Just keep swimming

The Taper Begins...

2011-11-08T18:35:00.000-05:00

I just finished my last long and/or hard workout. It was 4200 yards in the pool or the actual 2.4 mile Ironman swim distance. I was able to go faster than my time at Ironman Canada. Just amazing since the wetsuit and draft really helped me go fast that day. 3 years since and I've actually learned how to swim somewhat so I can go faster without expending so much effort. The goal of 63 minutes is in reach for sure.

As Lance would say, it's not about the bike. That's so true in the Ironman. The run is the toughest part not only because it's at the end but because it's a MARATHON. Marathon's by themselves are tough affairs but after pedaling for 5+ hours become tougher. My run was going great last month. I had completed my first 18 miler at just a little over my goal pace and felt pretty good at the end. I was injury free and feeling it was all coming together and then it happened on a cold afternoon in Oregon.

I had a 10 mile tempo run planned for Wednesday. I arrived in Oregon on Monday night and went for an easy 4 miler Tuesday morning to loosen up the legs. On that 4 miler, I had some serious tendon pain in my right ankle. I've had this pain before so I knew what to do but man it was out of the blue. I iced and took some Aleve to help it out. I was thinking of moving my tempo to Thursday but the foot felt pretty good Wednesday morning so I'd just give it a go. I warmed up or so I thought and it was pretty good so I started the journey of 10 miles of pure fun.

I was dialed into my goal pace and clipping the miles off. The foot wasn't bugging me very much so it was all good. I did my best to find the flattest loop I could but it still had a slight up for a good 2 miles and slight down for 2 miles per loop. As I was cruising "down" towards the 8 mile mark, I was just trying to maintain a pace. I took a stride and my left hamstring tensed a little. This hamstring is been a problem each of the last 3 years so every time it even gives me a hint I back off. I immediately backed off the pace and my stride but by the third step it "yanked". CRAP!! I stopped dead in my tracks. There was no reason to try and "gut" it out. I started walking back to the gym, cussing about every 5 step at my rotten luck. It was October 26th.

The good news at the time was I still had just over 3 weeks to go and could still cycle and swim. Last year, I took 4 days off and was back slowly and healed up for the Baltimore marathon. My schedule and weather this time would allow 6 days of rehab before the first test. The rehab consisted of rolling the crap out of it. I had been rolling both hamstrings and calves every night for about a month but I gave the bad hamstring some extra roll-love. Ice and some more ice as well. The thing I changed was I didn't stretch it for a full day. Last year, I yanked the hamstring sprinting the end of an Olympic for like 37th place. I immediately started stretching it. Well, a bunch of folks on my favorite time waster site, Slowtwitch recommended not doing that.

Another thing I did was I changed my diet a bit. I started really pounding protein so much so that I had to add some additional fiber to my diet, if ya know what I mean. ;) Day 6 comes around, I go for a nice easy bike ride to loosen up the hammy and then hit the 4 miler. It was good for about 1 mile and then it slowly started bugging me again. Hmm...this isn't good. I've taken 6 days off and my taper is suppose to start in another 5 days. Ugh what am I going to do...

More stretching, more rolling and more ice. The next day I'd figure to try it again but I barely made it to the half mile point before it was too painful to continue. DOUBLE HOLY CRAP!! This is what I was thinking. This was Wednesday where I should be slogging out my last 18 miler and I can't even run 1/2 mile.

Injuries are brutal mentally especially for me as I've really focused 10 months of all my workouts for the Ironman. Every workout has been geared towards Nov. 20th and now this. Time to find something good to think about or I would be elbow deep in a super size Dorito bag. The good thing was I had done an 18 miler already and had completed a 6, 7, 8, and 9 mile tempo runs. I had done three 100 mile bike rides and one 118 mile ride. I had done about two months worth of serious bike tempo rides as well. As some say, a lot of the hay was already in the barn.

Just take some more running days off and come back fully healed. Well I was successful in an easy 4 miles last Friday and I did 9 miles on Sunday. I tried to dial up some speed to test the hamstring on Sunday but it still didn't like that. I figure to put in a 4 mile tempo run at 6:30 pace on Tuesday. That pace should feel easy and if it does my confidence will be BACK.

The taper has begun as I only rode 56 miles during the weekend total as opposed to 156 I had been doing for the past weekends. That 9 mile run felt like I hadn't even really done anything. I'm sure I'm going to get a little restless this week. I'm starting to dial back the diet as well. No need to keep trying to eat 4K calories every day just to keep up.

I fly to Arizona on Sunday and the rest of the family arrives on the 18th. I'm feeling anxious already. It's so close now.

30 days of training

2011-10-20T11:59:00.000-04:00

The final countdown has really started. Just 30 days left til the Ironman in Arizona. I have just over 2 weeks of hard training left before I start the 2 week taper.

I know I'm close because I'm constantly tired and constantly hungry. Even with all the hunger, I've been holding steady at 140 which is good and haven't busted into my Dorito stash. I've been going through rice and pasta quick though to stay on top of it. I'm cooking 3 cups of rice in the rice cooker which is about all I can handle for dinner instead of the normal 2. I'll be buying another 25lb bag at Costco soon. The Costco skinless chicken breasts have been going fast as well. The big bike day on Saturday is the toughest to stay on top of the diet even with all the calories I'm consuming during the ride. Sure I could eat a ton of junk food but that's not part of the diet. Although, the pent up junk food cravings will be unleashed on Nov 21st and it's not going to be pretty. I'll still be in Arizona for Thanksgiving so the real eating won't really begin until the end of November. I need to figure out when I have to start getting serious again for Boston and the Ironman in August 2012. I'm guessing day after New Year's is probably okay so a full 5 weeks of gluttony shouldn't be too bad, right?

I've been battling off and on the hint of a sore throat and cold. I bought a big box of Emergen-C and have been using it often. It's hard to tell if I should just get sick and get it out of the way or try to stay on top of it. The goal is to be good to go race day.

Our bib numbers for the race came out this week, I'm 1875. Seems like a solid number but it will take up quite a bit of arm real estate come race morning. I'm getting nervous as it just seems that I'm not ready to tackle that day at the pace I want. Perhaps if I break down all the training it will be sort of like some self-assurance. So read on if you're interested...

Swim

I've just been doing a steady diet of 3 days a week with the long swim getting longer and intervals every other week. This week I had a decent long swim of just under 65 minutes but man my Wednesday easy swim sucked big time. I don't think I'm getting faster but I do think I'm getting better at staying my pace for the whole Ironman distance. The pool is different than open water with 2500 of my closest friends so we will see. The pool finally got it's heater fixed which was a big relief. I'm totally frozen. I have a big ladder interval set this Friday so we'll see how I can respond after Wednesday. I guess I'm about 75% confident I can hit 63 on race day. There's probably nothing that will increase that just because the wetsuit adds so much speed to my swimming.

Bike

Oh god, the bike. I have 2 long rides left before the taper. The long ride has been going well from a mental standpoint. It seems before I know it I'm at the 50 mile turnaround and headed back. Speed is a different story. I'm getting better on the bike. The miles and tempo miles are adding up but I just don't feel super strong. I'm thinking I won't be as fit on the bike as I was in 2008 when I did a 5:39 on a hilly course. The good thing is I know I can go pretty much all out in the half distance and still be pretty good on the run. My hope is still to go at a moderate effort for this race and be on pace for a 5:15. The good thing is its 3 loops so basically you just have to focus for 38 something miles and make it to that last loop when it starts to get tough. The rides are getting colder out here in DC so I'm wearing more and more clothes which really makes me feel slower as well. 50%

Run

My favorite part, where I excel and yet it's the one I'm most worried about. I guess it's because I've put a definite reach goal in place, 3:05 and even more of reach, fastest run split in my age group. The main reason for concern is that previous paragraph. I just not as strong on the bike. My long runs haven't been spectacular this training yet either. I did my first real test yesterday with an 18 miler. I was able to hold just a touch over 7s for the last half. It didn't feel super hard but not super easy either considering I'd have to go 8 more miles and I didn't bike 112 right before either. The tempo miles on every other week have been so-so. I'm hitting my goal average of 6:15 but it's been some big time effort to get there. The rest of the week's run miles are just easy runs to stretch out the legs. I have two tempo runs and one more 18 miler left before the taper. 65%

The last discipline, nutrition has been going great. I'm all dialed in with the plan for the bike and plan for the run as well. Pre-race morning nutrition is set. The only thing will be the tail end of the bike and if I'll cut back the calories a bit to let the stomach settle for the run.

I just gotta stay healthy to get that starting line in the best shape my 40 year old body can be in.

SavageMan Triathlon 70 Race Report

2011-09-23T05:13:00.001-04:00

The first thing I have to say about the event is it's iconic. It's a total bucket list event. It must be experienced if you're a triathlete. It sells out every year and this year was no different. Here's the website for a jump on next year's registration: SavageMan. It benefits Joanna M. Nicolay Melanoma Foundation. You can raise funds and get cool swag. This year 6 time Ironman World Champion Dave Scott was participating and speaking at the pre-race dinner.

I thought about doing this race last year but based on my run focus for qualifying for Boston I knew it wouldn't be fun since the cycling portion is probably the hardest half Ironman distance in the sport. I put it out my mind as this year was all about Ironman Arizona until July. In July, my diet had netted a lean 142 and during my visit to Oregon I almost PR'ed a cycling climb even though I was nowhere near in top cycling shape. I got home from Oregon and went to register...it was full already. Bummer oh well maybe in 2012.

In early August, it was posted by the race director on Slowtwitch that they were opening up additional slots because they got permission to increase the size of the bike racking area. I jumped head on in and signed up as did a few other ST'ers. Okay now I'd have to hit every little hill in DC as hard as I could in as big of a gear as I could. The lure of making it up the dreaded Westernport Wall without falling over and getting forever immortalized on the wall with my name on a brick.

Executive summary: 28:33 swim(PR but the course was a bit short), 4:46 T1(slowest ever due to putting on all kinds of clothes to stay warm on the bike course), 3:12:18(didn't fall on the Wall and just survived), 2:29 T2(slowest ever due to removing all the cycling clothes), 1:32:45(this includes a Honey bucket stop for being over hydrated). Overall time 5:20:49, 5th fastest run split and fastest non-pro run split. 6th in the "elite" division out of 15 and 15th overall.

Pre-race dinner

With quite a few ST'ers coming to the race, a few of us decided to meet for dinner at a local brewery. It was nice to associate faces with screen names. Everyone had beers and pizza well I just had pizza. We were all talking wall strategies and what gears we brought to hope to accomplish the feat. I brought my 34-25 and one of the biggest gears of the bunch. Hmm..I wonder what they knew that I didn't. The only thing I had going for me was I was probably the lightest of the bunch. I've never had pizza for a pre-race dinner so I was hoping it would be alright. Overall this race was mostly a training one and I just wanted to experience it and not worry too much.

Pre-race

The race started at 8:30 and I was in the first wave. I begged the race director to let me participate as part of the "elite" wave. I figured the brick was more important than dealing with a ton of folks on the wall and racing in my 40+ age group. I got up and started with my Infinit pre-race nutrition. It was still dark, windy and maybe 50 degrees. The weather forecast for the race was partly cloudy with highs in the low 60s. Joy!! NOT! I'd be putting on as many clothes as I could find in T1 so I wouldn't freeze. So much for a fast T1. I bundled up extra for the weather as well with two sweatshirts since I don't have an "inner sweatshirt" like some folks.

I got to transition and laid out my cycling vest, arm warmers, smart wool gloves, and knee warmers. I also thought if I feel cold I'll put my socks on as well. Usually I go sock less for the bike and then put them on for the run. I was relaxing and chatting with fellow athletes racked next to me. It was getting close to the start so I put on my wetsuit and made my way down to the water. We were able to swim a bit for a warmup. The water was warm compared to the air, 65 degrees. It actually felt warmer than my LA Fitness pool that has a broken heater.

Swim

It was an in water swim start. It was the pro/elite men and all the female athletes. I positioned myself in the middle about 2 swimmers back. There was lots of room as most of the athletes were waiting in the knee deep water rather than out by the buoy line. I wondered if they had anticipated a tough scrum in the first 100 yards. Hmm...I figured after the last race I'd go more with the faster swimmers and see if I could draft.

The horn sounded and we were off. I hammered hard for the first minute or so trying my best to stay with the faster pack and get a real draft. I sighted and had a few folks right in front of me so I did my best to stay with them. That didn't last too long as for some reason I was all over the place. I couldn't swim straight to save my life. I usually not too crooked but something was different. I ended up zig-zagging a bunch in the first 1/3 of the race. This cost me any draft and I was by myself. I moved right on top of the buoy line in hopes of trying to stay straight and rounded the first turn buoy.

I decided it was time to speed up as I felt like I hadn't been going so fast. I started to really push myself and as I finished probably the 2nd third of the course I saw a small group of swimmers ahead. I told myself to surge to get onto their feet for some draft. I put down some speed and reached a guys feet. I relaxed and just maintained.

He was swimming perfectly straight and I had to keep adjusting to stay with him. I was still swimming crooked for some reason. Doh! It was also hard to see his feet so I'd sight to make sure I was still in his wake. It felt easy to swim in his draft almost too easy. I thought okay lets get out of the draft and try to overtake him to get ahead to the next swimmer just ahead. I started swimming hard and was gaining no ground. DOH! Okay, back into his draft I went. I stayed with him all the rest of the way.

I hit the timing mat and some yelled 28:30. Holy crap!! That's insanely fast for me so I'm guessing the course was a bit short like Rev3 was a bit long. Based on everyone else's post race report, it was probably 1.1 miles instead of 1.2. Overall still a tiny PR. Yay drafting because I wasn't anywhere near as tired as at the end of the Rev3 swim. I felt fine like it was just a short easy swim.

T1

I proceeded to run up the first hill of the day from the beach to transition. The swim was the only flat part of the course. I got the top of my wetsuit off easy which was great. My arms didn't get stuck. Yeah chicken arms. I hit my spot and was actually able to get off the legs easily as well. I didn't feel light-headed so that was great as well. I started to proceed with the slowest ever T1 time as I put on my vest, gloves, arm warmers, knee warmers and socks. It was just cold and the first 18 miles of the bike course is all downhill. I also practiced the plan for IMAZ by carrying my shoes out with me to the mount area and putting them on there. It worked smoothly and was fairly quick.

The MEAT aka Bike

OMG! OMG! OMG! That's the best overview of the bike course. It's the hard 55 miles I've ever ridden as far as hills. You hit the first hill at about a mile or so in and it's an 8% for a half mile. The cool thing is each major hill has a sign with it's length and gradient. The longest climb Big Savage has a sign for each mile after the wall. After the first hill, you hit some rollers. My legs weren't responding very well and I was worried that just didn't feel fresh. After a bit you start a massive descent that takes you to the base of the wall. It lasts for at least 13 miles. You could really bomb this descent if you knew the road which I didn't so I was tentative in various sections.

You get to a light in a town and turn left. Before you even get to the neighborhood in the helmet cam video above it goes up and you know it's TIME. I crossed the timing mat and immediately got butterflies. I shifted down and tried to relax. You go about 200 meters and make another left and there it is the hill with the wall in the distance. I shifted all the way down or so I thought more on that later. I remained seating and started the lower portions spinning easy. There was one larger guy in front of me about 20 to 30 yards. He was going at a nice pace so I felt that he wouldn't impede my attempt at the wall. Even on the "lower slopes" I could hear the screaming of the crowd gathered on the wall. Right before the wall starts there is a cross street so the road flattens out for that. I hit that point and stood up and started to drop the hammer to hit the wall as fast as possible.

The WALL

I hit the stones that make for pavement on the wall and immediately popped my front tire off just a bit. I settled that down and just kept cranking. There were volunteers right up next to me sort of running with me. It freaked me out a bit as I was worried I might run into one of them. I guess that's what the grand tour riders feel like as they ride through the crowds on those climbs. The middle of the wall started to tired out the legs quite a bit. I just kept focused and then the last bit really was hurting. The crowd was so loud in my ears that they willed me in those last 20 or so meters when I was almost coming to a standstill. I hit it hard for the last push I had in me and made it. PHEW!!

Video of my ascent and another one.

No relaxing though as it levels to a meager 4% and the aid station is right there. I was pretty shelled and then as I bent over my top tube trying to find some air I saw my rear cassette. I wasn't in my biggest gear(25) but in the 23. I had another easier gear. No wonder if was so fricking hard. IDIOT!!

I shifted into the 25 and proceeded to start the 12% section that was right there. I was barely moving and just trying to recover. Luckily we hit a mile where the average was 1% grade. This was because a good portion of it was downhill and the rest of that mile was only 8%. Joy! The last mile is a good clip of 12% average with that last 200 meters being in the high teens. The 25 saved me getting up to the top. Big Savage done only 2 major climbs left, Savage River and Killer Miller.

Even after a bunch of descending, the Savage River climb felt harder than it should. It was on smooth pavement and only 4% but I just felt like I was a Matrix slo-mo effect barely moving. It came and went.

Another big descent where it sort of opens up to a nasty hairpin turn which flattens out for 300 meters or so before the start of Killer Miller. It starts you off at 12% for a nice 300 meter or so section. I got my hopes up as it looked like there was a turn but we were at the top. Well my perception was dead wrong. You turn and it kicks to 22% for 400 meters. The legs were so cooked that I had to give it everything I had in the 25 just to make it up without falling over. The race director and course architect was right there in the steepest section taking pictures. I wanted to SAY THANKS for the suffering but I couldn't even mumble. The only good thing about Killer Miller is it's pavement is smooth.

Overall it was the toughest climb of the day for me. I hit the top and was so relieved that I didn't even notice they were handing out Miller beer for anyone who wanted one. Hilarious.

The last 12 miles or so are a gradual downhill with small flat sections. I was just trying to recover and get the legs underneath as the half marathon loomed with some serious climbing.

I finally got to the point where the bike course merges with part of the run course and saw the overall leader just hauling ass. I didn't know the finish very well so I got onto the top of my shoes a little earlier than I should've but probably only cost me a minute or so.

The tight dismount area made it quite interesting but I managed to get off without falling down.

All I can say in summary that the bike course was just EPIC. This puts the event at the top of bucket list for triathletes. It's just so different than anything else out there.

T2

I proceeded to remove all my cycling clothes(vest, arm warmers, knee warmers, gloves, etc.). This took some time. I got the running shoes on and grabbed my hat and fuel belt. The Honey buckets were outside transition so my pitstop was going to be added to my run split. Oh well...

Run

I started the run which starts out on a trail for a bit. I was just sort of easing into the run trying to conserve for the heinous fire road hill that in my mind was going to be a mile long in each of the two loops. I got to the pavement section and just kept turning the legs over. The mile splits for the first miles were all under 7. Perfect and then I hit the first major climb which is into the neighboring campground. You do get a nice downhill after that so it all evens out.

I hit mile 4 and then you turn onto the fire road which looks like it just goes straight up. I was doing my best to keep some turnover but not much. I kept going but then all of sudden it was over. WOAH! It was only like a quarter mile. I came back down and was just so relieved and happy. This wasn't going to be so awful.

Throughout the run since it was two loops and lots of out and backs, I kept seeing folks from the ST gathering and wishing them well. It definitely helped break up the run.

I kept cruising and then I sort of started feeling my hamstring. Uh-oh, well that really makes it just a cruise run. Mentally, I kept telling myself to be careful on all the downhills. This is where it would bother me most and there was no way I wanted to get injured. Just not worth it. I pick up the pace on the hills and flats and just be tentative on the downs.

I made it up the campground for the last time and hit mile 8. Wow, it didn't even feel like I was out there that long. During the Rev3 half in July, mile 8 seemed to take forever and started a death march. Sure I was hammering at Rev3 but it's good to feel in better shape now.

The last fire road ascent was pretty slow as the legs felt slight cooked as it comes at mile 10. I took it real easy on the descent and then hit the 12 mile marker with no more downhills. I decided to up the pace and just see how I could finish. My last mile was 7 which was just fine and I finished.

This was best I felt at the end of a half marathon run. I was tired but not completely shelled. My run split was 1:32:45 which was 2:45 slower than what I had thought. I think if I would've pushed hard I could've hit my 1:30 goal.

Being old allows me only one A race per year so oh well. My run split allowed me to catch and pass the overall female leader so in the end I didn't get chicked. Plus my run split was faster than Dave Scott(6-time Ironman World Champion) but he is 57. ;)

Summary

Some other interesting tidbits, my swim was 42 overall, bike split was 30th and the run was 5th. That's more normal with the bike being better than the swim. Another interesting thing was they timed the Big Savage climb and I was 10th overall as compared to my 30th overall bike split. I guess being light lets me climb but kills me on the descents.

The volunteers were awesome. There were some serious remote areas on the bike but there were vocal and enthusiastic volunteers at every potential turn and intersection. If you watch the Wall videos, you'll see volunteers going up and down the wall with reckless abandon helping participants as well as screaming their lungs out. A++

2 months til the taper

2011-09-07T15:27:00.001-04:00

Yep, I'm already counting down the days til the taper starts and I've just started putting in some hard workouts.

Elena and I had a great time at Universal Studios with Orion in late August for 3 fun filled days. Elena absolutely loved the The Forbidden Journey ride in Hogwarts Castle. We rode that 8 times over the 3 days. Thank god for the single rider line as that's how we got to ride it so many times. The castle was totally cool and ride was just great with the interactive screen and real castle stuff. We had numerous butter beers with the frozen butter beer being the best. Think vanilla cream soda slushy.

My favorite ride was The Simpsons ride. It was awesome starting with the queue to the actual ride. Elena absolutely loved it even though she has never seen a Simpsons episode. This says something about how great the ride was. Of course now she's on me to let her watch Simpsons episodes. I might have to start renting the old seasons and have a go although it still might invoke more questions from her than laughs. Overall, we went on the ride 5 times for the 2nd most of the weekend.

The weather is shifting from super hot summer to more mild days with even some rain here and there. This makes it a little more difficult but not impossible. Just 2 weeks ago, I ran 12 miles in absolutely pouring storm rain prior to Hurricane Irene. The only positive was it was over 70 during the run. I successfully missed Irene by riding my miles early the day it arrived and then flying to Oregon for work.
And of course 12 miler today in the mist of another massive downpour. Ugh.

The diet is going well even though it seems more and more difficult to stay away from the chips. I'm dropping pounds and streamlining. I finally got a digital scale with body fat measurement based on reviews by blogger, DCrainmaker. The best tri-runner geek equipment blog I've ever read. Anyway, I had planned to spend big bucks but after reading his review of all types of scales, I went with the mid-level one from Target. This scale will come in handy post Ironman to track how many pounds I'll be packing on for the winter.

Speaking of gadgets, I'm still trying to find a triathlon watch that does GPS pacing that's not as large as Flavor Flav's clock. It will just take another season before we get a normal size watch I guess. Quick side typing note. The whole just "one space" after ends of sentences is almost impossible to get used to. I guess it shows my age since I learned to type on an actual typewriter where the rule was two spaces. Now with the computer it's not needed.

My last tune up race that just happened by luck is coming up next weekend. Savageman 70.0. It's an epic event with some serious climbing especially on the bike highlighted by Westernport Wall.

It's really gonna bring all the diet sacrifices to the forefront with all the climbing. I'm in better shape than the July Rev3 Half but with the hills who knows how the time will compare. In preparation for the event, I hit the hills as hard as possible in Oregon. I didn't think about doing it until late July but it was full. All of sudden, they opened up some more transition space and voila I had to sign up. I think the biggest takeaway will be the suffering for my race preparation.

Football starts for real on Sunday but I'll be in a hotel in Oregon so I won't get to take advantage of the best channel ever the NFL RedZone. That channel is the only way to watch Sunday football especially when your team stinks aka my pathetic Raiders. I guess the bonus of being on the West Coast is I'll actually get to see the Sunday night game as well as the Monday night game.

Counting the days...

The Last Day

2011-07-29T10:08:00.003-04:00

Yep, it's my last day as a 30 something. Ugh...the agony. My daughter laughed at me this morning as I was bemoaning turning 40 tomorrow and told me I was already old at 39. She decided to point all my gray hair as evidence of being old. It's nothing for a 9 year old to tell ya like it is. I just have to laugh every time she does this. Good times.

Do I feel old, well I definitely have been feeling old the last couple of weeks. I think the half took a lot of my legs especially the running legs. I finally had a decent run earlier this week in which I was able to average just around 7:30 pace. Ugh...at least the legs felt somewhat responsive. The one plus side this month has been the cycling. I can slowly feel myself improving. I just need to keep the slow increase until September and October when I sharpen the edge.

I may be turning 40 tomorrow, but I feel really lean. The LoseIt diet is working great, almost too good lately. The last few nights I've been starving and basically just cramming as many healthy snacks into my pie hole as possible. I think I'm down to 140 which is probably the lowest since my exclusive running days. It's kindof cool to be able to see all your tendons and muscles. I'm not a bodybuilder or anything so it's quite amusing to see my little chicken arm muscles.

With the latest hunger pains, I've made plans to quash all of this with one visit to the Golden Corral, an all you can eat buffet. I plan to eat as much as humanly possible. On top of the massive food that will be consumed at the buffet, I'll be making another Costco trip. I've run out of my 25 lb bag of rice and will be up-sizing to the 50lb this visit. I'll buying a bunch more broccoli and other healthy snacks that. I'm hungry right now as I'm typing out this blog but I'll be pasta loading tonight in preparation for the special birthday workout.

Here's the plan. I'll be swimming 40 minutes and then I'll bike 40miles out and 40 miles back with a 40 lap or 10 mile run to finish. This will be great and take a good 6 hours to complete or so. I'll be able to test out some more nutrition stuff as well even though T1 will involve driving from the pool to the start of the bike ride. ;)

It's been ungodly hot since I've returned from the Oregon trip. It's been above 90 everyday with a few 100+ days as well. The hottest day so far was 117 on the heat index. This is the first time I've ever been super hot riding the bike. Usually when I'm riding the wind keeps me sortof cool but not that day. It was brutally hot. It won't be 100+ tomorrow but high 90s and humid. Just constant sweating while working out.

Well I'll be saying goodbye to this young nubile guy today and hello to the old man tomorrow. I'm not a youngster anymore.

Portland Rev3 Half...the details

2011-07-19T07:43:00.011-04:00

Pre-race

The park/race site wasn't going to open till 6am and my wave(the new 40+) wasn't going till 8:40AM. I decided to wake up at 5AM to start getting ready. For this race instead of having your number and age put on you via a sharpie on race day, this event gave us temporary tattoos. Like kids use…the only problem is I needed Elena to figure how they work at 5AM. I read the directions but missed a key step. Remove the clear plastic. So my first race number was glue to this clear plastic instead of my arm. Oh great…but I successful got one of my race numbers on my arm. I was also successful with the "4" to start my age of "40" but screwed up the "0" because again I'm a moron. I guess I won't be offered a "Race Number Ink" show. First thing to do after arriving at the race site is try to get some additional tattoo numbers. I had lots of time so I decided to drive the speed limit. Its my way of building of up good car karma. Speaking of karma, imagine if you had the 9 arms of that Hindu god. You could be blogging, drinking a latte, shaving and still have hands at 10 & 2 on the wheel.

Pre-race breakfast

I spent so much brain power over the last 3 or 4 months trying to figure this one thing out that it deserves it's own heading. I have been using just a chocolate chip Clif Bar since my old running days in the mid 90s. I remember the race I first tried a Clif Bar, the Lake Tahoe relay. I had my brick hard Powerbar that tasted like sawdust and one my team mates had this new bar called a Clif Bar. It looked like a normal granola type bar. He gave me a piece. I was like WTF…let's see eat compressed sawdust that was so chewy I believe it could replace the super glue on those commercials with guy hanging twenty feet in the air OR eat a tasty relatively normal granola bar. Tough choice I know.

Fast forward to August 24th, 2008 4AM in a hotel in Penticton, Canada. I started eating my tried-and-true chocolate chip Clif Bar but barely made it through halfway. My stomach was like one of those butterfly rooms at a zoo. The same thing also happened prior to the Baltimore marathon last October. Nutrition is always called the 4th discipline of triathlon so I've been trying to figure out the best way to deal with pre-race calories. I decided why not use the same thing I do post race, LIQUID. After a hard effort, I can only stomach liquid calories to consume in that critical 30-60 minute window when your muscles will suck glycogen like a sorority girl doing a keg stand at a party. I dialed up Infinit Nutrition(I'll be speaking about them as awesome throughout this report just like when I did Canada in 08). I talked to one of their nutrition consultants and we built a custom pre-race formula. It's basically 24 ozs with 340 calories. I got the bag of powder and I had tried it in training with excellent results. It wasn't thick or anything and tasted good.

I started drinking the formula as I drove to the race. I arrived at the race site and was there early enough that I got an executive type spot. My legs would love me when I had to schelp all my equipment post race doing the Frankenstein walk.

I made my way over to the registration tent and got some replacement tattoo numbers. Luckily, I wasn't the only one who had tattoo malfunctions. I started laying out my transition area. Just by chance the person who had the spot next to mine didn't show up so this made extra space available. The air was a little chilly so I laid out arm warmers and a newspaper and it wasn't for reading. I'd be stuffing it under my shirt to start the bike in order to keep the wind off me and stay warm until everything dried out. The sun was out but it was just a bit chilly plus this would be my plan for the cold Arizona bike start as well. It's more convenient than a vest that requires zipping, unzipping, stuffing in a jersey pocket and finally removing at T2.

I finished a Honey Bucket stop and was all set. I figure why not head down to the swim start and if I got cold just put on my wetsuit. In the information, they said the swim exit was a good four tenths of mile from transition. It was all pavement except sections here there line by the park and grass. They would have a rack for bags at the swim exit to hold shoes for the transition run. I've done about 200 meter barefoot transition runs on pavement in previous races and they always hurt. I would hope that it wasn't major carnage at the rack when I finished my swim. We'll call this T1a and then the bike T1b. I was going to use my training shoes for T1a and leave my racing flats for the actual run.

It was a little cold as there was some wind already. Uh-oh…that's one thing Marine Drive is known for is some brutal winds. I was hoping that it wouldn't be crazy for the bike. I decided to put on the bottom part of my wetsuit to stay warm as well as self warm. That's wetsuit talk for christening your race.

The pro men and women went off sans wetsuits because the water temp was 72. The fastest male finished in just over 24 and a few of us noted that perhaps the swim was long. I was bummed as I hoped I would be able to really throw down a good time. I figure just swim as fast and if it's long oh well it will be a good excuse.

It was little odd watching the under 40 wave take off without me. Oh well, it's time for a new chapter in my life right. 40 is the new 30 right…;) If you read this far, the free code for a $10 Amazon gift certificate is 1285-847G-YE98-WQ02

Swim

The swim was going to be a beach start which would be my first. Hmm…I guess I should've practiced dolphin diving but when the pro wave went I noticed that only a few them did it so hey if the pros aren't doing neither am I. Luckily, we were able to get into the water and take some practice. I swam about 50 yards and got past the adrenaline crush of that first stroke. I decided to line up way right as I figure most of the big swimming guns would be front and center. I figured I'd be all alone but was surprised by the number of people who had the same idea. I was about 2nd person back when they said "GO!". I trounced into the water and got to about knee level before I commenced an Animal House worthy belly flop. I hit and immediately started hammering just in case someone was behind me. About the 10th stroke, I had just a bit of water in my right goggle. I was surprised since my post swim goggle eyes remain for hours. I wasn't worried since it's just lake water but man I had a bright red eye when I got back to the hotel at the end of the event. I swam hard and then took a sight to see if I was hypotnusing to the first turn buoy. You see a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Yes not only do get read triathlon exploits but you a Geometry refresher course at the same. It's a learning blog. As I sighted I noticed that I was about 4 or so body lengths from the knife edge of the swim wave. Sweet if I can just stay with this group, I could get a nice draft all the way. I made my way around the first buoy without much turmoil. The next time I sighted I was basically looking right at the sun. The direction buoys were contrast enough that you could barely make them out. I was sitting behind a group but then I felt I wasn't going hard enough so I started powering and everyone was gone. I was in no-mans land. I'd pass a few swimmers from the previous waves here and there but pretty much it was just me. I like being by myself on the swim as I can really pace myself. When I'm in a draft I have no idea if I'm going hard enough. Maybe in the next couple years, I'll be able to feel pace. This is worse with a wetsuit though because personally I don't feel the water at all on my arms. I basically have to go by pure exertion(try spelling that word right with the help of a spell checker). The swim seems to take forever and staying focused has been a problem for me. I made an effort to keep pushing hard the whole way. I finally reached the point of sighting the swim exit archway. It looked about 400 yards away so I kicked it into high gear. As I approached I took a couple extra sightings because swimming full speed into someone standing up and walking out of the water would suck big time. My fingers touched the bottom and I stood up and bounded up to the exit. I remember to hit my watch split and saw 31:12. Not since my Ironman Canada swim time have I've been as excited. On top that if the swim was a bit, I had just really obliterated my swim PR.

