. So on the way I start pointing from one to the next, hmmm… which one do I want… they are all smiling at me, maybe they have seen this before from someone. So anyway I run up. And remember the scene from Close Encounters, at the end when the Richard Dryefuss walks up to the alien ship and about 100 aliens all surround him holding out their hands and lead him into the ship? Well, that was me, I run up hold out my hands and about 30 people come over to take off my suit.
The head alien tells me to unzip, which I already did, and to lay down on the grass. So I do that and they grab the suit and pull it off me. This was to be my last really happy moment of the day. As my FOCKING LEG CRAMPS UP. And not the calf where it normally does. The big quad in the front of my right leg. I was terrified at first I was going to do the floppy fish on the ground in front of 200 people. But I got up and hobbled to the change tent.
I was completely dehydrated already. Big big trouble.
Once in the tent I have my bag of bike stuff. You take off swim stuff, put it in the bag and take out your bike stuff. A (ahem!) “friend” tied the bag for me. Just pull the two short loops. So I pull two. Then another two, then another… pull harder, harder! Some volunteer ( a vol ) walks over and says “Can I be of some assistance fine sir?” “Yeah, get this focking bag open a-hole.” I hint back to him. Actually I don’t say anything, I just have a pleading look on my face as I hand the bag to him. Well, I have got the strings tied up super tight now and he works on it for about a minute. I use this time to get all my stuff figured. The bag finally opens and out comes all my happy bike stuff. I rush them all on and find I can’t get the spray can of sunscreen to work. Fock fock fock! Panic is now the main feeling. So I finally figure, well, maybe its cloudy out? I run outside and there is a vol there putting sunscreen on people. I run up and she has two huge gloves on like she is going to rout around in a horse’s butt for something. Also they are COVERED in sunscreen, like giant sticks of butter all over these enormous gloves. “Sunscreen?” yes! I yell back and she grabs an arm and swipes, then another and two legs. Done in 4 seconds. One swoop around the neck and I am running my bike to the start. Resa showed up about the same time, maybe a few seconds ahead of me and we are biking!
THE BIKE ( what’s your prediction? - Pain! )
We both do the monkey hooting and yelling noises as we get on to our favorite part of the event. The bike. Wow. The most awesome feeling of the day that’s for sure. I have my favorite shirt on, ( the blue one with the dragon is really my fav but is too big now ). The shirt has a dog cutting the grass, space ships and of course plenty of green trees and blue sky on it. it was also stuffed full of yummies. I am starving ( also to look back on it a very bad sign ) and so start eating and drinking everything I have. Was wonderful. We head out of town on the giant loop. Right away we are passing everyone. All those good swimmers are getting their asses handed to them now by real bikers. Bam bam bam we check off a few hundred people in a real hurry. What now fag swimmers? What now that we are doing a real sporting event huh? “ON YOUR LEFT!” screams a guy from behind. He probably said it four times as we smugly went by everyone on the left side of the course. Some sleek looking 150 pound guy on a high end tri bike explodes past us at about 10mph faster than what we were doing. The wind swoosh almost knocks me off the bike. Ahh. Well, uhh… yeah. So we were not the fastest bikers on the course after all. “Learn to swim!” I mumble after the guy. Geeze, you think people would be more well rounded…
The wind is slowly building in intensity. It was totally calm to start the swim ( thank god ) and has been picking up as we head south. It’s also blowing north to south and we get a bit of a push. More every minute. It gets up to the forecasted 10mph, says “fock that” and heads up to 40mph. But that won’t be until we get to heading home in it later.
About 30 minutes out and we hit the first real hill of the day. We bomb up that, passing 90% of the people and getting passed 10% of the time. “This is the last hill of the day!” I chortled. But my legs are dead. Really dead. And we have gone 30 minutes. Really really bad. Already I am asking Resa if we are going too fast. Maybe we were? I look at the speed we are doing and it’s less than a moderate ride pace. The first real fear hits me. I am in big trouble already.
We head down the far side of the hill and halfway down, going about 35 mph I hit a tack. Some people in the area don’t like the event being in town and they suggest this to us by leaving tacks on the bike course. I pick up one of these, the tire goes flat in a second and I think I am going to wipe. I start yelling “Flat!” over and over as I head to the slow side of the road. I am up on the front of the bike, trying to put all my weight on the front wheel while breaking. I do the skippy shuddery thing all the way down the hill, almost wipe out some chick who does some very good bike handling to avoid me and finally come to a stop on the side of the road. Back tire of course. Even tacks know not to flat the front tire. I start swearing and pulling out my flat change stuff. Levers and tubes and canister of CO2 and such. I rip the wheel off the back and start prying the tire off. Perfect pin hole leak. I force the spare on and am levering the tire back when Sheila goes floating by. She says “HI” and is gone for about 5 hours in front of us. A repair car pulls up and a guy runs out with a pump. I tell him to look for tacks on the road back up the hill and we take off.
The next 30 miles are on the only flat part of the course. We are still passing people but the bunch has spread out considerably. We take turns leading each other. We have to keep a big distance between bikes as you are not allowed to draft. But the shutting down the mind and just staying behind is nice. We do this until the first real big climb of the day Richter Pass.
Richter Pass.
Just had to put that in it’s own paragraph. This is THE HILL. This hill has been in our minds for about 12 months. I read about it. We even (tried) to ride it last year when we were on site. This six mile hill WRECKED us last year, walking and swearing and sitting down and walking and more riding… for over an hour. This was Richer Pass.
And she was not happy.
The day before we chalked it up. Put down a bunch of “Go Ken” and “Go Sheila, Resa, Mark” stuff. I have a nice video of it.
We get to the bottom. And remember Pee Wee Herman? Well, there are traffic cops at the bottom, waving us up The Pass like we were being sent to the slaughter. So I use my best Pee Wee voice and ask all screechy “Seen any hills around here?” She grins and points happily with her traffic stick.
Richter Pass.
We start the climb and for the first time I tell Resa I am in trouble. “Just don’t have it today hun.” She sees that I mean it and says something about shrinking my world to just this hill. She also lets me go it alone which is probably for the better. About 6 months ago we bought new bikes, and you can pick out your gearing then. For this one climb I put climbing gears on both mine and reas’s bike, also I checked Sheila’s out at the store to make sure it had climbers on it when she bought that.
I put it in granny and start the climb.
Resa is a few dozen yards behind me. I think she saw some trash at the side of the road, this always bugs her so she stopped, went back to get it and then threw the chain getting started again. So didn’t see her until we were at the top. I looked for our chalk but the rain the night before washed it all away.
I actually had a really good and easy trip up the pass. Just spun it up to 70ish in granny and made the climb pretty easily. At one point some chick passed me slowly and on the way by, like people like to do when you are climbing, started a conversation. “How was your swim?”
The old open ended question. The best weapon of tour and group riders. “How are the kids?” “What is your favorite football team?” all questions asked to let the other person try to talk for 3 minutes while the first person just gets to ride along. Feeling good I told her ALL ABOUT the swim. Really made me smile to be able to talk without gasping, going on and on about it. after about 10 minutes she grew tired and moved up to the next person, “How was your swim?”
About 1 mile from the top Resa came bombing up. Just all happy, covered in chain grease and smiling. “Doing okay?” “Yep.” I said. A car went by us and some chick went absolutely ballistic about it. swearing and almost in tears over it. Resa and I shrugged and went over the top. They announce your name at the top of this bitch which was pretty nice.
Down the back at 45 mph and a much needed rest.
To turn the corner into some flatter area where the wind was now about 30mph straight into our faces for the seven rollers. Then the out and back.
At mile 70 I picked up our half way bags. We waited in line to pee about 10 minutes when some vol said there were more port-o-pots in 4 miles. So we rode up there and waited there about 10 more minutes to finally pee. At least I got my legs back a bit.
For Yellow Lake. The second hill. And it was windy as fock out now.
The first day of TOSRV last year I rode in the wind all day and my left eye dried up too much to see out of. This happened again this day. I was blind in my left eye from mile 60 on through the night. I started getting pretty dizzy riding with just one eye. Also I was trying to get caught up on the eating and drinking. The eating went well. I felt like I ate enough.
So we struggled up yellow lake, blind in one eye, dizzy, sick feeling and out of energy. Was a pretty tough ride. I kinda liked it. we decided to go into survival mode at the half way point. I toyed with telling the Resa to ride up to Sheila and or just go on alone. But I freaking HATE that when people do that to me. About 10 times a year I hear that from someone. “Just go on without me.” Argh! So, I didn’t say it. And I am pretty sure that the Resa knew I was toast too, because she talks more when I am struggling.
Usually I am too gassed to talk back, just have to sit there and struggle through your own hell at those times.
But, oddly I was feeling emotionally wonderful. It was truly the greatest time. It hurt and we were going about 70% of our normal speed. I looked and our average was about 15.5… which is pretty lame for us. Not that we can do 19s but, we expected to be about 17ish. Probably the wind hurt some of that, but… it was a slow grind and I felt great mentally if dead physically.
I just love big events I guess. I was chattering too. We talked to everyone that would talk to us. Laughing and throwing encouragement around. “How are you doing?” they would ask “Horrible!” I would laugh back. It was fun.
And here all those 5 am training rides and runs helped. Those days where the run was more than I could do, and I had to stumble from park bench to bench on a 2 hour 5 mile stagger back to the car. Those times when I thought I would die in the pool. Those times where my legs screamed for me to stop and somehow I managed to say “Shut up legs” in a german accent. The dozen times I bonked so hard I thought I truly could have a heart attack. Those times when the hill and the wind went on and on and on and there was just nothing I could do anymore. Those days. Those days and Resa ALWAYS there with me. Days when I would feel great and look over and she was almost in tears with the hurt on her bad days. Those days made this day *wonderful*.
We rode over yellow lake, some 340 pound, 5 foot chick passed me going over the top of yet another hill. She passed me slowly and there was nothing in it for me to do more than stay upright. I broke my water bottle straw of all freaky things and had been out of water for about 10 miles, just to completely dry me up. I borrowed Resa’s on the last 20 miles downhill into town.
We screamed downhill at about 20 miles per hour, probably we were passing through the wind at near 60, but the wind was in full force now. Rained on us and it felt like hail it was hitting so hard.
Came into town and nearly got blown off the bikes in the hurricane by the lake. Did it in about 7:30, maybe 1:30 longer than I think we could have. We wasted about 40 minutes with flats and stops… probably close to an hour for me being trashed.
I got off the bike, kept my one eye open and stumbled into the tent. I was really hoping for a TV guy to be there as I must have looked devasted.
Got my bag and tried to open it again. No luck, so I just tore into the side of the bag and let it all spill out. I have a lot of stuff in there, including eye drops in case I need to wash out a bug or something. I spend about 10 minutes trying to get my eye working again. No luck. Changing into running gear was pretty simple, but I also have a bit of bathroom emergency and spend 3 minutes in there. Got out of transition 2 in 18minutes. If I had only known I would have waited an extra 30 seconds and set the record for slowest T2 that day. As it was I came in 3rd of 3000 people.
Resa waited outside the tent about 15 minutes and came in 4th.
THE RUN ( or how hard could it be? )
Blind, sick and happy I met the resa for the run. At least the wind would be behind us for the first 13 miles.
We ran about ½ mile and I was dead. Just totally dehydrated and cashed in.
We did some math, we wanted to finish at all costs. Our seriously big trouble plan was to have at least one of us finish… so we did some thinking that we could walk the whole thing if needed. If I couldn’t do that then she would have to run it in herself.
We started walking. I drank everything I could each mile stop. Two or three cups of water, Gatorade and soup each stop. We would trot a few hundred feet and then walk to the next stop. At the time you would think this would have been the low point of the day. And it really wasn’t. Pushing hard on the bike, and I was pushing as hard as I could, gave us 8 hours to get the marathon in. We were safely home if I could stay upright.
Three miles in and I am drinking and walking.
Five miles and I finally stop hurting internally.
At about seven miles we leave the last of the city and are out on the lonely road. Except there are thousands of people on the other side heading home. We pass the 9/10 hour people running. The 11/12 hour people jogging. Here we see Mark for the first time all day. He has the biggest smile on his face. He is about the happiest person we see all day long and that’s saying a huge amount of happy people. He runs over and gives us each a wicked hard high five. Must have been because he saw me flipping him off as he ran over! he ran it in strong, had a wonderful day and I think almost broke 12 hours. A very very impressed set of two, me and the resa plodded along.
Eight miles and about a gallon of liquid later and I am ready to run. We run out to about mile 12ish. To the big hill at the turn around. We go up and over and get the half way bags. I am feeling for the first time since the end of the swim, physically good. We do the math. Figure we can finish under 16 hours if we keep up a fairly brisk walk.
On the way back we run most of miles 14,15,16,17,18,19 and 20. Well, run is a shuffle. And we spend about 10 – 15 minutes in a bathroom break again.
Mile 20 and we are both a bit tired again. My liquid recovery is now liquid maintenance as we are running more. And I start regressing badly.
Mile 21 and a group of kids in a car go by. “YOU SUCK!” they yell out. Immediately I yell back “THANK YOU!” five minutes later they are back and drive by really slowly. “You guys are doing great, keep up the hard work.” A different voice calls out. Must have been annoying to the sober driver to have to turn around after giving his drunk loser friend a chattering and then come back and apologize. We are very hard to insult and just added it to our list of very cool things that happened out on the course.
Mile 22. The killer mile usually, too far away to sprint home, too far in to feel good. Mile 22 is the worst. We are walking along, our math is good. We are going to finish in 15:50 to 15:59. Perfect. We just take a step at a time. Its very dark out. And the best moment of the day happens. At least for me. We are walking just where the town starts again. And some old lady, must have been in her eighties or maybe later. Very very old is sitting all by her self in a lawn chair. On the curb. Should have been a wheelchair with blankets and some kid waiting to roll her back inside. But no, its just her. Sitting in a lawn chair watching people go by. And as we go by I glance at her and think it somewhat odd that someone would leave an old lady out on the street at 10 at night. And we go by and she speaks to us. I didn’t expect that, usually you get the cheer that everyone does. “you are looking strong, almost there, keep going.” Thing that you hear every 40 feet for the last 2 miles. And she speaks instead. Her voice is totally gone, just some croaking whispering. Either she cheered her voice away or drank it away in the 40s or… maybe just got to be 90. And she says “Ironman. You are going to be an Ironman. All the way to your soul.” And tingles like lightning went down my back and finally after 15 hours of a racing heart my tears came. I will never for the rest of my life forget that moment.
We walked in the last 4 miles. I fought back my tingling dizzy passout bonk that I know so well and Resa fought a messed up leg muscle. Walked into town to hear Scotland the Brave playing on bagpipes. Walked to the turn around, saw Mark and Maria and Patsy. Walked around the turn, saw Sheila doing her own walk with golfball sized blisters. Turned the corner, walked another 4 minutes. Some guy ran up and said we still had an outside chance to get under 16 hours. ( 17 is cutoff ) we had a final laugh of the day, finally at someone else’s expense. “Dude, we have done that math for the last 7 hours, I think we have it nailed.” And we did. We got to the 100 yards to go and started the “Shifty Shuffle” in towards the finish. Again our two superfans and one super ironman were cheering us in. I sadly didn’t notice but Resa waved to them. They have a nice video of us going top end 13 minute mile sprinting to the finish.
Resa hung back to let me finish ahead, neither of us like to be first at the end and I turned with about 20 yards left and asked her to run it in with me. We did. Crossed the line at 15:54 and some seconds.
Personal Best.
AFTER ( or death stalks me )
You get a medal at the end, and a catcher. This guy makes sure you don’t fall over when you finish. And being at the finish line last year these guy’s job description is NOT over rated. About 1 in 10 people do collapse at the end in one way or another. Puking or falling or cramping or whatever.
The first thing they did last year was ask you your name. They do that to see what kinda mind you have left. This year they didn’t do it, but I had thought about it for a few months. I waited to be asked but the guy was just there about one electron away from my elbow staring at me. “Aren’t cha going to ask me my name?”
“Uh, no?”
“Ah, last year the catcher asked the name of finishers.”
“Ah…” I could see his eyes getting squinty as he studied me.
“So ask me my name!”
“Okay, what is your name?”
“Tony Stark!” harharharharhharrr!!!
Blank look from mr catcher.
“Uh,”
“You know! Tony Stark! The guy that becomes Ironman in the marvel comics!” I am a genius!
“Uh, K. Well, over here you can get your picture taken.”
So the Resa and I get our picture taken, I about collapse and Sheila can’t walk.
“I will run and get the car.” Says Resa, and she does. She runs off at about a 9 min pace for some much needed leg stretching.
Gads what a hard day. But more of a bad luck day. The cutoffs are more than fair. The race was absolutely amazing. I just loved it. Wish I could have had a good day to celebrate 600 days of effort. And at first for the next few days I was bummed about it. But always in the back of my mind I had a slight worry that it would be too easy. I would show up, do the course and wonder if all the training was really needed. But it was, at least on this day. This one I will remember.
But more I think I was bummed that the training was over. It was one of the best years of my life. I learned to swim. My run went from disastrous to just pretty lame… Our pace went from about 12 minute miles to 10. Our distance from 5 miles max to probably a good 30ish. We got new high end bikes and learned a ton about nutrition. ( all evidence to the contrary! )
Those 600 days got me through one of the worst days either in training or racing lifetime. There is no way, no way whatsoever I could have finished that day without all the lessons and work of the last year and a half.