T1a - a wetsuit adventure

I made my way up a few steps gingerly and proceeded to take off the top of my wetsuit. I always have a little trouble because my arms are super tired getting out of the water so trying to yank them out is tough. I got them out and took off my cap and goggles. Now is when the fun er fun for spectators watching begun. I went to remove the bottom portion of my wetsuit and it got hung up on my left leg and the timing chip. I yanked and grabbed but not luck in the standing position to get the leg out. Since I was bent over my leg, I got a super head rush and basically fell down on my ass. As I was falling, I was like oh well let's try this sitting. Thank god, I didn't fall ass over tea kettle. I wrenched and wrenched and finally got the chunk hung up on the timing chip by and off. There was a staff/volunteer that had my bag and said he'd put away my wetsuit and re-rack the bag. I asked him if that was allowed since triathlon rules state no outside assistance and then I noticed the staff/volunteer shirt. Phew..that save some time and then I was off the T1a races. I absolutely hammered that 0.4 miles to the transition area. I passed barefoot competitors and people in shoes all the way to transition.

T1b

The wetsuit incident had cost me a ton of time but I was able to get to my rack and just shake off. I was efficient and got my newspaper stuffed without problems. I did a flying mount and proceeded to get up to speed.

Bike

We turned onto Marine Drive for the start of 2 out-n-back loops. I immediately felt a slight tailwind. Perfect way to get going. I grabbed my half concentrated Infinit and gave it swig. It went down easy without feeling to heavy or sweet from blasting on the swim as the tummy wouldn't have been able to handle anymore. I was trying to maintain a good pace when a fellow athlete passed. I immediately upped the pace as he got to legal draft distance in front of me. We had just turned west into the headwind and I was able to hit about 23-24 behind him legally and it felt just a little harder. Excellent, I'll just hold on for as long as I feel possible. I had been practicing legal drafting on my training rides with just random cyclists. It's definitely a good .5 to 1mph difference in my perceived effort. This is great for me as I was planning to ride just on the bubble the whole way and see how the run went. Not so good was most athletes are quite conservative on the bike especially with the warmer temperatures coming during the run. The guy in front of me is doing his "easy conservative" 23 into a headwind. Once he goes to pass another athlete his speed increases to 25 with no extra effort on his part. Well there's a whole lot of extra umph on my part to maintain that legal draft distance without getting shed like a Siberian Husky's winter coat during a Phoenix summer. This would be the theme of the bike for me.

As I was struggling to hold 21 in various places especially during the 2nd loop, I just kept telling myself I've got four months to average 21.5 for 112 miles and then run a 3:05 marathon. NO PRESSURE to get my ass in shape by November. My glutes or in layman terms ass cheeks were hurting big time. I'm guessing it was from the super effort I put in early in the ride. Hmm…ease into it the next time.

I approached the last notable section of the ride and just thought man I miss Oregon where you can easily find a flat consistent 50 something miles without many if any stopping. I still have no idea how I'm gonna get my body ready to be aero for 5+ hours. As with all triathlons, I keep telling myself as I'm suffering at the end of the bike that my event is coming up. This is where I shine and put the hurt on people, the RUN.

T2

As I was getting ready to do an awesome flying dismount, the cyclist in front of me decided it was time to lose his balance and swerve toward me. I was eyeing him anyway so I was able to avoid a potential crash. Just additional mental notes to keep track of always be prepared for anything as you mount the bike in T1 and as you're ready to dismount going into T2.

I did my flying dismount like I do after each training ride and was jogging into transition toward my rack. I unclipped my helmet during this time and came to my rack without incident. Racked the bike, took off the helmet and proceeded to put on my socks. They went on fairly fast and then the shoes. Hmm…even with a good pull on the quick laces a little lose. I'll have to fix that before the next race I use the racing flats. I grabbed my racing hat and fuel belt and was off. This would be my first race with Infinit run nutrition. In all the previous races, I had used PowerGels. My post mortem on the Baltimore marathon and the massive cramping I had led me to do something different. In Baltimore, I went with HammerGel the whole way because I found a flavor that I could stomach and had 50mg of caffeine. The double caffeine really gives me that extra boost. The problem with HammerGels as opposed to my go to PowerGels is there's no sodium. Again Infinit to the rescue. A custom formula when mixed would have about 50mg of caffeine per 8 oz(size of one fuel belt bottle), 110 calories and a good amount of sodium and electrolytes.

Run

With the fuel belt, the plan was to use it's race number attachment system instead of doing a simple race belt and fuel belt. I did the race belt/fuel belt combo and got a huge strawberry on my hip from them rubbing together. However, this required a on the fly attachment of side of the race number. My thought was this would slow me down out of the gate as without even trying my first mile is always lightening fast. The problem was the footing for this races first half mile was all uneven grass terrain. I'm bumbling along and look about as graceful as a Biggest Loser contestant on a Wipeout obstacle course. Mental note, do something different at the Ironman. I got the number attached and I was off for real. I downed a full bottle of nutrition as I always start the run with a gel. Hmm…that didn't feel comfortable in the stomach.

I finally got off the grass and onto the asphalt trail that would be the first 4 miles or so. I hit the first mile mark and clicked my watch 5:48. Hmm…mile marker must be short. I didn't know at the time but saw once I reviewed all my mile splits that while I was getting the race number attached I had clicked my watch split. So my first mile was 6:30. I kindof wish I would've known that because I just kept the same pace and hit mile two with a 6:08 split. Hmm…another short mile maybe I thought? I relaxed my pace just a bit and came through mile 3 at 6:21. It was at this point I had the inklings of side ache forming. Elena has been getting side aches all the time during our runs and I just tell her to be tough and run through it. Now it was my turn to walk the walk or in this case run the run. I backed off on the my nutrition schedule to prevent putting more sloshing liquid into my stomach. I had settled into 6:30 pace which was the plan for a 1:25 run split. I was zooming by people and on the look out for fellow 40-44 age competitors. Since there was a slight headwind heading out, I would ease up just a touch when I saw one and then put a burst to go by. I passed a couple of my age group guys this way and it was going good. I came up on a 45 guy and just was cruising by when he asked if he could hop on for a bit. I said sure since we weren't in the same age group. He said he had just been passed by a couple of guys in my age group. It was pretty cool that he mentioned that to me. He finally dropped off and I was cruising waiting to see those fellow age groupers he mentioned.

I started to slowly gain on a 41 year guy. Okay time to give the plan a go. I eased up just bit and then upped my pace and gave a burst as I went by. He immediately responded. I was like good for him. Let's see how this goes. I just kept my pace and he hung on. Hmm…time to give it a little gas to see what happens. I put in a good 200 meters of 6ish pace and he couldn't hang. Just then I came upon another guy in my age group, probably that 2nd guy that I was told about and came around him. He grabbed on for a bit but it didn't last long and he was gone. I hit mile 6(burst), 6:24 and mile 7, 6:32. Then it hit just like watching the movie Titanic and thinking TURN, TURN!! You can avoid the iceberg and well you know how that turned out. The side ache hit in full. Crap. Since the debacle at 2009 Florida 70.3 where a side ache basically reduced to a walk, I've gotten more side ache treatment tricks up my sleeve. This has all been practiced on my little guinea pig, Elena. We've done all kinds of things to alleviate her perpetual side aches on runs. I slowed down quite a bit and relaxed my breathing. I walked about 10 steps while I dug my fingers into my side and then I started hobbling again. Just then we hit the turnaround and I saw the 2 guys I passed running together about 100 meters behind me. Uh-oh, how embarrassing. They're definitely gonna pass me back with my pathetic side ache pace. Sure enough they did but were quite nice about it. After about another half mile or so the side ache was gone, sweet. Time to get back to it.

Okay the mind said let's go but well the legs said wait just a minute, we don't have enough long runs in to be doing that crazy 6:30 pace anymore, we're tired. Damn you legs…damn you. The positive is I would get to do about 3 miles on legs which had given up…good wall training for the Ironman. Then a light bulb flashed, I hadn't been taking in enough nutrition. So I downed a whole flask of my nutrition and my legs started feeling a little better. Not 6:30 better but 7:10ish better. Again that's perfect wall Ironman pace so I was mentally storing this away. One of my passers, had started to walk aid stations and I was able to pass him back.

I was dreaming of just stopping. I wish the miles would come faster and where the F is mile 11 anyway. I finally saw it. Okay, I just got to get to mile 12 and then it's pretty much home free. Again more nutrition and I was slowly snapping out of my funk and feeling like this pace was manageable and just keep going. Mile 12 was at the last aid station and I figured why not try something different. I grabbed a cup of cola. It tasted pretty good and my tummy wasn't unhappy with it being there. Cool, let's give a little push and then I saw the turn for the final 400 meters or so. Wow that was quick, so I'm guessing mile 12 was a little off. I finished and clicked my watch, 4:37:50ish. Sweet a half ironman PR. I was wondering how sad my run split was because of those side ache and sucky last miles. The cool thing about Rev3 events is they have a timing booth that you can get live stats right there on the race site. I wandered over there and they called up my info. I ran a 1:26:30. I was shocked that I was that close to 1:25. I was a little disappointed because if I was in a little better shape I may have been able to go even lower than 1:25.

If you've read this far, the next blog is free. Oh and you can see which event I'm most interested in...Bike gets a measly 3 paragraphs and the Run gets 5 monstrous paragraphs...

Portland Rev3 Half..a taste

2011-07-15T13:10:00.001-04:00

I'm still trying to find time to finish the whole detailed race report but I figure I'm sure my fans er fan is interested in seeing a quick summary so here it is.

This is the first triathlon in 2 seasons that I didn't get rained on. The weather was great. For those not wanting to suffer through a long winded report. Here's the meaty details. Nice uncrowded swim. Push as hard as I could go the whole way to rock a 31:15 swim time. There was about a half mile run from swim exit to transition so we had bags with shoes. I had trouble getting my wetsuit off but once I got my shoes, I hammered to transition and passed about 5-10 people. I did a flying mount on the bike without incident and proceeded to get going. Pushed too hard at the beginning of the bike legal drafting way faster folks. Suffered through the middle and end of the bike. Hit T2 thanking God that I was off the bike and could unleash my event, the run. I got my socks and shoes on and headed out. Futzed around with my fuel belt and number for a bit. Thought I was going a little slow so pushed into a nice pace. Started to get a side ache at mile 2 and decided to take less liquid nutrition to see if I could manage it. It hit full time at mile 7 and I slowed big time. It finally went away at mile 8.5 or so but then the legs said hey you don't have enough miles in me and started to hurt. Probably a little lack of nutrition combined as well. Finished in a new 70.3 PR for a flat fast course. This course was even faster than Florida. I hit my goal swim time on the money, missed my goal bike split by 3 minutes and only missed my goal run split by 1 minute.

Becoming a swimmer...

2011-06-30T15:42:00.000-04:00

Maybe. I had my fastest interval session ever on Wednesday morning but still was getting passed by a guy in normal board shorts doing backstroke. Ugh. Okay so maybe the title should be "becoming a triathlon swimmer." The Half Ironman on the 10th of July will really be a swimming benchmark for me. Can I be close to my pool times with the wetsuit in open water? My goal right now is sub 32. The plan is to hammer the swim and bike and then cruise the run. Of course, I have no idea if I'm in shape to accomplish this but it will be fun to give it a go.

The Half Ironman will be my first official event in the 40+ age group even though I'm still 39 for another 20 days. They use end of the calendar year age for the event. It's gonna be a little weird for me moving up an age group. It's been forever since having to do that because I was cycling from 31 through 35 and cycling doesn't have age groups. When I came back to running and then triathlon I was just in the 35-39 age group. I'm sure it will take some adjustment but luckily the 40+ wave goes after the under 40 wave so I won't miss my wave. I think it will be like those first weeks of every year when you start writing dates on checks oh wait that's so 90s. Who writes checks anymore? It's more like when you sign documents or type in dates on websites those first few weeks of January.

With the 4th of July 3 day weekend upon us, it really feels like summer. Elena is in full swing at her summer camp and loving that she doesn't have to do homework when she gets home. We got her report card and she got straight As for the entire year. Great news. Her reward is a trip to see Universal Studios in Florida, specifically the new Harry Potter area. I figure it isn't too early to instill in her that you do well in your studies then you get rewarded. I'm hoping this will save me some money when it comes to college as she'll maybe get a scholarship or two. It's the perfect excuse for me to go to Universal Studios. Sortof like buying her a Wii for Xmas so I can play it. Yes, I may be turning 40 but I'm still a kid when it comes this stuff. Dads can have fun too. In about 2 more years, she won't want to do anything with me because I'm her dad and she's too cool to hang out with her dad. For us, it's super convenient to visit the Orlando area because we can stay with one of my best friends, Orion. I also used the travel credit United gave me from the big screwup on a business trip in March to fly free.

I continue to use the LoseIt app for tracking my calorie intake. It's definitely interesting to see that having 3 chicken quesdillas is more calories than 3 chicken breast with rice. Also skimping on ranch salad dressing because it packs some serious calories as well. Overall, it's helping stick as much as possible with the no junk food diet. Sure the occasional bucket of movie popcorn and DQ blizzard show up in the log but it's not a daily item. The only real negative thing with the diet is I think I feel full sooner. Right now this isn't so bad but I can see it becoming a problem as I ramp up my workouts when the meat of the Ironman training starts to happen. Stay tuned...

It approaches

2011-06-22T07:53:00.000-04:00

I can feel it...I have just over a month left in my prime. I hit the top of the hill next month, 40. There are a few good...er...interesting things to look towards after the 40th birthday. First, I get to reset all my PRs in all my events. Okay, I'm taking this even though technically it was written on any stone tablets. I think it's a good way to stay motivated through the next 10 years to the oh so dreaded 50. My running PRs are ancient history. I'll never be close to 16:30 in the 5k or 34:10 in the 10k. I don't have a true half marathon PR except the first half of my super blowup in 2001 on the Portland course where I hit the half at 1:19. My marathon PR of 2:50 will also stand. I just don't think I have 26.2 6:30s in my legs.

I'll be an official master's competitor at any event. The masters category always seems totally stacked but it will be interesting to see if I can keep myself from slowing down too much and stay somewhat competitive. I keep peeking at 40-44 age group times just to see and damn they are fast. With this new age group, I have to change my Ironman Arizona information I think. Since you sign up a year before the Active website automatically put 39. I will miss starting my age with "thirty". Wait a minute, isn't 40 the new rage these days. Well maybe not but I can hope. Anyway, I need to figure out how to get the information for Arizona updated. I definitely don't want to be lumped in with those fast 35 year olds in the 35-39 age group. Actually, it would make my goal of having the fastest run split in my age group really hard.

I'm trying to think of what I should do on my birthday. It's a Saturday so I was thinking about doing some sortof interesting workout. Perhaps 40 100s in the pool and then er 40 miles on the bike and 40 laps or 10 miles on the run? That's a pretty short bike and really not long enough run either based on my training plan. Should I eat 40oz of Doritos and chase them with a 40 of Coors Light? Maybe cook a 40oz steak or get 40 chicken nuggets at McDonalds? Although, I'm not sure I could eat a 40oz steak. I think my stomach has shrunk with this LoseIt diet. My weight is pretty close to the target and I know this because when Amber saw me this weekend she said I looked sickly. The old saying if everything thinks your sick, you know you're at the your racing weight. Overall, my run should improve slightly with this new weight but I was really hoping to use it my advantage at the Rev3 Portland Half Ironman next month. It was suppose to be a super hilly course but they couldn't get a road permit and now they've changed it a pancake flat course. I was sortof bummed but sortof happy for the run at least. Running like a demon and only being able to do a 1:35 just doesn't seem as satisfying as a 1:25.

So send me your suggestions for what I should do on my 40th..

LoseIt love it.

2011-06-10T12:43:00.000-04:00

As I was surfing the Slowtwitch forums, I came upon a thread about someone wanting to lost 15 lbs by September. I was bored so I decided to read it and see what people were saying. In the thread, a person mentioned this cool iPhone app that they were using that helped them a lot. Hmm...I figure why not give it a try just to see how many calories I was consuming every day.

The app is called LoseIt and it's totally awesome. It lets you input your current weight and then your goal weight plus how much you little you want to eat er I mean how many pounds you want to lose each week and when you want to be your weight. I punched in all my information and at first thought why not the default of a pound per week but well I would only get to eat like a pittance of food. I dialed that back to a 1/2 pound per week.

Just lounging around and doing nothing I get to eat 2000 calories a day and the more exercise I do the more I get to eat. Some cool things I found it is I only eat about 800 calories of rice a day. That's awesome as I thought it was more like 1200. A cup of broccoli is only 20 calories...how awesome is that. I'm definitely buying a bunch during the next Costco trip. I can really fill up on broccoli and perhaps cut down on my calories weakness for after dinner snacks.

A family bag of Doritos is 4500 calories and last night I was so hungry I thought about eating some. Instead, I went to sleep. Sleep is the best diet assistant I've found. I'm in Oregon next week so we'll see how well the calorie intake goes. I wonder how many calories a Dutch Baby from the Original Pancake House is.

If you're just trying to maintain or keep an idea on calories, this app is the greatest and definitely keeps you honest.

The Fourth Discipline

2011-06-04T15:18:00.000-04:00

It's almost like the sixth sense where if you fail to execute it properly on race, you will see dead people and in the end could end up like Bruce Willis and be the walking dead. Race day nutrition.

You really have to figure out what you can stomach for the 10+ hours of exercise. It's pretty daunting to think about. If I started the Ironman at the same time you arrive at work, I'm still exercising by the time you go home for the day. Constant movement and you need to figure out what you can stomach during the bike and run. During the swim, you're basically dry for 65 or so minutes except for the mouthfuls of lake water.

The bike is the easy part of the whole thing when it comes to nutrition. You can easily carry all sorts of stuff and since you're stomach is pretty much in the same position you can eat anything. There are all kinds of stories of people eating hamburgers, pb&js, cookies, muffins, bagels, and the obvious stuff.

For me, I use Infinit Nutrition. I built a custom formula in 2008 and it worked great so I'll be using that again. The website lets you dial in everything and basically become a mad scientist.

The run is totally different story. I'm very picky when it comes to the run. It's taken a long time to really find the perfect nutrition plan for the run. I do a 25mg caffeine strawberry banana Powergel every 4 miles. Caffeine on the run is awesome. Of course in order to make it feel like an illegal PED, you have to abstain from caffeine leading up to the race. For you hardcore coffee drinkers out there, it may be tough to do but man you can really feel awesome if you do.

Speaking of abstaining from caffeine, let's talk the daily diet. I'm a total junk food junkie with my biggest vice being chips. I absolutely love chips especially Doritos. I can easily down a whole bag of Doritos post dinner. Chips are complete empty calories so I cut all chips leading up to the Ironman. I still down lots of calories but no chips. In addition to no chips, I cut all alcohol. So no beer. Sure it sounds like the diet is no fun but it works for me. Of course, post Ironman all this goes out the window.

Here's my current list of food I'll be gorging on November 21st:

Nacho Cheese Doritos lots of Doritos
Cheese puffs
Mini Reese peanut butter cups
Pretzel M&Ms
Ruffle chips
KC Masterpiece BBQ chips
Salt & Vinegar chips
Sour Cream & Cheese Lays
Numerous Egg Nog Lattes

24 weeks til the big day...

Once a runner always a runner

2011-05-30T11:04:00.000-04:00

The 3rd discipline of triathlon, the run. Since last year's entire run focus, the run has been going well plus on top of that, I've finally got a plan to stay as injury free as possible. I don't do any speed work at all. My body just can't handle the speed anymore. I keep my miles in high 20s to mid 30s per week and just go easy if I feel like it or sometimes I just get some tempo miles in if I feel good.

As the cycling increases, I'll ease back on the run a little bit knowing I brought a decent base from the winter. The miles and miles in sub 30 degree weather with snow on ground this winter are paying off. The legs continue to feel fine as I tick off the miles. I can tell the legs aren't ready yet for the 26.2 but I felt the same last May in the preparation for Baltimore. Soon enough as the training continues, 10 milers will seem easy and not even a warmup. I wonder how long before that conditioning starts to deteriorate with age where it's always tough no matter what. At least as I approach 40, that's not happening.

This summer on July 31st all my running PRs reset. That's my plan I get to set new PRs since I don't think I'll ever see my 10k or 5k PRs again. The saddest thing about my 10k PR is back in late 90s there really wasn't a lot of 10ks to compete in and now there are tons. I only got about 2 10ks per season to lower my PR and never could quite get a perfect day on a perfect course to break 34. I really wanted a sub 34 10k PR but oh well I'll get a new one next year.

I've been trying to figure out a goal for the Ironman marathon split. At Canada in 08, I ran a 3:25 and didn't feel in peak marathon shape. I had battled a bunch of injuries in the lead up. The Arizona course is an easier run course so that with more experience and even more run base, I came up with a good number. 3:05 which would put my split in past couple of years, right there close to best in the over 40 men splits. In last years, an ex-pro ran a sub 3 split being over 40. So assuming no ex-pros, I'm shooting to have the fastest run split. A 3:05 is just right around 7 minute mile pace...so the training commences where if I'm completely dead 7 minute pace should still feel easy.

Stay tuned for the last discipline of the Ironman, nutrition.

It's not about the Bike

2011-05-28T05:25:00.000-04:00

Well that's definitely right. The engine on top of it is out of shape. I'm a fair weather cyclist so during DC winters I don't get any miles on the tri bike at all. The last outdoor ride was in October and the first outdoor ride this year was in March. I was also just a bum knowing that the Ironman wasn't until November so I didn't even hook the bike up to the indoor trainer but perhaps 3 times.

The one thing I do ride is the spin bike. I ride it like 2 or 3 times a week but it's really not the same. That first outdoor ride is a total shock to the legs. No heavy flywheel momentum to keep things rolling sucks. The position is totally different and so the back is sacrificed early on and even the ass is telling this seat is pretty hard and uncomfortable.

The bike is plan is just to do a gradual build until August. In August, start doing more structured workouts and using all the base from the early summer to really speed up. I'm struggling on just maintaining a nice easy slow workout pace when the weather is so nice. Going fast on the bike is so much fun especially when you can keep up with cars in 25mph zones. Patience is key or I will be totally burnt out by November.

The other key is to get the body ready to handle constant aero position for 5 plus hours. The Arizona course is almost pancake flat so most race reports talk about struggling to stay aero for that long. In normal, riding through town and stuff you're always stopping, standing, etc with hills and lights. I've been scouring Google maps looking for a smooth, safe stretch of road that I can do loops or out-n-backs on.

I thought I had found one, the Clara Barton Parkway. It's a 4 lane road with not much traffic early morning on the weekends and it's flat with 8 miles out and back. The speed limit is 50mph but the cars have a whole lane to pass and plus there's shoulder here and there. Well I had successfully put in two 50 mile plus rides on the parkway when I was ending my 3rd 50 miler last weekend, I was stopped. Not totally stopped but enough of a police stop to tell me bikes aren't allowed on the parkway. Luckily, I didn't have to play the I just moved here card which so far has been successful in getting out of a "blowing through a stop sign in a park" ticket. Sure it's been over 3 years since coming out to DC but technically, I moved here just 3 years ago.

Anyway, back to Google for so more searching and then scouting on the bike. My back has definitely been a problem but hopefully it will get it's act together by November. Now the legs are slowly getting used to some outside miles and are coming around. My pace on the bike is getting a little easier but I still haven't done any intervals or tempos just yet.

In the back of mind, I think I can average 21mph for the Ironman bike portion with race wheels and aero helmet. It won't be a walk in the park but it won't be redline. This puts my goal bike time at 5:15. So the plan is do some serious bike training as the months close in to make 21mph feel like a ho-hum pace.

Stay tuned..

Let's talk swim

2011-05-26T10:10:00.000-04:00

I figure why not just go discipline by discipline until it's all caught up. The swim...my nemesis..my Achilles' heel. It was reason it took me so long in the first to even attempt to do triathlons.

Sometime early in 2010, I finally figured out what all the swimmers meant when they said "high elbows". I applied this "ah-ha moment"(in memory of the Oprah show) and immediately my swim started getting faster. It's still been a slow process but my times keep getting slightly faster.

Just last week I swam my fastest 2400 yards ever in the pool and a month before that I swam 3000 yards in the pool at my 2008 Ironman wetsuit pace. Both these were big time for me. Perhaps, if I can slowly keep improving I can get out of the water at Arizona and not have to deal with the massive crush of swimmers in the transition area and to start the bike. At Canada, there was so many people in transition after my swim my toe got stepped on by someone's cycling shoe. It was one big bloody mess post marathon.

Today was a different story. I struggle to even come within 3 minutes of my PR in the pool. I just felt blah. When you feel blah on the run or bike, you can basically just trundle along but swimming it feels like you're a steel anchor just wanting to sink to the bottom of the pool. I was going so slow my flip turn timing was off and a couple of times was barely able to get any push from the wall. That's another part of my swimming improvement, I started doing flip-turns post Baltimore marathon and have been doing them ever since. I was surprised at how easy they were. I wish I had tried them before because they really help you keep some momentum.

Overall, I've made my goal at Arizona to be a 65 minute swim. This is 1:32 per 100yards. It will be a wetsuit swim which is good for at least 5-10 seconds per 100. You take away that and add sighting and battling the mass start swim with 2100 other folks and it's about right.

Coming soon the bike and who doesn't want to hear about my diet or as I call it Dorito-less.

Time to get back to it

2011-05-25T06:38:00.000-04:00

I figured it's a good time to update the old blog. The blog definitely helped me document all things Ironman training the last go around so I better get back at it even though Facebook has really made spouting off thoughts easier. No history though and it's good to have a detailed training blog. I'm super anal...er analyzing person so having a detail of how and what really lets me dial in the preparation for this upcoming Ironman. For example, I remember the Ironman marathon wall coming at mile 18 in my head. I went back to my race report and it read, "Mile 14 and the wall, WTF!". It's amazing on how my brain had already made the Ironman not so bad and why not do another one. Crap. See now I know that I got do a better job on my running training than last time and hey being 3 years older isn't going to matter, right.

The background is after last year's resounding success at welcoming my best friend Eric into old age(he turned 40), I knew my 40th was bearing down on me like a pre-teen wanting a Bieber autograph. What should I do to celebrate my 40th birthday and then it came to me, I'll run the prestigious Boston marathon and do an Ironman as well when I'm 40. It will show even old guys can still get stuff done.

The Boston marathon required some planning since you just can't sign up, you have to use another marathon time to qualify. So last March, I started training for the local Baltimore marathon in October. This way I could get my qualifying marathon out of way and use all of 2011 as training for an Ironman once I turn 40 in July. Luckily, I was successful last October and qualified for Boston. Now I just have to fight the internet hordes on sign-up day and hope I get in for April 2012.

The 2nd part was finding an Ironman post July 30th 2011. Ironman Arizona seemed perfect. The temperature is usually warm and Elena's grandpa(Amber's dad) lives in Arizona. The Ironman is right before Thanksgiving so the whole family could come and cheer me on and then we'd stay and celebrate Thanksgiving with grandpa. In order to guarantee myself an entry, I decided to travel out to the race for signup. Elena hadn't seen her grandpa in awhile so I brought Elena with me to sign-up and celebrate Thanksgiving with her grandpa. Elena had a blast and I got to sign up for an Ironman.

So 2011, I'll turn 40 and hopefully if all the training goes well I'll complete my 2nd Ironman. Stay tuned...

Meat and Potatoes

2010-07-31T16:59:00.000-04:00

The real training for the Baltimore Marathon is just starting for me. We're just under 3 months away and it's time to start getting some specific long runs and tempo workouts done.

Last week, I was able to run the first 12 miles of the actual marathon course. Falls Road Runners store put on a training run with 3 water stations on the course. It was great to get a preview of the course. The first miles are a gradual up followed by a gradual down. It's going to be imperative not to overcook these first 8 miles.

The marathon course runs right through some of the neighborhoods featured in the Wire HBO series. I just started watching it and it was based on Baltimore. It's cool on one hand as you can see some of streets where D and Stringer were doing their dealings but on the other hand it's not like being in the same area as let's say the MTV show The Hills. It's only for a few miles and the race starts at 8am so hopefully any potential drive-byers will still be in bed.

Speaking of the Wire, I've been trying to catch up on old TV series that I missed but now the networks have decided to have a summer TV season. WTH! So I've got to watch Hell's Kitchen, Rescue Me, Leverage, Mad Men and of course Jersey Shore. The first Jersey Shore episode was great. It's harder to tell if it's an act because of all the stardom but they based on the first season I'm guessing it's not too far off. Watching Snooki getting into a monster Cadillac SUV and crank the seat up for what seemed like 5 minutes was classic.

I'm slowly ramping up the cycling in preparation for the annual triathlon that Orion and I do together. The cycling legs have been slow to come around but I really have been more run focused so no big deal. I rode 85 last Sunday but only brought calories for 75. Major bonk during the last 10 as I was just trying to survive and get home. I was lucky that I went somewhat early because at around 3:30 we had a super big storm for this area. 60+ mph winds and massive rain. Tons of trees came down and kill power all around the area. We didn't have power for 2 full days because it was so bad.

Swimming is well swimming. I've gotten so extra speed by increasing my stroke cadence but that's it. Nothing super fast but I've only been doing consistent yards and no speed. It's just too painful. Ha! Of course all that will change come Nov. 21st when I signed up for Ironman Arizona 2011. I got plane tickets for Elena and I since her grandpa is in the area so we'll be staying with him. I also signed up for a volunteer position which is basically signing my name to the dotted line for an entry in next year's race. I can't believe I'm doing another one as it will be painful but what else should I do to commemorate my 40th year of living. I'm not buying a sports car because I'm too cheap so that's going to a piece of my midlife crisis.

Back to more fun things, running tempo miles. Yippee. Okay they're painful but a necessary evil to be able to complete Baltimore in a time to qualify for Boston. I ran just 6 of them today and was quite please with my times. I'm on schedule but in the 10 miles of tempo later are going to be painful.

10th Annual Helvetia Half Marathon Race Report

2010-06-13T08:47:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday morning and I'm sitting in the airport so why not spend some of this free time blogging about yesterday's race or should I say workout.

Lets first rant about Oregon driving. How slow can people go!?!? It's amazing that people drive 55 on freeways here. Shocking...I've gotten so used to driving 55 on main city streets in DC. I have this main 6 lane street that I drive on all the time. The posted speed limit is 35 with lights every so often. Everyone drives at least 45 and sometimes 50 if you're in a hurry. I get to Oregon and on 217 the speed limit is 55 and everyone drives 55. I'm going 65 and I feel like an Indy car driver weaving in and out of traffic. It's crazy. 55 in the rightmost lane and even 55 in the left lane. Just kill me. The other crazy thing is how old the highway infrastructure seems. I had to go over 26 hill into Portland a couple of times this week and man how stupid is those 3 lanes with 3 separate single lane exits as you head into Portland. Seriously, they have a dedicated downtown exit lane which no one is ever in because everyone is backed up on the two north and south freeway exit lanes. They could easily have doubled on of the freeway lanes but no let's just back up traffic forever. I guess with all the hills and rivers I should give Portland a pass as compared to DC we just have the Potomac and no hills so no tunnels but still.