So, what’s next? Well, we read that it takes 5 years to peak at triathlons… so, having already spent 1 year at it, we can’t but help going 4 more to see if that’s true or not.
Next year is probably Ironman Wisconsin and maybe Vegas, then Texas and of course New York, then there is Mexico, China, Austria, Australia, Spain, Germany, Montreal, California and maybe the lottery to do Hawaii! Coming back to Canada in 5 years to put a bookend on the whole adventure.
We will see…
And so I go out not with a mighty raging yell like I thought, but with a whisper, an 80 year old’s whisper. “Ironman. Ironman, to your soul.”
And I have a Personal Best that I think is beatable. It can’t be better than that!!!
“all that I am, all that I will ever be, is right here in your perfect eyes… I don’t know where, confused about how as well, just know these things will never change for us at all.”
Thank you Resa.
i told her i wanted to run a triathlon. she sighed. as we don't say much about what we want to do, as we just about always make a go at it. so this kinda thing only comes up once every few years. "Let’s build a house." was her last one. took us 3 years of solid non-stop work. so it was my turn. "Lets run an ironman."
she paused a second. "Ironman."
"Yeah. how hard could it be?"
"The full-on motherscratcher Ironman?"
"Yeah hun."
we sipped our beers for a few minutes.
"Seriously?" she asked.
"As serious as a cat in a microwave." i replied.
she nodded. "Okay. i am in."
"Awesome." i said as i opened a fresh beer. i sat back contented. we were already pretty much done!
"Bummer you hate to run..." she mused from the chair next to me.
"Yeah, running sucks. but at least we like to bike!"
"I think its longer than we have ever gone before."
"But how hard could it be?"
we were quite a while.
"Bummer you can't swim honey." she hinted.
"Look, if all you are going to see are roadblocks, then... uh, swim eh?"
"Miles of swimming."
"Miles?" i sputtered.
"Miles. you can’t swim a hundred meters."
"Well, we aren't doing the race next week sweetie, i can learn."
"How hard could it be?" she agreed.
so we picked a race. Canada Focking Iron Focking Man. August 29, 2010.
And we did it.
Here is how the day went. Or, rather, let me back up a bit… around 600 days…
I was in decent shape from building the house. But over weight a bit. I was around 215 pounds. I could run about 3 miles, some of them without walking. I could swim about 20 meters in a row. Well, that might be exaggerating a bit, more like 15 meters. I could ride a bike around 40 miles without getting wrecked for days at a time. but the bike was the best, every year we usually rode the TOSRV 100 mile ride and thought we could get up to the 112 miles of ironman without much trouble.
So I learned to swim. The first 300 days I probably took my swim from 15 meters up to around 300 meters max distance. At that point I would run out of air and be holding onto the side of the pool. The running advanced from about 3 miles up through my first ever marathon and then ultra-marathon. The bike we kinda blew off altogether.
Then we started the actual training about 6 months ago. Long bikes and long runs and long swims. All of which were great learning experiences.
The day of the race finally arrives, and like a child counting down the days to Christmas I had counted down the days till the ironman.
The last few weeks before the event I don’t have much jump. I figured it was just using up nervous energy. Also the fear was gone, probably a few months earlier and I would have had about 3 major issues unresolved about the event, but over time I had them figured. And the day of the race I felt calm and confident. And “intestinally challenged”.
Woke up feeling like I had been punched in the stomach. We parked the RV and everyone headed to the start area. Except me. I headed to the bathroom!
I think I lost about 1/5th of my body weight over the next 10 minutes. The Poop Fairy was bashing me over the head with her magic wand. “You want some more?” bash! “How’s that feel bish?!!" BASH! BASH!
Wandered over to the start of the race feeling pretty odd as you can imagine. One positive was I had no worries about peeing in my wetsuit. I drank down a Gatorade and got marked up. They put your race number and age on your legs and arms. This is so when they later peal your wetsuit off your dead body they can tell who you were.
The Resa and I planned on staying together regardless of how we were doing throughout the whole day. To help stay together on the swim we took a marker and drew stuff on our swim caps. This actually helped during the swim as I could pick her out by the extra markings.
What nervousness I had went away as for no reason other than wonderful luck they played what is probably “our” song over the loudspeakers. We are not all the wound up in stuff like that but we both kinda looked over and smiled and all my worries went away when I heard it. Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. “We’ll do it all, everything… on our own. If I lay here, If I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?”
We waded into the water and filled our suits with water and waited for the start. I felt very calm and confident. Odd that after all the months of getting ready I wouldn’t be more stressed. It was pretty nice.
Countdown from 10, and then air horns, whistles, a canon goes off and the rope start line shoots up in the air, people start screaming all around us and the water turns into a blender of splashing arms and legs.
We stood there watching it all for about 20 seconds. As we had planned on doing. Then we started making our way out to the deep water. After a few yards of walking we started swimming. “And for no paaartic-u-lar reason, I started swimmin!” I mumbled in my best forest gump voice.
Over the last year the swim had gone from the most nervy item to the least. And the bike had gone from the least to the most.
During training runs we covered the 2.4 mile swim in about 1:35 to 1:40. We got times in this range regardless of how hard we swam or whether it was in a pool or lake or whatever. This is a fairly slow but very usable swim time. they give you 2:20 to get out of the water and this time is more than fair. So barring complete disaster we figured we would be out in the high 1:30s. this took a lot of the stress out of the swim, as a bad slow swim would be in the 1:40s and still be plenty fast enough.
THE SWIM ( just a calm happy time )
We took a middle of the pack route. I think to do it again I would have been closer to the inside of the course as Sheila did it that way and didn’t have much crowding. Probably at the front of the pack there was huge crowding there, but the swim kinda spreads out in a V shape and the farther back you are the wider it gets.
Having learned a lot about lake swimming and wetsuits and other things the first thousand meters went very very smoothly. We were together and in mostly open water. Just getting warmed up to it and pushing away the worries. The water was pretty warm and somewhat clouded, you could only see about 10 feet in front or downwards. The lake gets to about 700 feet deep and obviously we didn’t see anything after the first few yards by the shore. We heard there are scuba divers under the water to help collect bodies but I never saw any. And I was looking for them as it would have been fun to see some guy down there waving at us. Two times I did see a massive bunch of bubbles come up from below, once right under me.
To my right the buoys floated by one after another. There are about 12 or 13 on the way out, a few on the cross and about 16ish on the way back. The weird thing about wearing a swim hat – which I rarely do, is that you can hear the water whoosh by you as you swim, its pretty comforting. So the big 6 foot orange ball buoys go floating past one after another and we get about 70 percent of the way down the long out straight. Here we start meeting our first traffic. People that have started out too fast and are now a bit gassed start going backwards a bit. One after another we have to dodge people. This was the first annoying part of the swim for me. Up till this point I felt really comfy. But getting the feet kicking your hands and you stop a moment and then turn sideways and start swimming again. At least nobody was racing us directly. We didn’t have to put up with someone being all territorial or anything. Just dodged people. Also, since the Resa and I swam side by side she wouldn’t know when I was getting blocked and I would have to swim right up next to her to get past a person. I could have gone around the other way, but there was always the fear that once around someone – which takes a lot longer than you would think – the I would have lost track of where Resa was.
We come up to the first of the two corners, a house boat. We swim around it no problems. On the short second section the V shape all gets compressed into a pack and we have some real crowding for the first time of the day. I think about going wide, but that would just take more effort and make the course a lot longer so I just try to settle in and relax. The second house boat comes up and we are turned for home. I tried waving to the people on the boat as they sure were making a lot of noise and running around on it. but I quickly thought “Oh crap, they are going to think I am calling for help” and the next thing I would be in the hands of divers or something trying to explain ( probably for 10 minutes ) how I was really ok.
We turned the corner there and my only thought was we were heading home. And I gulped some water. Gads it tasted like crap! Just then a big set of about 7 large waves rolled through – some boat must have driven past. And I started bobbing and spitting out water. This is the only time we stopped swimming. Resa turned and motioned me to keep going. I felt the first feelings of motion sickness in the waves. Luckily the waves were not a permanent feature and after about 30 seconds we were back to being normal. I think though, that to do an ocean swim I will have to practice being out in the open water a lot more.
Now we were running into more and more people slowing down. It was a constant stream ( har har ) of people going backwards. We dodged this way and that, for a while I went behind the Resa as it was just getting too crowded. We started swimming a bit faster too. I think a lot of the passing people was just us picking up the pace a bit. All along I felt we were going at about a 4 on the ten scale for effort. Pretty lazy swimming. On the last half of the way back we bumped it up to about a 6 I would say. Still not close to out of breath, but for the first time all day I was taking a real pull on the water. The difference after about an hour of swimming was very welcome. Finally got to stretch out my arms a bit and pull.
At one point we were going around one guy, me following the Resa and I NAILED the guy square in the face. I could feel his goggles crunch under my hand. “Sorry!” I yelled, the guy had stopped, and I went on with “Are you ok?” thinking I would give him my goggles or something if I broke his. Not sure what I would have done about a nose swap if I had broken that. “I am ok, its cool.” He said back. So what can I do? The Resa was already a few body lengths ahead and we were moving a bit faster, so I got back to swimming. Did some serious pulls to catch up and then we pretty much counted the last 5 buoys in to the shore.
The shore was rocky, when your hand hits ground underneath you, you can stand up and start running. Well I stood up and it was on softball sized rocks, really hard to even stand. I laid back down and used the rocks as handholds. Just pulled myself from rock to rock for about 20 meters. Then the sandy beach!
Ta-da! Done swimming. We got out of the water and run under the timer gate at 1:28 – all-time best ever swim. I think we could have gone the bumped up pace of around effort level 6 the whole way and probably got a 1:20ish time. maybe faster if we had really made a big effort out of it. but!!! Out under 1:30 had us smiling pretty happy.
I smiled all the way up the beach to the strippers.
HA! Wooohooo, I love strippers. But they strip you, not themselves sadly. I ran up, and there were about 100 people ready to help you out of your suit. So on the way I start pointing from one to the next, hmmm… which one do I want… they are all smiling at me, maybe they have seen this before from someone. So anyway I run up. And remember the scene from Close Encounters, at the end when the Richard Dryefuss walks up to the alien ship and about 100 aliens all surround him holding out their hands and lead him into the ship? Well, that was me, I run up hold out my hands and about 30 people come over to take off my suit.
The head alien tells me to unzip, which I already did, and to lay down on the grass. So I do that and they grab the suit and pull it off me. This was to be my last really happy moment of the day. As my FOCKING LEG CRAMPS UP. And not the calf where it normally does. The big quad in the front of my right leg. I was terrified at first I was going to do the floppy fish on the ground in front of 200 people. But I got up and hobbled to the change tent.
I was completely dehydrated already. Big big trouble.
Once in the tent I have my bag of bike stuff. You take off swim stuff, put it in the bag and take out your bike stuff. A (ahem!) “friend” tied the bag for me. Just pull the two short loops. So I pull two. Then another two, then another… pull harder, harder! Some volunteer ( a vol ) walks over and says “Can I be of some assistance fine sir?” “Yeah, get this focking bag open a-hole.” I hint back to him. Actually I don’t say anything, I just have a pleading look on my face as I hand the bag to him. Well, I have got the strings tied up super tight now and he works on it for about a minute. I use this time to get all my stuff figured. The bag finally opens and out comes all my happy bike stuff. I rush them all on and find I can’t get the spray can of sunscreen to work. Fock fock fock! Panic is now the main feeling. So I finally figure, well, maybe its cloudy out? I run outside and there is a vol there putting sunscreen on people. I run up and she has two huge gloves on like she is going to rout around in a horse’s butt for something. Also they are COVERED in sunscreen, like giant sticks of butter all over these enormous gloves. “Sunscreen?” yes! I yell back and she grabs an arm and swipes, then another and two legs. Done in 4 seconds. One swoop around the neck and I am running my bike to the start. Resa showed up about the same time, maybe a few seconds ahead of me and we are biking!
THE BIKE ( what’s your prediction? - Pain! )
We both do the monkey hooting and yelling noises as we get on to our favorite part of the event. The bike. Wow. The most awesome feeling of the day that’s for sure. I have my favorite shirt on, ( the blue one with the dragon is really my fav but is too big now ). The shirt has a dog cutting the grass, space ships and of course plenty of green trees and blue sky on it. it was also stuffed full of yummies. I am starving ( also to look back on it a very bad sign ) and so start eating and drinking everything I have. Was wonderful. We head out of town on the giant loop. Right away we are passing everyone. All those good swimmers are getting their asses handed to them now by real bikers. Bam bam bam we check off a few hundred people in a real hurry. What now fag swimmers? What now that we are doing a real sporting event huh? “ON YOUR LEFT!” screams a guy from behind. He probably said it four times as we smugly went by everyone on the left side of the course. Some sleek looking 150 pound guy on a high end tri bike explodes past us at about 10mph faster than what we were doing. The wind swoosh almost knocks me off the bike. Ahh. Well, uhh… yeah. So we were not the fastest bikers on the course after all. “Learn to swim!” I mumble after the guy. Geeze, you think people would be more well rounded…
The wind is slowly building in intensity. It was totally calm to start the swim ( thank god ) and has been picking up as we head south. It’s also blowing north to south and we get a bit of a push. More every minute. It gets up to the forecasted 10mph, says “fock that” and heads up to 40mph. But that won’t be until we get to heading home in it later.
About 30 minutes out and we hit the first real hill of the day. We bomb up that, passing 90% of the people and getting passed 10% of the time. “This is the last hill of the day!” I chortled. But my legs are dead. Really dead. And we have gone 30 minutes. Really really bad. Already I am asking Resa if we are going too fast. Maybe we were? I look at the speed we are doing and it’s less than a moderate ride pace. The first real fear hits me. I am in big trouble already.
We head down the far side of the hill and halfway down, going about 35 mph I hit a tack. Some people in the area don’t like the event being in town and they suggest this to us by leaving tacks on the bike course. I pick up one of these, the tire goes flat in a second and I think I am going to wipe. I start yelling “Flat!” over and over as I head to the slow side of the road. I am up on the front of the bike, trying to put all my weight on the front wheel while breaking. I do the skippy shuddery thing all the way down the hill, almost wipe out some chick who does some very good bike handling to avoid me and finally come to a stop on the side of the road. Back tire of course. Even tacks know not to flat the front tire. I start swearing and pulling out my flat change stuff. Levers and tubes and canister of CO2 and such. I rip the wheel off the back and start prying the tire off. Perfect pin hole leak. I force the spare on and am levering the tire back when Sheila goes floating by. She says “HI” and is gone for about 5 hours in front of us. A repair car pulls up and a guy runs out with a pump. I tell him to look for tacks on the road back up the hill and we take off.
The next 30 miles are on the only flat part of the course. We are still passing people but the bunch has spread out considerably. We take turns leading each other. We have to keep a big distance between bikes as you are not allowed to draft. But the shutting down the mind and just staying behind is nice. We do this until the first real big climb of the day Richter Pass.
Richter Pass.
Just had to put that in it’s own paragraph. This is THE HILL. This hill has been in our minds for about 12 months. I read about it. We even (tried) to ride it last year when we were on site. This six mile hill WRECKED us last year, walking and swearing and sitting down and walking and more riding… for over an hour. This was Richer Pass.
And she was not happy.
The day before we chalked it up. Put down a bunch of “Go Ken” and “Go Sheila, Resa, Mark” stuff. I have a nice video of it.
We get to the bottom. And remember Pee Wee Herman? Well, there are traffic cops at the bottom, waving us up The Pass like we were being sent to the slaughter. So I use my best Pee Wee voice and ask all screechy “Seen any hills around here?” She grins and points happily with her traffic stick.
Richter Pass.
We start the climb and for the first time I tell Resa I am in trouble. “Just don’t have it today hun.” She sees that I mean it and says something about shrinking my world to just this hill. She also lets me go it alone which is probably for the better. About 6 months ago we bought new bikes, and you can pick out your gearing then. For this one climb I put climbing gears on both mine and reas’s bike, also I checked Sheila’s out at the store to make sure it had climbers on it when she bought that.
I put it in granny and start the climb.
Resa is a few dozen yards behind me. I think she saw some trash at the side of the road, this always bugs her so she stopped, went back to get it and then threw the chain getting started again. So didn’t see her until we were at the top. I looked for our chalk but the rain the night before washed it all away.
I actually had a really good and easy trip up the pass. Just spun it up to 70ish in granny and made the climb pretty easily. At one point some chick passed me slowly and on the way by, like people like to do when you are climbing, started a conversation. “How was your swim?”
The old open ended question. The best weapon of tour and group riders. “How are the kids?” “What is your favorite football team?” all questions asked to let the other person try to talk for 3 minutes while the first person just gets to ride along. Feeling good I told her ALL ABOUT the swim. Really made me smile to be able to talk without gasping, going on and on about it. after about 10 minutes she grew tired and moved up to the next person, “How was your swim?”
About 1 mile from the top Resa came bombing up. Just all happy, covered in chain grease and smiling. “Doing okay?” “Yep.” I said. A car went by us and some chick went absolutely ballistic about it. swearing and almost in tears over it. Resa and I shrugged and went over the top. They announce your name at the top of this bitch which was pretty nice.
Down the back at 45 mph and a much needed rest.
To turn the corner into some flatter area where the wind was now about 30mph straight into our faces for the seven rollers. Then the out and back.
At mile 70 I picked up our half way bags. We waited in line to pee about 10 minutes when some vol said there were more port-o-pots in 4 miles. So we rode up there and waited there about 10 more minutes to finally pee. At least I got my legs back a bit.
For Yellow Lake. The second hill. And it was windy as fock out now.
The first day of TOSRV last year I rode in the wind all day and my left eye dried up too much to see out of. This happened again this day. I was blind in my left eye from mile 60 on through the night. I started getting pretty dizzy riding with just one eye. Also I was trying to get caught up on the eating and drinking. The eating went well. I felt like I ate enough.
So we struggled up yellow lake, blind in one eye, dizzy, sick feeling and out of energy. Was a pretty tough ride. I kinda liked it. we decided to go into survival mode at the half way point. I toyed with telling the Resa to ride up to Sheila and or just go on alone. But I freaking HATE that when people do that to me. About 10 times a year I hear that from someone. “Just go on without me.” Argh! So, I didn’t say it. And I am pretty sure that the Resa knew I was toast too, because she talks more when I am struggling.
Usually I am too gassed to talk back, just have to sit there and struggle through your own hell at those times.
But, oddly I was feeling emotionally wonderful. It was truly the greatest time. It hurt and we were going about 70% of our normal speed. I looked and our average was about 15.5… which is pretty lame for us. Not that we can do 19s but, we expected to be about 17ish. Probably the wind hurt some of that, but… it was a slow grind and I felt great mentally if dead physically.
I just love big events I guess. I was chattering too. We talked to everyone that would talk to us. Laughing and throwing encouragement around. “How are you doing?” they would ask “Horrible!” I would laugh back. It was fun.
And here all those 5 am training rides and runs helped. Those days where the run was more than I could do, and I had to stumble from park bench to bench on a 2 hour 5 mile stagger back to the car. Those times when I thought I would die in the pool. Those times where my legs screamed for me to stop and somehow I managed to say “Shut up legs” in a german accent. The dozen times I bonked so hard I thought I truly could have a heart attack. Those times when the hill and the wind went on and on and on and there was just nothing I could do anymore. Those days. Those days and Resa ALWAYS there with me. Days when I would feel great and look over and she was almost in tears with the hurt on her bad days. Those days made this day *wonderful*.
We rode over yellow lake, some 340 pound, 5 foot chick passed me going over the top of yet another hill. She passed me slowly and there was nothing in it for me to do more than stay upright. I broke my water bottle straw of all freaky things and had been out of water for about 10 miles, just to completely dry me up. I borrowed Resa’s on the last 20 miles downhill into town.
We screamed downhill at about 20 miles per hour, probably we were passing through the wind at near 60, but the wind was in full force now. Rained on us and it felt like hail it was hitting so hard.
Came into town and nearly got blown off the bikes in the hurricane by the lake. Did it in about 7:30, maybe 1:30 longer than I think we could have. We wasted about 40 minutes with flats and stops… probably close to an hour for me being trashed.
I got off the bike, kept my one eye open and stumbled into the tent. I was really hoping for a TV guy to be there as I must have looked devasted.
Got my bag and tried to open it again. No luck, so I just tore into the side of the bag and let it all spill out. I have a lot of stuff in there, including eye drops in case I need to wash out a bug or something. I spend about 10 minutes trying to get my eye working again. No luck. Changing into running gear was pretty simple, but I also have a bit of bathroom emergency and spend 3 minutes in there. Got out of transition 2 in 18minutes. If I had only known I would have waited an extra 30 seconds and set the record for slowest T2 that day. As it was I came in 3rd of 3000 people.
Resa waited outside the tent about 15 minutes and came in 4th.
THE RUN ( or how hard could it be? )
Blind, sick and happy I met the resa for the run. At least the wind would be behind us for the first 13 miles.
We ran about ½ mile and I was dead. Just totally dehydrated and cashed in.
We did some math, we wanted to finish at all costs. Our seriously big trouble plan was to have at least one of us finish… so we did some thinking that we could walk the whole thing if needed. If I couldn’t do that then she would have to run it in herself.
We started walking. I drank everything I could each mile stop. Two or three cups of water, Gatorade and soup each stop. We would trot a few hundred feet and then walk to the next stop. At the time you would think this would have been the low point of the day. And it really wasn’t. Pushing hard on the bike, and I was pushing as hard as I could, gave us 8 hours to get the marathon in. We were safely home if I could stay upright.
Three miles in and I am drinking and walking.
Five miles and I finally stop hurting internally.
At about seven miles we leave the last of the city and are out on the lonely road. Except there are thousands of people on the other side heading home. We pass the 9/10 hour people running. The 11/12 hour people jogging. Here we see Mark for the first time all day. He has the biggest smile on his face. He is about the happiest person we see all day long and that’s saying a huge amount of happy people. He runs over and gives us each a wicked hard high five. Must have been because he saw me flipping him off as he ran over! he ran it in strong, had a wonderful day and I think almost broke 12 hours. A very very impressed set of two, me and the resa plodded along.
Eight miles and about a gallon of liquid later and I am ready to run. We run out to about mile 12ish. To the big hill at the turn around. We go up and over and get the half way bags. I am feeling for the first time since the end of the swim, physically good. We do the math. Figure we can finish under 16 hours if we keep up a fairly brisk walk.
On the way back we run most of miles 14,15,16,17,18,19 and 20. Well, run is a shuffle. And we spend about 10 – 15 minutes in a bathroom break again.
Mile 20 and we are both a bit tired again. My liquid recovery is now liquid maintenance as we are running more. And I start regressing badly.
Mile 21 and a group of kids in a car go by. “YOU SUCK!” they yell out. Immediately I yell back “THANK YOU!” five minutes later they are back and drive by really slowly. “You guys are doing great, keep up the hard work.” A different voice calls out. Must have been annoying to the sober driver to have to turn around after giving his drunk loser friend a chattering and then come back and apologize. We are very hard to insult and just added it to our list of very cool things that happened out on the course.
Mile 22. The killer mile usually, too far away to sprint home, too far in to feel good. Mile 22 is the worst. We are walking along, our math is good. We are going to finish in 15:50 to 15:59. Perfect. We just take a step at a time. Its very dark out. And the best moment of the day happens. At least for me. We are walking just where the town starts again. And some old lady, must have been in her eighties or maybe later. Very very old is sitting all by her self in a lawn chair. On the curb. Should have been a wheelchair with blankets and some kid waiting to roll her back inside. But no, its just her. Sitting in a lawn chair watching people go by. And as we go by I glance at her and think it somewhat odd that someone would leave an old lady out on the street at 10 at night. And we go by and she speaks to us. I didn’t expect that, usually you get the cheer that everyone does. “you are looking strong, almost there, keep going.” Thing that you hear every 40 feet for the last 2 miles. And she speaks instead. Her voice is totally gone, just some croaking whispering. Either she cheered her voice away or drank it away in the 40s or… maybe just got to be 90. And she says “Ironman. You are going to be an Ironman. All the way to your soul.” And tingles like lightning went down my back and finally after 15 hours of a racing heart my tears came. I will never for the rest of my life forget that moment.
We walked in the last 4 miles. I fought back my tingling dizzy passout bonk that I know so well and Resa fought a messed up leg muscle. Walked into town to hear Scotland the Brave playing on bagpipes. Walked to the turn around, saw Mark and Maria and Patsy. Walked around the turn, saw Sheila doing her own walk with golfball sized blisters. Turned the corner, walked another 4 minutes. Some guy ran up and said we still had an outside chance to get under 16 hours. ( 17 is cutoff ) we had a final laugh of the day, finally at someone else’s expense. “Dude, we have done that math for the last 7 hours, I think we have it nailed.” And we did. We got to the 100 yards to go and started the “Shifty Shuffle” in towards the finish. Again our two superfans and one super ironman were cheering us in. I sadly didn’t notice but Resa waved to them. They have a nice video of us going top end 13 minute mile sprinting to the finish.
Resa hung back to let me finish ahead, neither of us like to be first at the end and I turned with about 20 yards left and asked her to run it in with me. We did. Crossed the line at 15:54 and some seconds.
Personal Best.
AFTER ( or death stalks me )
You get a medal at the end, and a catcher. This guy makes sure you don’t fall over when you finish. And being at the finish line last year these guy’s job description is NOT over rated. About 1 in 10 people do collapse at the end in one way or another. Puking or falling or cramping or whatever.
The first thing they did last year was ask you your name. They do that to see what kinda mind you have left. This year they didn’t do it, but I had thought about it for a few months. I waited to be asked but the guy was just there about one electron away from my elbow staring at me. “Aren’t cha going to ask me my name?”
“Uh, no?”
“Ah, last year the catcher asked the name of finishers.”
“Ah…” I could see his eyes getting squinty as he studied me.
“So ask me my name!”
“Okay, what is your name?”
“Tony Stark!” harharharharhharrr!!!
Blank look from mr catcher.
“Uh,”
“You know! Tony Stark! The guy that becomes Ironman in the marvel comics!” I am a genius!
“Uh, K. Well, over here you can get your picture taken.”
So the Resa and I get our picture taken, I about collapse and Sheila can’t walk.
“I will run and get the car.” Says Resa, and she does. She runs off at about a 9 min pace for some much needed leg stretching.
Gads what a hard day. But more of a bad luck day. The cutoffs are more than fair. The race was absolutely amazing. I just loved it. Wish I could have had a good day to celebrate 600 days of effort. And at first for the next few days I was bummed about it. But always in the back of my mind I had a slight worry that it would be too easy. I would show up, do the course and wonder if all the training was really needed. But it was, at least on this day. This one I will remember.
But more I think I was bummed that the training was over. It was one of the best years of my life. I learned to swim. My run went from disastrous to just pretty lame… Our pace went from about 12 minute miles to 10. Our distance from 5 miles max to probably a good 30ish. We got new high end bikes and learned a ton about nutrition. ( all evidence to the contrary! )
Those 600 days got me through one of the worst days either in training or racing lifetime. There is no way, no way whatsoever I could have finished that day without all the lessons and work of the last year and a half.
So, what’s next? Well, we read that it takes 5 years to peak at triathlons… so, having already spent 1 year at it, we can’t but help going 4 more to see if that’s true or not.
Next year is probably Ironman Wisconsin and maybe Vegas, then Texas and of course New York, then there is Mexico, China, Austria, Australia, Spain, Germany, Montreal, California and maybe the lottery to do Hawaii! Coming back to Canada in 5 years to put a bookend on the whole adventure.
We will see…
And so I go out not with a mighty raging yell like I thought, but with a whisper, an 80 year old’s whisper. “Ironman. Ironman, to your soul.”
And I have a Personal Best that I think is beatable. It can’t be better than that!!!
“all that I am, all that I will ever be, is right here in your perfect eyes… I don’t know where, confused about how as well, just know these things will never change for us at all.”
Thank you Resa.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Loading up, heading out - and a surprise.
well, time to get the teenagers, mice and dust out of the RV. we are hitting the road again! same as last year, just drive about 3000 hours and ta-da, Canada!
See you guys on the other side, this is going to be the last entry "pre-ironman attempt".
i dont feel like i am much better shape, i think i am, and i know the numbers say i am. but just sitting here i feel pretty un-super. :-) but the resa had a good point the other day. rather than getting our second wind after being too tired to go on we now get fifth, sixth and seventh winds. sure makes me smile.
I guess i am finally out of words or thoughts on the whole thing. :-) just a HUGE thank you to Theresa. my best friend. well, let me re-write that. rather than a thank you, i am thankful. yes, that's it.
and...
today she invited me to lunch. no biggie we meet for lunch about once a week or so. i show up and we sit down and at the table she has the printout for next years ironman races.
she starts looking over the list. "Okay Ken, you got to pick the last one..."
i pretty much teared up there. as i had no idea it was coming.
"Oh, come on." she is staring at me. "ok, ok, ok geeze what a pain you are. we can BOTH pick one."
See you guys on the other side, this is going to be the last entry "pre-ironman attempt".
i dont feel like i am much better shape, i think i am, and i know the numbers say i am. but just sitting here i feel pretty un-super. :-) but the resa had a good point the other day. rather than getting our second wind after being too tired to go on we now get fifth, sixth and seventh winds. sure makes me smile.
I guess i am finally out of words or thoughts on the whole thing. :-) just a HUGE thank you to Theresa. my best friend. well, let me re-write that. rather than a thank you, i am thankful. yes, that's it.
and...
today she invited me to lunch. no biggie we meet for lunch about once a week or so. i show up and we sit down and at the table she has the printout for next years ironman races.
she starts looking over the list. "Okay Ken, you got to pick the last one..."
i pretty much teared up there. as i had no idea it was coming.
"Oh, come on." she is staring at me. "ok, ok, ok geeze what a pain you are. we can BOTH pick one."
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
10 days out.
wow. just ten days now. started this project about 500 days ago.
had our last hard week. it wasn't all that hard so on the weekend we bumped the bike ride up a bit to include some pretty hard hills. managed to handle them pretty well. the resa was a bit nervous about her knees so skipped some of it - which i thought was very smart.
also so the show Wicked, it was better than i thought it would be. the story was about what i thought, but the skill of the people in the show was so good that you forget to think of them as people, like in movies. ( at least for me ). we go to plays now and then and the less the skill level, like highschool, i hold my breath the whole time, hoping they dont have some really embarrassing moment. the local pros are a bit different, i think they wont have an embarrassing moment and so i just enjoy the show. but its people being other people that i see. i try to separate out what is really them and what is their effort in being something else. this show, they were the characters. at least most of them were. a few minor chars were just people being a made up something. but the main two witches and most of the next 5ish mains were absolutely wonderful. really fun to go to that show.
and i feel my emotions taking some swings over the last few days.
it is just a swim a bike and a run. and i am pretty unpatriotic as a person. i very rarely make more of something than i can laugh at later. i have been serious in my effort on many things, but also know that i am not a true believer. all along i knew it would be the journey and not the destination that was the true reason for the whole thing.
well, the journey is now over. it ended with the last run on sunday afternoon. a five and a half mile 98 degree scorching hot struggle that we managed very well. and we sat on the cement and i created a lake of sweat beneath me as we sipped some drinks. we have some half speed and half distance things planned for the next 10 days. tapering all the way in. and the next time my heart should be pounding like its off the chain will be on the beach before the start.
i have done zero triathlons and i am hooked.
i think sheila is too. and probably the resa - but she wont ever say before the end of any event if she is going to do one again. i think she likes to keep them events and not lifestyles. which is fine with me. if she was the other way we would never have done any of the amazing things we have over the last 12 years. although she did mention that it would be cool to have the p4s from cervelo.
hooked on the life style if not the actual race.
not sure who reads this. the only one i know that does is someone i have never met or talked to, Julie. i think my friend Dave has read two or three posts in the 20 months. also the canada poop fairies have read a few now and then when i pestered them with questions. also i believe a friend kim reads now and then. i guess i would have to be my own biggest reader, as i go back to stuff a year or more ago and just re-live some of my better or worse moments.
but thanks for spending some time here all of you!
i imagine things will be pretty different in 2 weeks. i will either have or not finished the event. and if i dont i will try again. but this will of course always be my first shot at it. and i am sure as i get older this will be one of the easier events i will do.
so, five hundred days and where am i?
i can swim! this alone would be worth going through the whole thing. i lost my fear of being under water. i think i will take up scuba again. i had some pretty disasterous attempts at that over the years. but i was, i think just too afraid to want to go in the water. now i really enjoy the swimming part and look forward to it.
i lost 30 pounds. not as much as i thought i would. i feel i just haven't gone all-in on the food part. ate a cookie today, a chocolate chip muffin yesterday. ah well, 30 pounds makes for a happier me... next year i lose another 10 and be in better shape.
learned a lot of stuff about hi-tech gear and clothes. :-)
learned that i cant go 2x harder on any one day, but i can recover 2x as fast as i could before.
ran my first ever marathon! big smiles for that.
ran 10 miles in 100 minutes.
saw more trails, birds and had more fun outside than in my entire lifetime.
the next post will be on next monday. on tuesday we load up the camper and head out to the race. the post after that will be from after the race, and i hope its a long and happy one. but! if it is not... well, that post will just have to wait a few more months.
the final phase of training is over and what a ( bike ) ride it was. again, thanks for the reading... :-)
SCORES!
mentally - 10. did everything i wanted to do to get ready. if i wipe out or anything happens when up there that keeps us from finishing, well, i came in to it as ready as i could have hoped.
physically - 10. not sure what to say. i could have been in much better shape. or much worse. but i am completely healthy.
workouts - 10. did them pretty easily on the book's hardest week. next year we skip from level 3 to level 6! i mean, common! lol.
whether you think you can or you think you cant... either way, you are probably right.
had our last hard week. it wasn't all that hard so on the weekend we bumped the bike ride up a bit to include some pretty hard hills. managed to handle them pretty well. the resa was a bit nervous about her knees so skipped some of it - which i thought was very smart.