Onto the report...I caught a cold on Wednesday. I basically sneezed all day Thursday and Friday and felt not so good. I swam easy on Thursday and Friday morning and it felt okay. It sortof cleared me up a little bit but not permanently. I skipped running or cycling on Thursday. I figured with the cold why not do a real taper. So took Thursday off running and then I just did short easy run on Friday with some short bursts. I left work early on Friday as I had been working basically 24/7 for the previous 3 days trying to meet our deadline which we did on Thursday. I got to the hotel, ate dinner and prepped for the race. The bonus was a prediction of 80+ sunny degrees on Saturday. Woohoo...at least one race would have good weather.

I woke up and voila my cold was gone. No more sneezing, no more sniffles. Sweet! I actually might be able to get in my tempo workout after all. I drove out to Hillsboro early so I wouldn't have to deal with the traffic. I figure I'd just hang in the car until it was time to warmup. I made one round through the stadium to see approximately where the start line was since this is the first time I will be running the new course. I ran the first annual Helvetia Half when we started at Rock Creek PCC and finished at the Helvetia Tavern. That course was quite hilly and I was worried this one would be basically just as bad.

I saw Paula and Dave, the race organizers, prior to the start and said hello. A great duo that I've known every since Amber introduced me to the "blue girl" as she referred to Paula during her early Portland Fit days. They're a great benefit to the Portland Area running scene.

At 7:30am, I went over to the stadium to stretch and start my warmup. It was still a little chilly. I've found now that I'm old I need a decent warmup even for these longer races. I had my warmup and ditched the warmup sweats in the car and downed my espresso Hammer gel. I had decided to just run in my normal Nike Air Structure 13 training shoes. They're almost as light as my DS Trainers but have way more cushion. I figured with the downhills on the course my knee would need some relief. This would be the first race that I have gone to a racing shoe. Kindof weird but oh well.

I got to the start line a little late for me and had to crowd my way in. The 10k would be starting at the same time as the half. I assumed there would be a few of them towards the front so I went about 5 to 8 rows back. The start sounded and we were off or well walking. I guess I was wrong about the 10k because no one except like 10 people started at a sub 6 pace. Doh! It wasn't too bad but I did have to weave my way around a few folks but then it settle out.

I was cruising along trying just to stay easy until I could see my mile 1 split. The other thing I was doing was gauging my fellow competitors around me to look for a nice big guy I could draft when we turned north up Shute Road. There was a little headwind coming out the north and we had basically 3 flat unprotected miles headed up Shute/Helvetia. Mile 1, 6:25. Perfect and my draft had appeared. Excellent.

We turned heading north and I tucked in. He'd pass a few folks and I just stayed tucked in. We hit mile 2 in 6:22 and mile 3 in 6:27. Perfect. We hit Helvetia Tavern just before mile 4 and I downed a Hammer espresso gel with some water from the aid station. I felt the energy immediately or my draft died one of the two because I opened a gap. The headwind was gone as we were sheltered but another lucky person hopped in front of me as I continued to conserve. Mile 4, 6:33

The Hills
From mile 4 to 6, the major hills existed. I had ridden these hills numerous times on the bike back in the cycling days so I knew them but not on the running legs. By the start of the hills, there were about 5 of us together. I cruised up the first massive hill and dropped everyone. I was just cruising and not trying to go too hard. I was shocked. I think the drafting paid off as well as the benefit of actually training in hot weather for the last month. I'm guessing the heat started affecting a few Oregon folks as they haven't had much luck with good weather. After the first big hill, there was a big downhill. Here's where everyone basically caught up. I had this one long legged just cruise right up to me. I was very conservative on the downhill. The knee and not really having any real hill training. This would repeat on every downhill and uphill. It just seemed odd that I'd be able to hold my own on the uphills. Mile 5(uphill) 6:46, Mile 6(downhill) 6:15, Mile 7(up-down) 6:29

With the hills up done, we had mile 8 which was a pretty good downhill. Another guy zoomed by. Mile 8 6:09. We came up on the 8.6 mile aid station at West Union. I downed a Powergel as a change of pace. I learned this from Frederick that straight espresso the whole time was just too much. I was able to keep that one fast downhill guy in view as we started over some rollers on West Union. These miles are always the toughest for me mentally. They seem to take forever and I can start to feel my leg muscles tiring. I just tried my best to hold my form and foot speed. Mile 9 6:25, Mile 10 6:26.

Right around the 10 mile marker starts a little gravel section and where the half marathon merges back into the 10k course. It's been over an hour so the 10k folks are walkers at this point. Luckily they were quite good about being aware of us half folks which was great. I really didn't have to weave at all. The only hill left was the Hwy. 26 overpass so it was just a matter of trying to hold pace and not have a super slow mile like I did at Frederick.

Mile 11 6:27. Consistent, consistent. I could feel a little calf and hamstring twinge here and there. This worries me a little as when the big marathon comes that I'll yank a muscle during it. Hopefully through the summer, the muscles will get stronger and with 7 minute pace not as taxed. I went over Hwy. 26 and heard someone scream, "Go Alan!". It was John Ponterfact from Portland Fit at the last aid station on the course. I didn't see him and I was by as I heard him so I didn't get a chance to say hello. Luckily I got to see him post-race and chat with him.

At mile marker 12(6:30), I had caught the one fast downhill guy. This time I started to get drafted. This was fine as I immediately went to curb and started to weave in and out of 10k walkers. I know it's mean but hey it's a race sortof. I kept trying to up the pace just a little but at this point it was more like maintaining. He dropped off in a half mile. I just kept steady as I was nearing the stadium and was thinking, crap I could go 1:25. I had put the goal of 1:30 since I figured the hills would kill me but man this course was actually quite fast. I hit mile 13 at 6:29. Perfect and as long as I didn't pull up lame I was set.

My time was 1:24:34. Not too far off my actual half marathon PR on the Helvetia course. Although with that course and the shape I was in those days, I could've easily went under 1:19. All in all a great workout. Nice smooth tempo the whole way. I'm beginning to like racing at tempo pace. It's not the suffering edge of real racing. Way less pain although my muscles are pretty sore. I also had a stomach ache until 5pm. Same thing happened at Frederick as well. I'm not sure what it is, perhaps dehydration or the gels. I just feel like puking after the race. So no DQ blizzard for me...oh well. That will keep my weight down which is quite svelte. I don't have as much muscle as I did during the Ironman 08 training but at least my fat is down.

Blue Lake Triathlon

2010-06-07T08:57:00.000-04:00

I can sum up the entire race in one word, WET! Classic Oregon summer weather. Geez...of course it was beautiful on Saturday for the Sprint triathlon and newbie tri folks and it looks like nice and dry today(Monday). My luck.

Pre-pre race setup (Saturday)
I wouldn't have even planned on doing this triathlon but some of the tri buddies from IMC mentioned it when I talked about getting together for a workout. My immediate email back to them was I'm not bringing my bike. No problem, Don said I could borrow his older time trial bike and it would help him maybe sell it at the event. Okay so I cart out all the triathlon stuff. I secure some carbon clincher aero wheels from Alanna earlier in the day on Saturday. This was right after a major carb load at Cheesecake factory with Dylan, Susan, Keira, Eric and Tracey. Good times had by all and lots of pasta and cheesecake. Later in the evening I head over to Don's place to dial in the bike. Wow where do I begin. I guess I should've known we were going to have bad weather because nothing I tried on the bike worked out. I brought a cycling computer and it didn't fit the fork. I tried putting on Alanna's wheels but for some reason the shimano 9-speed cassette wouldn't fit on her shimano 10-speed hub. It was like the grooves were deeper or something. It took both of us just to get her 10 speed cassette off to begin with. Totally gorilla'd on there. I forgot my 8mm allen wrench to put my pedals on and Don didn't have one. Luckily with you can basically hand tighten them and they really won't come off. So what I thought would take about 30 minutes took over 90. Don was cool enough about it though.

Pre-Race
I wake up and load the car up with my stuff. I really hadn't planned on rain so I didn't have a ton of my typical rain gear and it was pouring when I left the hotel. I was hoping that it would stop in time for the race. I looked at the radar and it was totally dry south of Salem so I thought maybe that dryness would move north for the race. Due to all the rain that Oregon has been getting, we had to park about a mile away from the race site instead of on the grass which is typical. So I loaded my tri-pack and set off on the bike to pedal the bike. It was raining pretty good so I was already getting wet.

I arrived at the race site and went Uh-oh. The grass was basically mud already and there wasn't even 300 or more people trampling over it. My fairly new training shoes weren't coming out white. I racked the bike and organized my transition. I thought about just putting on my wetsuit 2 hours before the race to stay dry but I had planned a 15 minute run to warm-up. With the cold wetness, I figured it was better to warm up. Don arrived and told me that our buddy Jeff was wimpin out. I guess his back was sore as well but the rain didn't spur him to come either. Don almost mentioned that he was going to just sleep in as well. He really crushed the course so I'm sure he was glad he did make it out of bed after all.

I started to put my wetsuit on after my nice run warmup. What a pain. I hate this part of triathlon almost as much as the swim leg. I wrench, grab and wiggle to get the thing as high up as possible to give as much motion in the shoulder area. I'm always sweating and my arms always hurt when I'm done. I got my swim cap and goggles and went down to the lake for a little warmup swim. The water was warm enough so I got a nice swim warmup. It always feel weird swimming in the wetsuit because of the weird shoulder sensation. I need more wetsuit practice I think to get a better feel of my stroke.

Swim : The Dry Leg
I was in the 4th wave on a thin rectangular course. It was a water start. The best part was a nice wide start too with only one general direction to head towards. I'd have clean undisturbed water the whole way to the first buoy.

I started my watch at the 10 second countdown so I wouldn't have to fiddle with it at the horn. I read this from someone and it works great. The horn sounded and I was off. No gasping for air just off I went. I was trying to find a groove but it really wasn't coming. I was next to a pack of my wave group for awhile then just before the first turn buoy they disappeared. I have no idea if I slowed down or sped up past them. I came around the buoy and still open water. 1 of 5 buoys down. I continued and finally got into a groove. I tried to push the pace a little bit because I wasn't feeling tired. I started to concentrate on my form and as always kept wanting the swim to be over. I tick off another buoy and try to get to the next one. Then it happened as always I miscounted. I was heading towards what I thought was the last buoy before the short homestretch but NO. The last buoy had a slide by it and this one didn't. Crap, I had one more to go. I just suck at counting things during a race or keeping track. I'm this master planner but I can't count to 5 in a dumb race. I finally hit the last buoy and started to give it all I had to get out the water. Little did I know this would be the driest I'd feel all race. I hit the shore and almost fell. The first steps are always a little woosy for me. I crossed the timing strip and went up the mud hill. I finally clicked my watch as I peeled down my wetsuit. It read 26. Better than my Potomac 27:30 but not under 25. Oh well I was still okay with it.

T1 : Calling all wetsuit strippers
I got to my rack and wetsuit pain number two. Getting it off. I need to practice this because I never have a good time with it. I struggled to get the last part off my feet and finally said screw and sat down. I started to cramp here and there as I finally got out my wetsuit. I put the helmet on, glasses and set off through the mud out of transition. What a mess. The bonus was a huge puddle on the pavement at the bike mount area so some of the mud came off before I got on the bike. This was the first actual race barefoot mount with the new tri-cycling shoes. It went great. I got my cold wet feet in without much to-do.

Bike : Pain hurts so good
This was going to suck as it was still raining and I had a sleeveless top and no knee covers. Actually, I was fairly warm so maybe this wasn't going to be a freeze fest after all. The problem was I didn't have any cycling legs. My cycling has probably been the slowest so far but that's planned as it's really a run year. The bike fit pretty well except the tri-bars were too high so I wasn't as aero as I could've been but there wasn't any wind so not that big of a deal. I kept trying to turn the gear but the legs were already hurting about 10 minutes into the ride. I had no idea how fast I was going so I just kept going based on pain. The one thing I hate about Blue Lake is the bike course. I haven't done the course in 3 years but what sticks out as it seems to never end. Sure enough the frickin turn-around just never shows up. You just go and go it seems.

I saw Don fly by on the way back. He started in a wave 10 minutes before mine plus he swims an easy 20 minute Olympic. The only reason I saw him was he was sporting white Pro-race 3s on his all black bike setup. He looked good while I was in hell. My legs hurt a lot and I was starting to think my run would just suck. I managed to drink my entire bottle of Cytomax which surprised me because well it was pouring the whole time. I was soaked but the benefit of the aero helmet was my head was pretty warm.

I looked at my split time to see where I was and it read 55 minutes. I was hoping for a sub 1:10 bike but I didn't think that was going to happen. I started pushing as I just wanted it to be over running legs be damned. I had a guy that I was trading legal draft lengths with for a bit and then I had enough of it and pushed past him for good.

I got to the turn for the last bit home. Man the race organizers screwed this one up. They had us turn on a grass hill rather than a nice paved entrance. I had no idea until the cyclist in front of me turn and I saw her front wheel bury about 3 inches. They carpeted the ground but it didn't help her. She survived luckily. I shifted down and prayed I wouldn't crash. Phew...made it over and undid my shoes for the last 300 meters or so of ride. Made a barefoot dismount into our favorite mount puddle.

T2 : Mudfest
I ran through what 2 inch mud to my bike rack. On the way, I took my new favorite gel, Hammer espresso which looked the same color as my barefeet when I got to my rack. I drank half the bottle of water I had and squirted the other half on my feet before slipping socks over them and putting the racing flats on. Grabbed my hat and I was off sort of. It was easy stepping around the run exit turns and such. So I'm running out the mud transition area and there's this guy who is keeping up with me. I try to speed up, he speeds up. So basically I'm racing this guy on the narrow mud path before even getting to the run start. Crazy but I thought fine let's go as we cross the timing mat and I hear it beep.

Run : Hammer time
My transition buddy is gone when I drop the hammer on the pavement. I guess he was just sprinting for the transition crowd. ;) The legs feel good. Excellent. I ratchet up the pace to what feels good and then I go oh crap I didn't click my watch at the run start. Oh well, no problem it's chip timed they'll have all my splits. I hit the watch and I'll just ignore the mile 1 split. I keep cruising and passing people. I see the elites flying in from the run. This gives me confidence and I run faster.

I hit my first real split between mile 1 and 2 and it's 6:10. Perfect. This feels pretty easy so let's just keep this pace til the turn-around(out and back course) and push the last 3 miles home. I see Don heading home and he looks smooth and good. It's still raining and course it littered with steeple water jump sized puddles. The benefit of the puddles is I always pick up the pace through them to try and keep the feet as dry as possible for as long as possible. Wet running feet suck big time for me.

I hit mile 3 at 6:09 and the turn-around. Sweet and it still feels easy. The last time on this course I was doing a duathlon and sucking big time. It was horrible. I thought I was going to die. I ran a 42 and almost decided not to ever do the Ironman because the run felt so bad after the bike. Little did I know it was my first run of the dualthon that wiped me out.

I turn-around and notice double sweet I have a slight tailwind. Now I know why Don was looking so good there was a tailwind. I had been battling a slight headwind on the way out and didn't notice. I start to push myself and feel that running tired/pain threshold. I don't see a mile 4 sign..bummer it would've good to see how it's going. I hit the watch at mile 5, 12:02. Sweet I just ran two 6 minute miles. One mile to go let's really hammer it out and see what I got.

I turn down the last stretch of road and see this shirtless guy in front of me about 200 meters. I really haven't been gaining on him much so he's going at a good pace. I start pushing harder and then the course gets interesting. I forgot about this part of the course where they send around the park sort of through a trail system. I'm pushing to catch this guy and I'm about 10 meters away when we hit this mud downhill. I slow down and still almost eat it. I hit the paved trail just behind this guy but it's has some back-n-forth turns and such. It's super slick because well my shoes are racing flats and the bottom is covered with mud.

I keep pushing the pace hard trying to catch this guy. I make the catch quick and pass with an extra burst just so I don't get into it with him. During all this we go by mile marker 6. I didn't look at the time because the trail was so sketchy but I did a 6:05. Not bad considering the mud downhill and such. I see another guy just up ahead so I really start dropping the hammer but the course runs out before I can catch him. I finish and hit my watch. 2:16....hmm that sucks but I wonder how my run time was...I have to wait for the results I guess.

Post Race : The Cleanup
Don and his fellow Portland Triathlon Club folks are chatting at the finish. He really had a good race. We talk for a bit and then I decide to access how I'm going to get all my soaked gear back to the car plus I'm getting cold. My rack is a mess. My wetsuit has mud everywhere. It's just a mess. I take it down to the lake and wash it off. I didn't have enough plastic bags to keep my clothes dry but I put them one anyway. They're sortof dry but at least they're warmer. Mud and wet everywhere. I get all my stuff together and start to head out.

At the last minute, I decide that I haven't eaten or drank anything post race. I park the bike under a tree and head over to the booths for some Muscle Milk and Clif products. I notice the result table so hey I go see what my run split was. I look on the results and don't see my name around the 2:16ish other folks. Hmm...they're printing another set of results so maybe due to the wave start my name isn't in that list. I wait and finally look at the new list. Still no name. Crap did I DQd or something? I ask the lady behind the desk and she points me over to the van where they are doing the results.

I get to the van and talk to the AA Sports folks. I give them my number and name. They have no splits at all. The chip didn't work. I tell I swore I heard it beep at the timing mats but now that I think back I was always crossing a mat with someone else except at the finish. I give them some information and they say they'll see what they can do. Bummer...so I hope at least I can have an official finish time but I'm pretty screwed on the rest.

6:10 pace is a 38:10 for a 10k so that's probably pretty close or I might've just went under 38 for the 10k. Hard to say. So overall, I'm pretty happy. Plus I don't feel extra tired or sore. Of course, we'll see if today's workout goes well. I'm not sure what I'll do but I brought both running and riding stuff.

Now a week of work and Helvetia Half on Saturday...with the hills...uh-oh.

Allergies and 2/3

2010-05-26T10:12:00.000-04:00

Man, my allergies have been horrible all spring. It sucks big time. Luckily, I get my Kleenex at Costco because I go through a box in about 2 weeks. My allergies probably have a big negative impact on the environment with all the Kleenex I've been using. This combined with massive sneezing and such after swimming no matter what the season makes a day like today miserable.

I swam this morning and ended up going a little longer than normal. I started experimenting with breathing every 2 strokes and then every 3 strokes. I usually breath every 3 strokes so I get to see both sides of the pool. This makes swimming in open water easier since you can see landmarks no matter what or if you happen to be right next to a person who basically keeps splashing you as you try to suck in oxygen. It was recommended in the Slowtwitch forums. Along with increasing stroke rate which I had been experimenting with previously. Anyway, all this stuff combined has take a couple of seconds off per 100 yards.

The biking has been slowly getting better. I'm still not in good shape yet but I doing okay. I rode my longest ride of season so far, 84 miles on Saturday. It went pretty well although I was on a route with some decent sized hills. The hills about killed me. There was a huge hill on a road called, Johnnycake. I kept thinking man who named this road because it definitely doesn't remind me of cake or pancakes. I was thinking a more accurate name would be Hellhill Rd. or Losesomeweightfatso Lane.

The run has been so-so. It's really in maintenance mode right now until later this summer when I start uping the long run for the week and adding significant tempo runs as well. Just trying to stay injury free. The posterior tibial tendon pain is gone after taking 5 full days off and doing all kinds of preventive stuff. Thank god because that made it hurt just to walk. My poor flat feet have a little to do with all my injuries. Quite a few folks are always surprised I can run well with such flat feet. I guess flat feet puts more stress on other various pieces and could explain the latest injuries as well as just being OLD.

It's finally nice weather after a couple of 50 degree days a few weeks ago. We got heat and of course humidity. Basically, you feel like you just finished a warm shower after going for an easy run outside. With the humidity, I've trying to get better about drinking more water. I hear that staying hydrated also helps in injury prevention. So it's anything I can do to stay injury free up until the Baltimore Marathon this October.

The most interesting thing that has happened lately is a planned business trip to Oregon is coinciding with the Helvetia Half Marathon and the Blue Lake Olympic Triathlon. If everything works out, I'll be doing those two events as a book-end to my week in Wilsonville. I'm definitely not in any Olympic Tri shape but it will be fun to do the event where I first thought about doing an Ironman in 2007. Back then I was just doing duathlons but that event was where I had decided you know maybe it's time to learn how to swim and step up to a new endurance challenge. The Helvetia Half and I have a nice history as well. I help the race organizer plan pieces of the event for the first couple of years. I ran the old course which was brutal so running this new course should be interesting.

All in all Oregon will be fun.

Recovery Week

2010-05-10T08:19:00.000-04:00

After the half on the Sunday before yesterday, I ended up basically doing a recovery week. My quads were quite sore from the half which was surprising. I guess they weren't quite ready for 13 miles of pounding or what felt like an easy pace was faster than they wanted to go, or the 50 mile ride on Saturday just gave them extra reasons for tightening up. Don't you just love blogs where you can write massive run-on sentences. No english/grammar teacher to make your blog all red. Do teachers still use red pens?

Anyway, so I basically took it easy on the old legs for the entire week. I just did low miles and let the run come to me. I also went pretty easy on the bike as well. So why the legs were recovery, the start of the real swim workouts for the season started.

I'm just going to start another paragraph well because it looks cool. On Wednesday, I did my first swim workout since last summer. I did ten 100 yard repeats. This time I swam 400 yards for the warmup. In the past I only have done about 200 yards but it seems that I feel better after a little more warmup. Another sign of getting old I guess. In surprise, I was able to hit my same times that I did in the past. Now maybe I can get faster in the pool by September when I'll be doing my first tri of the season. It would be nice not to be so far behind coming out of the water. I got time to really see if I can improve.

I don't have any other races planned til then so I'll just keep following my marathon training plan. I'll be hanging steady with some 30 something mile weeks until August when I'll start cranking up the long runs as I head towards the Baltimore peak. I kindof dread the those long runs. It's hard to stay focused for such long runs. So not only will I be training my body but I'll be training my brain. The brain definitely says it's hurting and you need to slow down and why are you being stupid, let's just walk. Crap like that all the time. It's like the little devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other. The devil is telling you to just slow down and we'll only walk for a bit. The angel is trying to keep you encouraged by saying, "Just think of qualifying for Boston and Wellesley".

It's super cold here again. Well only high 50s which might feel warm to some people but after a few weeks of 80 degree weather it's cold. Hopefully, it will turn warm again soon in order to keep getting bike miles in.

6 more days..

2010-04-26T08:09:00.000-04:00

til the first benchmark of the marathon training, a half marathon. Actually, it's not a biggie really. I feel like I'm an experience marathoner. I've done 4 and therefore have put in easily 6 months at the shortest to a full year in preparation. The main thing with this marathon training is getting to October injury free and just "fast enough" to qualify for Boston. The "just fast enough" will be a theme throughout the training. With that I'm planning on just cruising the half on Sunday. The competitive juices get flowing and I might actually end up pushing faster. My legs would be trashed for the following week of training so I'll have to stay calm and just try and get into a rhythm.

I ordered some Hammer espresso gels. 24 in all which should last until marathon day. I tried the Powergel double latte version on my long run last week and it was way too nasty sweet. So that's out. Strawberry-banana and Hammer espresso. I bought one of those Helium Fuel belts at the running store and gave it a go. Definitely easier to run with from a comfort standpoint than just the single running bottle belt. The only drawback was getting the flask in and out of the belt. It's really only for training as I won't need to worry about bringing water with me during the half or the full.

The weekend is over but I managed to navigate the spring time weather. I was able to run in nice 70 degree weather on Friday for the long run and ride in some sunshine on Saturday. Sunday was an easy day with some easy running miles sandwiched around a 30 minute swim.

Right now the forecast has a nice warm day for the half but because it's also a full marathon everyone starts at 6:30am. Ugh...at least it will be fairly warm but not as nice if we started at 8am. I guess I really only care about the weather on marathon day in October.

Oh another cool thing about the marathon is TweetMyTime. The chip timing system for the half and full is linked up with this company who automatically will update your tweet or facebook as you cross various timing mats and finish. That's totally cool. Gotta love social networking..

Earth Day 5K Race Report

2010-04-20T19:06:00.000-04:00

Elena's first ever 5k was on Sunday. The weather was quite chilly at about 45 degrees with some wind but it was sunny. We had picked up our packets on Saturday so we had our chips and numbers. I was surprised by the number of people, well over 500 as I assumed it would half that due to the small feel of the race.

Starbucks was about a block from the start line so we went over there to get some coffee for our spectators, Amber and Joe. Elena ended up scoping out some of Joe's hot chocolate but mainly wanted just the whip cream. I put the kibash on her whip cream eating so she wouldn't have tummy trouble during the race. We stayed inside Starbucks staying warm until about 10 minutes prior to start time.

Elena, Jill and I all lined up way toward the back of the start chute. Since we had a chip it really didn't matter how long it took for us to get to the start line. The race started and Elena was totally excited. After a couple of minutes, we started moving and by the time we hit the start line we were going full speed.

Elena was ready to jet off. I had to slow her down. The course was an out-n-back with a big downhill for about 3/4 of mile at the beginning and of course that same downhill hits ya in the face with uphill in most of the last mile. Elena was off and I was kept slowing her down but we still hit mile 1 at 9 minutes. She still felt great. She was getting encouragement from fellow adult competitors who she was passing and keeping up with.

We made it to the halfway point and only water stop. I decided to get Elena some water and it was her only time that she stopped and walked to drink it. I was worried she wouldn't want to start running again but she started with no problems. She actually was clipping along for a bit a good speed after the break. We hit mile 2 with a 10 minute split and then about 200 meters later the hill the started.

The hill was brutal on poor Elena. She was struggling and at numerous points wanted to stop and walk. I kept encouraging her that we didn't need to stop and she was moving and almost done with the hill. The hill combined with her first 5k really made mile 3 hard. She kept running the whole way up and made it past the hill.

Mile 3 was 11:30. Phew.. Once the hill was done it was only about 400 meters to the finish. We had talked in training about pushing at the end. She was excited to keep a nice pace then push it at the end. I asked her if she wanted to push the pace. She was quite demoralized by the hill but end up pushing a little bit and we finished in 32 minutes.

She finished 2nd place in her age group(8-10). She won a $15 gift certificate at the local running store. My baby's a professional now. No longer an amateur, she's being paid to run. The girl who won was 25 minutes and 10 years old. She ran the race by herself. I don't think Elena is tough enough to run by herself. She'd be lolligaging along for sure. She needs to be pushed a little. We'll keep training and probably do the Race for the Cure for fun. The DC race has so many people there is really no way to go at anything but just an easy pace.

Felt Strong

2010-04-16T14:35:00.000-04:00

I actually felt like an athlete for the first time since last summer, today. I had the strongest bike ride since then although it still wasn't super fast but I felt 10x better than I did on Monday. I have Elena this weekend so I decided to test a little bit longer brick run to try and keep my mileage up. Plus it was 80 today and if I tried to run early tomorrow morning, it was predicted to be 50 and rainy.

I got off the bike and downed some extra gulps of water and an espresso Hammer Gel. Coming off the bike, the legs always feel weird so I was just trying to get them under me. The wind was whipping quite good but for most of the first mile it was a tail wind. I was just trying to float along.

I had packed an extra gel in case and was planning my standard out-n-back course. Depending on how I felt, I could turn around at mile 2, 2.5, 3.1 or 4.1. The first mile has about half of mile of uphill so it's always a slow go but I came through the marker at 7:10. This was easily my fastest first mile in forever. I was thanking the tailwind but knew I'd pay on the way back. The 2nd mile is a gradual downhill for most of it and then the course basically flattens out. It's usually the fastest mile for all the runs on this route. I hit it in 6:30 and was like "wow". This is cool. The legs were just feeling good and I was really wasn't pushing it at all.

I decided for better or worse I'd go all the way out to my 4.1 turnaround point and put down the 8 miler. I was able to keep 6:40ish pace for a few miles until I started to feel a little bonky. I quickly down the gel I had brought and just tried my best for the last couple of miles to keep the form and pace. Of course the last mile was into a massive headwind and uphill. It was pretty painful but I figure I could use the mental toughness for those last 10k of the marathon.

Overall it was a 6:45 average pace and it didn't feel hard. I think the nice warm weather plus about of month of some consistency in workouts is really paying off. I'm still fat as the inside of my knees ended up getting chaffed a little from my fat legs rubbing together but it's slowly coming along.

Big race coming up

2010-04-15T08:31:00.000-04:00

Elena's first 5k is on Sunday. We've been training for a month off and on. She ran a mile last night and it wasn't too bad for her. I think she'll be fine except there's a slight uphill in the middle of the race. She moans about running up hills. Soon enough she'll be loving hills because she'll be able to take advantage of her light body to crush her competition. ;)

Hopefully, if all goes well she'll have fun and crush her age group competition. Okay I have the typical high expectations but I know she can go fast. I'll just let her go her pace and make sure she doesn't go sub 6 for the first mile. ;)

Finally, the weather here in DC has turned decent. I'm finally getting into a nice workout rhythm. This is helping to work off those extra pounds. I think I gained like 5 lbs during the trip to Florida. Of course, it probably had to do with going to all you can eat places every other day. It was pure luck on our part as we had only one all you can eat planned during the trip. The other 4 places were just by accident. So all in all, Florida was 5 all you can eat places in 8 days.

Swimming is sucking big time right now. I just can't get into any groove. My times are stinking but I'm finally getting consistent so hopefully it will turn around before I start doing real swim workouts. My first tri of the year is in September so probably mid-May I will start the swim workouts again. Ugh..ladders and speed intervals. Definitely painful.

Hammer Gel Espresso

2010-04-11T11:37:00.000-04:00

I know it's been in like forever since I did a full blown blog. With simple one-liner status spew outs, what's the point. Well, it's once again time to keep track of my progress towards something. Today marked the first real workout towards the Baltimore marathon this fall.

I got this crazy idea to try and run Boston when I'm 40. It's like my mid-life crisis. Along with doing Boston at the age of 40, I'm going to do another Ironman. What better excuse to get out there for 10+ hours of exercise than to try and tell myself I'm not really 40. 40 is a big number. Life is pretty much half over. Only 40 more years to have fun. Anyway, I hated the first Ironman so I probably would never do one again until I got this hair-brained idea to do one for my 40th and then I get to wait 10 more years before trying again when I'm 50. I got 18 months before the Ironman but only 6 months before Baltimore.

My goal is run Baltimore this year and use it as a qualifier for Boston 2012. That way I can just train for Ironman Arizona in all of 2011 and not worry. Well that's if I can run Baltimore in under 3:15. I think I can do but it won't be a walk in the park like my old days of running.

Back to the here and now, I just did 10 miles and felt a little slow at the beginning but man things picked up nicely after consuming an espresso flavored Hammer Gel. I got this for Easter from a fellow runner. I had tried Hammer Gels in the past and never really liked them at all. I figure I'd give it a go since it was just a training run. I'm glad I did. It tasted exactly like a condensed mocha. I washed it down with some water and about 5 minutes later my pace picked up without much effort. I wonder if Hammer makes Egg Nog gels. Those would rock. So now I have 2 flavors of gel I like, PowerGel strawberry/banana and Hammer Gel espresso. I got a few more flavors to try over the next long runs.

Well now the rest of the day will be slacking in front of the TV and I'll just ride tomorrow to give the legs some rest unless I feel like a quick 4 miler off the bike. The weather and my 2008 Ironman picture are fueling my workouts right now. I can't believe how slim and in shape I was for that Ironman. Hopefully, I can get back into that shape for Baltimore. I've started back on the diet and made it through Costco yesterday without buying chips. Doritos are no longer part of my diet. Frito Lay may have to tell shareholders and readjust Q2 forecasts. ;)

Last Triathlon of the season and more changes

2009-08-16T15:20:00.000-04:00

As the 2009 version of Ironman Canada looms, it's time to change the blog title, etc. Inspired by yesterday's last triathlon of the season, I'm ready to start my slacking in preparation to build it all back up for next season.

Yesterday's performance was pretty weak. I was expecting better but I went into the day already on a negative. No wetsuit. I couldn't believe that this decent sized lake was 80 degrees. My pool at the condo is way colder. WTF!! But I'm sure the temperature was right because it was no problem at all getting in. In my head I knew it would be a tall order to bring goods knowing I was easily going to give up 5 minutes on the swim. The only benefit was a bunch of power hills on the ride and decent hills on the run as well.

I drove out to the event which was about a 2 hour drive. It wasn't too bad as I had been slowly adjusting my sleep schedule in preparation for the early 3:30am wake up call. I got the event without trouble and setup my rack. I decided to go with my tri-top rather than my full zip cycling jersey. I was able to get the tri-top over my torso after the non-wetsuit swim at Florida but I hadn't practiced since then. Uh-oh.

The swim started and was uneventful early as I found clear water and had a decent job sighting. I swam pretty straight. I really need to figure out how to draft. The problem is by the time I decide to try to draft, all the swimmers going just a touch above my speed are already gone. So anytime I draft I end up swimming up over them. I just stayed off the left of the pack and went as best as I could. By the time, I got out of the water, I forgot all about hitting my watch for a split. I was busily trying to hammer the super long run up about 40 stairs to the rack.

At my rack, everything went on fast except my tri-top as it got stuck. I struggled at least 2 minutes to get it ready. What a bummer because I saw a ton of athletes shirtless which I easily could've done. Oh well, next year I'll have this solved as well as the cycling shoes. I'll buy some tri-specific shoes in the offseason so I can go sockless on the bike.

The bike had a few decent little inclines plus this massive long false flat towards the end of the loop. We did 2 loops and I was passing quite a few fast swimmers. I was killing it on the bike. I was really making the legs suffer. I decided to try this as compared to my first Olympic where I went hard but not all out and still had decent running legs. The road surface was quite good and there wasn't much bike traffic. Plus on top of that there was no wind so it was fast even with the hills. The finished include 2 decent sized climbs which I was trying to pass just a few more folks.

I was lightening fast in T2. It's always my fastest taking only about a minute. I hit the run course and my body just said "Nah I don't feel like it today". It was weird feeling. I guess that's what happens when you leave it all out on the bike course. I tried to start at an easy pace and then pick it up in the middle. I was slow for the first mile but it included some decent up hill. I saw the overall leaders and there were going at a good pace. I just couldn't match it on my own side of the 2 loop run course.

I was glad it was over knowing that my season is done. I ended up 39 overall which was sad. I might've made the top 10 in my age group but who knows. I was pretty slow but the official results aren't up yet. I heard quite a few athletes complain about the swim course being a little long and even the bike course being a touch long.

It was like a vortex of the worse possible scenarios. Long non-wetsuit Olympic swim course. This is the worst thing about the distance is the everything else is half the half-ironman except the swim which is only a quarter mile shorter. The best part was the hills which definitely helps me on the bike and even the run although painful on both. I guestimated my run split around 39:30ish which is only 2 minutes slower than the DC tri in June which was dead flat while this one had hills. Plus I never felt fast, I felt like I was doddling the whole way. How sad is that. My A game leg was crap. Time to take a break.

All in all my knee is hurting big time so I'm taking 2 weeks off from running. I really want to see if I can get it in line for next year. I'm also going to try my best to improve my swim as well since my luck seems crappy for wetsuit swims hence the new name of the blog.

The Countdown

2009-07-31T07:53:00.000-04:00

As usual it's been along time since I made a post to the blog. It's almost August....2009 so I need to get my act together and change the actual blog title and layout. My Ironman 08 statue of limitations is up in a few weeks. I'll forever be an Ironman but I won't be able to flaunt it like before which is a bummer but I'll take it over having to actually complete another one this year. It seems all my fellow Ironmen and Ironwomen signed up for an IM this year and even already signed up for one next year. Crazy...I think their addicted to being in shape.

My next attempt at a Ironman or marathon will be when I turn 40 in 2011. I think that would be a good final Ironman or maybe just do one every decade if possible. Although if my knee doesn't heal, I'm not sure I can run that far again. It's still messed up but I will head back to the PT folks and probably an orthopedic doctor after my last race of the season on August 15th.

I'm doing my first running only race tomorrow. It's my first 10K in over 7 years. How wild is that! I'm thinking I might have a good race because it starts at 6:30pm. It will be hot and I execute better in the heat than the cold of a typical morning start. I had a good interval workout last week and my times actually compare quite well to my times in 2000 when I was under 30. Another a benefit of this race is they will have shoe recycling. Sweet. Time to unload of 10 pairs of old running shoes just taking up space in my closet. And the last and greatest benefit of this race is it's location. It's only a couple of blocks away from a Dairy Queen. DQ has put me into a trance with all their blizzard of the month commercials over the last weeks. I have blizzarditis and there's no DQ near my condo. ARGH!! It's probably good though as I'd be having a weekly blizzard and those 1000 plus empty calories wouldn't help my weight one bit.

Summer has finally arrived in DC. It's been pretty warm the last few days plus a decent amount of humidity. Overall, I've only had to turn on my A/C a few times so far. I'm saving a ton of money this summer. If you close your eyes, you should be able to hear Geico commercial music in the background. As part of summer, we see lots of road work around the area. They are paving my road this week and causing all kinds of trouble for me on the bike. I have to weave around all the construction and of course the fresh new black top. New black top and bikes don't go well together with all the little pebbles sticking to the tires and scratching your frame. The problem out here is the road construction crews are horrible. They always screw up and the finished job is usually worse than the original. On my bike route, there are two locations where the road crew has paved this certain section 4 times and finally it's right. On top of that roads in general out here just suck.

So I'll be thinking about the new title for the blog over the next couple of weeks but suggestions are welcome..

Another Olympic

2009-06-26T15:14:00.003-04:00

Well, I loved the first one so much I immediately started searching for another one. I signed up for one in mid August. It's a 2 hour drive away but not that bad. It's a 2 loop swim which should be interesting getting out of the water and back in after 750 meters. The bike is a little hilly which will help me unless it's just power hills.

I've only been biking this week to let my knee rest. I swear it didn't hurt during my race. It's sortof weird as it only hurts when I run slow. Maybe my gait is so different between race pace and training that it upsets my knee. My cycling is really coming around as I have a good set of workouts this week. It's so amazing how slow my training wheels feel after riding the HEDs for the last week. Oh well, it will just make me faster come race day sortof like racing flats on the run and wetsuit for the swim.

I wanted to add a 10K running race in between now and the next Olympic but there aren't really any coming up which is sad. There's just one which I'm probably going to do. On top of that, there is no kid's races at all. This bums me out because Elena ended up being sick for the kids race on the 20th and so she didn't get to go. We could try a 5k but I'm not sure if Elena will like running for 25+ minutes. It might be a bit much. There is a kid's race at the Baltimore running festival this October. Amber and Joe are going to do the half marathon.

I had my bag of Doritos and bag of Lay's this week so I'll go back off chips again. It will save money since chip prices have gone way up since the last time I bought them. I do miss them. The Doritos created a wave of euphoria over me as I ate them. Is that bad? I'm definitely out of practice though as my chip eating arm became sore after the multiple reaches into the bag. Sad, how far the great have fallen. Of course, Elena saw the chip bag when she was over on Wednesday and gave me the stink eye. It was hilarious! She keeps me honest in my junk food eating. I guess this is good as she gets older, she'll keep raggin me on my eating habits and hopefully keep me in line.

I'm an Olympian..

2009-06-22T08:05:00.000-04:00

Well not quite but I did complete my first Olympic distance triathlon yesterday and I watched the Beijing 2008 triathlon gold medalist walk down the swim ramp to get ready for the ITU elite competition after ours was over. Close huh? Here's the details for those that don't want to wade through the whole blog. I finished with 2:11:58 so I can say yep, I did a 2:11. :) I had a 37:35 run split for 15th overall run split. It was 6:04 pace which wasn't exactly as fast I had hoped for but overall I was pleased. I did a 27:40 swim in the Potomac. This was the same pace as my Ironman swim last year. Not as good as it could've been. I rode a 1:03:something for a 23.3 average on a pretty flat course. Exactly my goal. I ended up 27th overall out of 267 finishers and actually got 3rd in my 35-39 age group. I had figured at the finish that was time was too slow though so I didn't stay for awards. Doh!

Now onto the details...

The event was a unique mix of just a normal age group Olympic/sprint distance with the fancy ITU world cup international elites competing on the same day with some of the same course. This created some interesting aspects to the event. First, age groupers started at 6am. Yep super early. Second, there was a mandatory pre-race briefing and bike racking the day before on Saturday. The race briefing was a joke as they didn't even talk about the race at all. There was no discussion of aid stations on the run course, how the swim waves were going to be handled, or much of anything else.

So going in, I knew I'd be getting up super early so I had been slowing preparing all week by going to bed just a little bit early each day and on Saturday sleeping as much as possible. I prepared all my stuff the night before race day including a bottle of Cytomax that I stuck in the fridge. I woke up at 3:15 and left at 3:30am with everything except the nutrition bottle in the fridge. I didn't realize I had forgotten it until I arrived at the transition area. Doh! I almost panicked. Luckily I had already brought 1 gel for the bike course and 1 gel for pre-swim. I brought a normal sized water bottle for potential foot washing. It went into my bottle cage and I figured I'd just deal with any gunk on my feet post swim. My rack neighbor loaned me a old school power bar. Who knew they still made those things? I wasn't too picky but figured only half of it was gonna sit well in my stomach an hour prior to the swim. I starting putting on my wetsuit which was a pain as always. Somehow during this I scratched the crap out of 2 knuckles and bruised my left wrist. I don't remember doing this but as I was standing with my wave participants I looked down to see skin missing on my knuckles and nice bump on my wrist.

Swim

This was my first water start. I jumped in the water was a fine 73 degrees not cold at all. I had no idea where to position myself in this wave. I probably made a slight mistake by getting a little too close to the front and middle. The swim course has you swim upstream first, under a bridge and then back with a slight upstream turnaround to the pontoon. The only problem was there was only 6 buoys for the entire 1.5k course.

The horn sounded and we were off. I immediately started to get bludgeoned and on top of that was swimming so fast I could only barely catch my breath every stroke. It was really a horrible first 200 meters or so. No rhythm and horrible form combined with barely being able to breath. I finally got settled down and proceeded to the bridge. The Potomac was very muddy as we've had tons of rain this spring so you couldn't see past your bicep. I got into a nice rhythm but really didn't have as much mental focus on my stroke, body rotation as I should've. Sighting was a problem because of the current on no buoys. We were supposed to be able to have a practice swim on Saturday but thunderstorms canceled it. I was hoping to get a feel of the current and angle from that. I got around the first turn buoy and was actually going quite well and then turned downstream. I was cruising with the pack to my left about 10 meters. The problem was the current was taking me to the right. The course was like a triangle so it took a lot of sighting to stay pointed in the right direction. The other problem was the sun in our eyes directly on the buoy side. I had the tinted goggles but it wasn't much help.

I came around the last 2 buoys and up onto the ramp. I clicked my watch and saw 27 something. I thought hey it's less than 30 so not bad but really it was pretty bad. Sure all of my other triathlons so far have been lake swims but still my pace was the same as my Ironman pace. Ouch. The pack swim just isn't my thing. It takes too much focus that I don't have to spare due to my horrible swim stroke. I need all my focus on it with some on sighting. Next time I starting on the totally opposite side of buoys and not in the middle. On top of that, I've only been swimming like twice a week and rarely 3 times so I have been slacking. My arms are sore right now and were sore getting out of the water.

T1
I made my way up the ramp towards T1. It was like maybe 100 meters total but I got my legs under me and starting running at a good clip while taking out the arms of my wetsuit and off my goggles and cap. I got to my rack and started the dreaded wetsuit strip. This was my first ever hand done wetsuit strip. It actually came off pretty quick although I did almost fall over. I put my helmet, glasses, socks, cycling shoes and race belt and I was off. My official T1 time was 2:21. Not earth shattering but the fastest T1 time for the age group was 1:52 and I did notice some folks going w/o wetsuits for the swim. So I was pleased.

Bike
I got out onto the road and luckily we had a 3 lane rode at the beginning because people were weaving everywhere trying to get into their pre-mounted cycling shoes. I just use cleat covers and remove them on the fly. I did this and got moving quite well as the first section we had a nice tailwind. My new race wheels were awesome. I was flying quite good. The course was mostly north and south sections and we had a decent wind out of the north. Luckily the course goes slightly downhill on it's longest section north. I was able to keep good speed into the headwind and this section is an out-n-back so the last finish miles into transition are tailwind. Sweet! I was just flying the first loop. Probably a little too fast but hey gotta give it go right. There was one section that the organizers should've did something about. It was under a bridge where there was this front tire eating bump. I know DC roads and they completely suck so this wasn't surprising. Overall they did a pretty good job of keeping us on quite nice pavement. I bunny-hopped this massive gauge in the road and made a mental note to remember it on lap 2. There was some drafting but nothing too blatant on the first lap. I started the 2nd lap and I could feel my legs. I was getting some pain from my running injury. I let off the gas a tad and it went away so I started going for it again. I ended up in legal paceline with 2 other riders. Legal in the sense that we both going about the same pace and were staying 7 meters or longer away from each other. With the head wind, you could feel some draft even at that distance. As we approached the massive rut, a spectator was there this time warning riders. I bunny-hopped it again and noticed medic tending to a rider. Certainly a crash victim of this rut. I saw the 400m to go dismount sign and started backing off a little too early as it seemed to take forever to get to the real dismount sign. No big deal.

T2
I'm off the saddle and running at a nice clip to rack my back. I get the bike racked. Helmet comes off, my running shoes go on, running hat on and empty my pockets of empty gel packs and cleat covers. I'm off. It went so fast I was wondering if I had forgotten anything. I grabbed a cup of powerade as I excited transition. This was a slight mistake but I really didn't know if I had enough calories to make it through the run.

Run
I started out what felt slow. My legs weren't clicking. I could feel the bike ride a little plus my stomach was starting to tense up. I thought that if I get a sideache again like at Florida I'm running through the bitch this time. I started getting a little better and by the supposed first mile mark felt like I was up to speed. My mile time of 6:20 was bad. Crap...oh well if I can break 40 it won't be that bad. I picked up the pace. We had some tailwind sections and some headwind sections. I was passing people here and there but just moving at what I thought was a slow pace. I got to a marker for mile 3. Halfway! Woohoo! I clicked the watch and it read 11:30 for the last two miles. I knew then that the markers were off for sure or at least that's what I thought in my head. I figured there was know way I running sub 6s. It felt like 6:30s to me. I just chugged along and then it happened. During mile 4, I started to feel my bad hamstring. I was a little worried and really shortened my stride. You can run through a sidestitch but you can't run through a pulled muscle that well. It went away which was a relief and then boom goes the dynamite. I got passed by a guy. This particular guy I had caught right before the 1st mile marker and he asked me if I was doing the sprint or Olympic. I said Olympic and motored by. I had assumed he was doing the sprint because he just let me go. WRONG! He came by at a nice clip and I started to hang with him. Again, I just don't have enough mental confidence and F-U toughness for a head to head matchup. He slowly pulled away as we were head for our last turn onto Pennsylvania. Now here's where knowing the course would've help. Once onto Pennsylvania it really is only about a half mile to the finish. I saw this and started picking up the pace but it was too late. On top of this it starting sprinkling and the wind was in our face big time. Another guy passed me and I tucked in behind in the massive headwind. With about 400 meters to go, I came around him and started really pushing the pace as I could I see I was catching the Mayor of DC, Adrian Fenty. He is an avid cyclist, runner, and triathlete. He started in the top age group way. The event had TV cameras because of the fancy pro race so I was trying to catch up to him so I could be close enough at the finish maybe to get a bit of me into one of the highlights.

I clicked my watch at the finish and saw 2:11:59. Sweet just under to 2:12 so I can say I did it in 2:11 when people ask. The time was pretty slow as to be really a contender you need to go under 2 hours and I wasn't close so I made my way back to my bike which was a good mile and half walk. I found out via the results online that I had actually gotten 3rd in my age group. Amazing... there were only 50 something in the age group so not that big of deal but definitely cool. I had the 15th overall run split with a 37:35. My standalone 10k PR from when I was 27 was 34:10 so looking at it wasn't that bad. Sure sub 36 would be friggin awesome but probably right now I might be able to run a standalone in the 35s but nowhere near my PR. Overall, that makes me happy with my running training despite having a sore knee on every step of every training run since mid January.

Overall, the olympic was great because I was able to actually jog a little back to my bike. I wasn't completely wiped out and I didn't have to train like a maniac for the distance. I think I'm going to do Olympics for awhile. Just so easy plus I need a few standalone 10ks under my belt to try to get back my mental F-U toughness when it comes to battling during the run.

Last Scheduled Race

2009-06-15T17:10:00.001-04:00

It's only 6 days away and then I can eat, drink and slack the rest of the summer away while I read about people ramping up for their Ironman's this year. Excellent! Plus it's just an Olympic so it won't be that bad. I'll actually get to test my wetsuit removal by myself for the first time. I'm not very confident I can get it off my calves and feet fast. We will see. Lots of body glide hopefully will help.

I gave the HED 6 and 9 a test ride today. Definitely interesting, it takes a bit to get them going but once you do boy they feel fast. I found out that my squeak while climbing is the other wheels and to think I thought my headset was wearing out. I also found out that the HEDs have a wider rim 23 mm than my training wheels as I've had to adjust my brakes and they're still not perfect. I'll ride a few more times this week to get it all dialed in for Sunday's race.

After the ride, I gave the hamstring a little easy run to see how it's feeling. It's okay but slightly twingy towards the end. I was just going real easy. I figure some more ice and rest and it will also be ready. I'm not sure if I can go sub 6s for the entire 10k but I'll definitely try hard to go fast.

After Sunday, I will proceed to eat chips, drink beer and caffeinated drinks and basically just get fat. I'll probably take numerous weeks off from running to see if I can get my knee to heal as it still hurts. Actually, it hurts all the time now. I'm worried because the PT person said I might be damaging cartilage because of the constant inflammation. Uh-oh! I miss running without pain.

Oh I need a new name for the blog soon...the statute of limitations is close to running out on my Ironman of 2008 bragging. It seems everyone I knew that did an Ironman last year is doing one again this year. Crazy suckers!! Last summer's training seems like forever ago. It was all a haze. I have go back to my log just see the fun I wasn't having last year.

A little bit of everything..even training.

2009-06-03T09:16:00.000-04:00

As my waking up for swimming has diminished to non-existence so has my blogging. It's pretty easy just to post a thought to Facebook rather than try to put out a daily boring blog with all kinds of thoughts.

The weather has finally turned around somewhat for me. Of course, I had perfect half marathon weather but the rest of my week in Florida was filled with record rain for the area. This only allowed for one ride and even then we got soaked. Luckily, I had a day to let the bike dry out before putting it back in the box for airline ride home. I had missed some beautiful weather in DC but right when I got back there was two days of cold(60s) rainy weather here. Perfect. It's finally turning around but I haven't had a hard time sleeping yet and it's already June. Last year there were tons of hot as hell days. I guess this is good but still it just seems like we're getting robbed on the weather.

When I was down in Florida, we were able to do lots of eating. As mentioned in my previous blog about polishing off 28 slices of pizza at an all you can eat pizza place. We went to the Golden Corral which is a buffet and I ate a ton there. But the best part was the 12 egg omelette. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be. It was about the size of a medium sized football and about 2 inches thick filled lots of ham and cheese goodness. Plus we got 4 pieces of toast and a plate of hash browns.

The waitress was in horror when both Orion and I ordered one. She tried to talk us out of it. Oh yeah, I forgot the breakfast came with a carafe of OJ. Sweet! We had swum 45 minutes prior to coming to breakfast. It went down without trouble and I wasn't even sick full at all. We finished the week eating 6 full slabs of baby back ribs between 4 of us. I had almost 2 full slabs. Orion cooked them and they were awesome. After it was all over, I weighed in after a couple of days of being home. I was still sitting at 145lbs. Not bad, no weight gain.

I had Elena all of last week so it was a bunch of picking her up at school. We also did a fair bit of training for her upcoming 5k this fall. She's also doing the "Kids for the Cure" race this weekend. It should be easy for her. We'll see if she can push the pace. Okay maybe not but she can hold a decent pace. Every so often she'll have a tough patch and want to walk. I push her to keep going and that it will get better. So far so good. I'm making her mentally tough. It is a fine line from her ending hating running to liking it. She still likes to train. She's still embarrassed running in front of her friends or people she knows.

I bought some new race wheels for triathlons. I got a HED 6 and HED 9. I figure it's worth the extra speed come race day. Especially, since Orion wants to run Florida ever year plus do a full in a couple of years. If the Olympic goes well, I may sign up for more of those and the wheels will get some good use. I got a great deal on the wheels from Tri-Zone. I'm not sure my Olympic will go well on the run though. I did a 3 mile tempo run last week trying to hold 5:45s and was struggling the last 2 miles of it at 5:55. Ouch. I'm going to do some 400s today to see if I can get my leg speed up. It's definitely hard going from 6:30ish half marathon training prep to sub 6 10k prep. Maybe I'm too old to bust out fast 10k times, we'll see. I still miss those easy 6 minute pace legs. I'm hoping I can find them in time for the 21st race.

Stay tuned...

Disappointed

2009-05-19T04:21:00.001-04:00

That pretty much sums up my feelings of the Florida Half Ironman. Obligatory stats:
Swim: 40:32 T1: 3:39 Bike : 2:34:18 T2: 1:30 Run : a pathetic 1:50:03 for a total of exactly 5:10:00.
Things just didn't go according to plan and I mentally gave up. Here's some of the details if you care to read on.

I flew into Orlando Friday afternoon and my friend Orion picked me up. We were both excited as this was going to be his first half Ironman plus really the longest event he's ever done and farthest he's ever ran. We got some early dinner and went to bed to start banking some additional sleep.

Saturday, we drove to the race site to register and rack our bikes. I got some rental race wheels from Race Day Wheels. They were unorganized so it took quite awhile to get the wheels in place. I gave them a test spin and they felt nice and fast as compared to my bombproof training wheels with heavy flat proof Amardillo tires. I also did a small 15 minute run to work out the kinks. I immediately noticed the heat. This was not a good sign. Curse you lame cold DC spring weather. I also tested out what I was calling our "Pulp Fiction" shower in the parking lot. Basically, 2 gallon jugs of water, towel and shampoo for post run and race cleanup.

On Sunday, we awoke at 2:45 AM to drive back to Disneyworld. We arrived in good spirits at 4:15 just in time to catch the first bus to transition. We proceeded to set up our gear and start what would be many nervous bathroom trips. It was already 70 degrees which was good so we didn't have to worry about being cold waiting for the non-wetsuit swim.

Before we knew the pro men started and then it was just a matter of time. Luckily Orion and I were in the same wave. My plan was to draft off him as much as possible and let him clear a path in the water. We hoped to come out of the water at the same time so we could wrestle each other all the way through transition for fun.

I had to make a google choice and I chose wrong. I went with the clear goggles as I thought the sun wouldn't crest over the tree line til late in my wave. These are my favorite and preferred goggles but I should've went with the tinted ones because the sun was well over the trees. It wasn't horrible but definitely noticeable.

Swim: The horn sounded and we were off. I saw Orion for like 10 strokes then he was gone. My right goggle filled with water immediately but my left was clear. It was just lake water so not too bad just a little stinging here and there. I was trying to swim as fast as possible but I didn't feel fast. My new found technique is crooked. I swam pretty crooked the entire way so I had to sight a lot more than Canada. I was trying to use the pack to sight off but there really wasn't a mass of swimmers. On top of that a bunch of times I'd look and all I would see was a wave of water. It was strange. This never happened at Canada. Every time I sighted I also picked some clean water. I had a pretty uneventful swim. Only a couple of bumps here and there. I finally got to shore winded as I really was pushing pretty hard the entire swim and clicked my watch, 40 something. OUCH!! I knew during the swim that 35 was out due to all my sighting but I thought maybe I'd hit 38. Wrong! Oh well, I thought to myself this is still faster than 42 last year and I can make up those minutes if the rest of the day goes well. A post race note is a lot of people have commented that they swam slower than last year and even slower than they expected. This is leading to the thoughts that course was maybe 100 to 200 meters long. I don't really buy this until one of the pros also mentions that they thought the course was long.

T1: I was able to motor up into transition pretty good this year as there wasn't much of a crowd. I could feel my stomach being a little upset but nothing too big to worry about. Most of my bike rack was gone. Not a good sign but lots of room to maneuver. I went as fast as I could. I got my tri jersey on without much effort, helmet, glasses, shoes and I was off. Similar time to last year but I really wasn't clicking my watch splits accurately.

Bike: The bike started good. I got clipped in after awhile and was motoring pretty good passing people constantly and also being passed as well. I started drinking a half gatorade half water concoction to get some calories and some liquid in as the sun was out and it was going to be high 80s for the day. The best thing about Florida is the bike course. It's as smooth as glass. You can really go. Everything was clicking along but my stomach just wasn't feeling too great. I kept trying to find the magic to stay hydrated and carbed up without too much stomach distress. At one point during the ride, I almost puked just because my stomach was feeling great. It finally went away for a bit but never really felt good. This seems to be a common theme with my bike segments. For a lot of the bike course we had a nice tailwind so the miles were clicking off quite fast. I rode a bunch of 24+ without much effort. I knew though at some point during the course we would PAY. The section was the last 15 miles of the course. Uh-oh. I managed to use the legal draft of some bigger guys to help conserve energy and keep an okay pace at the end. I finally looked at my time as we were nearing the end and I knew I'd be pretty damn close to my 2:30 goal. I wasn't exactly on it but I slowed down at the end to spin out the legs a little and undo the shoes for dismount. I was pleased and ready to rock the run.

T2: I was in and out of transition like a bolt of lightening. This was the first time I didn't have to make a portopottie stop before the run. Good sign or bad sign not sure.

Run: This where I was going to rock or so I thought. Boy I was so wrong. Things went well at the start. I clicked off a 6:04 first mile which I still think is officially short with little effort. I hit the trail and rattled off a 6:30 and 6:45 miles. My last trail mile on the first loop was 6:55. At this time I was a little worried. My legs just didn't feel good. I knew they weren't going to carry me. Mile 5 was a full pavement mile and I hit it at 6:40 and then it happened. I got this horrible side stitch. CRAP!! I haven't had a side stitch on a run in like forever. It's been so long I haven't even done side stretches before training runs this entire season. The last time I had one that felt like this one was in a high school 3k track event. I ran through that one but pulled my side muscle during it and was in serious pain for over a week. I had 8 miles to go and side stitch. I could gut and continue to run or stop and see if I could stretch it out. I opted to start walking and stretch it out. I'd stretch and then try running and within a few steps no change. Repeat for the entire 6th mile. 10:46. OH GOD, my race is officially over. This is what ran through my mind along with a bunch of "I suck", "I'm pathetic". Being an eternal pessimist when things go wrong in races, it's really cataclysmic for me. The 10:46 basically put a 1:25 out of reach for sure so I knew a top 10 was surely gone with my slower swim and therefore a chance at a Clearwater spot. In the end, I was happy that most of the top 20 in my age group all ran nice low 1:30s for their run split and all were under 4:30 overall. Anyway, back to my pathetic run. So after mile 6 I basically gave up mentally. I finally got the side stitch under control but my legs liked walking too much so it was hard to get and keep them going. I'd run to the aid station and take in fluids while walking then start running again after a bit and this continued. On top of this my actual run pace really wasn't what I consider running. It was a slow shuffle because this felt the best for my side rather than a full stride. I continued to curse myself the rest of the entire race and was just glad to be done. I did run the entire last mile but overall it was just a pathetic performance. At mile 6 I basically decided since the 1:25 or just a little slower was out of the question that the rest of the race didn't matter. I maybe could've gutted a sub 5 but it really didn't matter.

The funniest thing was Orion suffered like a dog on the run course because of his bad hamstring. On top of that he had tons of cramps but kept going no matter what. He finished and was so happy. He loved the whole race. What a guy! He's a stud.

We picked up our gear and got prepared for dinner at the Wilderness Lodge Whispering Canyon. I was going to drown my sorrows in bottomless milkshakes and all you can eat ribs, pulled pork, brisket and chicken. We both ate a fair amount but were pretty tired.

Some additional notes, I got sunburned which again shows how crappy DC's spring has been this year. Last year, no sunburn at all. Also my legs felt fine. I could walk easily without pain. This is how bad my run was as I'm more tired after training runs than this race. Sad!

My week in Florida continues with lots of eating going on. Last night(Monday), we went to all you can eat pizza. It was a little training for a pizza challenge that we might do someday. Anyway, I polished off 28 slices of pizza in about an hour. The slices weren't super big or anything as the pizzas were 12" with 8 slices per. We think the pizza challenge is doable but will be tough. Of course, I could barely move and had hoped to do 30 slices but had to stop at 28. I also ran 5 miles on Monday afternoon and it wasn't too bad except I still had a side ache.

Orion tells me he wants the Florida Half to be a yearly thing and is already thinking about how he can improve next year. I'm thinking about just not doing anything and becoming a shut-in while he's already planning on training for next year.

I guess when I really look at my run I can't be too upset. I hadn't been able to put in any running miles from the end of January til mid March. I had 8 weeks to go from ground zero on running in order to prepare. Who knows maybe this will allow me to do great things at the Olympic distance event on the 21st of June. I did not feel my sore knee yesterday after my 5 mile run so that's good.

Almost Here

2009-05-15T06:43:00.000-04:00

The Florida Half Ironman is just 2 days away and both Orion and I are excited. You can follow both us via the athlete tracker link on the Ironman.com webpage. I'll try to post our race numbers tomorrow.

My bike is all packed and I'm ready to make the "walk" to the Metro station with the bike case. But $4 for the metro train is cheaper than parking at airport for days...so I walk.

At least I'm fully recovered from the trip to Europe. I've been going to bed earlier and getting up a little earlier to be ready for that 4am wakeup call on Sunday morning.

So here are my official goals for the race, 35 minute swim(it's going to be a stretch but maybe), 2:30 bike(I think I can do it but it will be close), 1:25 run(This is the main goal for me. I'm hoping this will get me a top 10 overall run split.). Overall in the 4 hours and high 30s for the event. If everything goes perfect and the competition isn't too steep, this time could net me a top 10 finish in my age group. That would be awesome. Ideally, if this happens, I might be able to sign up for the Half Ironman championships in Florida later this year.

I posted this YouTube clip on my Facebook but I'll repost just in case.

I figure I'll be taking one of these instead of an ice bath after the event.

Anyway, the blog isn't as up to date as Facebook makes little updates easier.

Olympic Distance

2009-04-27T15:56:00.000-04:00

Yep, I'm going to try my first Olympic distance triathlon. I signed up because I was inspired by a 39:30 10k brick training run after doing an easy 25 mile bike. I figured what the hell. It's local and on Father's day in June. Maybe I could apply all the half ironman training to it and see if I could really go fast on the run. The brick run I was just cruising to that 39:30 so if I pushed maybe I go 36ish. We'll see as it will be more for fun than anything since my 1500m swim will be pathetic as compared to fast men in my age group.

But overall my run is really coming along. I just need to keep any additional injury at bay. I still have the sore knee but I don't need any new one coming along. I busted a 5 mile tempo at 6:10s which was good. The 1:25 for the half run segment at Florida is in sight if it all comes together.