also so the show Wicked, it was better than i thought it would be. the story was about what i thought, but the skill of the people in the show was so good that you forget to think of them as people, like in movies. ( at least for me ). we go to plays now and then and the less the skill level, like highschool, i hold my breath the whole time, hoping they dont have some really embarrassing moment. the local pros are a bit different, i think they wont have an embarrassing moment and so i just enjoy the show. but its people being other people that i see. i try to separate out what is really them and what is their effort in being something else. this show, they were the characters. at least most of them were. a few minor chars were just people being a made up something. but the main two witches and most of the next 5ish mains were absolutely wonderful. really fun to go to that show.
and i feel my emotions taking some swings over the last few days.
it is just a swim a bike and a run. and i am pretty unpatriotic as a person. i very rarely make more of something than i can laugh at later. i have been serious in my effort on many things, but also know that i am not a true believer. all along i knew it would be the journey and not the destination that was the true reason for the whole thing.
well, the journey is now over. it ended with the last run on sunday afternoon. a five and a half mile 98 degree scorching hot struggle that we managed very well. and we sat on the cement and i created a lake of sweat beneath me as we sipped some drinks. we have some half speed and half distance things planned for the next 10 days. tapering all the way in. and the next time my heart should be pounding like its off the chain will be on the beach before the start.
i have done zero triathlons and i am hooked.
i think sheila is too. and probably the resa - but she wont ever say before the end of any event if she is going to do one again. i think she likes to keep them events and not lifestyles. which is fine with me. if she was the other way we would never have done any of the amazing things we have over the last 12 years. although she did mention that it would be cool to have the p4s from cervelo.
hooked on the life style if not the actual race.
not sure who reads this. the only one i know that does is someone i have never met or talked to, Julie. i think my friend Dave has read two or three posts in the 20 months. also the canada poop fairies have read a few now and then when i pestered them with questions. also i believe a friend kim reads now and then. i guess i would have to be my own biggest reader, as i go back to stuff a year or more ago and just re-live some of my better or worse moments.
but thanks for spending some time here all of you!
i imagine things will be pretty different in 2 weeks. i will either have or not finished the event. and if i dont i will try again. but this will of course always be my first shot at it. and i am sure as i get older this will be one of the easier events i will do.
so, five hundred days and where am i?
i can swim! this alone would be worth going through the whole thing. i lost my fear of being under water. i think i will take up scuba again. i had some pretty disasterous attempts at that over the years. but i was, i think just too afraid to want to go in the water. now i really enjoy the swimming part and look forward to it.
i lost 30 pounds. not as much as i thought i would. i feel i just haven't gone all-in on the food part. ate a cookie today, a chocolate chip muffin yesterday. ah well, 30 pounds makes for a happier me... next year i lose another 10 and be in better shape.
learned a lot of stuff about hi-tech gear and clothes. :-)
learned that i cant go 2x harder on any one day, but i can recover 2x as fast as i could before.
ran my first ever marathon! big smiles for that.
ran 10 miles in 100 minutes.
saw more trails, birds and had more fun outside than in my entire lifetime.
the next post will be on next monday. on tuesday we load up the camper and head out to the race. the post after that will be from after the race, and i hope its a long and happy one. but! if it is not... well, that post will just have to wait a few more months.
the final phase of training is over and what a ( bike ) ride it was. again, thanks for the reading... :-)
SCORES!
mentally - 10. did everything i wanted to do to get ready. if i wipe out or anything happens when up there that keeps us from finishing, well, i came in to it as ready as i could have hoped.
physically - 10. not sure what to say. i could have been in much better shape. or much worse. but i am completely healthy.
workouts - 10. did them pretty easily on the book's hardest week. next year we skip from level 3 to level 6! i mean, common! lol.
whether you think you can or you think you cant... either way, you are probably right.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Uphill both ways
So they ranked all 20 some ironmans from hardest to easiest:
“Whichever one you are in the process of doing, about halfway through the run, that one is the hardest one of all time.”
went for a long run for the first time in about 6 months. by long i mean about 4-5ish hours. the book has called for shorter runs all the way through - but we decided to bump it up a bit as we have the full on thingy in only 20 days. ( FOCK! )
well, we found a trail that was really wide and smooth. and hilly as all fock. we ended up parking about 1/4 from the end, staged about 3 gallons of water at the other end, also about 1/4 from that end. and for no particular reason, we started running.
uphill.
whoooh. about a year ago i would have walked the grade we ran up. it was pretty steep. the tricky part though was that the hill went on for about 2.9 of the 3.0 miles. then it was just about all downhill coming home. then, after 6 turn around and do it again, and again...
we did end up walking about half a mile all told but. wow, what a difference a year makes. also our pace was faster than our best ever half ironman from january. nice to be 185ish pounds now. also feel a ton better with the breathing. only once was i totally out of breath, and that was on a downhill section - so i must have been running all stupid or something for a while there.
average pace was 10:40. did about 18 miles. got really thirsty! it was about 88 degrees out although as the day wore on the temps plummeted drastically into the low 80s.
managed to eat a banana, 2 hammer gels and some cheatos. the drinking i kept up with even though the amount of sweat i put out was pretty comically ginormous.
i bit sore today as that was probably the hardest running i have done in my life. although for sure i have been pushed a lot harder in runs, i would roughly say i have done 6-8 runs that were harder. none hillier, only a few hotter, none faster... :-) so big improvement. might even run the marathon in canada under 7 hours now. :-)) and The Resa had a slightly better day than i had. she likes hills and heat a bit more than i do.
just to keep me level headed i got stung by a bee. really itchy now.
and sure did meet a lot of interesting people on the trail...
many people parked at the top of the big hill at the end of the trail. we *always* park at the point where you can run up the easiest. so picked the bottom of the run. that way we dont have to dread the last heartbreak hill. well, anyway, we are running up the hill towards the end and a lot of people are ripping past us downhill. the resa and i took a look at each of them after the first lap and made bets on who would be running back up the hill as about 70-80% walked back up. there was the occasional "runner". we saw 2 very good runners, about 7ish people that were better than we were - the rest were in tears.
one of the two fast people was a guy that looked like he stole a car sterio. long stringy black hair and a do-rag to tie it to his head. no shirt. about 140 pounds and maybe 5-8 tall. and he was bombing up the hill at about i would guess an 7min pace. just really going fast. but he looked like he knew what he was doing, not just running a fast quarter mile. did some kinda flicky finger thing at us that we practiced a few times with other runners, but they just stared at us. they were not as cool as we had just become obviously.
the other fast guy was mr hightech. like us he had the underarmor stuff on, the new shoes, also had the ipod going ( which we dont do ). ran along really smooth and just slipped past us at also probably 8min mile pace. this guy looked like he could do several laps at that pace.
of the 7ish people that were just faster, like slowly or somewhat quickly going past us, all of them were women. the resa would yell out stuff like "she is trying to beat us! trip her!" or i would say something else probably both annoying and also unheard through the Lady Gaga.
the biggest group was the what looked like first timers. cotton clothes and goofy running looks. these people all walked back up the hill. although one fat old guy surprised us with doing 2 laps.
at one point in the third lap we saw a chick running downhill towards us. after she went by the resa wondered if it was "Chicks with huge boobs running with a bouncing motion day" at the park as there were plenty of them.
we looked like the shuffling dead most of the run ourselves. but we tried pretty hard to keep from walking. we didnt walk at all until the last lap, and did that pretty much in small sections. another youtube video we like is by a guy Voit who rides the tour, he is from germany and has a very thick german accent. they asked him what does he do when he is climbing the big hills and his legs are screaming at him: "Shuts ups legs! Shuts up!" so we say that as we run when it starts to suck.
so how did it feel?
stingy.
my knees were a bit more sore than they have been in 8 months. also my push to the edge was a lot closer yesterday than in about a year. the book pretty much doesnt ever take you beyond what you can recover from and the longest run up till yesterday was about 90 minutes. so this was almost 3 times that. and i started getting the dizzy, stomach, blistered feet thingies going on. but we think we could have pounded out another lap if we had to. my biggest fear ( and most of my later whining ) was that it would take about a month to recover from this. but i think i overestimated the uncomfortableness and underestimated my new body. :-)
well, that was week 1 of 2 hard ones. 7 days from now the training will be complete... one way or another that is. then its taper to the day of the race. we both surprised ourselves on our good run. sheila joined up and also had the same run as we did. she used to do 4 hour marathons so she is getting stronger faster than we are on her feet.
SCORES!
mentally: 9 - i feel very good about the run, but i found myself being a pain in the ass to the resa... just need to shut up and find help inside myself more. of course all three of us were a pain at some point... but... :-)
physically: 10 - have some small technical issues yet... still not sure what i am going to run in. going to drop the blue jean cutoffs and find some tri-shorts maybe. ( welcome to the 2000s!! )
workouts: 9 - did them all. did them pretty strong. might be blowing off the swim too much. but if we swim hard i think we can get 1:25 and an easy swim would get us 1:35. so... might be better just to take our time, lose the 10 minutes and just get out of the water really happy and ready to go. ( the shear tonnage of stuff i dont know yet is pretty staggering. )
one more week. hardest one ever! then... ? ? ?? ? then we wait and see.
“Whichever one you are in the process of doing, about halfway through the run, that one is the hardest one of all time.”
went for a long run for the first time in about 6 months. by long i mean about 4-5ish hours. the book has called for shorter runs all the way through - but we decided to bump it up a bit as we have the full on thingy in only 20 days. ( FOCK! )
well, we found a trail that was really wide and smooth. and hilly as all fock. we ended up parking about 1/4 from the end, staged about 3 gallons of water at the other end, also about 1/4 from that end. and for no particular reason, we started running.
uphill.
whoooh. about a year ago i would have walked the grade we ran up. it was pretty steep. the tricky part though was that the hill went on for about 2.9 of the 3.0 miles. then it was just about all downhill coming home. then, after 6 turn around and do it again, and again...
we did end up walking about half a mile all told but. wow, what a difference a year makes. also our pace was faster than our best ever half ironman from january. nice to be 185ish pounds now. also feel a ton better with the breathing. only once was i totally out of breath, and that was on a downhill section - so i must have been running all stupid or something for a while there.
average pace was 10:40. did about 18 miles. got really thirsty! it was about 88 degrees out although as the day wore on the temps plummeted drastically into the low 80s.
managed to eat a banana, 2 hammer gels and some cheatos. the drinking i kept up with even though the amount of sweat i put out was pretty comically ginormous.
i bit sore today as that was probably the hardest running i have done in my life. although for sure i have been pushed a lot harder in runs, i would roughly say i have done 6-8 runs that were harder. none hillier, only a few hotter, none faster... :-) so big improvement. might even run the marathon in canada under 7 hours now. :-)) and The Resa had a slightly better day than i had. she likes hills and heat a bit more than i do.
just to keep me level headed i got stung by a bee. really itchy now.
and sure did meet a lot of interesting people on the trail...
many people parked at the top of the big hill at the end of the trail. we *always* park at the point where you can run up the easiest. so picked the bottom of the run. that way we dont have to dread the last heartbreak hill. well, anyway, we are running up the hill towards the end and a lot of people are ripping past us downhill. the resa and i took a look at each of them after the first lap and made bets on who would be running back up the hill as about 70-80% walked back up. there was the occasional "runner". we saw 2 very good runners, about 7ish people that were better than we were - the rest were in tears.
one of the two fast people was a guy that looked like he stole a car sterio. long stringy black hair and a do-rag to tie it to his head. no shirt. about 140 pounds and maybe 5-8 tall. and he was bombing up the hill at about i would guess an 7min pace. just really going fast. but he looked like he knew what he was doing, not just running a fast quarter mile. did some kinda flicky finger thing at us that we practiced a few times with other runners, but they just stared at us. they were not as cool as we had just become obviously.
the other fast guy was mr hightech. like us he had the underarmor stuff on, the new shoes, also had the ipod going ( which we dont do ). ran along really smooth and just slipped past us at also probably 8min mile pace. this guy looked like he could do several laps at that pace.
of the 7ish people that were just faster, like slowly or somewhat quickly going past us, all of them were women. the resa would yell out stuff like "she is trying to beat us! trip her!" or i would say something else probably both annoying and also unheard through the Lady Gaga.
the biggest group was the what looked like first timers. cotton clothes and goofy running looks. these people all walked back up the hill. although one fat old guy surprised us with doing 2 laps.
at one point in the third lap we saw a chick running downhill towards us. after she went by the resa wondered if it was "Chicks with huge boobs running with a bouncing motion day" at the park as there were plenty of them.
we looked like the shuffling dead most of the run ourselves. but we tried pretty hard to keep from walking. we didnt walk at all until the last lap, and did that pretty much in small sections. another youtube video we like is by a guy Voit who rides the tour, he is from germany and has a very thick german accent. they asked him what does he do when he is climbing the big hills and his legs are screaming at him: "Shuts ups legs! Shuts up!" so we say that as we run when it starts to suck.
so how did it feel?
stingy.
my knees were a bit more sore than they have been in 8 months. also my push to the edge was a lot closer yesterday than in about a year. the book pretty much doesnt ever take you beyond what you can recover from and the longest run up till yesterday was about 90 minutes. so this was almost 3 times that. and i started getting the dizzy, stomach, blistered feet thingies going on. but we think we could have pounded out another lap if we had to. my biggest fear ( and most of my later whining ) was that it would take about a month to recover from this. but i think i overestimated the uncomfortableness and underestimated my new body. :-)
well, that was week 1 of 2 hard ones. 7 days from now the training will be complete... one way or another that is. then its taper to the day of the race. we both surprised ourselves on our good run. sheila joined up and also had the same run as we did. she used to do 4 hour marathons so she is getting stronger faster than we are on her feet.
SCORES!
mentally: 9 - i feel very good about the run, but i found myself being a pain in the ass to the resa... just need to shut up and find help inside myself more. of course all three of us were a pain at some point... but... :-)
physically: 10 - have some small technical issues yet... still not sure what i am going to run in. going to drop the blue jean cutoffs and find some tri-shorts maybe. ( welcome to the 2000s!! )
workouts: 9 - did them all. did them pretty strong. might be blowing off the swim too much. but if we swim hard i think we can get 1:25 and an easy swim would get us 1:35. so... might be better just to take our time, lose the 10 minutes and just get out of the water really happy and ready to go. ( the shear tonnage of stuff i dont know yet is pretty staggering. )
one more week. hardest one ever! then... ? ? ?? ? then we wait and see.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Spark
Someone once asked me what i was good at...
"The more I practice, the luckier I get." - Gary Player - golfer.
So I was sitting on the couch.
It must have been 25 years ago. And there I was sitting there. In front of me was, as always, a TV. I probably watched 5 hours of tv every day from 3 years old to my early 20s. Being fairly introverted I watched to get away from people.
On the tv was some pre-game show for an NFL football game. The Giants need to blah blah today if they hope to beat the Eagles because the Eagles can blah blah blah better than anyone... All very interesting.
"Now, let's go down to the field and join Mark."
"Thanks Jack, as you can see, I am down here on the field. The players are warming up and maybe we can get a quick interview with one of them."
Mark walks on the field towards some guy doing leg stretches.
"Here is the newest running back for the Giants..."
Mark stuffs a microphone into the guys face.
I am slunched on the couch, thinking I know just about all there is to know about pre-game 30 second interviews with guys who have the IQ of a springer spaniel... "Just glad to be here, one game at a time, thanks mom, thanks JC, hope to contribute, we play a really good team today."
The guy looks up, answers a few questions like I thought he would... something about glad to be there or something. And the reporter is just about to walk off. And the guy gently grabs the microphone. And he turns away from the reporter and looks right into the camera. Right at me. And says something I will never ever forget: "Limitations are largely a matter of habit and conventional thinking." The reporter is staring at him with a surprised look. And the guy turns to him. And says with absolute conviction. "And, it's VERY important that you remember this." Then he turns back to stretching his legs out.
"Again." - Herb Brooks, hockey coach.
Got off the couch. Walked in a circle. Not much else all that interesting happened that day. Other than I thought over and over about it. Habit. You *are* what you repeatedly do. And what was it that I was? A guy on a couch. Within a short time of that day M*A*S*H had their last ever episode. I remember watching it and feeling kinda sad that it was over and that everyone was now gone. I think everyone in the world watched that last show. I decided right then not to watch TV anymore. And I haven't. Never saw a Sienfield, or a Simpsons or a South Park or any of the other shows on. Lost, Dancing, American Idle - no clue at all about any of it. I decided ( like fish vegetarians ) that I could watch sports. So I have watched a lot of that over the last 25 years. Not telling you guys this for any reason other than I freed up about 30 hours a week. But the big impact wasn't the TV time. It was the thought that my limits were as the guy said due to habit and conventional thinking.
What could I do? Looking around. Shrug. What looks like fun? Computers looked like fun... so I wrote programs for a living. Spock even played chess against a computer. Chess! Chess is fun too. Run around and see stuff. So I went to Europe and lived in Africa. Climbed mt. K and played in the snow on the equator. Wondered what it would be like to build a house. So I built one myself. Wired it, plumbed, framed it, installed the duct work and the geothermal heating system. Was about to buy the cabinets but figured what the heck, I can learn how to make them. Took a few months. Laid the flooring and did all the trim work from rough wood, poured the cement, dug holes and filled holes. ( filling holes is not as hard as you would think it to be ) Took an IQ test and got into Prometheus. Met a supergenius, fell in love and married her. Learned to play guitar and bass and played for years in a band. Got good at golf and softball, learned to skate and play ice hockey. Bought a mountain bike and fell in love with the forest. Ah, the forest in the fall! the dry leaves rustle and whoosh behind you and you dont know if its the last ride of the year and you just want to live forever. Did adventure races. Doing my first ironman triathlon in 3 weeks. Been a professional model. Tracked and found wild lions on foot with no weapons. Jumped out of airplanes and laughed over and over at how incredibly awesome life is.