Elena got some new running shoes and is excited to be training again. We ran an easy 3/4 of a mile on Sunday. She has pretty good form which is nice. I think I can get her up to that 5k distance but we'll see. Maybe at around 8 minute pace who knows...I know she could easily bust a 7:30 mile if she had too right now. I'm sortof excited to see how fast she can run when she gets older.

It's fun for me because she actually likes running right now. I have to be careful to make sure she continues to like it. Of course, we're going to get her into the pool this summer with goal of teaching her how to swim. On top of that, it's also time for her to learn how to bike without training wheels. My 7 year old is going to get the full triathlon gambit this summer. It will be good for her and improve her confidence.

It's finally hot here(90 degrees) as I just finished my first ride of the year where I wasn't cold at the beginning of it. Of course, now my condo is 80 degrees but no A/C yet...just yet. I'm holding out as it's suppose to cool down to the 70s by mid week.

With the hotter temperatures, the summer movies start this week with X-Men Wolverine. Next week is the new Star Trek. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do for the movies this summer as I'm kindof just like sitting at home. Maybe when I'm down in Florida at O's, we'll catch a couple of movies. We'll also be doing extreme amounts of eating while I'm down there. We start with going to the Whispering Canyon right after the race for all you can eat chicken, ribs, and sausage as well as bottomless shakes. I'm thinking I'll gain 10 lbs while I'm down there. I'll have to trade off going way off my diet vs. sticking to my diet in order to go fast at that June race.

A side effect of all this nice weather is my allergies are killing me. The Claratin is holding them back but still my eyes are constantly itching. Elena has been walking a tight rope of allergy medication and nose bleeds. Her poor nose gets too dry from the allergy medication and then she has nose bleeds. She woke up last night with one. Poor kid, definitely not fun.

Lazy and Rain

2009-04-20T15:10:00.000-04:00

It's been pouring all day after a really nice spring weekend. I bagged my swim workout this morning because I just didn't feel it. I put in enough calories Sunday afternoon to really need a workout in the pool. My legs are thrashed from the weekend workouts. I thought about running on the treadmill but figured what's a day of rest gonna hurt as it still hurts just walking right now.

I was in shambles after last week's Wednesday's tempo run. I figured I had no chance of going fast on the half and was worried that I might be slower than last year's 1:33 split. Everything mentally changed for me on Friday. It was 70 degrees so I went for a mild 25 mile ride just to spin the legs. I got off the bike and immediately hit the road for a brick run of 6.3 miles. I just wanted to cruise at a nice pace. I clipped off the first mile in 6:40. I thought that didn't seem fast more like a pedestrian 7:15 something to me. I decided to keep cruising and see how it would go. I got to the same part of the run where I had run the tempo on Wednesday. I had averaged basically 6:10s for the 3 miles of tempo. During this run, I was able to rattle off a 5:57, 6:05, 6:07 during that section. I about lost it on the 5:57. I haven't seen a middle mile during a workout since 2002. I'm still shocked. I finished the roughly 10k course in 39:30 and that's with a 1/2 mile cool down. I immediately thought maybe I should sign up for a Olympic triathlon. I suck at the swim but maybe I could drop a sub 36 on the run. I might have to give one a go this summer.

On Saturday, I pushed my first 4 hour ride of the season. The weather was great and even got a slight forearm sunburn from being aero for most of the ride. The arms hadn't seen so much sun all year. I got home with the thoughts of my Costco lasagna. I ate 2/3rds of the entire tray. I probably could've finished but I wouldn't have been able to hit the pavement the following day for my run.

I woke up Sunday for the longest run since doing the PT stuff. 10 miles loomed and my legs were already tired. The first mile felt like 21 of a marathon. The legs were just dead. I guess it will make me mentally tough running 80 minutes with dead legs. I was glad when the run was over.

I can feel I'm getting stronger on the bike and run. I actually may have things timed right for a good peak at Florida. My stretch goal is to qualify for the half ironman championship in Clearwater, FL. I'd have to have a perfect race and hope it was hot enough to decimate the field. I would need to make the top 10 for a shot in my age group. The key is getting my swim at 35 and then being able to finish with a 1:25 half. Of course it wouldn't be an easy task to drop a 2:30 bike in the middle of that. I was close on the bike last year while just cruising at an Ironman feel. The run will be the hard but if things go well I could do it. The real problem with the run is dodging other participants due to the course being 3 loops. This is toughest part of that course navigating everyone as you overtake them on the uneven surface of grass/dirt. I just want to see 6:30s on the watch at as many miles splits as possible.

The swim isn't improving but it isn't getting worse. I haven't been swimming as much as last year but that's okay. 3 quality workouts each week seems to letting me hold some shape. I'm not sure it's going to translate to a 35. I think my experience from last year will help cut some time from last year's 42. I definitely spent a little too much dodging swimmers and sighting. I think based on my experience from Canada I will sight a lot less. In Canada, I think I sighted maybe 3 or 4 times total. I just used the crowd to guide me around the course.

I can't believe it's almost May though as April has just flown by. I probably need to change the layout of this blog and change it's title. If I do qualify for Clearwater, I'll have some purpose for training this summer. If not I can see a lot of lounging by the pool. I've also just given myself a new goal for 2012. I want to run Boston when I'm 40 and possibly do another Ironman at age 40 as well. Instead of buying a sports car, coloring my hair and buying a bunch of fancy clothes, I'll train for a qualifying marathon and maybe even another Ironman.

Hmmm

2009-04-08T08:43:00.002-04:00

Yep, it's been a long time between posts. I just sortof update my facebook status with key workout information rather than putting all the gory workout details in the blog. My life continues to be pretty boring so it's not like I have some great story about going to the bookstore to talk about or even to a Wizards game. Although I had entertained doing a Wizards game just for something different since it's pretty convenient and they are so bad the StubHub tickets are super cheap.

Speaking of StubHub, this service is awesome. I'm sure Elena and I will go to a few National's games courtesy of that service. I will also try to take her to a WNBA game but man the cost of those tickets seems outrageous for the popularity and the seat locations. I tried last year but it was just too expensive. With the slower economy maybe the prices will be cheaper, I will have to keep looking for those games this summer.

And with the economy, I moved my 401k investments back to 75% into the stock market as it's been slowly increasing over the past weeks. Buy low and hopefully sell high when I'm 80 and can actually retire. I wish my 401k would show how much money I've put into the account over the years. I'm wondering if I've actually made money or not. As I think about it, I've probably doubled my investment so that's better than it just sitting in my mattress.

The weather is still cold here. It might get to 50 today. The usual average is 65 and we've only seen like 3 days in the past 2 weeks at that temperature. So sad. This is really hurting my cycling shape. I'm going out today with a bunch of layers for a hard ride so hopefully I don't freeze. The knee is the knee nowadays. I think the PT is helping but it's a super slow process especially now that I'm running a bunch. I did my first real running workout yesterday. I decided to run some tempo. I figure with the limited time I have before the race in May, I'll do one tempo run each week. I started with just a simple 1.75 mile tempo yesterday. It was brutal and I only went 6 minute pace. I still think back to 2001 when it was breeze running 6 minute pace. That's really the last time I've been in awesome shape. Anyway, if I can keep the tempo pace the same but increase the distance I could still have a shot at a 1:25 half. We'll see..

Elena is on spring break this week but luckily the before/after care went full time this week. I wonder how she is liking the no school. I'll have to ask her about it today. Easter is this weekend so I'm not sure what the plans are. I may have to get some eggs and color stuff for this weekend since she's at my house. Maybe I can do an egghunt out in our common area?

Also on the plan for the weekend is a massive Costco run, I'm completely out of food. I have one chicken breast, 5 brats, and 3 boxes of pasta. That's it other than rice for dinner. Luckily, I can eat the same thing every night for days on end and not care. I'm expecting a large Costco bill but overall it's cheaper than just a normal grocery store.

Super Flexible...not so much

2009-03-30T09:36:00.000-04:00

After yet another week of PT, I started running last week. I ran for 3 straight days and 4 miles each. On Friday, I put the hammer down on a brick run and was able to bust out 6:30s. I was quite surprised that I still had the leg speed. Of course, I need that pace for 9 more miles to reach my original Half Ironman run split goal. I still have time so I might be able to get my endurance back up and get used to the knee pain.

My PT told me I have this hyper flexion or something with my joints. I guess its not normal for you to be able to bend your fingers back so they look like the letter "C". Who knew. She says it makes running easier because I don't have to use as many muscles hence one of the reasons I'm injured to begin with. All these little unused muscles in my hips, etc. are weak. I found out Elena also can bend her fingers back easily into a "C". It must be genetic.

Elena is excited to starting training again. We'll start to do some running and see about entering her into a summer race or two. She's 7 so if she wants we'll see how fast she can really go. There are a few kids races around but mostly just 5ks which is still too long for her age.

I finished her 1st grade musical video. This is the first production on the Macbook using iMovie. It turned out okay I just need to get better at holding the video camera.

Elena and I were watching TV this weekend and we kept seeing those weird Audi Q5 commercials. Anyway, she said she wanted to get that car when she grows up. Oh great my daughter has Audi tastes.
I told her she'd have to work hard so she could buy that car.

I got 2 more photo speeding tickets on the way to the PT office. It's so sad because the little photo thing is hidden and fixed. It just happened to be on this 3 lane street that is totally wide open. It's also at the bottom of this hill. Lame all the way around. Who knows how many more I'll end up getting because they took so long to get to my house that I had at least 4 appointments. $40 a pop is starting to add up. I really hate Maryland because I also have to deal with this car insurance thing. I registered my car last year but didn't transfer over my insurance from Oregon right away so now I have to prove that I had Oregon insurance. Fricking pain in the ass. I should've just been lazy and not registered with Maryland at all. So technically, I'm driving with a suspended tag because they give you only 15 days to respond but if you mail them the documents they need it takes 10 days to process them. Either way you're screwed.

I found out that I have to go to Europe after all. I thought I was going to be able to get out of the upcoming trip but no. I'm stuck going the week of the Half Ironman. F-ing great. I get to travel to Europe for 3 days, fly back on Thursday then fly to Florida on Friday. PERFECT!! I'm gonna do my best to sleep as much as possible and maybe even in meetings. ;) It's the taper time so I should be okay but it's just the lack of sleep that might be a problem. We'll see..

Felony Assault

2009-03-23T08:42:00.000-04:00

My quads called the cops to charge me with felony assault after this weekend's cycling. I absolutely demolished my legs on Saturday's 56 mile ride. I just kept doing short 5 minute or so intervals the entire time after a warmup. I could barely make it up my stairs when I got home. Even more pathetic was my time was just under 3 hours for the ride. I rode a 2:40 57 mile leg at Florida last year and felt like I went easy. Ugh...my cycling needs some serious work between now and May 17th.

On Sunday, I went out for just a nice spin session. I ended with 62 miles in 3 and half hours. The legs were tired but I just took it easy. The weather is still under 60 here and I sure wish it would get warmer so I could feel comfortable outdoors on the bike. The best part was my knee felt great on Friday and I was almost tempted to run. It felt fine on both Saturday and Sunday.

My next PT session is Tuesday. I'm hopeful that whatever we're doing is helping and maybe I can get back to some 30 minute runs this week. I looked at my calendar from last year and I was still doing short stuff at this time so maybe I can really have a chance at the run afterall.

The only thing that's ahead of schedule is the swimming. Can you believe it?!? My worst event is actually the most improved right now as I'm on mid summer form right now. I just completed the "Pyramid of Death" this morning for my longest interval workout so far this season. It was brutal but I kept the pace as fast as I could. I thought I was going to faint during the last few 50s. I'm assuming fainting in the pool is probably a bad thing. Swimming til you puke is probably not a real good one either. I stumbled out of the pool at the end but I feel better for busting out the tough workout.

Other than working out, I pretty much watched NCAA basketball, movies and DVR TV shows all weekend. I caught up with 24. I finished season 2 of Friday Night Lights and season 3 of X-Files. I watched Death Race and Mummy Dragon Emperor. Death Race was okay but not too great. The Mummy was awful. I can't believe how bad it was compared to the first two. It didn't get going until the end and then it just was pathetic. I saw Wanted which wasn't too bad except it also had a lame ending as well. The cool thing about it was the director. He's the same guy that directed these weird Russian action-horror movies Night Watch and Day Watch. The star from those movies had a little bit part in this one. It was interesting what he was able to do with some budget.

Even with all the TV watching, I was able to get some good sleep. I'm ready for another week...

Tournament Thursday

2009-03-19T15:24:00.000-04:00

It's BEGUN! The NCAA Basketball March Madness Tournament! Everyone's got a bracket including President Obama.

My bracket has changed 3 times before the games tipped off. I already had a major scare**SPOILER ALERT** with Memphis almost losing in the opening round. I have them winning it all. We'll see how it goes. It would be great to be in Portland right now as the Rose Garden is hosting opening round games. Actually being part of the first two days would be great fun although I hear they don't serve beer at college basketball games. That's lame and major money detractor.

I made it through my 3rd PT session today with no improvement. Well that's not totally true but man it's slow going. I was able to test the knee on a 3 mile run yesterday under sunny skies in 65 degree weather and it failed. My cycling is slowly coming around and my swim is holding steady. I did break 1:40 during some 100 intervals earlier this week which was lots of fun. I really don't feel like I'm going to be able to bust out a fast run come May. I just haven't been able to get any work in on it.

The PT person makes fun of my lack of flexibility and my loathing of weight lifting. She moves my leg around and just starts giggling sometimes about the lack of mobility. Oh well, she's been working my hip, IT band and hamstring. I guess all these 3 being a little tight is causing running stride issues which effects my kneecap positioning.

Spring is tomorrow but man it's still pretty cold as compared to last year. I think it was a mild winter here last year as we were already getting lots of sun and for lots of outdoor rides. I'll probably be able to do some 3 hour rides on Saturday and Sunday. At least my heating bill last month was cheaper than expected, woohoo. I can turn on the heat now if I get too cold.

The Macbook is doing great. I have it sitting on the coffee table while watching evening TV so I can still respond to email and do work. This is good and bad because sometimes it's 7pm before I even think about relaxing. I've been trying to get a good sleep so I feel rested. I've been trying to get my 9 hours at least to feel good waking up at 4:30am.

I looked at my 401k recently as the market has started rebound and was shocked. I think I'll be working til I'm 102. I've lost half of my total account. How sad is that? At least all my current purchases are bonds which are getting at least 2%. I thought about switching to a fund but I think I'll wait just a little longer.

West Wing Tour

2009-03-16T09:10:00.000-04:00

On Saturday night, we got to go on a West Wing tour. It's one of the perks Joe gets for his short 6 month stint working for the office of the President. We walked through two different security posts and through an metal detector with our cameras and wallets X-rayed. It was raining so we hustled over to the basement entrance of the White House.

You walk in and there's a guard behind a desk who checked the badges we received for the tour. We walked down some stairs to see the door of the Situation Room. It's a normal size wooden door but has a peep-hole. It's not like you're opening the door during a meeting unless you see who's on the other side. There were numerous action shots of President Obama in frames all along the walls. There are also old paintings of special events through the halls as well like Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Next past another guard post, we made our way out onto the patio of the Rose Garden.

This is the walkway right next to the Cabinet room and at the far end is the Oval Office. Here's a shot looking into the windows of the Cabinet room and of course my daughter is all smiles.

So right at the end of the walkway is where President Obama has his smoke every so often I bet. It was cool just thinking about all the history of that patio. I mean Presidents had to be out there clearing their minds before big decisions in the history of the nation. Just amazing when you think about it. We saw a guard all in black packing some serious fire power walking through the garden as we were about to leave.

So we went back inside for the best part of the tour, actually peeking in through an open door at both the Cabinet Room, the Roosevelt Room and Oval Office. The Cabinet Room and Roosevelt Room each have a chair just for the President. It's almost identical to the other chairs in the room except it has a taller back and of course is at the center of the table. There was guard right outside the Oval Office who actually knew some information about the rooms, etc.

She told us about the Roosevelt Room which has Franklin's Nobel Prize in it on the wall and Teddy's Congressional Medal of Honor. It also has all the military branch flags with ribbons signifying each action they were part of. Even the Coast Guard has a flag(a shout out to my Jeff and Elizabeth in Seattle). It has a secure video conference equipment and cool fake skylight in the ceiling.

Obviously, the most interesting was the Oval Office. We found out that President Obama is using the Resolute desk as in the movie National Treasure: Book of Secrets. It's looks really cool in real life with all the carving on it. He just got a pen holder given to him created from the hull of the HMS Resolute's sister ship. He had pictures of his family and wife on a little table behind the desk. The Oval Office has this cool stone carving of the Presidential symbol on the middle part of the ceiling. He has two busts, one is Lincoln and one is MLK. The guard said this was the first time a civilian's sculpture has been in the Oval Office.

We just marveled at it for awhile and easily spent 20 minutes just chatting with guard and asking questions. Just trying to make a mental picture of the place.

We walked out through the actual White House lobby to the outside.

Our last stop of the tour was the Press Briefing room. It's quite small overall as compared when you see it on TV. It only has 35 chairs.

We hung out and got some fun pictures in here.

I'm not a crook. Okay so maybe I was only one goofing around. What ya gonna do!

Overall, we spent an hour for the tour. A co-worker of Amber's had a nice camera so I hope to get a bunch of high quality shots from him as these were all camera phone shots.

Elena even had fun and was not bored. I guess living here isn't bad all the time.

PT

2009-03-14T13:47:00.000-04:00

Yep, I bit the bullet and caved into the physical therapy route for my stupid knee. I went in and they grabbed, poked, massaged and tweaked. They finally came up with the answer. My foot injury is what's causing the knee pain. It's not runner's knee at all. It's the muscle be overstrained because it was compensating for my tendon in my boot being tight. My whole left leg was tight as compared to my right one. The physical therapist pushed and massage different spots. It hurt like a mother. I've never gotten a massage because it hurts too much. It was hard to tell if the various pressure and massages were helping relieve my knee pain or if it was just hurting worse and masking the knee pain.

At a point during the procedures, the knee did feel better. I got various exercises that I'm doing to loosen up my muscles in my legs to help the soreness. Overall, it's good that I can get this to go away and not have to worry about cartilage being inflamed. They said it should start to feel better in a couple of days if I keep doing the exercises. Once, I can walk down stairs without pain, I can start running again. Hopefully within the week as I can still get some sort of training in before the May Half Ironman with 8 weeks to go.

I did get some fancy ultrasound on the top of my foot. Not sure if it helped or not because I really haven't had pain in my foot since the knee injury. I can see how professional athletes can heal really fast. If they do PT everyday, it can help a ton. I have another session on Tuesday so hopefully it just get better and better.

The next running injury I get I'm hitting the PT immediately. It's worth it to me to be able to keep running at a high level. Maybe this way I can really ramp up the running speed and get a little closer to my old pace.

Elena is taking a nap right now in preparation for our White House tour. It got moved from 2pm to 7pm so she'll be up past her bedtime. It was her own idea to take a nap. What a conciseness kid. I had to get her some dress shoes as she's grown out of her past ones. She also needed a new dress sweater to go over her dress. It was hard finding because all the spring clothes are out. We found one at the Gymboree but it was spendy. Oh well...such is a parent's life.

Green

2009-03-10T07:42:00.000-04:00

In continuing with the Apple theme, I sent in my old PC to be recycled by Apple this morning. When you buy a new Mac, Apple lets you participate in a recycling old computer program. It's pretty sweet. They send you two FedEx barcodes so you can ship 2 boxes full of old computer parts. I cleaned out all kinds of old stuff that I can no longer use. The only problem was finding boxes big enough. I had to use my work 24" LCD empty box so if I ever get whacked I'm not sure how I'm going to send back my monitor.

I'm typing this blog as I ice my knee for the billionth time. This runner knee is not getting any better. I've gone to an extreme measure and sent an inquiry email to a physical therapist. I'm actually debating with myself to call them today to see if they can help. I'm also seriously thinking about not running for 14 days just to see if it can heal completely. This would leave me 7 weeks to build up my run.

I rode both Saturday and Sunday on the tri-bike in 70 degree weather. It was great even though I can tell why I got runner's knee. My quads are pathetically weak. Endurance was fine but leg strength was horrible. It's just amazing at how hard my Ironman pace feels just for 60 miles. My neck and back hurt as well because I'm not used to the tri position. It's not like my lips are kissing my front wheel either, I was just too much of a winter riding slacker.

I can safely say my off season didn't accomplish anything. My riding sucks and I can't run because I'm injured. Perfect! The only benefit so far is my swimming is faster. Who would've thought!

Since I didn't have to go to Europe this week, I get to go on a White House tour on Saturday. Amber's husband works for the President so he was able to get us the "special" White House tour. I'm sure now my blog will be flagged because I used the word "President" and "White House". Anyway, it's going to be pretty cool as we get to see the West Wing and might get to peek into the Oval Office. All this assumes that the President isn't around because if he's working the tours are all canceled. I hope he's slacking this Saturday at least. I guess this is one of the perks of suffering out here through super cold winters and super hot and humid summers.

Pure Pain

2009-03-07T18:25:00.000-05:00

I went out today for my first "long" ride. It wasn't really long though since I only managed just over 3 hours and 60 miles. The weather was great for early March and compared to all the cold weather. It was 70 degrees by the time my ride ended. My energy ended about 8 miles short of the finish. It was a struggle to get back home. I was wiped out. This doesn't bode well for May but hopefully I can get my act together.

The Macbook Pro is doing great. The display is so amazing, it's hard to describe plus just being able to pick it up and move around the condo is sweet. I didn't have to go Europe. Woohoo!! Things are changing for me so I won't have to travel as much hopefully. So bye bye to my United Premier status for next year. The one crazy thing with the Mac is trying to figure out how to read in the movies from my camcorder. I need to catalog and put together some movies from last year of Elena. Plus because I don't have to go to Europe, I get to see Elena's 1st grade music performance. We'll give the iMovie a spin to see how it goes.

The knee still hurts but I think I'll just get used to it. I probably won't be able to walk after the half but I'll just recover this summer. Ice and more ice with some Aleve throw in for good measure. It hurts getting out of the saddle on the bike as well but definitely didn't make me so slow on all the climbs today.

I need to wash my car because it's covered in salt. It looks like a heavy sweater's tri-shorts at the end of a hot day. Actually all the roads around here have the same salt streaks. Massive salt and I didn't see anyone with chains that day when it snowed. The roads can't handle that type of wear because they already have freeze cracks everywhere.

Well tomorrow it's suppose to be another nice day so I'll try the trifecta for bike rides. I might die but at least the legs will get stronger because right now they're weak. I'm already down to my race weight of 142 and I know its mostly muscle loss. I just slacked way too much on the bike this off season so my legs have turned back into runner legs. Of course that's useless because I won't be able to leverage all that good running base into speed because of the stupid knee. Last year my off-season was wasted because of the collapsed lung and this year most of it was destroyed because of one 12 mile run. I wish I would've just stuck to my normal route and maybe it would've been different. Just one of those time machine type moments.

Well it's another exciting Saturday night in DC, as I watch Netflix. I might try to see Watchmen tomorrow but I hate going to opening weekend movies. I just rather not deal with the crowds. Although I might brave the crowds for Monsters vs. Aliens because Elena is totally excited to see it. She's been talking about it for months.

Well we lose an hour of sleep tonight which sucks...it's odd that this year its so early when last year it wasn't until April. I wonder who makes that decision. It seems random. I want to be the daylight and standard time change czar. Full control of people's wake-up schedule and screwing parents nationwide when they attempt to get their young ones up an hour earlier than normal. Excellent! I wonder if Congress would have to vote to stop daylight savings. Imagine being like Arizona where you don't have to deal with a time change. I guess in June the sun would rise at 4am and most people wouldn't like that.

Stimulating this horrible economy

2009-03-03T09:02:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm doing my part to stimulate this economy by spending a bunch of my federal tax return. I decided to go even more Apple this past weekend by getting an iPod at Costco. I got an 8G one and I decided purple based on Elena's suggestion. She loves purple and I like it as well. Anyway, she'll be getting this iPod when she gets older anyway so it works to my advantage. I saved $10 by getting it at Costco which covers the sales tax. It would've been cool to get the free engraving Apple is offering but oh well.

Of course the biggest purchase of my new Macbook Pro 17". The screen is awesome and it's really light for how wide it is. It's not a big hassle carrying it around but man it's tough to get used to the new OS. I'm still trying to find out how to "cut" files and "paste" them rather than just "copy/paste". I'm sure I'll find it. The files I backed up from my PC don't work though. Stupid media player built a bunch of wma files and those aren't readable on the Mac. Luckily, I had only purchased 3 albums so it's not that big of deal. I can try to convert them via Itunes on Windows but my PC is pretty messed up. The graphics card is almost dead as it only boots in VGA mode.

Some things are really cool like this "Expose" feature which zooms all windows to fit the screen so you can find one easily. I have a bluetooth mouse and keyboard that's really cool. The best thing is I turned it on and selected my wireless network from a list and entered my password. It was that simple. No selecting which type of wireless password crap that XP has, etc.

Elena and I also went to Ikea and bought a desk for her room and I even upgrade to a normal desk. The folding table disintegrated when I took it down. Good times! This desk is nice and it's all clean now. We'll see how long that lasts.

I get to Europe next week well I have to is more accurate in the description. It's going to be a brutal trip because I have to leave on Saturday and I don't get back to the following Saturday. Plus on top of that I'm missing a tour of the White House that Saturday. It pays to know people but I can't take advantage this time around. Elena, Amber, Joe and a couple others are getting a tour and including the West Wing. Amber says they might get to peek into the Oval Office. Bummer for me. Oh well...

It's fricking cold here still. It snowed 6 inches yesterday. This is compared to mid 50s last Thursday when I took my bike outside for the first time since October. Crazy...it wasn't too bad of a 27 miles. The legs definitely felt weak but not totally dead. It was 66 on Friday but it rained plus Elena had a half school day so I didn't get out on the bike. Now there's snow everywhere and it's like 20 something degrees. ARGH!! This is hurting my heating bill although I'm still keeping it cool in the apartment.

The swimming is continue to stay at my new faster pace. This is cool and was able to bust out a sub 1:40 for my last 100yard interval yesterday. Sweet... Of course this is all tempered with not being able to run at all. I even bought Aleve at Costco. I took one on Saturday. I haven't had an Aleve in easily 5 years not counting the drugs they were giving in the hospital last year for the collapsed lung stuff. The knee is still sore. I'm also trying some glucosamine supplement to see if that helps. I'll try to run on Sunday in Zurich for 30 minutes and see how it goes. The run last Wednesday was 4 miles and I kept a decent pace even though the knee hurt.

That's just a quick update of stuff going on...I'll try to be more active but I've gotten super busy at work.

The barrel

2009-02-21T11:02:00.000-05:00

OMG! I couldn't wait til the end of the weekend to post this. I just swam my fastest ever 2400 yards in the pool sans wetsuit. My half ironman swim split was 38 minutes. This is a minute faster than my previous best. I was averaging 1:43 per 100. That's insane for me. I haven't seen really anything under 1:50 consistently for a long time. And it all has to do with this:

It all because of the barrel. Yesterday, I tried making my arm into a "C" like I was hugging a barrel during my pull. I noticed it was harder and I got some speed from it. I had been pulling my arm like an oar. Perpendicular with a high elbow through the water. I just thought that a flat arm would direct the most propulsion backwards well somehow a "C" shaped forearm and upper arm pulls more water for me.

I decided this morning to use the "C" shape pull the entire swim. I had forgot to dry my baggy swim trunks last night so I was stuck wearing just my tri-shorts for the swim. Shedding the baggy trunks cuts about 5 seconds per 100 for me. Anyway, I hoped in and swam my first 100 in 1:41. This is almost my fastest ever 100. Even when doing intervals I've only gone under 1:40 a few times. I was excited but the next 100 was 1:47. Crap, let's get focused and see what I can do. I just kept busting out 1:42s and 3s. Towards the end I had a couple of 1:45s but overall I averaged 1:43. Sweetness!!

Maybe a 35 minute half ironman split is in my grasp at Florida. Combine that with a 2:30ish bike and then if I can just bust out a fast run split, the high 4:30 something range is in my grasp. That's right in the thick of things in my age group. Of course that all depends on my run coming around. My knee feels pretty good today so I'm going to lay off until the first of March and then come back slowly. The run base should still be there and if I can just build up a little slow and overlay some speed in April I should be okay.

The run is going to be harder this year because my entire cheering section from last year won't be there. Amber has a conference the Monday after the half so she, Elena and Joe are not coming. Of course, Orion is participating so he won't be in the crowd either. I'll just have to stay mentally tough on my own.

I made it

2009-02-20T10:27:00.000-05:00

I actually drug my ass out of bed in time to head to the pool for a swim plus the spin class. I've even hit the indoor trainer twice this week. Since I have only run twice in the last 12 days, I need to keep myself stress free by doing something at lunch time. The riding of my road bike on the trainer has been interesting as compared to the spin bike. It's nice to get a feel for the old road geometry although I'll probably transfer over the pedals to the Cervelo when I hit the outdoors. We're under 12 weeks for the Florida half.

Orion's training is hanging in there but he is also struggling nagging soreness from his running. He's following the beginner's 16 week half training program from Triathlon magazine that I sent him. We're still excited to do the event together. Hopefully, I can hang out in the finish holding area to get a finish photo with him. I'm also hoping for no rain at all and just oppressing heat and humidity. It's probably the only event I'll be doing with this "economy" and my laziness.

It's still cold here so I'm getting more and more pissed at the weather. I don't know if I can make it to the days when the temperature high is 50. It seems like spring is never going to get here. Frickin east coast...stupid DC area. Of course, I don't get to run right now as I need to keep resting the knee. I figure if I give a full 2 weeks off maybe it will be healed enough to get some run workouts in.

I sit here typing this on my old computer since my Macbook Pro is still on a FedEx plane somewhere. Apple delayed it 10 days for everyone and now finally started shipping them out. Mine went from Shanghai China to Alaska and now it ended up in Indy before heading back Oregon. How weird is that? Talk about a waste. I guess those FedEx folks really don't know how to route shipments. How many other west coast shipments from China go to Alaska and then to Indy before heading back to the west coast? Wild stuff. Anyway, so I won't have my computer until March. It will end up at work on Monday and then my AA will send it to me here. It's going to cost $40 so in the end I'm saving $200 by shipping it to my work. Woohoo!!

When it arrives, I'll be going to Ikea for a new desk to put it on. I figure why not get rid of my pathetic folding table desk and step up to a somewhat real one. I'll buy one for Elena and me. Elena will help me put it together and organize my bedroom around it. It's nice having a little slave er daughter that helps around the house. I really need a new dining table and chairs but I really haven't found a cheap enough one yet. ;) I should just bite the bullet and buy a nice one. Maybe with the current economy, I can find some great deals as places drop their prices.

Not much else going on here in DC which means less blog updates.

Feelin better

2009-02-17T08:12:00.000-05:00

Well it looks like my diet is coming to an end. I felt better yesterday. I was able to eat some food and even have some post dinner snacks. I did go to bed extra early to see if I could feel rested for today. I slept well and didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night to blow my nose. Woohoo!! It's the little things although I probably only have 2 more weeks before allergy season starts and then the nose will be covered with a tissue constantly.

I can never remember all the cool things that I want to talk about when I write this blog. It seems I always forget. Maybe I should switch to Twitter since it seems to be for ADD bloggers.

After this past weekend, you can almost guarantee that the Friday the 13th franchise will start back up. 42 mil, are you kidding me? I can't wait to see it. I might think about going to see it this weekend although I'll probably just stay home and watch TV instead. Let's see spend $15 on a movie and popcorn or just stay home for free. Tough choice! Plus I have 4 hours of 24 on the DVR..sweet! 24 mini marathon here I come. I think Watchmen is probably the next movie I'll see in the theater. It's big enough that it requires some big screen viewing.