"Such amazing dreams and horrible nightmares." - Carl Sagan. Science weasel.
I looked for that spark. That jump in people. All my life I looked. And if you are willing to look you can see it sometimes out of the corner of your eye. Just a quick st. elmos fire flash of green. But you have to be patient beyond all fucking common sense. In a huge bar full of people we are only as smart as the dumbest person in the room. But... there, in the corner of your eye, in the pinched back crawly edge of your ear you hear it. Something... said with thought and passion. And it's the grabbing of that. That makes the whole of the waiting worth living for.
"It never gets any easier, I just get faster." - Greg Lemond, cyclist.
So, what do I feel I have gotten good at - and how did it affect me... I thought about this a long time. I am good at many things. Really good at a couple. Not sure I am great at anything. And so I was stuck thinking of things that marked some change. But I was missing the whole picture. :-) And so I would say that what I became really good at, was, living itself. Just that. Grabbing the fucker and squeezing, squeezing it. Taste as much as I can. Incredible disasters and awesome victories. Spinning and falling and shredding my body and more painfully my mind over it. Getting up. Again. Again. Again. Habit and conventional thinking. And it is beyond all words *staggeringly* important that you remember that.
Some people get nicknames, others get a stamping. "John the good looking guy." "Lisa the athlete." I never did get a nickname. But people always tell me how lucky I am.
The more I practice, the luckier I get.
"The more I practice, the luckier I get." - Gary Player - golfer.
So I was sitting on the couch.
It must have been 25 years ago. And there I was sitting there. In front of me was, as always, a TV. I probably watched 5 hours of tv every day from 3 years old to my early 20s. Being fairly introverted I watched to get away from people.
On the tv was some pre-game show for an NFL football game. The Giants need to blah blah today if they hope to beat the Eagles because the Eagles can blah blah blah better than anyone... All very interesting.
"Now, let's go down to the field and join Mark."
"Thanks Jack, as you can see, I am down here on the field. The players are warming up and maybe we can get a quick interview with one of them."
Mark walks on the field towards some guy doing leg stretches.
"Here is the newest running back for the Giants..."
Mark stuffs a microphone into the guys face.
I am slunched on the couch, thinking I know just about all there is to know about pre-game 30 second interviews with guys who have the IQ of a springer spaniel... "Just glad to be here, one game at a time, thanks mom, thanks JC, hope to contribute, we play a really good team today."
The guy looks up, answers a few questions like I thought he would... something about glad to be there or something. And the reporter is just about to walk off. And the guy gently grabs the microphone. And he turns away from the reporter and looks right into the camera. Right at me. And says something I will never ever forget: "Limitations are largely a matter of habit and conventional thinking." The reporter is staring at him with a surprised look. And the guy turns to him. And says with absolute conviction. "And, it's VERY important that you remember this." Then he turns back to stretching his legs out.
"Again." - Herb Brooks, hockey coach.
Got off the couch. Walked in a circle. Not much else all that interesting happened that day. Other than I thought over and over about it. Habit. You *are* what you repeatedly do. And what was it that I was? A guy on a couch. Within a short time of that day M*A*S*H had their last ever episode. I remember watching it and feeling kinda sad that it was over and that everyone was now gone. I think everyone in the world watched that last show. I decided right then not to watch TV anymore. And I haven't. Never saw a Sienfield, or a Simpsons or a South Park or any of the other shows on. Lost, Dancing, American Idle - no clue at all about any of it. I decided ( like fish vegetarians ) that I could watch sports. So I have watched a lot of that over the last 25 years. Not telling you guys this for any reason other than I freed up about 30 hours a week. But the big impact wasn't the TV time. It was the thought that my limits were as the guy said due to habit and conventional thinking.
What could I do? Looking around. Shrug. What looks like fun? Computers looked like fun... so I wrote programs for a living. Spock even played chess against a computer. Chess! Chess is fun too. Run around and see stuff. So I went to Europe and lived in Africa. Climbed mt. K and played in the snow on the equator. Wondered what it would be like to build a house. So I built one myself. Wired it, plumbed, framed it, installed the duct work and the geothermal heating system. Was about to buy the cabinets but figured what the heck, I can learn how to make them. Took a few months. Laid the flooring and did all the trim work from rough wood, poured the cement, dug holes and filled holes. ( filling holes is not as hard as you would think it to be ) Took an IQ test and got into Prometheus. Met a supergenius, fell in love and married her. Learned to play guitar and bass and played for years in a band. Got good at golf and softball, learned to skate and play ice hockey. Bought a mountain bike and fell in love with the forest. Ah, the forest in the fall! the dry leaves rustle and whoosh behind you and you dont know if its the last ride of the year and you just want to live forever. Did adventure races. Doing my first ironman triathlon in 3 weeks. Been a professional model. Tracked and found wild lions on foot with no weapons. Jumped out of airplanes and laughed over and over at how incredibly awesome life is.
"Such amazing dreams and horrible nightmares." - Carl Sagan. Science weasel.
I looked for that spark. That jump in people. All my life I looked. And if you are willing to look you can see it sometimes out of the corner of your eye. Just a quick st. elmos fire flash of green. But you have to be patient beyond all fucking common sense. In a huge bar full of people we are only as smart as the dumbest person in the room. But... there, in the corner of your eye, in the pinched back crawly edge of your ear you hear it. Something... said with thought and passion. And it's the grabbing of that. That makes the whole of the waiting worth living for.
"It never gets any easier, I just get faster." - Greg Lemond, cyclist.
So, what do I feel I have gotten good at - and how did it affect me... I thought about this a long time. I am good at many things. Really good at a couple. Not sure I am great at anything. And so I was stuck thinking of things that marked some change. But I was missing the whole picture. :-) And so I would say that what I became really good at, was, living itself. Just that. Grabbing the fucker and squeezing, squeezing it. Taste as much as I can. Incredible disasters and awesome victories. Spinning and falling and shredding my body and more painfully my mind over it. Getting up. Again. Again. Again. Habit and conventional thinking. And it is beyond all words *staggeringly* important that you remember that.
Some people get nicknames, others get a stamping. "John the good looking guy." "Lisa the athlete." I never did get a nickname. But people always tell me how lucky I am.
The more I practice, the luckier I get.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Weekend Half and PB race
the football hall of fame has a 5 mile race they do every year. one of the resa's weasles is the run race director. he runs like 3 min miles and coaches the track team and is all skinny and stuff. well, he said we had to do the race, so we signed up. we were number 60 and 61 of 1600 racers. people all checked out my number and then me. then looked at the number again. they are pretty interested in giving out numbers based on previous years events. so, after looking at the 60 ( which for a small time i had purposefully upside down to show it as 09 ) and then at me they had a "Oh, i am SOOO sorry" look. as if they knew i had gained about 30 pounds over the last year. but hahahaha! they had it backwards! i had lost 30. i was just still 30 pounds heavier than a runner that would have come in 6oth of 1600.
well, there is ten minutes to start and the resa and sheila decide to use the one port-a-pot at the start area. the line was only about 700 people long so we waited in that till the starting gun. we had made it about half way through when it went off. everyone ditched the idea of peeing and just took off. so - now, me too - went in and got happy.
this got us to the start line about 3 minutes after the leaders took off. so they were almost to mile one when we started. not bad really, we have done several races, both running and biking where the winner was already done when we started. the cape argus race in africa had the winners already showered and to the airport before we started. so anyway we are running all by our selves for a few miles. and we start passing people. and... wow. what a difference a year makes. the people we passed were running about 12 min miles and breathing like they had some horrible chest cold. struggling and gurgling. just like we did a year ago. amazing. really brought it home to us how much better we were at running. and! of course the flip side of that coin was how much better we can still get. my nephew mark ran his first marathon in under 3:30. running with him was certainly different. he just sorta plods along at an 7-8 minute pace, talking and looking around. no biggie. well, that was us at 9:20 pace yesterday. we chatted, dodged people, got water 2 times, ran over to a sprinkler to run through. mile 3-4 was up a long slow one mile hill and looking at the splits we did that one at 9:24. ran down the hill to the finish at 9:02 pace and then up the very steep hill at the end. probably the steepest hill in the city - up to the hall of fame front door. finished on my watch at 5.03 miles, 47:27. but it was just a normal jog to us... that was part of the really cool part. that we probably could have done it much faster. but all in all it beats our last 5 mile personal best of 55:19 - 4 years ago.
after the run we headed home for a bagel and then grinded out our half ironman. all went really smooth for everyone, no hurties or mess ups. really it went so smooth i kinda went into another world for most of it. just kinda faded out and when we were done i got some dinner and went to bed. oddly i didnt sleep all that well though, got up about 5 times to pee and had some weird annoying dreams. also really sore this morning. but pretty happy with the weekend!
that was the taper week. the next two weeks are the hardest in the set. we hope to do all of the workouts over the next 14 days. then the book calls for about a 75% week and a 40ish% week. i am going to adjust that downwards - against the book for the first time ever. although we have gone against the book many times in the other direction - especially in the early months. so the adjusting ( as of now ) is going to be more like 50% and then 5% of a normal week. :-D
and here is everyone's favorite video right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJErrp4eOw
we could be riding along and a hill would come up and then... "if this dont make your booty move your booty must be deeeead!!" from at least one person. on one hill The Resa was just in front of me. she turned around and gave me the hard stare and then took off, "ohhh! and Ken has NO ANSWER for this attack!!!", "3 meters of snow, sheila says there is no way. no way you can ride, no way." "Whoes that?"
four to go! 2 hard, 2 easy. and then, well... hopefully 4 weeks from today i am an ironman. if not - well, i will try again.
SCORES!
mentally - 9, hate to say 10 so close to the end here. was more tired than i thought i should have been off the bike yesterday. but it was 90 degrees out.
physically - 9, tired today. good thing it was an easy week! nothing hurts, the hole in my foot is looking pretty good and i have no injuries. just a bit heavier than i want to be at 189. but thats only ( still!!! ) 5 pounds. eating and drinking like maniacs on the bike has us weighing almost more at the end of the bike than the start.
workouts - 9, did them all except i think we lamed out the swim once.
2 hard ones to go!
well, there is ten minutes to start and the resa and sheila decide to use the one port-a-pot at the start area. the line was only about 700 people long so we waited in that till the starting gun. we had made it about half way through when it went off. everyone ditched the idea of peeing and just took off. so - now, me too - went in and got happy.
this got us to the start line about 3 minutes after the leaders took off. so they were almost to mile one when we started. not bad really, we have done several races, both running and biking where the winner was already done when we started. the cape argus race in africa had the winners already showered and to the airport before we started. so anyway we are running all by our selves for a few miles. and we start passing people. and... wow. what a difference a year makes. the people we passed were running about 12 min miles and breathing like they had some horrible chest cold. struggling and gurgling. just like we did a year ago. amazing. really brought it home to us how much better we were at running. and! of course the flip side of that coin was how much better we can still get. my nephew mark ran his first marathon in under 3:30. running with him was certainly different. he just sorta plods along at an 7-8 minute pace, talking and looking around. no biggie. well, that was us at 9:20 pace yesterday. we chatted, dodged people, got water 2 times, ran over to a sprinkler to run through. mile 3-4 was up a long slow one mile hill and looking at the splits we did that one at 9:24. ran down the hill to the finish at 9:02 pace and then up the very steep hill at the end. probably the steepest hill in the city - up to the hall of fame front door. finished on my watch at 5.03 miles, 47:27. but it was just a normal jog to us... that was part of the really cool part. that we probably could have done it much faster. but all in all it beats our last 5 mile personal best of 55:19 - 4 years ago.
after the run we headed home for a bagel and then grinded out our half ironman. all went really smooth for everyone, no hurties or mess ups. really it went so smooth i kinda went into another world for most of it. just kinda faded out and when we were done i got some dinner and went to bed. oddly i didnt sleep all that well though, got up about 5 times to pee and had some weird annoying dreams. also really sore this morning. but pretty happy with the weekend!
that was the taper week. the next two weeks are the hardest in the set. we hope to do all of the workouts over the next 14 days. then the book calls for about a 75% week and a 40ish% week. i am going to adjust that downwards - against the book for the first time ever. although we have gone against the book many times in the other direction - especially in the early months. so the adjusting ( as of now ) is going to be more like 50% and then 5% of a normal week. :-D
and here is everyone's favorite video right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHJErrp4eOw
we could be riding along and a hill would come up and then... "if this dont make your booty move your booty must be deeeead!!" from at least one person. on one hill The Resa was just in front of me. she turned around and gave me the hard stare and then took off, "ohhh! and Ken has NO ANSWER for this attack!!!", "3 meters of snow, sheila says there is no way. no way you can ride, no way." "Whoes that?"
four to go! 2 hard, 2 easy. and then, well... hopefully 4 weeks from today i am an ironman. if not - well, i will try again.
SCORES!
mentally - 9, hate to say 10 so close to the end here. was more tired than i thought i should have been off the bike yesterday. but it was 90 degrees out.
physically - 9, tired today. good thing it was an easy week! nothing hurts, the hole in my foot is looking pretty good and i have no injuries. just a bit heavier than i want to be at 189. but thats only ( still!!! ) 5 pounds. eating and drinking like maniacs on the bike has us weighing almost more at the end of the bike than the start.
workouts - 9, did them all except i think we lamed out the swim once.
2 hard ones to go!
Friday, July 30, 2010
whispers
i remember a scene from the movie Gladiator. it was in the first part of the movie when the main character is still a general. and the old emperor comes and visits after the battle scene. and he says back in the old days the word "Rome" was an idea so fragile that you could only whisper it.
ironman...
ironman...
Monday, July 26, 2010
Yep
ok - we decided to run an almost or maybe a full ironman on saturday. but it rained and lightninged and such - so we killed the idea. just went to the pool and swam a mile and a half - then dodged some clouds and ran 5 miles. no biggie.
the next morning, sunday we tried again to do the long workout. we woke up at 5 so we could get to the park by 6:30 to get started at 7. which we did. but. sadly the park doesn't open until 8. :-/
so... we went to the gas station and hung out there for a while. ahh well, i guess we could have called or looked it up - but wtf? oh well. and! as a bonus it closed at 10. so rather than going 7 to midnight we ended up with 8:30 to 10...
the transition area for the three of us was also the minivan. the "molester van" as The Resa likes to call it. well, we had to keep all of our stuff in there and open it up each time through. this slowed things down a bit - but worked out really well otherwise.
the three of us decided to stay together for the full day. we were not racing - just trying to learn stuff. and all in all we did learn several things. the only negative is when any one of the 3 of us had a problem - all three of us stopped and waited. bathroom breaks, fixing stuff, whatever... also we went at about 90% intensity for most of the day. all in all i would say the day was one of the funner ones this year.
first off we went down to the lake - which is about a half mile or so from the parking lot. we were the first people there. it was raining pretty good as we drove out to the park... but we checked the radar and it looked like it would clear up after a few hours. which it did. so when we arrived at the pond the rain had gone and it was just overcast. we did the map my run on the pond and three times around is an ironman swim. a distance which i have never done before.
i still haven't found a good fix for the rubbing seem on the wetsuit - i think maybe some kind of repair kit or something to cover it up. it rubs the back of my neck and i get raw there. i bought some larger bandages and had sheila put them on my neck where the suit was scraping. "wont work" she hinted. i then blobbed a bunch of vaseline on the seem too. all in all it pretty much worked. the bandaid came off about half way through, the vaseline seemed to keep the suit from digging too hard into my neck and in the end it was only sore but not painful. i guess i probably could do something about it. ;-)
so we suited up, got our goggles and my new swim hat on and said "3,2,1,go!" and then all stared at each other for a few seconds. finally we shrugged and started swimming. noticed a huge thing in the first 100 feet. my new swim hat echoes! its very loud when you have it over your ears, blurbity blurbity! huge difference from swimming without one. and it also explains the panic i went through in my first race. it was weird and i didnt like it all. so i lifted it above the ears and all was well. so - any beginners out there - think about this next time you try a swim cap. this was about the only two things i tried differently on the swim. the hat was an easy fix and the suit - well, thats going to need to be fixed i think. i also wore a watch for the first time but never looked at it. so wont bother with that again.
along we swam, the three of us. we guessed 1:30 to 1:40 in the water. the first time we swam in that lake the sun was right over head and the water was clearer. you could see fish and stuff on the bottom. this time it was a lot darker as the sun was just coming up - couldnt see anything really - some sand about 3 times is all. we pretty much just swam along. our sighting or maybe direction is better now as we didnt split up much and didnt re-cross our paths either.
we had to change our course a bit to avoid some fisherdudes that showed up. also another set of 2 people got into the lake with wetsuits and started swimming around too. but they were in and out of the water in about 30 minutes. they were fast too. probably doing about a mile or so in distance.
i remember getting very comfy in the water. about half way through a large dark cloud passed right over head. "Tragedy Strikes when Lightning Strikes" was my headline for the next days paper. either that or "Three Retards get Nuked in Lake" but no lightning came down and we managed to make it to the end of the swim.
i felt really good about the swim. new personal distance record and i didnt feel nearly as tired as i usually do after a pool workout. got out of the water at 1:41. in line with what we figured. but out effort was more just swimming rather than trying to go fast. but! i would be very happy with getting out of the water in under 2:20. as that was my biggest worry a year ago. so 1:50 or 1:20 or anything else is just fine. at this point something really bad would have to happen to not finish the swim. cramps? storm? locusts?!?!?
got out of the water and put my shoes on and walked back to the car. we chatted along the way. saw a few other people in wet suits go by. my foot itched a bit but otherwise all good.
the itch turned to pain as i got to the car. a stone was in my shoe and my wet foot rubbed it till it cut the skin. argh! my left foot now had a hole in it. ruined my mood there. gads i was bummed. i was thinking i would be hopping on the run. poop! ahh well, what can you do. so i put a bandaid on it and started switching to the bike. which normally would take a few minutes to put my shoes and shirt on and be all set up. but we hauled out the bikes - having to unload the car to do it, pumped the tires, checked stuff - loaded up with food and water. all in all the transition took about 40 minutes from the lake to the bike start.
once we were finally ready we hopped on the bikes and took off. i had mapped a course that was a loop for 10 miles and an out and back section which was also 10 miles long. the out and back is a big favorite with the triathletes - there were about 50 people on that as we rode it. not too many people together - mostly single riders. a few 2 people teams and the big train of three that was us.
the loop kinda sucked. it was on lumpy roads and had more traffic. but i think it was better than just doing the 10 mile out and back 11 times. so we did a loop, did the out and back and then went to the car. 20.01 miles. our first time around i think we went to hard. just a bit. we were trying to remember not too. but you feel so fresh when you start. and after the first 20 we were feeling like we went 20. the next 20 we for sure went too hard. we did it in just a touch over and hour and were pretty dead by the end of it. felt like we had done 60+ miles at this point. well, we talked about it. all along we have been up against the question of whether to go as hard as we can on the bike, and then walk/trot/walk the marathon or to go easy on the bike and then have to run run the marathon. we are not runners and for a long time we have leaned towards getting as much done on the bike as we could and just suck it up on the shuffle. the other way - we figured, was to go easy on the bike and still be not too good on the run.
after reading some things about this - it seems the general thought is that you can drop 3 miles per hour on your bike and run 10 min miles rather than have the 3 miles per hour and walk 19 min miles. but we were not completely convinced one way or the other. just seems like we would have to do several events each way and see what worked out best.
i think though, after the full day sunday that we are now leaning towards not bombing the bike too much. first off it makes the bike if less adrenaline-ee more comfy. would be nice to not get off the bike and already feel totally gassed. and... well. i will leave that for the end to tell you the reason we really changed our minds.
so the second loop pretty well pushed us too much. towards the end of the 2nd we came upon another set of two riders. some guy and his girlfriend/wife. they were ahead of us by a few hundred feet. we were coming up on the far end of the out and back. the guy kept looked back at us, then chattered to the chick. they would put in a burst and be out ahead a bit. then slowly start coming back. then more talking by the guy and again a bit of a speed increase. we were about a half mile from the end and The Resa was in front. she also noticed all this going on. she turned around and looked at me and put here finger to her lips and then with a big grin crooked her finger and did the 'come here' motion. so we hit the gas. lol - was a lot of fun as the guy panicked when he saw us coming - but it was too late, we ripped by at probably something about 5-7 miles per hour faster as we hit the turn-a-round. Resa couldnt resist and asked him how his ride was going as we went past. the next 3 miles we spent laughing about it. they stopped in the parking lot and we never saw them again. i think they spent the next 12 hours hating each other.
other people we did see several times. a few we saw for 4-5 hours. and not the extreme people either. a lot of the 150 pound 6 foot tall guys pounded out what looked to be 30mph sprints back and forth and were gone in an hour. but some of the most average people were just cruising along like we were... hour after hour... sure makes us smile seeing other people trying to change their life. :-)
but after the second time around we were thinking we would have to back off if we wanted to finish with anything left. the park is not HILLY but it is hilly. not many flat areas - just a bit on the suck loop. at least the wind was pretty mild if still there. so the third of five loops starts and we put a cap on our effort. we decided to back way down to see what would happen. so we rode ( trying to avoid being frustrated ) at a slower pace. now we got passed a lot by people. and we did some chattering - well i did. "On your left!" from behind and i would yell back something like "Oh Great! Now What? You AGAIN??" or "You'll never catch us copper!" or "we will see you in 20 miles fastguy." sure was fun. and NO flats! really weird. must be because we were riding on the road and not the mountain bike trails or something.
third and fourth and fifth laps gets us a touch over 100 miles. felt about the same as after lap 2. which is to say like we were about 60 miles in. the last 12 miles we used to stage water on the trail. so we loaded up a few times and dumped about 10 waters and gatorades out there. sadly it was starting to get late. we decided all along not to run the marathon, just a 10 mile run with a 16 mile walk if we even did that much. we just didnt want to get hurt or have to recover for 3 weeks. so with only a few hours left before the park closed we decided to run out a half marathon. and it wasnt all that hard. we did walk a lot, but we were all three of us surprised how strong we felt. i was eating and drinking on the bike - like we have done the last 3 weeks and felt very strong on the run - even though i felt pretty done on the bike.
so - this is the reason for the slower bikes pace. i think we have improved a ton in the last year. a year ago after a 100+ mile ride it was lights out for the next few days. now we were trotting along at about 30 seconds off of our normal running pace. luckily my sore foot was a non-issue. it only hurt later in the shower.
i did get something nasty going on in my stomach. not sure what it was about - i think though that after the bike i wanted to try some baked potato. so we made up a bunch of them and the plan was to eat some at the start, middle and after the run. and everyone thought they were awesome. but i was starving and so i pretty much ate 5 potatoes all by myself after the bike. i was no longer starving after that. but... gads. lol.
also on the run it started getting dark. whenever it gets withing 2 hours of dark in the summer i grab the bug spray. i sprayed it all over me. then again a second time. sprayed my hat and shoes and ears and butt and everything. sheila and the resa were just watching. but the resa knows i am "The Bug Pied Piper" things from 200 miles away will come just to land on me. i have killed 3 mosquitoes in one smack. its insane and i have no idea why it is, but i attract bugs - nasty ones - like nobody i have EVER met. Resa doesnt even use bug spray. as long as i am around. so we start running the first 6.5 mile lap and sure enough there is a huge trail of bugs flying around behind me. i got to run behind sheila and resa as they cant see very well with me in front. because there are 2 to 3 thousand bugs behind me. after a while we get to our first water and we stop to drink. i smack a few bugs, wave out some from under the hat and generally hop up and down and walk in fast circles while they drink. we start running again and i ask the resa if she sees a horse fly on the back of my head. KA-BAM! my vision goes blurry as a white flash of light explodes in front of my eyes. my ears are ringing and the back of my head is on fire. a horse fly falls to the ground. "got the focker" she notes. she "gets" two more over the next mile. but on the way back i get some revenge on the two girls as the bugs are starting to go to a secondary source of food as it gets darker out. now all three of us are running and hopping and slapping stuff as we get to the car. they load up on bug spray, i re-load 2 more times and we go out for our last 6.5 miles. again i get all the bug attention now that they are protected.
its now monday morning and i feel pretty good. my stomach is still sore - like i got punched or something. so - maybe it was something i ate the night before. not sure. otherwise my legs are dead - but not killer. certainly been more tired from lesser workouts. the worst thing is the bloody sore on my foot from walking back from the pond - thats annoying. :-)
huge and also big things learned:
a - bike like its 150 miles not 50. i think we can have a pretty good run if we stay smart on the bike.
b - dont eat 12 potatoes in 2 minutes.
c - drink more than you think you should. i drank a gallon and peed a cup.
d - we added several more items to our trans bags - things like eyedrops and chapstick. normal things you can grab out of the car but would not be there unless we planned on it.
e - big confidence in the Ironman. now i think it will take something bad to happen to keep up from finishing. we hope to still finish at ANY time. one thing i have learned is each day is different and putting a goal for time has now been tossed in favour of just getting our first ever finish ( as it was when we first decided to do this ). maybe next year ( or in 3 years ) we can go for 14 hours or something fast. 16:59 or bust baby!
SCORES:
mentally: 10 - feel great about stuff. feel like a retard for not fixing my shoe - but thats because we did well in the lake and maybe thats a lesson to stay alert especially when things are going great.
physically: 9 - stomach asploded and i was dehydrated at the end of the run. but felt strong all day long really only hurt the last 30 minutes.
workouts: 10 - had a great hard week. next week is a taper ( then the last 4 to go )
the next morning, sunday we tried again to do the long workout. we woke up at 5 so we could get to the park by 6:30 to get started at 7. which we did. but. sadly the park doesn't open until 8. :-/
so... we went to the gas station and hung out there for a while. ahh well, i guess we could have called or looked it up - but wtf? oh well. and! as a bonus it closed at 10. so rather than going 7 to midnight we ended up with 8:30 to 10...
the transition area for the three of us was also the minivan. the "molester van" as The Resa likes to call it. well, we had to keep all of our stuff in there and open it up each time through. this slowed things down a bit - but worked out really well otherwise.
the three of us decided to stay together for the full day. we were not racing - just trying to learn stuff. and all in all we did learn several things. the only negative is when any one of the 3 of us had a problem - all three of us stopped and waited. bathroom breaks, fixing stuff, whatever... also we went at about 90% intensity for most of the day. all in all i would say the day was one of the funner ones this year.
first off we went down to the lake - which is about a half mile or so from the parking lot. we were the first people there. it was raining pretty good as we drove out to the park... but we checked the radar and it looked like it would clear up after a few hours. which it did. so when we arrived at the pond the rain had gone and it was just overcast. we did the map my run on the pond and three times around is an ironman swim. a distance which i have never done before.
i still haven't found a good fix for the rubbing seem on the wetsuit - i think maybe some kind of repair kit or something to cover it up. it rubs the back of my neck and i get raw there. i bought some larger bandages and had sheila put them on my neck where the suit was scraping. "wont work" she hinted. i then blobbed a bunch of vaseline on the seem too. all in all it pretty much worked. the bandaid came off about half way through, the vaseline seemed to keep the suit from digging too hard into my neck and in the end it was only sore but not painful. i guess i probably could do something about it. ;-)
so we suited up, got our goggles and my new swim hat on and said "3,2,1,go!" and then all stared at each other for a few seconds. finally we shrugged and started swimming. noticed a huge thing in the first 100 feet. my new swim hat echoes! its very loud when you have it over your ears, blurbity blurbity! huge difference from swimming without one. and it also explains the panic i went through in my first race. it was weird and i didnt like it all. so i lifted it above the ears and all was well. so - any beginners out there - think about this next time you try a swim cap. this was about the only two things i tried differently on the swim. the hat was an easy fix and the suit - well, thats going to need to be fixed i think. i also wore a watch for the first time but never looked at it. so wont bother with that again.
along we swam, the three of us. we guessed 1:30 to 1:40 in the water. the first time we swam in that lake the sun was right over head and the water was clearer. you could see fish and stuff on the bottom. this time it was a lot darker as the sun was just coming up - couldnt see anything really - some sand about 3 times is all. we pretty much just swam along. our sighting or maybe direction is better now as we didnt split up much and didnt re-cross our paths either.
we had to change our course a bit to avoid some fisherdudes that showed up. also another set of 2 people got into the lake with wetsuits and started swimming around too. but they were in and out of the water in about 30 minutes. they were fast too. probably doing about a mile or so in distance.
i remember getting very comfy in the water. about half way through a large dark cloud passed right over head. "Tragedy Strikes when Lightning Strikes" was my headline for the next days paper. either that or "Three Retards get Nuked in Lake" but no lightning came down and we managed to make it to the end of the swim.
i felt really good about the swim. new personal distance record and i didnt feel nearly as tired as i usually do after a pool workout. got out of the water at 1:41. in line with what we figured. but out effort was more just swimming rather than trying to go fast. but! i would be very happy with getting out of the water in under 2:20. as that was my biggest worry a year ago. so 1:50 or 1:20 or anything else is just fine. at this point something really bad would have to happen to not finish the swim. cramps? storm? locusts?!?!?
got out of the water and put my shoes on and walked back to the car. we chatted along the way. saw a few other people in wet suits go by. my foot itched a bit but otherwise all good.
the itch turned to pain as i got to the car. a stone was in my shoe and my wet foot rubbed it till it cut the skin. argh! my left foot now had a hole in it. ruined my mood there. gads i was bummed. i was thinking i would be hopping on the run. poop! ahh well, what can you do. so i put a bandaid on it and started switching to the bike. which normally would take a few minutes to put my shoes and shirt on and be all set up. but we hauled out the bikes - having to unload the car to do it, pumped the tires, checked stuff - loaded up with food and water. all in all the transition took about 40 minutes from the lake to the bike start.
once we were finally ready we hopped on the bikes and took off. i had mapped a course that was a loop for 10 miles and an out and back section which was also 10 miles long. the out and back is a big favorite with the triathletes - there were about 50 people on that as we rode it. not too many people together - mostly single riders. a few 2 people teams and the big train of three that was us.
the loop kinda sucked. it was on lumpy roads and had more traffic. but i think it was better than just doing the 10 mile out and back 11 times. so we did a loop, did the out and back and then went to the car. 20.01 miles. our first time around i think we went to hard. just a bit. we were trying to remember not too. but you feel so fresh when you start. and after the first 20 we were feeling like we went 20. the next 20 we for sure went too hard. we did it in just a touch over and hour and were pretty dead by the end of it. felt like we had done 60+ miles at this point. well, we talked about it. all along we have been up against the question of whether to go as hard as we can on the bike, and then walk/trot/walk the marathon or to go easy on the bike and then have to run run the marathon. we are not runners and for a long time we have leaned towards getting as much done on the bike as we could and just suck it up on the shuffle. the other way - we figured, was to go easy on the bike and still be not too good on the run.
after reading some things about this - it seems the general thought is that you can drop 3 miles per hour on your bike and run 10 min miles rather than have the 3 miles per hour and walk 19 min miles. but we were not completely convinced one way or the other. just seems like we would have to do several events each way and see what worked out best.
i think though, after the full day sunday that we are now leaning towards not bombing the bike too much. first off it makes the bike if less adrenaline-ee more comfy. would be nice to not get off the bike and already feel totally gassed. and... well. i will leave that for the end to tell you the reason we really changed our minds.
so the second loop pretty well pushed us too much. towards the end of the 2nd we came upon another set of two riders. some guy and his girlfriend/wife. they were ahead of us by a few hundred feet. we were coming up on the far end of the out and back. the guy kept looked back at us, then chattered to the chick. they would put in a burst and be out ahead a bit. then slowly start coming back. then more talking by the guy and again a bit of a speed increase. we were about a half mile from the end and The Resa was in front. she also noticed all this going on. she turned around and looked at me and put here finger to her lips and then with a big grin crooked her finger and did the 'come here' motion. so we hit the gas. lol - was a lot of fun as the guy panicked when he saw us coming - but it was too late, we ripped by at probably something about 5-7 miles per hour faster as we hit the turn-a-round. Resa couldnt resist and asked him how his ride was going as we went past. the next 3 miles we spent laughing about it. they stopped in the parking lot and we never saw them again. i think they spent the next 12 hours hating each other.
other people we did see several times. a few we saw for 4-5 hours. and not the extreme people either. a lot of the 150 pound 6 foot tall guys pounded out what looked to be 30mph sprints back and forth and were gone in an hour. but some of the most average people were just cruising along like we were... hour after hour... sure makes us smile seeing other people trying to change their life. :-)
but after the second time around we were thinking we would have to back off if we wanted to finish with anything left. the park is not HILLY but it is hilly. not many flat areas - just a bit on the suck loop. at least the wind was pretty mild if still there. so the third of five loops starts and we put a cap on our effort. we decided to back way down to see what would happen. so we rode ( trying to avoid being frustrated ) at a slower pace. now we got passed a lot by people. and we did some chattering - well i did. "On your left!" from behind and i would yell back something like "Oh Great! Now What? You AGAIN??" or "You'll never catch us copper!" or "we will see you in 20 miles fastguy." sure was fun. and NO flats! really weird. must be because we were riding on the road and not the mountain bike trails or something.
third and fourth and fifth laps gets us a touch over 100 miles. felt about the same as after lap 2. which is to say like we were about 60 miles in. the last 12 miles we used to stage water on the trail. so we loaded up a few times and dumped about 10 waters and gatorades out there. sadly it was starting to get late. we decided all along not to run the marathon, just a 10 mile run with a 16 mile walk if we even did that much. we just didnt want to get hurt or have to recover for 3 weeks. so with only a few hours left before the park closed we decided to run out a half marathon. and it wasnt all that hard. we did walk a lot, but we were all three of us surprised how strong we felt. i was eating and drinking on the bike - like we have done the last 3 weeks and felt very strong on the run - even though i felt pretty done on the bike.