It's still cold here so I still haven't taken the bike outside. I know I'm a wimp but well there is it. Florida is looking worse and worse. First, the running injury which basically blows any chance of a 1:25 run split. Second, the two weeks in Oregon with no swimming drowns the chance of going sub 40 on the swim. Third, no outdoor cycling and we're 3 months away drops the hopes of a 2:30 bike split. My training this season has been abysmal as compared to last year and last year I had a mandatory 4 weeks off because of a partially collapse lung. This year I just have a collapsed motivation.

I'm still bitter about all the sub freezing runs I did to just have it all slip away due to this stupid knee injury. I could've been a fair weather runner all winter and be in better shape now because at least I still be running 5 miles every so often. I had to explore a new route. I should've just kept to my old route that I did all last year. I should've just did 10 miles instead of 12. Wow!! I just can't think about it anymore it's too painful.

Hopefully, my new Mac will arrive soon. It's suppose to finally ship out this week. It's going to the office in Oregon(no sales tax baby!) and they're going to ship it to me here in DC. I'm sticking it to the Maryland state government. I'm doing it because well I can. I didn't bring back a ton of stuff from my Oregon trip tax free except running shoes, wireless keyboard, and 2 boxes of Clif Bars. Because of the extra stuff, my luggage was going to go over the alotted 50 lbs. I decided to put the extra weight into my backpack and then after getting my baggage tags stuff it back into my suitcase. At Portland International Airport, you have to take your own luggage over to the big X-ray machines after the airline tags it. Well as I was wheeling my 50 lb bag over to the X-ray, it all sudden acquired some extra weight and my backpack was 2 lbs lighter. Take that airline! Overcharging us for bike cases and having to pay for the fatty who's 50 lbs overweight sitting in a middle seat because your fuel economy isn't the greatest. F that!

Miserable

2009-02-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

This cold/sore throat that I caught in Oregon sucks. I felt miserable all weekend but at least I tried to workout. I figured I'd try to drown the cold by swimming. Hacking flem underwater just isn't fun. Boy 2 weeks is a long time to be out of the water because it's like I'm starting over from scratch. I have 3 months to get it all together in hopes with staying on the feet of Orion in Florida.

I tried to run 4 miles on Friday but it was more of a hobble than run as the knee is still trashed. I get a solid 3 months of training then I get injured. Although, I thought I figured it out this time. I wish I could blame the brutal 14.5 mile run with Don's friends but my knee was screwed up before I even went to Oregon.

At least as I was hacking and blowing my nose this weekend, Elena was extra nice and good this weekend. She's becoming more responsible about things like keeping her room clean and picking up her clothes. She had all her valentines from school on Friday and gave me one. I'm sure she'll try to keep all her valentines her friends gave her because she's such a pack rat. I usually have her clean her backpack out when she comes over because it's full of stuff. Rocks, papers, random receipts from grocery stores, left over bag lunches, etc. This time she surprised me with a mason jar full of sweet tarts. She won this at school by coming the closest on guessing how many were in the jar. I always remember not even getting close on those types of things when I was a kid. She guessed 230 and there were 266. She said most people said around a hundred. So she has a year supply of sweet tarts.

The only good thing about this dumb cold is I've lost 5 lbs. I rarely eat when I'm sick so it's easy to shed the pounds. So bye-bye Oregon pounds...

A disgrace

2009-02-09T09:20:00.057-05:00

I failed. I didn't even show up. I've let my fans down. This is the way I feel after eating just one 13" pancake and starting the 2nd at the Stepping Stone Cafe in Portland. The pancake was quite good. Nice and fluffy airy even. This was my downfall as they only had tabs of butter and not one of those big ice cream scoops. I went through about 10 tabs on the first pancake and it wasn't even close to enough. The pancakes are about an inch thick. The real food eater eats 3 of these in a stack. The kitchen screwed up and only sent me one pancake out at a time. This allowed for more room to eat but I just wasn't feeling it. I got to the cafe without feeling very hungry and after the first bite I knew it was going to be almost impossible. A fellow Ironman Canada finisher, Alanna, went with me and she polished off her pancake without trouble plus had 2 scramble eggs. She crushed me. I got beat by a girl. ;)

The weekend started by going to see Pink Panther 2 on Friday. It wasn't as good as the first one but during the movie I polished off a tub and half of popcorn. I woke up early even though I was trying to sleep in and decided to go ride for 2 hours on the indoor bike. At 11:30, I had reservations with Eric & Tracey at Claim Jumper. I had the roasted tri-tip with cheese potatocakes plus biscuit. For dessert, I was somewhat conservative only getting the chocolate cheese cake. I thought about the "I Declaur" e-clair which was the size of a football and the 6 layer chocolate cake but I knew the pancakes loomed so I just had the cheese cake. Just think double the normal size of a dessert cheese cake. I said goodbye to Eric & Tracey and stumbled back to my hotel room. I was full.

The sun was great on Saturday so I decided to go for a run in shorts. It was awesome even though I knew I would be doing a long run on Sunday. My knee wasn't happy but I was even though I could feel the cheese cake every step of the way. I rested afterwards but it wasn't enough to have a chance at pancake history.

Sunday morning I gave my report to Orion who promptly said I was worthless as an eater and didn't even feel like taking me to the any buffets when I come and visit. I begged and promised to train harder than ever before. It was just a bad day. I could find it again. My only saving grace was Orion saw me wreck the Brazilian steak house in DC.

I decided to run with Don and his group for a reported 12-13 miles. It would be at a slow pace so I figured my knee could hold up. We proceeded to run and immediately it was bathroom time. The pancake wasn't happy sitting in my stomach. I found one on the waterfront and left the pancake and shame in the honey bucket. We hadn't even reached the turnaround when I asked Alanna how far we had come. Just under 7 well exactly 6.38 is what her Garmin watch told her. I started cursing Don who had dropped back behind us so he didn't hear. I hadn't brought any water or gels or nothing. I was thinking at least there would be people around when I bonked. Paul decided to up the pace when we hit the west side waterfront trail in Macadam. This felt better on my knee and would also get me done before the dreaded bonk. I started to feel pretty good and just opened it up a little more. The knee was throbbing with every step but I wanted the run over with. We finished at the Athlete's Lounge in NW. The run stats were 14.4 miles in 1:48. This was my longest run so far this season and I only went longer once during my Ironman training. Thanks DON!!

I could barely walk on my knee as I headed off to the Blazer/Knick game later. This game was quite a spectacle. The Blazers were crushing it until the 3rd quarter. We hit 75 points and I was thinking chalupas. Taco Bell gives everyone a chalupa if the Blazers score 100. Well right then the Knicks started bombing the 3s and Blazers went cold. For all the gory details head over to Andrew's Blazer Blog as he was the one who invited to the game with his season tickets. He took some great pictures and I'm sure he'll post them all. Here's a picture I snapped with my phone:

I was pretty hungry from the run so I had a cheeseburger, 2 orders of fries, and a bag of popcorn. The Blazers ended up coming back to win with a last second shot from Brandon Roy. Awesome!

The weekend is over but it was a great weekend. I probably gained 5 lbs. and have to start getting serious about my eating. I only have just over 12 weeks til the Florida trip and I need to be ready both on the half ironman course and off the course at the post race restaurant.

Runner's knee

2009-02-02T09:23:00.031-05:00

Yep, I'm pretty sure that's what I have. I spun indoors on Friday and took Saturday completely off in preparation for the big group Super Bowl Sunday run. I hit up Portland Running Company for some new shoes in NE. I decided to forgo the standard support my pronating shoe and go back to finding the most cushy shoe I could find. I ended up with these Nike Zoom Vomero. I know how they say don't wear new shoes on a long run especially a different shoe but screw it. My knee was sucking anyway so to hell with that I wore them and boy did they help. The extra cushion really helped me limp to a super fast past of 8 somethings and then the knee warmed up a little so I could sortof keep up with all the fast folks. Luckily the old running partners weren't out for blood and even Vera took pity on me. I'm guessing the only reason though was she hasn't been running that much and was just surviving as well. I think we ended up with 8.8 miles or so at least that's what Alanna(check out her blog) had on her garmin. We stopped afterwards at Starbucks for coffee while another group tacked on another 6 miles. The coffee was good but the legs were tired.

Overall, the knee was okay but I'm going to focus on getting some cycling fitness and let it rest. I hope it can make a full recovery so I can still get some fast tempo work in late March and early April. I'll just keep icing it at least twice daily as it's constantly swollen. I might even take some Aleve but probably not.

I showered and went into work for a bit before the big Super Bowl Party. The Super Bowl Party was quite good even though the stupid Cardinal defense couldn't save the game by sacking Big Ben in that final drive. So sad. I was in charge of chips. Perfect. On Saturday, I bought about 10 bags of chips. You need a variety for people's tastes. At the party on Sunday, I think I ate the most chips. Hmm..coincidence. NOT! I had a ton of 7-layer bean dip, chili, and about 12 chicken skewers. I ate so much I felt like the Gluttony guy on Seven. If someone had punched me in the gut, my stomach would rupture and I would die. I could barely sleep last night as my stomach hurt from being so full.

After an easy spin this morning on the indoor cycle, I weighed in at 146. Easily put on 2lbs yesterday. I had successfully gotten down to around 144 on Friday after lots of extreme starvation dieting. I probably having an eating disorder where I can eat tons at one setting then eat barely anything the following day until another gorging a day later. Oh well, it's not like it's hurting anyone. It is amusing to see my weight fluctuate 5lbs either direction weekly. The eating will continue though as next weekend is a date with Claim Jumper where they have massive desserts plus a pounding of some movie popcorn when I see Pink Panther 2.

Well I got tons of work to do so I better get back to it and the jet lag is over. Yay!

Sleepless in Oregon

2009-01-29T08:00:00.027-05:00

I arrived in Oregon last night at 8pm. It took about an hour to get my luggage and drive all the way to Wilsonville to the hotel. I slept as much as possible on the plane as I had an entire row to myself in the United economy plus seats(extra leg room). Flying a bazillion times last year got me to their Premier status so it makes flying this year with them a breeze. I checked in without incident although there was a weird question during check-in on their monitor. I guess you buy airline miles for cash. It seems totally weird though since well airline miles really don't help with anything. I could've got 6K miles for $200. The really funny thing was the default button press on the kiosk would've been purchase. Luckily, I was somewhat coherent and pressed "decline".

Since I slept a little on the plane, I was somewhat rested when I hit the bed at 10PM. Well I woke up at 2:30AM and really couldn't get back to sleep. Oh well, I have tons of work to do so I just got up at 3AM. I thought about doing an hour on the indoor exercise bicycle at the gym but decided skip it. My first run in 8 days will be happening this afternoon. The knee is feeling better but it's still there. I can almost guarantee that I'm going to have a sore knee this entire season. Crap! Totally lame. I guess my running future is just destined to be injury prone. I've contemplated going back to the super cushion Nike Air Max shoes from my early running years. Basically sacrifice stability for cushion. I don't know overall it just sucks. Maybe running will make it stronger.

The only other great thing about flying these days is since I'm cheap it's like a built-in super diet day. I brought a breakfast bar for the flight and skipped lunch and dinner. That with the can of Sprite(caffeine free baby!) was only 270 calories. I had some cereal for breakfast so I think I probably ate about 700 calories yesterday. I know I have enough fat reserves to keep me fueled. I know there will be lots of eating this trip with the Super Bowl, a lunch at the Claim Jumper, Blazer game and for sure at least one movie it's good to start with a calorie deficit. Just call me Mr. Crash Diet.

I watched that movie, 21 the other day. It was a very interesting movie. I love gambling and I do like math so it was perfect for a geek like me. I think I might try a card counting system in my blackjack playing the next time I go to Vegas. It's pretty easy to memorize the standard playing blackjack system and counting cards isn't that hard since it's just +1 or -1. You combine the two and you basically tweak the standard system a little when the count is in your favor. You still have to get lucky here and there but it's nice to have just a slight advantage. Although craps is the still the game to rake in the money on but you need some hot shooters or really cold shooters. Plus Vegas is an eating paradise, I'm definitely hitting the Bellagio buffet this next trip no matter the cost. I wonder if they'll kick you out after so many hours.

Well back to work for me...

Snow and sore

2009-01-27T07:53:00.050-05:00

Well, we're getting our first real snow of the year. Perfect the weather turns to crap the day before I'm expected to fly out to Oregon. It's suppose to turn to freezing rain tonight so hopefully by 5pm tomorrow it will all be cleaned up so I can get out of here on time. Most of the schools around here didn't even bother with opening today. I thought this was the east coast manhood snow country where nothing shuts down unless it's over a foot. It seems just like Oregon in just a little snow shuts down the schools even though it's cold all the time.

I just saw this news story.

Senate passes bill to delay digital TV switch

Are you kidding me? Really we have to delay this stupid TV switch? What all the old ladies that absolutely would be lost without TV haven't gotten their free converter for their 20" tube TV. Too many trailer parks, not able to figure out what all those dumb commercials mean? I wonder how much tax money has been spent on this campaign and subsidy program. It's like TV is a given right. It goes "the right to bear arms", "the right to free speech", and "the right to watch free TV"?!?!? Okay enough of that...but I'm sure comedians around the country are incorporating this stuff into their acts as we speak.

It's been 6 days with no running and the knee is still sore. I really can't tell because my job doesn't require me to leave my chair. I think I walk maybe 10 feet to the bathroom and if I need something in the kitchen its like 20 feet. I've been icing it a lot and sleeping with it elevated. It seems I always get injured right before going to Oregon. Maybe it's my own ego trying to push myself into top shape in order to keep with the running folks when I arrive. I used to dish out the pain but now I'm only on the receiving end of it. I was hoping this trip would be different but probably not.

I'm finally caught with my rest because all of sudden I don't feel dead at 4:30AM anymore. I was able to get up today no problem even though I couldn't get to sleep until 10pm for some reason. This is my 2nd day in a row swimming. It's been going okay although my lower back hurts for some reason. Probably all the sitting for work...

I've been watching that Man V. Food show on the Travel channel. I just wanted to see how bad it was or build up some additional hate for the guy that stole the idea. Well, the show isn't too bad and definitely helps in seeing the food first hand. It's hit or miss with this guy though. He failed miserably at the breakfast taco challenge but totally destroyed the 72 oz steak. The steak was quite impressive. He demolished it in 30 minutes. He also almost beat the 8 lb. Sasquatch burger. He's pretty good with the hot food challenges which I wouldn't even come near. All in all the show is decent and he's actually doing a Portland, Oregon show where he attempts a hot food challenge at Salavador Molly's. I guess they have these super hot cheese fritters. After watching the show, it definitely gets me excited to attempt some of those challenges. I hope he attempts the Ben & Jerry's Vermonster although since it's not a real challenge he might not. I see previews of some big massive ice cream sundae in the commercials but no specifics. He is doing the 5 24oz milkshake challenge which should be quite interesting.

Maybe this summer, I'll get Orion and I to make the trek to one or two of these places on the east coast. I need to find someway to spend my tax refund. I did my taxes and that mortgage interest is awesome. Thank you federal government for taking that right off the top. I'm rolling in the biggest fed refund I've ever had. Sure it's my money but I like nice lump sums since my money just sits in a checking account. It doesn't earn interest. I know I should figure something out but CDs are even earning crappy interest these days so why bother. I mean that whole $50 in yearly interest just wouldn't be worth it. Anyway, that fed refund is going to pay for my new Macbook when I finally get it next month.

Sore knee

2009-01-23T05:45:00.001-05:00

Yep, it's happened the first injury requiring time off from running. Stupid foot caused my gait to change just enough plus the first 12 miler of the year hurt my good knee. The other thing was the entire 12 miles was on sidewalks which I didn't think about until later. The weird thing was I didn't know I had a problem. I finished the run and I was a little tired but my knee wasn't sore. I just happened to take Monday off because it was extra cold that morning and I was tired. On top of that I figured a day off wasn't a bad thing. On Tuesday morning when I started to run to the gym I immediately noticed my knee was tender. I'm expert as when I was in high school I had a partially torn meniscus in my right knee but I ran through it for at least a year.

After the run home, I went into denial. It didn't hurt too bad so some ice and I'd be ready for the hill workout on Wednesday. WRONG! I did the hill workout but it hurt. My legs are really coming around though but man the knee hurt. So here I sit after a pre-planned day off yesterday(business travel), taking today off. I have Elena this weekend so there's two more built in running days off. That will be 4 days off. That's not bad at all considering it is still early in the season. The only bummer is today happens to be a nice 45 degree expected high day. I haven't run in 45 degree weather since that one day in early December. That really sucks because at the beginning of the week I was looking forward to actually sweating on a run.

Maybe if it gets warm enough today, I'll take the bike out on the road. Now that would be something, but 45 and sunny still is pretty cold on the bike. I could've adapted to the ultimate cold weather and maybe it will feel like 65 degrees but I doubt it. Who knows maybe I'll venture it.

I'm frantically trying to get things together on the work side for my big trip to Oregon so I can actually do fun things on the weekends I happen to be there but it's not coming together as fast as I would like. I'll probably be doing the typical 12 hour days when I arrive in hopes of staying out of the office on the weekend. I do have a nice group run planned for Super Bowl Saturday. I'm hopeful the knee will be fine by that time. I think if I can get it feeling okay by mid next week I should be good to go.

I survived inauguration. Since I didn't have to go anywhere, it wasn't bad at all. I overheard a few stories from people that were stranded in the airport and had to fly out yesterday. I guess there were so many flights leaving Reagan that people couldn't get to their gates because of the backup at check-in and security. So the airport was pretty busy for a Thursday morning but I always get to the airport extra early just in case. I'm all about hurry up and wait. On top of that there were stories about not actually being able to get to the mall to watch the inauguration due to backup at security checkpoints. Everyone was saying there were tons of people in the streets during the inauguration that couldn't get into the mall area. Cell towers were totally overload as people were saying it took up to 10 times to get a connection from their cell. Pretty wild stuff.

It's warm

2009-01-19T07:40:00.009-05:00

Well at least it's freezing or 32 degrees here now. I ran inside on the treadmill Friday because the wind chill was below zero and I just didn't feel like hitting another PCW(personal cold weather) run. I wanted to try out the onsite condo fitness center. I walked over to the fitness center in just sweats and about froze to death. I was only outside for like 2 minutes. Brutal.

The treadmill was pretty narrow but overall a nice run and the 42" TV was right in front of it so bonus. It was pretty cold in the little room but no big deal as running on a treadmill always warms you up. I did my 5 measly miles and stopped. There is enough room to setup my indoor cycling trainer so I might have to do that during the spring if it rains. I don't want to bother my downstairs neighbors. Last year, I didn't have anyone below me so it was no problem going to town on the trainer in the condo. Now I think I have nurses below me which work different shifts and usually are home during the work day so no trainer in the condo.

On Saturday, I woke up with a mission. I was going to run to the gym for swimming and spinning no matter the temperature. It was 5 degrees when I left but no wind. I was warm for about 10 steps. Everything was cold about 5 minutes into the run. I started pushing just a little trying to warm up. I kept singing that stupid Subway commercial as I thought about being out in "5" degree weather. I only had to suffer for just under 25 minutes so I knew I could make it. The run home was easier as I was warmer and the sun was out. It was probably 10 degrees on the return trip. Either way, it was an all new PCW and I'm mentally tougher because of it.

On Sunday, I woke up to 30 degree weather. Sweet, my long run would be at just around freezing. There was no sun but also the wind wasn't bad. I dressed pretty warm and started the run. It felt so warm. 25 degree difference will do that I guess. I had a decent run and my legs didn't start feeling tired until the end. It was the longest run of the winter for me at 12.5 miles. I averaged a nice 7:30 pace so I was pleased. My foot injury from last spring has come back but I'm aggressively icing it so it didn't bother me much during the run. I have no idea what caused the inflammation this time. I think it's my shoes wearing down. They only have 320 something miles on them but I just can't pinpoint it because it started last week during a mild 25 mile week.

I arrive in Oregon next Thursday and I'll buy a new pair or two while I'm there. I'm hoping that will knock out the pain. I'm also excited that I pulled the trigger on a new Macbook Pro this weekend. I decided to go with the 17" for the increase screen size and resolution. I figured since I'm going to keep this laptop for at least 5 years might as well go with that. It's only 1 lb heavier than the 15 inch so I think that's worth it.

Okay, I've been meaning to blog about this major topic for awhile but I kept forgetting(old age). What do people do with those small soap slivers? I have a few of them now because I feel like throwing them away is wasteful but what to do. Should I try to mold all them into a soap sculpture that resembles a bar of soap? I'm waiting to see one of the Billy Mays gadgets for creating new bars from existing soap slivers or that Ronco guy coming out with a machine that I can buy for $19.95 + shipping and handling. Those commercials have even gotten more over the top and deviant these days. Now they say they are going to throw in 2 miracle scratch removers just for the price of one and shipping and handling charges. You see those charges are just as expensive as the advertised price. On top of that they probably send it via the slowest shipping ever. What type of delivery takes 4-6 weeks in the real world anymore? Even the USPS smart post takes like a week.

Also after watching all the NFL playoff games this weekend, I couldn't help but laugh at those Play60 NFL commercials. They say 1 in 3 kids is obese and the NFL is trying to stop this by these camps. I think 1 in 3 NFL head coaches is obese. Is the NFL trying to do anything about that? Geez, did you see Andy Reid on Sunday? He's easily as big as that guy in Seven, gluttony. The other unintentional comedy with those commercials is the kid who says Eli taught him how to throw and then they show all the kids throwing the football. I think most of those kids threw a better ball than Eli did last Sunday in Giant's stadium. Poor Giants fans especially after the Cardinals showed that the Eagles just weren't that good.

Brrrr!

2009-01-16T07:23:00.003-05:00

That about sums up the entire winter here in DC. Just cold. Yesterday was an all time personal cold weather(PCW) run for me outside. It was 20 degrees with a wind chill of 10. The only benefit was sunshine which made it feel well refrigerator cold not freezer cold. I ran a meager 5 miles but running into the wind was quite painful on the bare face. I could've setup a treadmill inside a walk-in freezer and it would've been warmer.

I did my best to wear as many running clothes as I own. I had all my running clothes laying in the sun from the big bay windows in the living room to "pre-warm" them for the run. Here's a rundown of my attire:
Legs and family jewels: shorts, running tights, running sweats(fleece lined)
Torso/arms: polypro t-shirt, polypro long sleeve, fleece running jacket
Hands: Defeet wool gloves and just simple knit running gloves on top
Head: running beanie although I probably should've dug out my cycling balaclava
Feet: Socks and shoes

I've been running in 30 something degree weather since late November it feels like so I've adapted somewhat to the cold. It felt like I was running 35 degree weather as I was cold but I wasn't going into hypothermia. Obviously, the wind chill was brutal. My lips started to freeze towards the end which isn't much fun. I'm mentally tougher for braving the elements. It reminds me of all those 45 and raining Oregon runs I did when I was there but now I have 35 and raining runs here plus yesterday's doosy of a cold one.

I was blaming the pilgrims and the founding fathers as I ran. I mean really no wonder a bunch of the pilgrims died in the winter. It was frickin cold. Why didn't they just keep sailing along the shore SOUTH?!?! Or why didn't our founding fathers decide hey it's real nice in Florida, let's put the capital there. They're smart enough to come up with cool democracy but can't realize that a bunch of people have to suffer in the god awful winter cold and the god awful humid summer heat. Morons!!

Right now, it's 7 degrees outside with a wind chill of -7. I'm debating on skipping the run today although another 5 miler would be good for the legs just not sure how the rest of my body would handle this cold. I could hit up the local treadmill but 5 miles on it is pretty boring although it seems like I keep reading people busting out 17 miles and even one guy running 3 hours and a complete marathon on one. It might not be bad to take a day off though because my sore foot from last year is bugging me again. It was weird because my "good" foot had that weird pain and then all of sudden it went away and the "bad" foot had the old pain from last year back. It's hard to ice because well it feels cold all the time.

I'm still skimping on my electricity bill by leaving the heat off during the evening. The heat pump would run all night at these temperatures just to maintain 62 degrees in the condo. I'm plenty warm under my super goose feather comforter. I think that it has to be rated for at least 45 degrees. I was nice and toasty when I woke up today even though the thermostat said 53. Again luckily the sun is out because of the big south windows in the living and dining room I get free heat from that. Even with the limited heat pump use, I'm sure my electricity bill is going to be quite high. Probably mid 100s at least...ugh! Oh well, I looked at my finances and right now I'm actually saving money each month.

The 17" vs. 15" Macbook Pro debate continues in my head. 5.5 lbs vs. 6.6 lbs for portability? Native 1440x900 screen vs. 1900x1200 screen? 2.8Ghz vs. 2.66Ghz for the same price? 8 hour battery vs. 5 hour? It seems to coming down to availability in the recesses of my mind because I need to get it when I'm in Oregon to save the sales tax. Right now, it looks like the 17" might come out the first of February. This is smack dab in the middle of my trip so that helps but it's the unknown that maybe it gets delayed. Either way it's going to be my tax refund spent. I'm hoping I get a tax refund since mortgages are good for taxes right?

How about that plane vs. flock of birds crash yesterday? Crazy considering I'm ready to get on one of those US Airways regional jets next Thursday for a day trip to Raleigh, North Carolina. At least everyone made it but man it must've been cold getting out into that water and plus all your carry-on luggage maybe lost or damaged. Not fun!

Stay warm...and Al Gore I'm thinking Ice Age not Global Warming!

No motivation

2009-01-14T06:08:00.004-05:00

I don't know what it is but I just can't get motivated in this cold weather. I was listening to the wind gusting last night and decided not to go to the gym. I just see no fun in running to the gym in 20 degree weather with 20 mph winds just to swim 30 minutes before taking the spin class. Sure, I could drive but the amount of time is the same basically and I don't get a nice run. It's a 10 minute drive because of lights and traffic on way home while just being a 22 minute run. Sure I stay warm but the only benefit is swimming and the spin class.

I've started rationalizing my lack of motivation. It's really the cold weather. If it was even 40 something this morning, I would've made the trek. So what's this all mean, well my swimming is currently taking a back seat in training. I've plateaued at 1:50s for the 100 it seems right now. I have all kinds of form problems but I also have strength issues as well. It just hurts to pull a bunch of water. It's similar on the bike, it hurts to turn bigger gears fast. Everyone says if you can run fast but you swim slow it's your form. I have to agree. I saw this lady at the pool just cruising along at 1:40 or so. I looked at her form at the end of my workout to see if I could notice anything. Nothing really jumped out except just a smooth stroke and a very small profile. She was also flip turning which is about 5 seconds. After all that blah blah, the basics in my head are why suffer the cold and swim more when it just won't help. When it's warmer, I'll feel better about running in the morning to the pool.

Now the spin class is a whole different story. My cycling is so non-existent spin class or not it just won't matter. I think maybe I should setup the trainer but nah. I'm going to experiment with really no cycling through the winter and see if my May half will suffer. It shouldn't right? I mean it's only biggest percentage of time during a half ironman of all the three disciplines and being tired after it really sets you up for a great run. Assuming by great, I mean walking the run course a bunch. Oh god, I'm screwed!!

The good news is my running. Surprised? Probably not since it's my strength and I've been putting in a lot of training. Yesterday, in the middle of my 6ish mile run I saw a little hottie running towards me at a nice clip. I waved as I do with all runners coming in the opposite direction not just hotties but she ignored me. So me being a little petty decided to see if I could catch her. She had a 300 meter head start so I upped my pace quite a bit from just relaxing to pushing. Unfortunately, she turned around at the next intersection before I could catch her. I waved again as we passed and still nothing. Incensed in anger at a 2nd dis, I pressed forward.

Nah, I wasn't angry. It's pretty normal. I wave at all runners fast or slow and I probably get a return wave or acknowledgment about 50% of the time. It's quite low when you think about it. A wave while running requires almost no effort. I also wave on the bike and my return rate is about 30% but that's understandable because it does require some effort. There's no waving in swimming. Waving is for wimps. It's all business!!

Luckily, I have mile markers all mapped out for this run. I was surprised to see a 6:24 mile. I just ready to be disappointed with what felt to be a good pace to be a slow 6:55 or so. It still felt hard for 6:24 as I thought back to my running heyday when I could run 6:30s in my sleep especially on such a flat course. Now the next mile has a little hill in it and it's really the only long hill close to me, I was able to run a 6:37. This felt good as I really didn't slow down much. It's still January so this is okay. To quote Herm Edwards the former Kansas City Chiefs head coach, "We can build on this."

Since I skipped all the morning festivities, I'll be doing my hard workout for the week. 30 second bursts followed by 30 seconds of rest, fartleks for you runners out there. I'm hoping that this will help my leg turnover(speed). Overall, this is a pretty easy workout. It's not like one of those killer late spring fartleks where you do 3 minute on and 90 seconds off but it's a good start.

Another thing going pretty well is the diet. The nasty junk food is out due to me not buying it. I'm going back to my standard diet of rice, protein, pasta, and more rice. My old Endurox buckets are filled with 25 lbs of rice waiting to be devoured. Hopefully, this will keep the weight steady until the weather gets warmer and major cycling work begins.

The brighter side of the winter training is coming up as I travel back to Oregon for business. I'm hoping for some mild Oregon weather 40s or maybe 50s would be awesome. Of course, the old running partners will be ready to hurt me. I can see some brutal jaunts through the countryside. Another benefit of going to Oregon is no sales tax. This trip the plan is get a Macbook Pro. Probably the 15".

The 17" could be interesting but it might be just too big. I'm finally abandoning Microsoft. I decided back in September when XP just basically slowed to a crawl again on my computer. I had already done a brand new clean install when it happened in early 2007. I just got fed up. Plus with Apple you can still run XP if you need to. Combine that with video editing I would like to do Apple is an easy choice. I've only waited this long as I just wasn't sure between desktop IMac or laptop. Based on the new laptop updates, it will be enough horsepower to run the video editing but with that added portable convenience. Anyway by avoiding sales tax, I'm going to save around 200 dollars. On top of that I'll be hip when I go to coffee shops with my Macbook. Okay, poser is more accurate.

Another interesting side point of owning an Apple, is being able to get on the IPhone App gravy train. I just have to come up with some cool 99 cent app that at least a million IPhone users will want and voila...millionaire. I'm sure it's that easy.

Another swim workout

2009-01-12T09:01:00.001-05:00

I made it through my 100 on, 100 off swim workout..barely. It was quite hard at the end and took a lot of focus just to keep my form. In running, you slow down a little as your form gets wacky from being tired but in swimming you slow down A LOT. It was okay for a workout with my times being pretty mediocre as compared to workouts prior to the Ironman. Yes another Ironman reference!!

Now my swim on Saturday was pretty good. I was able to swim 2200 yards at a good clip for me even with sharing the lane off and on. If I can get just a little faster in the water at Florida, I should have a decent chance of going under 5. I have massive run goals at Florida though so we'll see how it all goes.

It's going to be another cold week so I'm still dormant when it comes to cycling. A steady diet of two spin classes a week is hopefully just keeping a slight cycle fitness. I'll probably start battling the coldness in February no matter what but I'm such a cold wimp.

So enough about my sad existence and on to my daughter, Elena. I took her to an ice skating birthday party on Saturday. One of her friends likes to skate so there were about 10 or so 7 year olds on the ice. It was Elena's first time on skates. She and another friend slide around the rink holding onto the wall the first time. I got a few pictures and video that I posted on my Facebook profile. I told her to try moving around the rink without holding onto the wall. She was worried but decided to try it. After a few times around she didn't want to stop for cake or even to go home. She was totally addicted. She wanted to go back on Sunday to skate some more. She was actually able to move around the ice without holding on or falling much the last few times.

I think the best part was she felt such a sense of accomplishment because she did it herself without help. A few of her other friends never tried and she was so glad that she did. It's definitely great to see her try something on her own as she's has been pretty apprehensive up to this point. She's becoming a little more independent which is cool. She's growing up.