so - this is the reason for the slower bikes pace. i think we have improved a ton in the last year. a year ago after a 100+ mile ride it was lights out for the next few days. now we were trotting along at about 30 seconds off of our normal running pace. luckily my sore foot was a non-issue. it only hurt later in the shower.
i did get something nasty going on in my stomach. not sure what it was about - i think though that after the bike i wanted to try some baked potato. so we made up a bunch of them and the plan was to eat some at the start, middle and after the run. and everyone thought they were awesome. but i was starving and so i pretty much ate 5 potatoes all by myself after the bike. i was no longer starving after that. but... gads. lol.
also on the run it started getting dark. whenever it gets withing 2 hours of dark in the summer i grab the bug spray. i sprayed it all over me. then again a second time. sprayed my hat and shoes and ears and butt and everything. sheila and the resa were just watching. but the resa knows i am "The Bug Pied Piper" things from 200 miles away will come just to land on me. i have killed 3 mosquitoes in one smack. its insane and i have no idea why it is, but i attract bugs - nasty ones - like nobody i have EVER met. Resa doesnt even use bug spray. as long as i am around. so we start running the first 6.5 mile lap and sure enough there is a huge trail of bugs flying around behind me. i got to run behind sheila and resa as they cant see very well with me in front. because there are 2 to 3 thousand bugs behind me. after a while we get to our first water and we stop to drink. i smack a few bugs, wave out some from under the hat and generally hop up and down and walk in fast circles while they drink. we start running again and i ask the resa if she sees a horse fly on the back of my head. KA-BAM! my vision goes blurry as a white flash of light explodes in front of my eyes. my ears are ringing and the back of my head is on fire. a horse fly falls to the ground. "got the focker" she notes. she "gets" two more over the next mile. but on the way back i get some revenge on the two girls as the bugs are starting to go to a secondary source of food as it gets darker out. now all three of us are running and hopping and slapping stuff as we get to the car. they load up on bug spray, i re-load 2 more times and we go out for our last 6.5 miles. again i get all the bug attention now that they are protected.
its now monday morning and i feel pretty good. my stomach is still sore - like i got punched or something. so - maybe it was something i ate the night before. not sure. otherwise my legs are dead - but not killer. certainly been more tired from lesser workouts. the worst thing is the bloody sore on my foot from walking back from the pond - thats annoying. :-)
huge and also big things learned:
a - bike like its 150 miles not 50. i think we can have a pretty good run if we stay smart on the bike.
b - dont eat 12 potatoes in 2 minutes.
c - drink more than you think you should. i drank a gallon and peed a cup.
d - we added several more items to our trans bags - things like eyedrops and chapstick. normal things you can grab out of the car but would not be there unless we planned on it.
e - big confidence in the Ironman. now i think it will take something bad to happen to keep up from finishing. we hope to still finish at ANY time. one thing i have learned is each day is different and putting a goal for time has now been tossed in favour of just getting our first ever finish ( as it was when we first decided to do this ). maybe next year ( or in 3 years ) we can go for 14 hours or something fast. 16:59 or bust baby!
SCORES:
mentally: 10 - feel great about stuff. feel like a retard for not fixing my shoe - but thats because we did well in the lake and maybe thats a lesson to stay alert especially when things are going great.
physically: 9 - stomach asploded and i was dehydrated at the end of the run. but felt strong all day long really only hurt the last 30 minutes.
workouts: 10 - had a great hard week. next week is a taper ( then the last 4 to go )
Monday, July 19, 2010
Heavy and Sweaty
so i am slightly heavier on mondays now.
we have been playing over the last month with eating on bike rides. our energy level has gone up tremendously. the first 3 hours or so feel the same. but the next three are completely different. before they used to be a slow grinding death, but now they are about like the first three hours again. the legs feel great. other parts are still going through the slow death thingy. but at least i am not struggling to keep a slower and slower pace going.
on the other side of that coin my weight is higher on monday mornings. now i am not recovering all day monday so furiously. makes for better rides on sunday and then the week rides are a lot more fun too. so all in all this has been our biggest improvement. wish i had known this 20 years ago... ( or even 20 weeks! )
here is my weight over the last few months: once a week on mondays:
March 22, 2010 198
March 29, 2010 194
April 5, 2010 198
April 12, 2010 194
April 19, 2010 194
April 26, 2010 191
May 3, 2010 192
May 10, 2010 192
May 17, 2010 191
May 24, 2010 188
May 31, 2010 190
June 7, 2010 187
June 14, 2010 187
June 21, 2010 186
June 28, 2010 186
July 5, 2010 185
July 12, 2010 187
July 19, 2010 191
my goal all along was 185 and i think i am going to stick to it. going to watch a bit more what i eat from now one in. kinda been leaning towards the paleo diet - which is pretty high in protein.
also noticed something about being sweaty. a year ago i was bigger and more out of shape - not to say i am in shape, but i was worse off a year ago. and when i worked out i would sweat, ( as i still do lol ) but it was different. i would take longer to start sweating. now i am sweating putting air in the tires. then it would take 30 minutes before i got really going. so i think my body is more ready to get rolling now. and! the other side is true too. then i would be sweaty about 3 hours after working out. i remember sitting on the floor under the ceiling fan for about an hour after a long ride. now i bring a change of clothes and am pretty done sweating about 5 minutes after getting off the bike.
just weird stuff, life is.
and! what did we do this week. not all that much weirdly. we followed the book and had a fairly tough book workout. but we didnt add anything to the weekend like we normally do so all in all it was a pretty easy week.
the worst part of the week was the long swim on the weekend. for the third time in my life i did a lake swim. this time the water was pretty nasty and you couldnt see anything in it. just like the first time i did it. but there was no panic. i really think i am okay in lakes now. we just swam back and forth around the lake a bit. two interesting things happened. 1 - my goggles got full of water, as happens every once in a while, and its rather weird getting them re-set in the middle of the lake. ( read about this in chuck's write up ) and he is right, it is a bit weird treading water and fixing them. as you are almost underwater for some of it. you can lay on your back and float pretty well in a wet suit and if there are no waves you can do it that way. or you can kick a bit and just get a little lucky doing it normal. or! you can bring along a Resa and hold onto that as you do it. trouble is, Resas dont like it too much. i am guessing this is something you can practice about ten times and never have another thought about it. kinda like getting into your clip pedals. and, 2 - my neck is all bloody AGAIN. in the same place. this time i lubbed up with a big wad of vasaline before swimming, to glid that part of the wet suit. no luck. about 30 minutes in it was burning. 45 minutes in and i was on the shore looking at the suit. what a pain. turns out a seam at the top is rough, rough enough to have skin in it now. argh. need a fix on this very seriously soon. i can either fix me with maybe a bandaide type patch on my neck - trying this in a few days. or fix the suit with some kinda patch on the seam. but thats our big trouble with swimming right now.
we plan on taking this friday off going up to michigan and running a full-on ironman. or about 80-90% of one. just to check out our stuff a bit on a really long day. obviously we are not going to do that well time wise as the taper is one day but... we would really like a full run at everything. so... unless there is really bad weather ( when we will move it to sunday ) here is the plan:
get in the water about 8 in the morning ( sounds late but our overhead is about 3 hours to get there and set up and ... well, thats going to have to be it. ) once in the water we do three laps of the lake. which is 2.3 - 2.5 miles based on how much we hug the corners.
move over to bikes ( hopefully with a less than 30 minute trans as the lake is about 1/2 mile from the parking lot and the trans is getting stuff out of the locked car. once on the bikes we ride at least 100-112 miles.
switch to running/walking. again a trans - this time pushing bikes and stuff back into the car. also getting re-loaded food and such. on our feet we would like to do about 20 miles. running the first 10 and walking the second. here is where we are wimping - but i am not sure trying to run a high 20 miles would really be good for us. might take a few weeks to recover and we dont want to get totally blasted, just be out there for a long day.
barring wind i would guess:
1:40 swim
0:30 trans
6:30 ride
5:00 run/walk
there is a half ironman this week in michigan and we were thinking of doing that. but its $250 per person and... i dont know we just feel we can do our own longer workout by ourselves.
SCORES!
mentally: 9 - feel a bit lame about the last two weeks and oddly my weight up from doing a good job eating has me thinking i haven't improved. i should not use weight as a measure of fitness. but otherwise the feel very confident and happy. :-)
physically: 9 - fresh and no pains. had a minor foot roll about a week ago, but is better now. all good. arms a bit weak.
workouts: 7 - lamed them up a bit. ahh well. its too hot out to exercise!!! lol
next week should ( i hope ) be a very interesting one on going longer distances. if we feel really good we might just trot out the last 6 miles on the run and say we are ironmen. odds of that are about 10% though!
we have been playing over the last month with eating on bike rides. our energy level has gone up tremendously. the first 3 hours or so feel the same. but the next three are completely different. before they used to be a slow grinding death, but now they are about like the first three hours again. the legs feel great. other parts are still going through the slow death thingy. but at least i am not struggling to keep a slower and slower pace going.
on the other side of that coin my weight is higher on monday mornings. now i am not recovering all day monday so furiously. makes for better rides on sunday and then the week rides are a lot more fun too. so all in all this has been our biggest improvement. wish i had known this 20 years ago... ( or even 20 weeks! )
here is my weight over the last few months: once a week on mondays:
March 22, 2010 198
March 29, 2010 194
April 5, 2010 198
April 12, 2010 194
April 19, 2010 194
April 26, 2010 191
May 3, 2010 192
May 10, 2010 192
May 17, 2010 191
May 24, 2010 188
May 31, 2010 190
June 7, 2010 187
June 14, 2010 187
June 21, 2010 186
June 28, 2010 186
July 5, 2010 185
July 12, 2010 187
July 19, 2010 191
my goal all along was 185 and i think i am going to stick to it. going to watch a bit more what i eat from now one in. kinda been leaning towards the paleo diet - which is pretty high in protein.
also noticed something about being sweaty. a year ago i was bigger and more out of shape - not to say i am in shape, but i was worse off a year ago. and when i worked out i would sweat, ( as i still do lol ) but it was different. i would take longer to start sweating. now i am sweating putting air in the tires. then it would take 30 minutes before i got really going. so i think my body is more ready to get rolling now. and! the other side is true too. then i would be sweaty about 3 hours after working out. i remember sitting on the floor under the ceiling fan for about an hour after a long ride. now i bring a change of clothes and am pretty done sweating about 5 minutes after getting off the bike.
just weird stuff, life is.
and! what did we do this week. not all that much weirdly. we followed the book and had a fairly tough book workout. but we didnt add anything to the weekend like we normally do so all in all it was a pretty easy week.
the worst part of the week was the long swim on the weekend. for the third time in my life i did a lake swim. this time the water was pretty nasty and you couldnt see anything in it. just like the first time i did it. but there was no panic. i really think i am okay in lakes now. we just swam back and forth around the lake a bit. two interesting things happened. 1 - my goggles got full of water, as happens every once in a while, and its rather weird getting them re-set in the middle of the lake. ( read about this in chuck's write up ) and he is right, it is a bit weird treading water and fixing them. as you are almost underwater for some of it. you can lay on your back and float pretty well in a wet suit and if there are no waves you can do it that way. or you can kick a bit and just get a little lucky doing it normal. or! you can bring along a Resa and hold onto that as you do it. trouble is, Resas dont like it too much. i am guessing this is something you can practice about ten times and never have another thought about it. kinda like getting into your clip pedals. and, 2 - my neck is all bloody AGAIN. in the same place. this time i lubbed up with a big wad of vasaline before swimming, to glid that part of the wet suit. no luck. about 30 minutes in it was burning. 45 minutes in and i was on the shore looking at the suit. what a pain. turns out a seam at the top is rough, rough enough to have skin in it now. argh. need a fix on this very seriously soon. i can either fix me with maybe a bandaide type patch on my neck - trying this in a few days. or fix the suit with some kinda patch on the seam. but thats our big trouble with swimming right now.
we plan on taking this friday off going up to michigan and running a full-on ironman. or about 80-90% of one. just to check out our stuff a bit on a really long day. obviously we are not going to do that well time wise as the taper is one day but... we would really like a full run at everything. so... unless there is really bad weather ( when we will move it to sunday ) here is the plan:
get in the water about 8 in the morning ( sounds late but our overhead is about 3 hours to get there and set up and ... well, thats going to have to be it. ) once in the water we do three laps of the lake. which is 2.3 - 2.5 miles based on how much we hug the corners.
move over to bikes ( hopefully with a less than 30 minute trans as the lake is about 1/2 mile from the parking lot and the trans is getting stuff out of the locked car. once on the bikes we ride at least 100-112 miles.
switch to running/walking. again a trans - this time pushing bikes and stuff back into the car. also getting re-loaded food and such. on our feet we would like to do about 20 miles. running the first 10 and walking the second. here is where we are wimping - but i am not sure trying to run a high 20 miles would really be good for us. might take a few weeks to recover and we dont want to get totally blasted, just be out there for a long day.
barring wind i would guess:
1:40 swim
0:30 trans
6:30 ride
5:00 run/walk
there is a half ironman this week in michigan and we were thinking of doing that. but its $250 per person and... i dont know we just feel we can do our own longer workout by ourselves.
SCORES!
mentally: 9 - feel a bit lame about the last two weeks and oddly my weight up from doing a good job eating has me thinking i haven't improved. i should not use weight as a measure of fitness. but otherwise the feel very confident and happy. :-)
physically: 9 - fresh and no pains. had a minor foot roll about a week ago, but is better now. all good. arms a bit weak.
workouts: 7 - lamed them up a bit. ahh well. its too hot out to exercise!!! lol
next week should ( i hope ) be a very interesting one on going longer distances. if we feel really good we might just trot out the last 6 miles on the run and say we are ironmen. odds of that are about 10% though!
Monday, July 12, 2010
under 50
well, there are 46 years gone in my life and 46 days till the event. uh... well, i guess thats pretty interesting. hmm... ok.
"Are you hurt or injured?"
"What?"
"Are you hurt or are you injured?"
"What is the difference?"
"Well, if you are injured you cant play anymore and i have to take you out of the game and send you to the showers. If you are hurt, you keep playing."
"Uh, hurt i guess."
we had a harder week, but it went really well. some parts hurt... the weekdays were pretty much the usual, biked 2 hours on tuesday and another 2 on thursday. the run/swim days were again as about usual, with 3 hours wed and just the run friday.
the weekend had us biking a long one on saturday, but first we had to make up the swim. so we swam the drill set and then got out and did the 5 hour bike ride. we rode up towards cleveland and back. we found a new trail called the emerald necklace or something ( kinda sounds like a porn site?? ) well, anyway we rode the emerald. it is a long straightaway ( well, a twisty one ) so a long twistyway between two loops. the top loop is just part of the trail but the lower loop is still kinda in the building phase and you have to ride down some streets and through neighborhoods, hop over fences and ride on rooftops. we got lost about 23 times in this lower loop section. and to do it the next time i think there is not much chance we will pull it off without getting lost again at least 5 times. but we did a lot of backtracking and asking people were we were and in the end almost enjoyed that section. the rest was awesome though. better than the tow path, - well, actually i would say they are both great. the emerald is a bit faster paced. the towpath has more baby strollers and tourists - also it has more dirt sections. so now we have two fun trails. :-)
again we went with another "BIG FOOD" ride. we ate and ate, resa was thinking we *gained* weight on the ride. that watching TV would have been healthier! but boy did we feel great afterwards. again a long ride and i was totally ready to run a long way. felt awesome. so, after the bike we decided to get a walk in. we hiked another 2 hours - which was harder than the bike as the hills were very steep. more like we scrambled 2 hours.
baby got new shoes! and the resa tried out some new bike shoes for the ride. she said they were a big improvement over her old ones. looks like her knees are better too. which had us scared for a few weeks there. she is as strong as ever, if a little more sore than a few months ago.
sunday had us swim 3400 in the pool, longest swim yet, but 4000s are coming. we did it in about 1:20. so thats again on line with our 1:30 triathlon swim. erg, i am so ready to do that swim now. thats the only event we have a pretty good feeling on time. 1:30 - 1:45 seems pretty much what we should get. the bike could be anything from 6:00 to dnf. well, dnf if we wipe out. i would say 6-7:30 is possible. and the run is pretty much going to be i would guess 6:00-7:00 also. getting us home just before we turn into pumpkins! well, after the swim we went on the run. did a half marathon. and pretty slow too! was really hot out again with the 90 degree heat. i think though that i can handle heat but not sun for some lame reason. i would much rather have shady 90 than sunny 80. hmmm following that logic i would bet i would REALLY like shady 65. hmm.... yeah. :-) well, i had a bit of a better run than i was thinking i would. we got the first 10 miles done in about 104 minutes - which is very fast for us. but died on the last three and pretty much walked/trotted it in from there. i think we still need to up our food and water on the run.
also there has been a bit of talk about swimming and running together, which would be fine with us. especially the run, we could help some of you people out maybe - keep the pace up. but i tell you now, and i am as serious as a cat in a microwave, if you cant keep a 16-18min mile pace up we will have to drop you, we cant afford to miss our expected run split of 10 hours... ;-)
SCORES!
mentally: 10 - fixed a lot of stuff in the last 2 weeks, knees, food, bikes stuff - all of which makes me feel better about it all. plus in the really hard weeks now in the heat and we are stronger than a month ago when it was easy.
physically: 9 - almost a ten, i feel a bit weaker on the swim now. i think my arms need a recovery, but the book calls for what i feel is overtraining the swim ( its just your arms - so no biggie ), undertraining the run ( dont get hurt ) and about right on the bike ( the most import leg ). nothing injured.
workouts: 9 - we still have "wandering workouts" that we have to scramble to make up somewhere. but we did them all and did them strong.
one hard week down, two to go!