On eating news, I made it through Costco Saturday night without buying a big bag of Doritos. They were sitting right there and I abstained. The diet is in full effect. No more caffeine or chips until after May. I'll cut out beer but I rarely drink so that's not a problem at all. It's time to trim it down.

Big Weekday

2009-01-08T08:27:00.001-05:00

It was major. I had to go to jury duty and the condo association's first meeting. This is huge amount of out and about for me. My typical weekday is I get up leave on my pajamas and start work. I work til about noon and then change into workout clothes to run. After the run, I shower and then put my PJs back on as I don't need to leave the condo so why actually get dressed.

Yesterday, I had to get up, shower and get dressed. This hasn't happened in a long time. I can't even remember the get out of bed shower in the past year at home. It just doesn't happen. I walked over to the bus stop instead of trying to drive to the courthouse. They had free parking but why bother. I just sit on a bus for 30 minutes and pay $1.35 one way or get in the Escape for 20 minutes and burn through a gallon of gas for the whole trip. I'm lazy and try not to drive at all costs so I went bus.

I got to the courthouse a little early so I went over to the nearest Starbucks. They have officially finished the holiday menu so I went for my usual decaf drip Venti. I sat and tried to dry out from the bus stop to Starbucks walk. It was pouring and a whopping 36 degrees more on the weather later.

We sat through a dumb orientation video and then waited for our number to be called. I was 110 and my number wasn't called til the last group at around 10:45. We went to the courtroom and sat for 5 minutes, the case settled, and we went back to the jury holding area. That was the last case so we got to go home right afterwards. I didn't even bother staying around for some stupid jury certificate and just left. At least I don't have to go through that again for at least 3 years.

I got back and it had stopped raining. Great, maybe I'd stay dry for my first structured running workout since August, hill repeats. I had to sit in on a conference call and by the time I made my way outside it was raining. Oh joy, raining and 36 degrees. I sucked it up and proceeded to attempt a warmup to a hill. It's not really hilly around here so I did my best to find a decent one. I tried 3 separate hills. The first one was hard but too short. The second one was even shorter than first and on top of that easier. The third and final hill was long enough with a gradual increase in steepness. Voila perfect for today. I did 3 repeats on it and 5 in total. I felt super fast even though my legs were beet red. I ran out of long pants so I was in shorts. I'd probably overheat in Oregon these days as it wasn't super bad.

Later last night, I walked over to a local restaurant where the first condo association meeting was being held. Almost half of the current residents turned out to vote on the board members. The builder who still holds 26 units had a majority so it really didn't matter what we wanted, he ruled. At least he was fair but still it was pretty weird that he didn't let us know about that little tidbit of information before the meeting as it could've maybe drove more participation.

So between two bus rides, a room full of jurors and the condo meeting, I saw more people than yesterday than any one day in the past 6 months at home. The big day must've made me tired because I didn't feel like waking up at 4:30 to do my standard run, swim, spin, run workout. I think I may have gotten lucky those because all the wet roads froze over night so it could've been a treacherous run on the dark sidewalks. I'll do my best to force myself out of bed tomorrow even though the temperature will probably be about 25 degrees. Did I mention how much I hate winter over here?

Rice Shortage 2009

2009-01-05T07:59:00.002-05:00

Yes, it's true. I'm out of rice. I can't believe it. I bought a 10 lb. bag in early September. I had to scrape together 2 cups last night via all the little bits left in the bottom of my rice containers. I use my old cytomax and endurox buckets to hold my rice. I'm going to buy a 25 lb. bag this weekend when I hit Costco. That should last me until the big May race.

Work starts today for a lot of people who have been slacking for 2 weeks. That must be tough. I just took a 4 day weekend and I was just getting used to not doing anything each day. I've already accomplished a lot so far during the 2 extended weekend vacations. I've watched all of season 2 of the X-files. Although I was robbed as season 2 ends with a "to be continued". I wish I had known so I would've just had the season 3 first disk in the mail. Everytime I see one of those Fringe commercials on Fox I just think 2009 version of the X-files with more characters. I finished both season 3 and season 4 of the Office. That show is just so hilarious. I guess season 5 is this current year's so at least I'm caught up. As you can see, I had an uneventful vacation.

Since 2009 is upon us, I've started getting my diet and workouts in line. First, I will be cutting out the chips again until after the May Half Ironman. This Costco trip I will be skipping the Doritos Super Size. I also be cutting out the chicken nuggets and fries with ranch as well for dinners. I just go back to my standard rice/sausage, rice/chicken, pasta, rice/pork chops, cheese filled tortelli, repeat. That should help me lose some of the extra holiday weight.

Second, I've started to do a weekly hard swim interval workout and I plan to do a hard running workout per week. I did 100s this morning. I was planning on only doing 10 but lost track and did 12. I tried something different since I only had 30 minutes between running to the gym and spin class. I did 100s on 2 minute intervals. I've never done this before but most swimmers do intervals on a fixed time although their fixed times are usually 1:30 or less. I can't even swim an all-out race 100 in 1:30 so I just used my slow time of 2 minutes. This gave me a nice 15 second or so rest between each one. Joy! They went okay but I was still tired from my swim on Saturday. I crushed 2000 yards on Saturday. It was great although I chafed the crap out of my shoulders from rubbing the slight unshaved morning whiskers of my chin. Anyway, swimming is hanging in and I hope I can keep up with Orion this May.

My running is coming right along as well. I was able to cruise a 7 minute average for a 9.2 mile run on Sunday. I felt pretty good the entire way. The legs didn't feel too heavy at the end but today they were tired. I went pretty slow to the gym. The spin class was extra tough today so I thought I was going to pass out on the pedals several times. The hard swim plus the extra hard spin class really made it a tough run home. I didn't bring any calories this morning so I was close to bonking. That's okay it will let me shed a couple of extra pounds. This Wednesday I start alternating weeks of hill repeats and fartleks. I think I have a good hill to try but it might be too short. I'll have to give it a go. If all goes well, the plan is to really hammer the half marathon.

Happy New Year!

2008-12-31T07:10:00.001-05:00

Well it's almost here...2009. 2008 has been a wild year for me and definitely a year to remember. I haven't blah blah blogged in awhile because I didn't have anything really to talk about. My couch potato life has taken on new heights as the only places I've gone in the last weeks have been Elena's house and LA Fitness. The rest of the time I'm sitting on my couch watching The Office, Weeds, miscellaneous movies, and X-Files Season 2.

The last two days I've been at Elena's house babysitting while she's on Xmas break. Basically my work from home office has moved to her house. Amber and Joe have been at work and Elena basically just plays on her computer all day while watching TV. A sprout off the old couch potato..

The Beavers play their bowl game today at 2pm but I'll miss the live watch. I'm DVRing it so I can watch it when I get home. Yeah New Year's Eve party for me. I'll be on internet blackout from 2pm til I get home.

My swimming is complete crap again. I've lost that fast stroke I found. It always happens I keep tweaking until I can't remember the fast stroke and then I seem to start all over again. It sucks but happens. I keep thinking if I can just get a little higher in the water I could go faster. With a wetsuit, I feel lightening fast because there is less drag from my body sitting low in the water.

After this morning's workout, I almost stopped at Starbucks on the way to Elena's houes for the last Egg Nog Latte of the 2008 Holiday season. I stopped myself because well I'm fat. I don't need those 600 calories. I opted for a 140 calorie cereal bar. I'm slowly running out of junk food at my house as well so my weight is coming back down. I'm under 150 again. Yeah weight loss starvation. I just need to make it through the college bowl season and NFL playoffs.

This is the last day of slacking on my workouts. Come tomorrow, I will start doing swimming intervals at least once a week as well as incorporate hill repeats and fartleks into my running training. My cycling will still just be spin class unless the weather is good then I'll hit the road bike. I figure by February to start putting some road miles on the tri-bike. Last year because of my partial lung collapse, I wasn't able to train during most of January.

I'm excited about the 4 day weekend considering Xmas holiday was a 5 day weekend. I can't believe how short the 5 days off felt. I think if I took a whole month off I would swear it was just a couple of days. Either way this is the last days off from work until Memorial day. Oh joy!

Happy New Year everyone..

Twas the day before Xmas

2008-12-24T08:44:00.000-05:00

Okay that's original. lol. There's probably only a billion blogs with that title or some variation today. I'm officially taking an FTO(flex time off) day today from work. Woohoo...I slept in til 8:30am and I'm going to go for over 6 miles at lunch today. The weather has finally turned around and it's even supposed to be in the 40s tomorrow, the big day.

I have to be over at the house at 7:30am to watch Elena open gifts. Elena will be running around crazy by then as she will easily have been up since 6am. We'll open gifts and eat some breakfast. It will be a good time. She tell me about how Santa ate some cookies and drank the milk. I think she was 4 when she first put out cookies that she made for Santa. I still remember her basically screaming at me when I showed up that Santa ate her cookies. It was a classic moment in her Xmas experience. She's still excited each year but soon enough she'll stop doing it and stop caring about Santa. Well one less gift for her, hah!

Usually during the holiday season, I'm the master bah-humbugger but not this year. It's pretty easy just ignore the holiday season when you stay in your condo 24/7. This is positive for me and positive for Elena since it was always tough for me to match her Xmas excitement every year. I'm not much for Xmas even though as a kid we had great Xmas's for being as poor as we were. We always had a tree with decorations and I got gifts from Santa and Mom. I usually got some cool stuff. I don't know why I don't like Xmas but I don't. Maybe I'm just weird.

Welp I'm off to start my epic 5 days of sitting on the couch watching movies. I'll interrupt that every so often for a workout but that's it.

Merry Xmas!

There will be thick blood

2008-12-23T08:01:00.000-05:00

Yep, my blood must be like molasses right now after running outside the past two days. It was 14 yesterday with a wind chill of about zero and I ran to the gym this morning in 14 degree weather and no wind. These are the coldest running days I've ever done. It wasn't too bad either. I think I'm getting used to the cold. As I was freezing my way back to the condo this morning, I started to think of how much harder my heart must be working to push the molasses through the veins. It hit me maybe it's good to be training outside in the winter putting in those base miles. The heart is working extra hard but you're not going as far or as fast. Once spring and summer roll around the blood thins back out and the heart doesn't have to work as hard. Therefore, you get free speed. Instead of "train low, sleep high" my mantra is "train cold, race hot". Catchy!

I watched my DVR recording of the Ironman World Championships in Kona finally. It got me thinking about doing another Ironman just to see if I could really kill the run. Seeing Normann Stadler hamstring cramp up in the marathon hit home. I was worried about my hamstring which is why I didn't push extra hard during the tough time of the marathon. I'm getting close in my training where I can feel like if I just go my body will respond. My early running days were always based on just going no matter what. Recently though my body keeps letting me down so I've been running tentative which hurts not only in racing but training as well. I can't push myself to exhaustion on tough training days because I'm worried about injury. I keep just cruising this winter in hopes of being able to unleash some great training this spring and not get injured.

3 days til Xmas and I can tell. I ran by Best Buy yesterday and the parking lot was pretty packed for a Monday afternoon. I still need to walk over there and get some batteries for Elena's Xmas keyboard. I'm hoping I can get them into her stocking Xmas morning without her noticing although at the age of 7 she's getting wiser to me being sneaky. Every time I mention Elena's age to someone it shocks me that she's 7. I almost always goof it up and say 6. 6 is such a perfect age not too young but not old enough to make me look ancient.

Happy Holidays!

It's ALIVE

2008-12-22T07:40:00.001-05:00

at least right now, my computer has come back to life. My old home windows box which is going to be retired soon, Imac here I come, is back alive. The video card was having all kinds of troubles this weekend so I thought it was pretty much dead. Somehow it came back to life today as I was going to start backing up the hard drive onto an external for the move after MacWorld in January.

It's amazingly cold right now. It's a whopping 12 degrees with a wind chill of ZERO. I might have to try out my condo's fitness center's treadmill today. I'm not sure running in this weather is good for the old lungs. Since it got so cold last night I had the head on...I know SHOCKING! The weird thing or maybe the cool thing about my heater is it rarely runs the heat element. Most of the time it just recirculates the air which keeps the thermostat right at the desired temperature. I guess probably all home heat does this but sometimes it pisses me off because it just seems like it's blowing cold air around. I guess it probably wouldn't be so bad if I actually put the temperature at like 70 rather than 62. lol

I found out this weekend that Maryland is more of a dry state than Oregon. It seems that you can't buy beer or wine at most grocery stores if not all grocery stores. I guess Whole Foods has an exception or a special license but Safeway and Giant don't. I had to walk to a liquor store to get a bottle of wine. Lame...that's the best part of California is you can buy all liquor, beer, and wine at a grocery store. However, this tells you how sad I am as I hadn't attempted to buy such things since I moved here last year. The wine was for a little condo association get together. I met some more neighbors so that was good.

I watched quite a few DVDs this weekend as Elena was at her house nursing her cold/cough. I saw Tropic Thunder and it was way out there. Funny but so wrong. Tom Cruise dancing was hilarious and probably the best part of the movie. I saw Fred Claus and it was a pretty good movie but not enough humor. I think the Santa chase was the best part of the movie.

It's only 3 work days til Xmas...JOY!

Man V Food RAGE!!

2008-12-18T14:57:00.001-05:00

Okay, a friend of mine mentioned that there's this new show on the Travel channel call Man v. Food. She said it was about a guy who goes around the country taking on those food challenges. WTF!!! I was robbed!! This was my idea. Damn you Travel Channel!! I should be the host of this show. Some of his food stops are already on my list that I've been researching for the past year. You can read one of my past blogs about it here. Are you kidding me? There's an actual show. I'm steaming...

I guess I have to watch it to see how pathetic the host really is and I hate him already. I wonder when they came up with it. It better be pretty dang close to when they televised the top 10 pig out places. Still though....I guess I'm not the only one with good ideas.

Well now that I'm on the blog I might as well talk about some other stuff. It seems a bunch of companies are forcing 2 weeks of vacation at the end of the year. Sometimes I wish Mentor would do this as my vacation is just sitting there but nope. I could always take it but then I wouldn't be able to dish out some good ribbin on all the slackers taking theirs. Its not like I have anything to do. I'd just get up later and watch crap loads of TV. Sure I could do chores but really why? I'm such a bum. I'd never see the outdoors during the winter if I didn't go out and train daily.

I finally got Maryland auto insurance and it's cheaper than my Oregon insurance would've been. Woohoo...probably has a little to do with only driving like 6000 miles or less a year. So I'm totally Maryland legal with a registered car and auto insurance. Since I'm such a good Maryland citzen the county decided to send me my first jury duty letter. Crap. I haven't been here even a year and I got to deal with jury duty. I'll make sure to answer all questions like a whack job to make sure I don't make it past the first phase. Hopefully, I won't even make it past the initial selection phase.

Alright back to work and fuming about the Travel channel.

Winter is back.

2008-12-16T08:33:00.000-05:00

Well the brief stint of spring ended this morning. It's getting colder as the day goes on and we're supposed to get hit with some freezing rain late today. Joy! With my body being pudgy, I forced myself out of bed early this morning from my patented run, swim, spin, run workout at the gym.

I did my first sortof swim workout since the Ironman training. I did 100 yard intervals and was having some decent times so that was good. I've swam 3 times since Saturday and will swim on Thursday morning and one weekend day. So at least I'm getting a little consistency in the pool. I think I've figured out the right stroke now I just need to get strong enough to keep pulling big water and fast to maintain my top slow er speed.

Since it was so warm yesterday, I went for a nice 6 mile run and clicked off some decent miles. I'll start doing some hill repeats and little fartleks after the New Year. Maybe I can find that 1:25 half marathon pace after all. The cool thing is I know the Florida course so I can definitely be prepared for the tough mental sections.

Xmas is only 9 days away...and I still haven't taken Elena to Santa yet. I'm such a slacker. So the 6 year Santa Xmas card streak is in jeopardy, but maybe I can pull it out.

All-time fat

2008-12-15T08:15:00.001-05:00

Yes, it's happened as predicted. I've hit an all-time fat of 155 lbs at the gym this morning. My swim sucked big time as I felt lethargic and now I know why. God how far I've fallen. 13 lbs and it's not like I haven't been working out at least some all the time. Maybe I need this... If I was a teenager I could get this. I guess people just have trouble feeling full so they keep eating. Although if you just fill 3/4ths of your stomach with ho-hos, twinkies and Doritos it probably won't matter that it's only 3/4ths. It's almost exactly 6 months til the Half Ironman and I feel even less motivated now. At least I finished my Doritos this weekend so I don't have to worry about eating those for awhile.

Elena and I saw Bolt yesterday. Rhino was hilarious and made the movie in my opinion. We also saw the preview for the next Pixar movie, Up. It looks odd to say the least and I'm not sure. It looks even worse than the first Wall-E previews. We saw the movie at the new restaurant/pub style theaters that's just down the street from my condo. Elena loved the whole concept and kept saying "Awesome" the whole time. I'm not sure how it's going to survive because it was just us and 2 other people in the entire theater and there was 3 movies going on at the same time, Day the Earth Stood Still, Transporter 3 and Bolt. It's cheaper for admission than the big megaplex but the screens are smaller. We ordered pizza and watched the movie. I'll probably try to go see a few more movies over there and hope it stays in business.

I've been watching that new show Secret Millionaire. It's so interesting seeing how rich these people are and then how they see how really poor people live. It's also interesting to see how much they actual give. The current leader in that department was the self-made chicken finger franchise couple. I'm not sure how much he's worth but he doled out a good chunk of his money as compared to the saddest was the self-made internet millionaire in San Fran. He was probably the richest of them all as he just sold a company to Yahoo for 300 million but yet he didn't meet the show's minimum rules which says they have to give at least $100K. He only gave $90K. Percentage wise it was pathetic. It be like me giving $25 to charity. I'm figuring as the show progresses maybe the millionaires will figure it out but right now some of them haven't. They seem willing to give but then cheap out. It's better than zero but still paltry compared to what they could give. Overall, it's a good show for the holidays. Way to go Fox Reality.

Not much else going except it's going to be 60 here today...woohoo!! I'm going for a long run in shorts and a shirt. I'm just going to bask in the warmth.

Horror Fashion

2008-12-09T06:28:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's time for horror fashion but before I get the fun started(lol) let's discuss how I'm such a bum. I had gotten all my workout stuff together last night with the plans of waking up early and heading to the gym. I even figured I'd just drive to the pool, swim and take the spin class rather than run. I looked at my clock around 4am and said to myself okay I just get up at 4:40am and I'm set. At about 4:20am, I looked at the clock again and proceeded to bag my workout. I decided to sleep in again. How lame is that. The half ironman is 5 months away and I'm sleeping in. I think I'm going to have to bust out some serious New Year's resolutions. I'll run at lunch time today since it's suppose to be at least 40 something degrees unlike yesterday where the high was 32 and around lunch it was only 25 degrees.

So let's talk fashion specifically horror fashion. Again as I mentioned yesterday, I saw the Texax Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning this weekend. As I saw the last victim trying to run in cowboy boots and jean skirt, I started thinking what would be the ideal attire you'd want to be have if you happened to be caught up in a horror movie.

Shoes: My first thought here is a good running shoe since if you start running you don't want to be caught. If that's a simple jaunt down the driveway to your car or if it requires miles and miles of running until you're completely out of the current city/town/county and at quite a large metropolitan city's police station. Side rant: Why is it horror victims always run for awhile then immediately head up to the road or the first house they come to? Bad idea. I'd be running for a hella-long time before even attempting to go anywhere near a road. I wouldn't even stop for that's city's or county's police station. No way and I'm not taking the chance that whole town/county is on the gruesome deaths. Okay back to shoes so running shoes seem like a good choice and probably a trail running shoe would even be better. Less chance of slipping in the muck which surrounds most of these horror houses. But I was thinking about close quarters escape and this almost always requires kicking at your killer while scrambling on the floor, under a bed, or through a window opening. Running shoes really wouldn't pack much punch. Combat boots! I mean the armed forces run in these all the time and they can definitely put some hurt on a killer if you kick him in the face, groin or even stomp on his toe. These would also work in muddy cold water. It always seems you have to traipse through a massive puddle in some dark basement which soaks you up the knees. On top of that, you're protected against an achilles slash ala Hostel.

And the winner is...

Combat boots

Pants: I think this one is a no-brainer. I think jeans are an easy choice. They're durable and yet comfortable. You might want to say shorts but man I'm thinking exposed legs could be bad plus with our previous shoe choice it just wouldn't be stylin. How about fatigues? Well these would match our combat boot but they would signal to the killer, bad ass. The bad ass always gets taken out early in the movie so don't get too cocky. Sweats or running pants just are good when trying to protect you against a killer's death grip. The killer is going to be able to ball up a nice chunk of your sweats. Now you can't be wearing these type of jeans:

Baggy jeans are a major problem. You can't really run fast because they're falling down. I even own some relaxed fit jeans that just wouldn't work. They'd get caught on that nail in the window as you were trying to squeeze out with the killer groping at your feet.
And the winner is...

501 Levi jeans

Top: This is probably the hardest horror attire choice. Now you could go with a T-shirt. Not bad and even one of those funny T-shirts like "I'm with stupid" or "Have a nice day!" which shows the standard happy face with an ax sticking out of it's forehead in with the horror movie spirit. Of course us guys love the white T-shirt on the hot co-eds because that is a 100% forecast for rain. Nope a T-shirt isn't going to cut it when it gets cold as it seems there is always some serious shivering going on. How about a stylin dress shirt? Now that's a little warmer but just too easy to grab or get caught on stuff. You jump into a closet to hide and lose a button as you shut the door. The killer walks in looks around and just is about to leave when he spots button by the closet door. Not good my friends. A sweater has similar problems by snagging on stuff and the killer being able to get a good grip. Sweatshirt has similar problems. A long sleeve t-shirt is a pretty good choice. It keeps you warm and isn't as easy to grab. Here's the ideal top though...

Under Armour long sleeve form fitting shirt. I mean this is made for horror movies and well performance outdoor sports. No extra material for the killer to grab. It will keep you pretty warm. It's a pretty smooth fabric so it slides through tight spots easy and be less likely to snag.

And the winner is...a cool sweatshirt with the above Under Armour underneath. You get into trouble and shed the sweatshirt. Throw it into the face of the oncoming killer to slow him down.

So if I'm going camping I'll have my combat boots, 501 jeans and Under Armour ready to go. Feel free to comment on what you would wear.

Horror Fitness

2008-12-08T06:34:00.004-05:00

Okay some might think this will be one of my typical rants about how I suck and I'm god awful slow out of shape 150lb behemoth but no. Although all those previous adjectives are true. This is about movie horror fitness. I was watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning on Friday and thought of this little topic.

I watch tons of horror films as seen by my previous statement. I've seen all the Chainsaw Massacres. This one was pretty good and really put things together nicely with the previous franchise redo, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It had all the same faces from that one including R. Lee Ermey who is quite good in both of the movies. Not Full Metal Jacket great but good.. I've seen all the Friday the 13th and even noticed there's a new one coming out this spring. I suffered through all of the Nightmare on Elm Streets including the later ones. I made it through all of the Halloweens even Rob Zombie's reboot and he's doing part 2 soon I hear.

So as I was watching Leatherface running after a victim in the movie, I thought I wonder how fast he can run. It looked like he was doing 8s. Then I started to compile a list of horror killers, the requirements must've be an actual person(sortof) and have at least 3 movies. This rules out Candyman with just 2 movies for instance and Chucky from Child's Play doesn't count because he was a doll. Here's my list: the aforementioned Leatherface, Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers, Jigsaw(he was in 3 1/2 of the 5 movies), Pinhead, The Tall Man, and maybe Ghost Face from Scream. The problem with the Scream killer was he/she was different in all 3 movies so I'm not sure it counts.

So let's break it down..

Leatherface: He's quite a big fella and was moving pretty good in this last movie and not so fast in some of the others. I'm still thinking he's about 8 minute pace guy. He makes up for that pace by being able to wield a large chainsaw while running that pace.

Jason: He really seems to be able to do some serious trail running. I'm not going to count we he was revived in the future with nanobots and became bionic Jason. He ran mostly with a machette and sometimes an ax. I'm thinking he ability to catch co-eds in the forest quickly puts him about 7:30s on the open road. Speaking of running co-eds here's a great Nike commercial:

Now Jason's build would make him a decent triathlon athlete but he can't swim and water is his kryptonite. So no triathlon for him.

Freddy: He's one of the leanest and wimpiest looking of all the horror killers. This makes him the perfect distance runner. Of course, he's in the dream world and can basically do anything even outrun Gebrselassie. Before being whisked off to nightmare land to terrorize folks, he probably was able to run pretty good. He did have to catch kids to bring them back to that warehouse. I'm thinking he's one of the most natural runners based on his body composition. On top of that he's smart and would be able to execute a race plan, push the pace early, cover the moves, let someone else lead. Now for my time estimate, I'm thinking sub 7s without training.

Michael Myers: He can move as seen by him jumping onto the station wagon in the first movie. I'm thinking he's a little faster than Jason but not much maybe 7:15 mile pace. Still not lightening fast. He's got a similar build as Jason but not the fear of water so he could probably excel in triathlons.

Jigsaw(killer in the Saw movies): He's tall and in the first movie was able to outrun that young detective after being shot in the leg. I'm thinking he's pretty fast at 7 minute pace. He probably competed in local runs as a cancer patient to help raise money for cancer. Think about it, he needs some relief from building all those elaborate death traps.

Pinhead: Another lean and mean guy who could probably bust out some decent mile times. He was in the war so he probably was able to move fairly fast carrying a full pack and gun. He mostly glides/floats as Pinhead except in Hellraiser 2 where he's walking down the street. Unlike Freddy, I think he's uncoachable. He's too arrogant to take any direction. I'm thinking he's a 8 minute guy just not able to live up to his potential.

The Tall Man: He's one of the main killers in the Phantasm franchise. I don't remember much of the movies but I don't think he ran at all. He had these metallic death balls do his bidding. However, he is tall and based on such a long stride length it wouldn't take much for him to move. He's the oldest in our list at what I would estimate 60s. I'm saying 8:30s.

Ghost Face(Scream franchise): Again technically not really in the same league as the previous killers because there were different people under the mask each movie and even multiple people in the same movie. These killers seem to be the fastest in our list though as they were moving in full sprints at some points. Interval training at its best. I'm guessing sub 7s were doable for most of these killers.

I really hope I haven't missed any key killers for the list. I'm going to have to give Freddy the nod here as the fastest of the bunch. You definitely want to be trained up if you came up against Freddy in a horror movie.

Tomorrow more horror fun...fashion!

Loafing

2008-12-03T07:26:00.000-05:00

That's one of the many terms Thesaurus.com gave me as a synonym for lazy. I bagged getting up early to run, swim, spin and run back from the gym. I was actually sortof awake and ready but just blew it off and decided just to run at lunch time. How far I've fallen in such a short time. My sleeping-in training is improving greatly though and I should be able to conquer the sleep til noon before too long.

I guess people get fat because well they don't want to work out but still eat like they did when they used to work out. I'm heading down that path. At least I'm getting faster at my running. My pace has been slowly coming back around to a nice smooth 7:15ish which doesn't feel too bad at all. I tried to push the pace a little yesterday for about a mile trying to reel someone in on the trail and boy that was hard. I have no speed at all. I definitely miss the days when in the middle of a workout I could throw down a 5:30 if I needed to. Who knows if I can keep my legs healthy maybe by spring I'll be able to get back to that?

Elena told me she wanted a Wii or DS for Xmas. I told her that she could "want" all she wanted but it wasn't going to happen. I asked her why and she said because she wanted to play Pokemon on the DS. My daughter likes Pokemon. That's been around forever and I thought by the time she was old enough it would've disappeared..no such luck. I told her to be happy that she has a computer and not to get too greedy. She agreed but said she still wanted one.

I'm trying my hardest to make sure she doesn't turn into one of those kids who always bragged about what they had or flaunted their cool stuff. I definitely want to give her all the things I never got to have when I was a kid but I don't want her to brag about it. She goes to school with a bunch of kids less fortunate and I still remember how it hurt to see someone bragging about the cool toy they got for Xmas. I think is starting to understand as she is very compassionate for other people's feelings. She always has been and its one of her great qualities that I never and still really don't have.

Ahh Cyber Monday

2008-12-01T08:23:00.001-05:00

Hopefully everyone had a good Thanksgiving. I ate so much that I gave back all the losses in the lb department I had worked on the past week. It was massive on the old scale at the gym this morning. I had to move the big balance onto the 150 for a whopping 152. Ouch...considering after my killer workout Thanksgiving morning, the same scale said 142. I was dehydrated though as I did the killer spinning class, went for about a 5 mile run and then swam for 45 minutes. I bonked big time in the pool but that was okay as it really wasn't about going fast but more about fasting. Heh!

I was eating T-day dinner with some friends of Amber and Joe. They live in this suburb of DC called Bowie. I arrived just before 1pm and there were snacks a plenty. I proceeded to slowly consume snacks but tried to limit the intake in order to consume mass quantities of turkey and mash potatoes. They were deep frying their turkey. This is a really cool method to cook a turkey but it's quite dangerous I guess due to the fact you have a big pot of 350 degree oil. I guess that's why castles back in the day used to use it for defense because it would not be fun to have it dumped on your head.

Just the plain oil heating up which takes awhile.

Turkey is in cooking...I heard on a radio show that it only takes 3 minutes per pound to cook the turkey with this method as opposed to 20 minutes per when you put in the oven.

And the final product...the skin was nice and crunchy plus the turkey was quite juicy. Just as everything was finishing up I was having a massive hunger pain. Basically I was bonking just by sitting in a chair...good times. I got a small plate of turkey to tide me over before the true feast begun. Phew...crisis averted.

I had 3 massive plates of turkey, potatoes, and stuffing. Plus some corn, rolls and green beans. I could barely move afterwards as we all let things settle before starting on the 3 pies, and 2 big massive buckets of homemade ice cream.

By the time everyone left at 8 something I was in a full turkey coma. I got home and went to bed but I woke up about 1am all hot and full. I couldn't sleep at all. I think my system was in overdrive converting all my stomach contents into FAT!! I rolled out of bed at 7am and hit up the internet to see what sales were going on.

I live about a block from a Best Buy, Circuit City and Target. I had planned to start looking for Elena's Xmas present an electronic keyboard. It was on sale at Best Buy but was sold out online but Target also had one on sale. I got dressed and decided to walk over to see about picking one up. It was pure bedlam at Best Buy. The parking lot was packed and people were parking on the street. I had to stop in just to see it first hand. There were people everywhere. I strolled through some aisles and they had the keyboard in stock so I figured why not save my walk over to Target and just pick it up. I waited in line for about 30 minutes just to check out. They were saying that doorbuster people had arrived at 11pm the night before and camped out in line for the 5am opening. Definitely crazy and I might have to see this door opening first hand next year.

I watched DVDs all day Friday and just tried to recover from the turkey. On Saturday, it was time to starting thinking about the chance of the Beavers to go to the Rose Bowl. I watched the game and it was so sad. Our defense played horrible which I really blame on the defensive coordinator for not preparing them to defend Oregon's spread offense. They had a chance to go to the Rose Bowl and just blew it. I guess it's for the best since I can save all that money I would spend on that mini-vacation and use it elsewhere. Typical Beaver let down. Plus I think I may have to travel already twice in December for business so a third time would be hard.

On Sunday, Elena and I watched a bunch of HGTV. She likes those shows because Amber and Joe are in the process of getting a house. They had been renting but now they are going to buy. It interesting watching because they show various markets in certain cities. Like they had one couple looking at houses in the Bay Area where a 3 bedroom 1 bath is 700k while this other lady in Dallas was looking at a 3 bedroom 2 bath for 130k. Wowzer!! Of course another show was about log cabin homes and those were just crazy. It's just amazing at how many people just have tons of money. I mean these things were monstrous and had crazy stuff. I just wonder how people can even heat such a massive house. One log cabin was out in the middle of nowhere and had to provide all its own energy with generators and solar power. Wild stuff...I wonder how these HGTV shows are going to be after a few months when they actually were taping during the current environment.

Hope everyone has fun shopping online today...

Yay oh YAY!!

2008-11-26T07:52:00.001-05:00

I'm so happy right now it's unbelievable and it's all due to something that I found out late last night about work. Yeehaw!! I can't tell right now until it's official but it's going to make my work life so much more enjoyable. Can't wait..

On to the more mundane, my workouts. I got my fancy new watch yesterday and it's looks weird. I wasn't expecting it to be so small but that's a benefit for my dinky wrist.

The other odd thing is it has a screensaver. The display can automatically turn off after 6 hours or 12 hours to save batteries. Awesome! The thing that currently bugs me is the back light comes on for every split I take with the watch. My previous Nike watch had a mode like that but you could turn it off. I can't seem to find the "off" for this mode. It's cool that even the numbers are tilted where as in the first incarnations of Nike watches they just tilted the entire dial.

I've started my fasting for T-day. I've slowed my food intake but I've upped my workouts as I swam, ran and did the hard spin class today. I should head into the T-day dinner with a nice calorie deficit and be able to gain 5 lbs easily. I'll be like one of the hobbits from Lord of Rings and be eating at least 5 times during the festivities.

My run is slowly coming around. I feel pretty comfortable muscle wise on most of the runs and I feel my legs are adapting to the daily pounding. If I can keep a nice weekly mileage and be ready come January to put some hill work on top of it that will set up nicely for the half Ironman.

I'm all set for some serious slacking during the next 4 days of holiday. I've got 5 DVDs from Netflix plus on top of that I can stream movies via my Xbox 360 from Netflix as well. We got some decent football games on Thursday and of course Saturday is the big OSU/Ducks game. I'm awaiting a nice mold of my ass on the couch cushion by Sunday evening.

Well here's to everyone and hoping you all have a good T-day...

Beavers!

2008-11-24T08:48:00.000-05:00

I can't believe they pulled out the game on Saturday. The whole game I was the supreme pessimist even up until the point where Straughter got behind the AZ secondary with 40 seconds to go and us being down by 1 points. Of course we had blown the PAT yet again in a close game to be down by that 1 point. After the win, I was thinking that usually we'd lose that game so maybe it is our year. We have to win at home against the Ducks to go to the Rose Bowl for a rematch with Penn State. It's going to be a great game and could rival the triple OT game in the rain at Reeser Stadium back in the day. Our last second field goal win in Arizona made the ESPN Pontiac Game Changing Performance voting. Pretty cool...and we're sure to move up in the rankings.

It continues to be bitter cold. I don't think it's been over freezing for a week or so. Well maybe yesterday. I've been running in high 20s with wind chills for the last few runs. Brutal. I did put in my first 6 miler since returning from my calf injury. It was perfect. I'll continue to slowly increase the miles to get in a nice base. I have absolutely no speed and it seems a struggle to bust out 7:30s these days. I have a nice winter coat which probably is helping with those slow running times.

I barely made it out bed this morning for the run-swim-spin class-run workout today. I love me some sleep and its so hard to suffer by waking up. I ate tons of junk food this weekend so I needed the workout. It's almost December and I really need to get my act together as I spent yesterday on the couch. It's been dry so I could've road the bike outside but I'm such a cold weather wimp I haven't been out on the bike for weeks. And unlike last year I haven't been getting on the indoor trainer either. I just chalk all this up to the extreme work ethic I had leading up to the Ironman and it just wearing me down mentally that I'm like a teenager rebelling.

Time to look for flights to Pasadena...

Old and forgetful

2008-11-21T07:11:00.001-05:00

The other day I received not one but two current issues of Bicycling magazine in the mail. It had my address on it and looked all official. I have no memory of subscribing to this magazine. I've read the magazine at gyms and Eddie's in the past but it's pretty fluffy. It's a cool airplane distraction but I really don't remember actually spending money on a subscription. Weird huh? Maybe it was a gift but again no one has come forward? I guess I must've just forgot about it or I got suckered by a banner ad somewhere.

I know it could not have been one of those down on there luck kids who came by selling magazine subscriptions because our building's exterior door is locked. This requires a key even from our mailman to deliver. No unwanted solicitors at these condos. It should've been a selling point as I'm sure most people hate having to answer their door in the middle of the evening. You got have you found god folks, the aforementioned magazine kid trying to go to summer school program, and the classic neighborhood girl scout schlepping cookies for the man.

I mean seriously $4.50 for 18 mint wafers. Really?!?! Where's all that money going? Maybe it's turning girls into leaders of the free world but still it's seems like some serious filling of the coffers for the higher ups in the organization. It's a dot org for f-sakes. Basically, non-profit but still making the officers of the company some serious dough.

On top of this nowadays, the girls aren't even the ones selling the cookies. Their parents are running around doing the selling for them at work and in social settings. Back in my day, you walked miles and miles through neighborhoods knocking on doors, putting on your best sales pitch, runnning scared from dogs as you approached fenced off doors, getting stink-eyes, and being offered to come in, have a conversation with an old lady who hasn't seen anyone in months while only selling 1 item for a half hour of your time. Kids have it way to easy these days with their fancy internet, HD TV, and gaming consoles. Back in my day, we'd have to go outside and play and had to squint at the TV to see through the fuzziness because the rabbit ears weren't just right. Those were tough days!

It's Friday and the big Beaver game against Arizona is tomorrow. We win this game against those Wildcats and we're one away from the Rose Bowl. I think I'll be watching the game from the comfort of my home rather than heading down to the alumni sports bar. The sports bar that the alumni gather at just doesn't have that great of food or beer. It's just so-so. It does so well because it has a ton of HD tvs and gets all the games no matter what. It food just is mediocre. It reminds me of the Kitchen Nightmare shows in how the food can be a killer to a restaurant. I love that show. Last week's mexican restaurant episode was classic. Cockroaches, week old refried beans and rice and the waiter throwing un-eaten chips from a table back into the chip pile. Awesome! I've eaten at enough sketch mexican restaurants to relate.

Go Beavs!!

Mmm...cold pizza

2008-11-20T07:31:00.002-05:00

I'm munching on cold pizza right now as my post workout breakfast. It's just simple cheese pizza from Elena's birthday.

I know it doesn't look all that great but hey it's carbs and fat so what can I say. I'll eat anything.

It was a balmy 34 degrees out this morning at 4:30am when I took off on my run to the pool. It felt amazing as compared to yesterday's 28 degree run with a wind chill around 20. I got to the pool and just did some drills. My arms felt tired which I thought was odd since I hadn't swam since Tuesday. I finished up my drills and did the spin class. It only had about 8 people as compared to the Saturday morning class which had at least 20. The workout ended up being only 45 minutes as compared the normal hour. I wasn't complaining as I still had to run home. Luckily the run is only 2.8 miles so no big deal.

I'm home, showered, drinking coffee and eating cold pizza and it's only 7:30ish. All my workouts are done for the day.

Last night I watched Lady in the Water by M. Night Shyamalan. It was an odd movie but pretty straightforward which made the movie seem even stranger considering M. Night Shyamalan is know for such major twists and turns during his movies. I'm surprised after seeing that it got such bad reviews. I mean it wasn't great but it sortof had an interesting story. Although it was the worst in regards to him pimping himself as an actor during the movie. He had a major part in this movie and it was ugly to watch. His career is quite interesting. Basically, he's riding The Sixth Sense for 9 years. It's like hitting a home run in the bottom of the ninth to win game 7 and the series your rookie year, signing a 10 year multi-million guaranteed contract and then batting .205.

So far the oddest movie I've seen this entire year is A Scanner Darkly. Not only is the movie shot in a real animation style but it's totally bizarre the whole way through all the way til the end. It's an entertaining movie and Robert Downey Jr. and Woody Harrelson do a pretty good job throughout. Keanu is well Keanu. I'd recommend it if your looking for something totally different.

It's dead

2008-11-19T08:11:00.003-05:00

My watch that is...the main display just disappeared during my run yesterday in sub-freezing temperature. Who knows maybe it was the cold that did the watch in but no such luck. I even replaced the battery hoping that was the reason but it's dead. It was the first model of the Nike foot pod system. I bought it after my marathon in 2002 and then it sat while I exclusively cycled until 2005 when I started doing duathlons. I guess it had a decent life the best part of the watch was the band never broke. My previous Nike watches and Timex watches have always had the bands break.

I immediately started looking for a replacement watch. I had started my search a little before the Ironman when the watch face fell off in the pool. The watch still worked fine after I superglued the face back on but who knows maybe all the water got in there and somehow screwed it up. I'm just thankful it didn't fail during the Ironman. Overall looking back on it most everything went right for the Ironman. I didn't get sick leading up to it and the watch hung with its problems and even the batteries in the cycle computer and watch made it. I ordered a Nike Vapor watch because I got a decent deal on it from Amazon.com and it has a memory of 300 splits. Sweet...I was looking for a watch with at least 100 splits. I love my splits. 50 splits just isn't enough because if you forget to record workouts for a couple of days the splits are gone. I still don't know my splits from first ever and fastest marathon because they got accidentally deleted due to the watch only having only a 50 total split memory. I still curse not documenting them sooner. This was in 98 before the Portland Marathon went to chip timing. I think my watch time was 2:49:something where as the official time was 2:50:something. I started a few rows back(big mistake) and started my watch when I crossed the start line.

Today's run will be on feel. That's okay I guess since it's probably going to be a whopping 30 degrees when I go. Right now it's 25 with a wind chill of 20. Joy!! The sun is out so no snow. This will make it feel like a warm 30 when I run.

The benefit of working at home is I get to roll out of bed and be working in about 5 minutes. The disadvantage is I have to pay for heat and air conditioning which I'm notoriously cheap about. So right now it's probably under 60 degrees in my room because it's on the north side of my condo. This is great for the summer as it's cooler but sucks in the winter. I think I'll be investing in a space heater soon as my fingers are slowing down due to numbness from the cold keyboard. I guess typing with gloves can't be too bad...maybe I'll test it soon.

8 more days til some serious turkey eating...I can't wait. I've been preparing myself by waking up with stomach pain each morning due to the amount of junk food I'm consuming the evening before. Just replace junk food with Doritos and it makes more sense. They're so good but they hurt my tummy so much and on top of that make me fat. Who knows maybe all this extra weight is allowing me to float higher in the water during my swimming therefore making me faster?

1 more month til the shortest day and the start of winter...UGH!!

The Video

2008-11-18T09:37:00.001-05:00

So I finally got my finisher video of Ironman Canada. It's a montage until they show about 10 seconds of the finish area when I'm going through the finish line. I guess I wasn't going as fast as I thought. ;)

I had Elena last night as well so I got to swim again this morning. I was trying to keep up with lady who had these monster fins on during my 100. She crushed me but I posted my fastest time in the 100 for awhile. This new stroke is really working. Next month I'll start the intervals back up and we'll see how that goes.

Winter has really begun out here in DC. The high today will be 45 and the low just around 30. Ugh...the bikes are just hanging on the rack as I really don't want to strap one to the trainer just yet. I think I'll keep running instead. I just hope that I can keep away from the injuries.

Is it just me or does Thanksgiving vacation seem like forever away? I'm really looking forward to that 4 day weekend. Gluttony and slacking are perfect. It appears that Elena's karate class is going to be part of a local Thanksgiving parade so that should be fun for her. She's probably going to freeze although she quite adept at wearing about 4 shirts and 2 pairs of pants. I guess she doesn't like her big winter coat that much so she wears extra clothes so she can just leave it in the closet. My little fashion diva.

Prepare for a mega post

2008-11-17T08:01:00.002-05:00

So much cool stuff happened since my last post. I can't believe it. Well it seems cool to me at least. Here's the cliff notes version. Elena's Chuck E Cheese party, signed will, Beavs win, Doritos rule, Facebook fun and 2 frickin seconds.

First on Friday, I signed up for Facebook. I have no idea how to create a link so anyone interested in "friending" me can do so. I'm not even sure how you could find a fellow blogger in Facebook. Here's a link to my profile but I'm not sure it will work. Send me a friend request. The best thing about Facebook is I can upload pics and video straight from my phone to the site. I couldn't do that with my Webshots account, Google or even this blog. Sweet. So expect more random photos in this blog.

On Saturday, it was Elena's birthday celebration at Chuck E Cheese with her friends. Here's a picture of her and Chuck E Cheese.

The phone is blurry sometimes...oh well.

While I was at Chuck E Cheese, I was able to finally get my will signed. I had to have 3 adults sign a document stating they watched me sign the will. I don't really see anyone and certainly not 3 people I know so I was able to use Elena's friends parents to accomplish this. So it's official everything goes to Elena if something happens to me.

We finished the festivities at Chuck E Cheese and it was time to go home. Elena got in trouble on Thursday and was grounded from TV for a week starting on Saturday. So she groaned and groaned all weekend because she couldn't watch TV. She basically figured she couldn't continue. All in all pretty dramatic. Hopefully, it will be a good lesson for her and she'll not break anymore rules.

Later in the day, the OSU Beavers beat the Cal Bears to keep their hopes and my hopes of a Rose Bowl alive. We have Arizona this Saturday and then arch rival Oregon on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. This is the problem. Oregon has a bye week this week so they get a full 2 weeks of preparation while the Beavs have a short week because of the Thanksgiving holiday. This really sucks and could have a negative affect on our team. Just one more hurdle to overcome in order to make it to the Rose Bowl. That damn Stanford loss at the beginning of the year looms big right now.

I woke up Sunday late as usual. Elena was already up, playing and reading books in her room. It was time to go to Costco. I had pretty much eaten most of the food I purchased during the mega Costco run of September. We got there and it was crowded. I guess people were starting to get ready for Turkey day. We proceeded to load up on all the food I needed. Fries, chicken nuggets, pasta, jerky, etc. They didn't have the tortilla chips out in the front area so we made our way finally to the chip area in the back. I rounded the corner and I saw them.

OMG!! I freaked out. Yes, they're back. I immediately threw 2 bags into my cart. I knew that 20 pages letter I sent to the Costo East Coast Regional Manager would help. Okay, I didn't send a letter but I thought about it. It was like Christmas had come early. Of course I had a few or 15 chips last night right before bedtime and paid dearly when I woke this morning.

We got back and went over to the park because it was super windy. Elena wanted to fly her kite.

I took her to UMAC this morning and stopped by the pool for a workout. During Saturday's swim workout I had found a couple of seconds per 100 with another tweak to my stroke. I worked on it some more this morning and it rocks. I'm now down to 1:49s for the 100 in the full swim trunks. Take off about 5 seconds for drag as compared to my tri-shorts and it's now 1:44s. Sweetness!! I haven't even started doing speed work yet and really don't feel in the best swim shape as compared to right before the Ironman. I'm totally pysched. With all this speed, I might be able to keep up with Orion afterall.

Facebook

2008-11-14T09:08:00.000-05:00

So I registered on the facebook site and boy is it a weird networking site. I thought it was basically like Myspace but it's not at all. I did find news on my 20 year high school reunion. How wild is that! My high school graduating class were major party animals and basically fought all the rules. We elected class presidents who bought beer for the class party. I was surprised there was a 10 year reunion which I totally forgot about and missed even though I could've made it. Now there's a 20 year one in the planning stages which again I'm amazed that someone from our class cares enough to plan. Of course I'm way out in DC so I'll probably miss it as well.

Back to Facebook, I'm totally lost on how it works but a couple of people I know are on there so I sent a couple of messages. Oh well, it's there and I'll probably neglect it more than most but I have one.

I must be sick as I went to bed early and couldn't get myself out of bed until just before 7am. I did wake up about 10 times during the night to blow my nose because I couldn't breathe. It could be allergies but I'm usually not tired during any allergy bouts. I'm sure it will linger for awhile especially with the cold weather. I ran in torrential rain, wind and cold yesterday. It was pretty miserable. I just gotta keep running so I can really blast some runs during the spring. I long to get back to my old running form where I just felt fast as compared to know where I just feel slow.

I finished watching the final table of WSOP last night. It was sad actually. I only saw good poker for like 3 hands. The overall winner won because he was on this mad luck streak. He river'd two people on their all-ins and turned another and then hit a few other hands amazingly as well. Just overwhelming luck. Each time it wasn't that much to stay in at first and then just called with sad pocket pairs which hit every time. It was shocking how lucky he was. Of course maybe he's a good player but it was hard to tell at the final table. Actually the final table was an all-in fest constantly. Rarely did you get past the flop without someone going all-in. I guess there was quite a large discrepancy between stacks so most of it was short stacks trying to double up at all costs. I guess it makes for a decent strategy but I just wonder how they determine chip stacks before they get to the final table. If they went through the same number of tables, they'd all be the same at the final table. I don't understand that but oh well. All in all the final table was pretty sad. Who knows maybe ESPN skipped normal hands in editing and only showed the all-in knock him down or out hands? Hard to tell. The funniest and saddest moment at the final table was when a guy went all-in without looking at his cards. He ended up with pocket Kings I believe after they were flipped over as he had one taker. It's the final table where each person you get past is worth about 1 million dollars and you're not looking at your hand. Are you kidding me? Of course he won that hand but still...play F-IN poker for the fan enjoyment.

The big college football game is tomorrow. Cal visits Corvallis. My Beavs(okay they're not mine but I am an alum) go for another win to keep their Rose Bowl hopes alive. A running buddy at Mentor back in Oregon is a Cal alum and we've had numerous bets over the years. I've lost a few and he's lost a few. We don't bet money, we almost always bet pride. Like one time I had to buy and hang a "blue" shirt in my office for entire year which of course required numerous explanations of "why". The best was a year of him announcing "Cal sucks OSU rocks!" before every run when his Bears lost to Stanford and my Beavs beat the Ducks during rivalry weekend. Both Stanford and the Beavs were big time underdogs. He's traveling in Europe this week so we didn't get a bet in place.

Go Beavs!

Swimming less = Faster?!?

2008-11-13T09:04:00.000-05:00

So I did my typical drop Elena off at her morning before school program and stop by LA Fitness for my swim. I was messing with my stroke some more and was able to run off some decent times in the middle of a 30 minute swim. I really haven't started any speed work at all. I think I'll just put in "base" like running until January then start some speed stuff. Who knows maybe I can get faster this year on my swimming. I'll have a chance at keeping up with Orion at the Florida half in May.

My running has been well just there. Nothing earth shattering with keeping my mileage low and slow. Again, I'll probably start doing some hill repeats in January and then some tempo sessions in February. There's a virtual challenge on Slowtwitch to see how fast one can run 1600m. I haven't tried to push a mile since before heading to Oregon and suffering through a 5:45 on the trail. A fast mile time would be helpful in my prep for the half. I'm not sure I have any speed left in my legs though. I was doing 800 repeats in the summer of 2007 at 2:35ish so I should be able to go under 5 but I'm not sure how far under. It would be cool to do a 4:40. Either way it's going to be fun to try over the next season.

The last sport cycling is suffering. Its been cold and windy lately so I've been ignoring the bike altogether. I'll do a spin class on Saturday for a little work but I really don't feel like getting on the trainer this winter. We'll see how the spring shapes up in building to the May race.

Anyone out there interested in poker? The World Series of Poker happened this past weekend in Vegas and some unknown amateur won. I DVR'd the final table on ESPN and started watching it. The first few hands were quite humorous and you could definitely tell that most of the players weren't professionals. I read a Bill Simmons article that mentioned they should have a pro-only tournament. I have to agree or something like 5 seats at the final table should be filled from professional only bracket while the 4 others could come from an at large amateur bracket. Overall it's also funny watching the players appear more sponsored out than NASCAR cars. I'm amazed that they can actually move in those jackets with all those patches sewn on. I see a future Halloween costume.

I also watched the first quarter of the Blazer/Heat game last night as Oden made more of an official debut. He had a dunk and a block. It was against the Heat's(we have no real center) team. I looked at the box score and he only had one additional field goal for the rest of his 16 minutes.

I've been extra tired for some reason. I can't tell if I'm still battling a cold as I seem to blow my nose a bazillion times a day or if my body just likes being under my warm comforter. The 2nd warmest comforter they sold at Macy's. I love that thing. Flannel sheets + comforter equals sleeping warmth without having to heat the condo. The nightly bathroom visit which is about 2 steps from my bed is major body shock. If I could get a bed pan, I wouldn't have to leave the warmth of my bed. Eureka!!

As Black Friday approaches, we inch closer to Xmas. I'm undecided about Xmas cards this year. The tradition has been a Elena on Santa's lap since 2001 but I feel little motivation to even bother this year. I'm already in my Scrooge mood and Xmas hasn't even hit.

Happy 7th Birthday Elena

2008-11-11T07:40:00.001-05:00

My daughter turns 7 today. Wow, 7 years. It seems longer to me but overall it's just amazing that she's 7. 2001 was a crazy year considering 9/11 happened during it. Luckily for Elena she was born in November and not on that day as it would be hard as a birthday. I do remember going to birth school at OHSU that night. Kindof surreal...as I'm sure most people remember what they did that day. Onto to more happy things during that year...I competed in my 2nd marathon that October. I was in awesome running shape probably close to the best ever in my life. Earlier in that year I had to travel a ton due to my job but then with the pregnancy complications I stopped all travel after an epic trip in May to Europe. A few friends got married that summer and we even had to leave one reception early and race back to the hospital. We practically lived in OHSU during those months. Elena was born after an epic 5 days of on/off labor for Amber who held on as long as possible but she was still 4 weeks early. Luckily, the steroids worked and her lungs were fine. She was super small but she's pretty normal right now.

Here's the latest picture I have from this September:

I bought her Kung Fu Panda, 2 pairs of PJs, and makeup/hair Sleeping Beauty head. The Sleeping Beauty make-up/hair head is one of the things she picked out when we were at the store. She really likes to create so I'm sure she'll spend hours putting makeup and doing Sleeping Beauty's hair.

Elena has a half day at school due to parent conferences today and tomorrow. Our conference is at 4pm so I'll get to hear how she's doing and if it's bad NO GIFTS. Hehehe...I hope things are going well at school. It looks like from a picture I saw that her classroom size is pretty small so I hope she's excelling so she can get a scholarship. More money for my retirement!!

Winter has started here. It's frickin freezing out right now with the temperature under freezing. I'm all bundled up as I haven't turned on my heat...yet. It's not too cold, 62 in house but the sun is out so the living room will be up to 70 easily by noon. My coffee and my new fleece robe is keeping me warm. My office/bedroom is cold all the time and my living room is warm all time. I guess I should migrate like geese for the winter into my living room or just turn on the heat. Hmmm...electricity expensive, 5 layers of clothes cheap.

The First Nog

2008-11-10T07:07:00.000-05:00

As predicted, I didn't make it out of Target on Saturday without stopping by Starbucks for my first Egg Nog Latte of the year. It was good but it wasn't great. I'm not sure what happened...maybe not enough nog or the coffee was old. Something because it wasn't how I remembered. I guess this is good because the venti w/ tax cost $4.63. I can't afford drinking those often at all. I can get a full deal meal at McDs for that money. I may go poor man nog coffee by buying some Egg Nog at the store and using it as cream for my coffee at home.

I had a couple of okay run days on Friday and Saturday. I'm still taking it easy with just 4 miles or 30 minutes of running. I'll go another week of just 4 miles and then the following week throw in one 6 mile run. The calf soreness is still there but I'm hoping it will just work itself out.

I decided to stay with LA Fitness and just drive down there 3 times a week. Overall, the quality of the facility won me over and paying $400 up front for a year at Bally right now just isn't worth it. I woke my sorry ass up this morning and made my way to LA Fitness for my first 5am workout there since I got back from Canada. It wasn't bad but my awesome stroke that I found didn't provide the fast results like last time. Ugh...back to my futile attempts at finding the miracle stroke. I've got 6 months til Florida to find some swimming speed.

I'm in the midst of an internal struggle on getting a coach for training. I think it would be good to have some focus and experience a coach could provide but it would also make me actually get serious about my training. I just going by feel right now. No structure at all. I didn't even workout on Sunday even though the weather was good just because I was lazy. I drank a few beers and had a greasy burger at the sports bar watching the Beavers win on Saturday night because well it's no big deal. Of course, if I pay someone each month to give me workouts all that would change. My cheapness would overtake everything that didn't help my training. I wouldn't be skipping workouts because I actually paid for them. I'd make sure to get enough rest and give my body healthy food in order to achieve the best performance for those "paid" workouts. On top of that, I'm sure the workouts would be hard. I'd have to suffer. I'm getting used to finishing workouts and not feel like puking, being able to walk straight, not wishing for a car to run you over so you can stop the workout, wondering what would happen when you heart explodes, and thinking if it's normal for your legs to burn as if they were being dipped in acid.

Interesting...

2008-11-07T06:24:00.003-05:00

I hit up the Bally pool this morning and it was crowded but since it doesn't have lane lines it really makes swimming easy with a bunch of people. I went about swimming with the new found technique from yesterday. I was averaging 7 seconds per 4 lengths slower than yesterday. I say lengths because I'm not sure if it's a 25 yard or 25 meter pool. The person who gave me the tour last Sunday said 25 meter but I figured he was wrong. I finished my workout and walked off the edge. I came up with 26 strides so it could easily be 25 yards with just the "chop" slowing me down. It would cool though if it was meters.

I had a tough run yesterday. Well not too bad but I was trying to make sure my calf was good the whole run. My quads hurt but that always happens after a long run layoff for me. I know I'm getting good running miles in when my quads no longer hurt from the pounding. Today, it's clear and suppose to be 70 so I'm going to hit the road with the bike. I'm going to ride my road bike. I haven't been on it since early May. It should be interesting. There are a lot of leaves on the ground so I have to be careful. I might put in a brick run after the bike. My muscles would be warm so it might make the run easier.

A funny thing I realized this morning as I was waking up, I never feel I can run "fast" in my dreams or nightmares. Isn't that odd? I swear each time I try to run in a dream it's almost impossible to get my legs moving. I don't remember many dreams but the ones I do it always seems impossible to get running fast if I need to. I can fly like Superman..nah just kidding. Although I always loved that 80s movie about dream fighting with the snake guy. I can't remember the title and of course you have the Nightmare on Elm Street titles as well. But damn if I can't run in my dreams. It must be some subconscious thing. Maybe I should get one of those dream analysts to help me understand. They'd say something like, "Not being able to run in your dreams mean you feel trapped in your life" or some bullshit like that. Maybe it's just because my legs are tired and my brain is trying to save them for the following day workout.

Oops forgot to add the thing that I put in the title. I looked at my Runner's World training log yesterday and notices some interesting information. YTD, for my cross training, I've bike 130 times and swam a 129 times. Wild that they're so close. I have 3500 miles of cycling and 137 miles of swimming. Holy crap, I've swam a 137 miles this year so far. That's crazy when you think about it. The duration of swimming has been just under 80 hours. Baffling which averages out to about 37 minutes per session of swimming. I have a 186 miles of swimming since I started swimming back in mid August '07. My running hasn't been as good with 723 miles for just 89 hours for 2008.

Egg Nog: 0 Al: 5

Breakthrough

2008-11-06T08:15:00.003-05:00

Okay so I was doing my morning swim at LA Fitness after dropping Elena off and boy is that pool nice compared to the Bally pool. Ugh...oh well convenience trumps everything. I was just swimming along struggling as usual. I decided to try kicking a little bit just to see if it would matter. It's the off-season so why not kick if nothing else but to use those muscles a little bit. I was kicking and dropped about 2 seconds per hundred. Not bad I thought but not great. I don't what caused me to do it but I just started looking a little more forward than down with my eyes. This lifted my head and shoulders and I started pulling my arms through the water at a more shallow depth. Hard to explain but I kept kicking hopefully counteracting my more upright face/shoulder position. I first noticed that since my arms weren't so "deep" in the water, it became easier to pull faster. Also it seemed that I was gliding on top of the water. I clicked my watch split and about died. I went from a 1:59 to 1:51. Shocking! I was keeping 1:51, 2s and 3s for the rest of the swim with this new position/technique. I'm guessing it might be all wrong since my head is up and I'm not pulling as much water per stroke blah blah blah but I'm faster for sure. These splits are comparable to my fastest consecutive swimming splits in normal trunks. It might be all wrong but I'm faster so maybe it's not too bad. It does require a kick to keep that speed. I'll keep it up and see if I can even get faster. Stay tuned...

Onto the run...argh! I had a pain free run yesterday. I ran 4 miles in 30 minutes. The sole inserts felt okay. They need some breaking in but I think they might help my foot. My foot is totally healed after all this time off as well as my hamstring. The calf felt fine and it wasn't tight at the end of the run BUT it was tight this morning. I'm debating on another 30 minute run today or take today off from running. Hmmm...I'll probably run just because I really do love running. It just feels so natural to me. I guess it's really all mental because I had so many good feelings from running through my younger years. Either way, I'll start going full assault on this injury which means constant stretching and icing throughout the day.

I've made it through another day without a scrumptious egg nog latte. Although I may fail that test on Saturday when I hit up Target for Elena's birthday gift. There's a Starbucks right in the mall on the walk to Target. I'll keep you updated..

Egg Nog: 0 Al: 4

Voted

2008-11-05T06:23:00.001-05:00

So I'm tired because I stayed up a little bit past my bedtime watching the election coverage. Once I saw Ohio and Pennsylvania go to Obama I knew the election was decided and hit the bed. Of course at 5am this morning, I slept instead of swam. Maybe it's too easy to take Rich's advice from Endurance Nation and skip a few swim workouts. Hey, I've been battling a cold since I got back from Europe so...there's another excuse. I am planning to run today for the first time in 10 days as I hope my calf is recovered.

I stood in line to vote which was weird since it was just after 10am. I was in line for just about 30 minutes. Wild stuff...but it looks like the popular vote went to Obama as well. In some of the battleground states, it's looking like every vote matters as there is only about 20,000 votes separating Obama and McCain after over 2 million were cast. Amazing...

Since I'm in DC, I might go watch the inauguration. It's a historic event with the first African-American being sworn into office. Maybe if you're white, it's not that big of a deal but as a minority with my daughter being a minority it is a big deal. It's like all of sudden, "Whitey likes us!".

Lots of good emotions on that but I immediately start worry as I'm sure lots of people are worrying about the A-word. I mean it's not like you won't see Obama not walk down a line of folks and shake hands anymore. Sure probably not as elaborate as a 2hr In Line of Fire Eastwood movie, but more like the Reagan one. There was already two knuckleheads who were arresting for planning an attempt. Definitely scary stuff and worrisome.

Back to the lighter side of things, Elena's 7th birthday is coming up in less than a week. I'm planning on hitting up Target to get her gifts this weekend. I really don't have any idea what I'll come out of there with but at least as I mentioned before she gave me some ideas. As always, I'm torn from spoiling her to making her understand that she can't have everything and will need to work for things.

On another Elena front, she'll be 7. It's time to start thinking about developing her into a world class distance runner. Okay maybe I'm dreaming but this would be the time to start something like that. She did run a 7:30 mile as a 5 year old after training for a couple of months. She might have something there. There could be something else as well. I guess she likes messing around on the piano at a friends house so maybe she's pianist. Although you don't get a scholarship for playing piano to most schools but there are lots of cross country and track programs. ;) The problem around here is the lack of kid races. Everything just a 5k and 3.1 miles is a little long for a 7 year old. Hell back in my day high school girls weren't even competing at the 5k distance in cross country.

On a social note, they re-opened the theater across the street from condo. It's now a beer and movie place I guess with 6 screens. They even run first run movies and have happy hour $3 movies at 6pm. Not bad...if I could get any forward motion on actually going over there to see a movie. Sure Saw V is tempting me but...I could just wait til DVD as it's not like I know anyone going to spoil the movie for me. For $3 though it might be easy to catch a so-so movie without much worry like Quantum of Solace...nah that movie looks like its going to ROCK! It requires a full blown sound system which I don't think this theater has. Of course if I find out that this theater has Black Butte Porter,

I'll be there at least twice a week.