"Are you hurt or injured?"
"What?"
"Are you hurt or are you injured?"
"What is the difference?"
"Well, if you are injured you cant play anymore and i have to take you out of the game and send you to the showers. If you are hurt, you keep playing."
"Uh, hurt i guess."
we had a harder week, but it went really well. some parts hurt... the weekdays were pretty much the usual, biked 2 hours on tuesday and another 2 on thursday. the run/swim days were again as about usual, with 3 hours wed and just the run friday.
the weekend had us biking a long one on saturday, but first we had to make up the swim. so we swam the drill set and then got out and did the 5 hour bike ride. we rode up towards cleveland and back. we found a new trail called the emerald necklace or something ( kinda sounds like a porn site?? ) well, anyway we rode the emerald. it is a long straightaway ( well, a twisty one ) so a long twistyway between two loops. the top loop is just part of the trail but the lower loop is still kinda in the building phase and you have to ride down some streets and through neighborhoods, hop over fences and ride on rooftops. we got lost about 23 times in this lower loop section. and to do it the next time i think there is not much chance we will pull it off without getting lost again at least 5 times. but we did a lot of backtracking and asking people were we were and in the end almost enjoyed that section. the rest was awesome though. better than the tow path, - well, actually i would say they are both great. the emerald is a bit faster paced. the towpath has more baby strollers and tourists - also it has more dirt sections. so now we have two fun trails. :-)
again we went with another "BIG FOOD" ride. we ate and ate, resa was thinking we *gained* weight on the ride. that watching TV would have been healthier! but boy did we feel great afterwards. again a long ride and i was totally ready to run a long way. felt awesome. so, after the bike we decided to get a walk in. we hiked another 2 hours - which was harder than the bike as the hills were very steep. more like we scrambled 2 hours.
baby got new shoes! and the resa tried out some new bike shoes for the ride. she said they were a big improvement over her old ones. looks like her knees are better too. which had us scared for a few weeks there. she is as strong as ever, if a little more sore than a few months ago.
sunday had us swim 3400 in the pool, longest swim yet, but 4000s are coming. we did it in about 1:20. so thats again on line with our 1:30 triathlon swim. erg, i am so ready to do that swim now. thats the only event we have a pretty good feeling on time. 1:30 - 1:45 seems pretty much what we should get. the bike could be anything from 6:00 to dnf. well, dnf if we wipe out. i would say 6-7:30 is possible. and the run is pretty much going to be i would guess 6:00-7:00 also. getting us home just before we turn into pumpkins! well, after the swim we went on the run. did a half marathon. and pretty slow too! was really hot out again with the 90 degree heat. i think though that i can handle heat but not sun for some lame reason. i would much rather have shady 90 than sunny 80. hmmm following that logic i would bet i would REALLY like shady 65. hmm.... yeah. :-) well, i had a bit of a better run than i was thinking i would. we got the first 10 miles done in about 104 minutes - which is very fast for us. but died on the last three and pretty much walked/trotted it in from there. i think we still need to up our food and water on the run.
also there has been a bit of talk about swimming and running together, which would be fine with us. especially the run, we could help some of you people out maybe - keep the pace up. but i tell you now, and i am as serious as a cat in a microwave, if you cant keep a 16-18min mile pace up we will have to drop you, we cant afford to miss our expected run split of 10 hours... ;-)
SCORES!
mentally: 10 - fixed a lot of stuff in the last 2 weeks, knees, food, bikes stuff - all of which makes me feel better about it all. plus in the really hard weeks now in the heat and we are stronger than a month ago when it was easy.
physically: 9 - almost a ten, i feel a bit weaker on the swim now. i think my arms need a recovery, but the book calls for what i feel is overtraining the swim ( its just your arms - so no biggie ), undertraining the run ( dont get hurt ) and about right on the bike ( the most import leg ). nothing injured.
workouts: 9 - we still have "wandering workouts" that we have to scramble to make up somewhere. but we did them all and did them strong.
one hard week down, two to go!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
can we ride witchyou?
a while ago we were riding a fairly long ride. we were just cruising along pretty happy when we came up to a group of 3 people. and this has happened several times so its worth writing about. :-)
the going faster than someone else that is. very odd for us.
well, we come up on this small group and the guy in front says "can we ride witchyou?"
we are going probably about 16-17mph... not too fast, just moving along. me and resa just taking turns at the front.
i sigh, but you never know, adding 3 people can really lessen the work at the front. not that we were busting all that hard. but the alternative is to say "no, fock off" and that sounds kinda mean. so i say "sure, we switch every mile." and the guy says "great" and gets in behind the resa. i finish up my mile, call out switch and go to the back behind him. his two friends decided they didnt want to come along.
i hear for the next mile how he wants his friends to be here too. how he normally rides at 30 mph and how its just not his day today. i say "oh" "ah" and "yep" maybe 48 times over the next 3.5 minutes. resa is just holding the same pace we have been at for 3-4 hours. i looked back but this guy's buddies are about a half mile back and i am hoping he goes back to them. finally the mile is up, i call out the switch and the resa comes back behind me with raised eyebrows. i just shrug back to her.
so now its the guys turn, and right away he is clicking through gears. click click click. time to rock!!! and he is going 17,18,19,22,25mph. zooom!
again to be polite we kept up with him for a few of that. at about 19 or so i just lay back down to our normal cruising speed. he bolts out and gets about 40 yards on us. then starts to slow down. we catch up after about 1/4 of a mile. he is totally out of breath and calling for a switch. waves feebly at us as we cruise by. he gets behind the resa after his turn of 1/2 mile and fades away over the next 1/2 mile.
and this happens all the time. i am not sure why people ( newbies mostly ) think that being in the front is so different. that they have to go 100% if they are in the front. usually i call switches on rides and when they go out front i let them go and scream SWITCH as loud as i possible can to them, if they are within a few hundred yards that is. some people just put their head down and are so far gone i usually don't see them again for a few miles. i can picture them out there 10 minutes of sprinting down the road waiting for the call to change... i tell people that i know: "when you go to the front, dont change gears and dont change your peddling."
ok! this week was pretty easy - it was our last recovery week. next starts the hardest part of the training. also the hottest. and i am not good in hot. well, swimming seems fairly heat resistant and biking i think doesn't bother me too much if it is hot. but running! yikes!
we had a good bike on saturday. went about 40 miles after doing a lake swim ( eeek! ) but the swim went great. jumped in and started moving. our pace was medium slow as we just wanted to have a good event. one trip around the lake is 0.8 miles, so 3 trips is the ironman. we did two trips in 60 minutes. again very much in line with our guess of 1:30 in canada. the resa and i both feel we could have improved our pace quite a bit. so maybe knock the 1:30 to 1:15 if it went well, but i am still hoping to just survive the swim. but feel pretty happy about that phase right now. the only negative was that the resa, sheila and i have gotten bloody necks from the velcro patches on the back - all three of us. need to figure that one out. but after the swim we were all pretty happy and rode around the park for the 40 miles. resa's knees acted really well ( the steroids must be on-line finally ). the only real negative was her bike skips badly on the front chainring when she shifts quickly from big to small ring. 3 times we had to get the chain back on, the last time mangled the chain and i had to take a few links out. only had one flat so thats just about a PB on a ride. i think once, back in the 90s we had a ride where neither of us got a flat.
sunday was supposed to be a long 4 hour ride. we got about 40 minutes into it and i was in front. in the shadow of a large tree on the side of the road was a small piece of metal. later the small piece of metal was on the side of the road somewhere. i never saw it. before, during or after i ran over it. but it cut the rear ( of course ) tire and i was flat. i took the tire off, the tube was cut up pretty good and so was the tire itself. i patched the inside of the tire so that the tube wouldnt come through the cut and then put a new tube on.
well, first off i HATE the small pump i got with the new bike. its like the size of a cigar and works about as well pumping up tires. its in the trash now. but, i am sitting there trying to pump up the new tire and i am getting a bit annoyed with it. resa says we should try using the new canister instant inflator. you attach a tube of CO2 and press it to the stem and ta-da! full air. unless you use the mountain bike side canister rather than road bike one. THEN you get like 2x as much air. i think the tire went up to about 190 pounds of air. well, not for very long as the tube forced its way through the patch and exploded. ka-bang! now we have two messed up tubes and a still messed up tire. we have one more tube in the bike bags, but it was not swapped out the day before and so we have 3 wrecked tubes and a tire.
i get out the patch kit and work on fixing the tube but once on it leaks. resa mentions we have a 4th of july party that night and are pretty much out of time. so we decide to scrub the day and do it monday. she rides back to get the car and i sit there on the side of the road. i start walking back, but i know it will be about an hour before she gets back, so i sit down and fiddle with the patch kit a bit more. i finally get one of the 3 tubes patched ( the second one ). now the bike pump is acting up and i cant get any air in the thing. its messed up pretty bad and i am sitting there moping. a guy rides by ( many have ) and asks like most do if i need anything. "yeah, just a pump." so he stops and hands me his pump. its a nice one. in fact i went out that night and bought one myself. really nice little pump and i get the tire about up to 60ish pounds and am thinking maybe we can still do a few hours today. so i pull the pump off the stem. along with the valve and all the air comes out.
the guy is staring at me and the tire. "sorry" he says. ahh well, not at all his fault, my junky pump ruined the stem i think. i say "no-prob" and he asks if i want a tube or more patches or .... well, i am pretty done. so i say, no, i am getting a ride and he waves bye and takes off.
i walked about 10 feet and say screw it, get on the flat tire and ride it a mile where resa finds me.
so! dont get 16 gram cartridges, get the 12s for your bike, i tested this the next day. put about 10 pounds of pressure in a new tube, hit it with the catridge and bang! 100 pounds - perfect.
only 4 flats this week, so not too bad at all! :-)
monday we did the the long ride. and it was pretty hot. about 95 degrees out. the ride went well. averaged about 17 and all in all was a fun ride. but i got dehydrated and didnt really notice until the last 3 miles. i ran out of water too about 5 miles earlier. when we got back we started our 5 mile run. but i made it only 2 miles before dieing. walked and ran the rest. but gads. i need to drink more. sure was bad.
SCORES!:
mentally: 8 - huge happy swim day. i really think i have the swim covered now. really bad dehydration again - need to watch that. ( i just sweat a ton i guess! )
physically: 9 - feel strong, very dehydrated today, but the week was good.
workouts: 8 - did them all, but they were not hard until the weekend. next 3 weeks should be the hardest of them all.
all in all i think if we have a good next month we should be ready. i would, at this time give our finish time at just under 16 hours. 15:30ish maybe. :-)
the going faster than someone else that is. very odd for us.
well, we come up on this small group and the guy in front says "can we ride witchyou?"
we are going probably about 16-17mph... not too fast, just moving along. me and resa just taking turns at the front.
i sigh, but you never know, adding 3 people can really lessen the work at the front. not that we were busting all that hard. but the alternative is to say "no, fock off" and that sounds kinda mean. so i say "sure, we switch every mile." and the guy says "great" and gets in behind the resa. i finish up my mile, call out switch and go to the back behind him. his two friends decided they didnt want to come along.
i hear for the next mile how he wants his friends to be here too. how he normally rides at 30 mph and how its just not his day today. i say "oh" "ah" and "yep" maybe 48 times over the next 3.5 minutes. resa is just holding the same pace we have been at for 3-4 hours. i looked back but this guy's buddies are about a half mile back and i am hoping he goes back to them. finally the mile is up, i call out the switch and the resa comes back behind me with raised eyebrows. i just shrug back to her.
so now its the guys turn, and right away he is clicking through gears. click click click. time to rock!!! and he is going 17,18,19,22,25mph. zooom!
again to be polite we kept up with him for a few of that. at about 19 or so i just lay back down to our normal cruising speed. he bolts out and gets about 40 yards on us. then starts to slow down. we catch up after about 1/4 of a mile. he is totally out of breath and calling for a switch. waves feebly at us as we cruise by. he gets behind the resa after his turn of 1/2 mile and fades away over the next 1/2 mile.
and this happens all the time. i am not sure why people ( newbies mostly ) think that being in the front is so different. that they have to go 100% if they are in the front. usually i call switches on rides and when they go out front i let them go and scream SWITCH as loud as i possible can to them, if they are within a few hundred yards that is. some people just put their head down and are so far gone i usually don't see them again for a few miles. i can picture them out there 10 minutes of sprinting down the road waiting for the call to change... i tell people that i know: "when you go to the front, dont change gears and dont change your peddling."
ok! this week was pretty easy - it was our last recovery week. next starts the hardest part of the training. also the hottest. and i am not good in hot. well, swimming seems fairly heat resistant and biking i think doesn't bother me too much if it is hot. but running! yikes!
we had a good bike on saturday. went about 40 miles after doing a lake swim ( eeek! ) but the swim went great. jumped in and started moving. our pace was medium slow as we just wanted to have a good event. one trip around the lake is 0.8 miles, so 3 trips is the ironman. we did two trips in 60 minutes. again very much in line with our guess of 1:30 in canada. the resa and i both feel we could have improved our pace quite a bit. so maybe knock the 1:30 to 1:15 if it went well, but i am still hoping to just survive the swim. but feel pretty happy about that phase right now. the only negative was that the resa, sheila and i have gotten bloody necks from the velcro patches on the back - all three of us. need to figure that one out. but after the swim we were all pretty happy and rode around the park for the 40 miles. resa's knees acted really well ( the steroids must be on-line finally ). the only real negative was her bike skips badly on the front chainring when she shifts quickly from big to small ring. 3 times we had to get the chain back on, the last time mangled the chain and i had to take a few links out. only had one flat so thats just about a PB on a ride. i think once, back in the 90s we had a ride where neither of us got a flat.
sunday was supposed to be a long 4 hour ride. we got about 40 minutes into it and i was in front. in the shadow of a large tree on the side of the road was a small piece of metal. later the small piece of metal was on the side of the road somewhere. i never saw it. before, during or after i ran over it. but it cut the rear ( of course ) tire and i was flat. i took the tire off, the tube was cut up pretty good and so was the tire itself. i patched the inside of the tire so that the tube wouldnt come through the cut and then put a new tube on.
well, first off i HATE the small pump i got with the new bike. its like the size of a cigar and works about as well pumping up tires. its in the trash now. but, i am sitting there trying to pump up the new tire and i am getting a bit annoyed with it. resa says we should try using the new canister instant inflator. you attach a tube of CO2 and press it to the stem and ta-da! full air. unless you use the mountain bike side canister rather than road bike one. THEN you get like 2x as much air. i think the tire went up to about 190 pounds of air. well, not for very long as the tube forced its way through the patch and exploded. ka-bang! now we have two messed up tubes and a still messed up tire. we have one more tube in the bike bags, but it was not swapped out the day before and so we have 3 wrecked tubes and a tire.
i get out the patch kit and work on fixing the tube but once on it leaks. resa mentions we have a 4th of july party that night and are pretty much out of time. so we decide to scrub the day and do it monday. she rides back to get the car and i sit there on the side of the road. i start walking back, but i know it will be about an hour before she gets back, so i sit down and fiddle with the patch kit a bit more. i finally get one of the 3 tubes patched ( the second one ). now the bike pump is acting up and i cant get any air in the thing. its messed up pretty bad and i am sitting there moping. a guy rides by ( many have ) and asks like most do if i need anything. "yeah, just a pump." so he stops and hands me his pump. its a nice one. in fact i went out that night and bought one myself. really nice little pump and i get the tire about up to 60ish pounds and am thinking maybe we can still do a few hours today. so i pull the pump off the stem. along with the valve and all the air comes out.
the guy is staring at me and the tire. "sorry" he says. ahh well, not at all his fault, my junky pump ruined the stem i think. i say "no-prob" and he asks if i want a tube or more patches or .... well, i am pretty done. so i say, no, i am getting a ride and he waves bye and takes off.
i walked about 10 feet and say screw it, get on the flat tire and ride it a mile where resa finds me.
so! dont get 16 gram cartridges, get the 12s for your bike, i tested this the next day. put about 10 pounds of pressure in a new tube, hit it with the catridge and bang! 100 pounds - perfect.
only 4 flats this week, so not too bad at all! :-)
monday we did the the long ride. and it was pretty hot. about 95 degrees out. the ride went well. averaged about 17 and all in all was a fun ride. but i got dehydrated and didnt really notice until the last 3 miles. i ran out of water too about 5 miles earlier. when we got back we started our 5 mile run. but i made it only 2 miles before dieing. walked and ran the rest. but gads. i need to drink more. sure was bad.
SCORES!:
mentally: 8 - huge happy swim day. i really think i have the swim covered now. really bad dehydration again - need to watch that. ( i just sweat a ton i guess! )
physically: 9 - feel strong, very dehydrated today, but the week was good.
workouts: 8 - did them all, but they were not hard until the weekend. next 3 weeks should be the hardest of them all.
all in all i think if we have a good next month we should be ready. i would, at this time give our finish time at just under 16 hours. 15:30ish maybe. :-)
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