639

That's my number for the Ironman.  There are over 330 folks in just my age category and over 2400 total participants signed up for the event. It's going to be a massive amount of humanity hitting the lake for that swim.

Since we're at the 10 day mark, I've been able to see some weather predictions and it looks good right now at partly cloudy and mid 80s BUT there is rain for Wednesday and Thursday of next week.  This concerns me because it could stay or not come until Saturday and Sunday.  I'm hopeful the weather will be good.  Riding in the rain just sucks so doing a 112 miles in it would be brutal.

I have another day off today in the current taper program.  My appetite is on taper as well.  I actually felt full after dinner on Tuesday night and full last night after dinner.  It was a weird feeling because usually I eat snacks up until bedtime and I didn't need to eat any snacks last night.  My weight it staying the same after my weigh in at the gym after my swim on Wednesday morning.

I keep doing little things to prepare for the race.  I've printed out some inspirational material to help calm me down when I get antsy waiting for the race to happen next.  I have also slowly gathering stuff I'm going to take on the trip.

I actually getting a little worried about my bike.  During yesterday's ride, I just didn't feel comfortable for most of the ride or fresh.  I was hoping it's just because it's taking me forever to warmup but it still not the same way my legs felt before the half ironman in Florida.  I still have 10 more days of taper to really get the legs into form for the bike.

The run feels good though.  I'm getting pretty comfortable with the pace and now I'm just hopeful I got enough miles in for the endurance required for that last 10k of the marathon.

It's only 11 days til Elena starts first grade. It's weird that they start before Labor day even though they don't get out of school until June.  I guess it's because they have all these lame teacher days and other weird days off that I never got when I was a kid.  All I can say is I was robbed!!  Kids have it easy these days with the internet, ipods, video games, and a bazillion cable channels.

Only 10 more days...egads!

1 year anniversary

So it's been exactly 1 year since I started doing all three sports in preparation for Ironman Canada, amazing.  I finished the pyramid this morning and it wasn't quite as good as the one I did 2 weeks ago on my birthday.  It's always just a little tweak here and there that makes a second or so difference.

I looked back at my log and the first week of swims I was swimming a whopping 400 to 500 yards in about 15 or minutes each time.  Each workout about killed me.  This is pretty good stuff looking back on it.  Here's an excerpt from the blog during that first week:

I had to rest during this workout as I really was trying to catch my breath. I ended up only doing 12:30 minutes but that's okay as I think I covered 400 yards even with breaks. I did my last 100 in 2:20 which is 40 seconds faster than yesterday. Small little steps. If I do 4 swim workouts at least every week, I have 112 more workouts to get it all put together for that 4000m swim during the Ironman.

It would be even better if I had videotape of those swims.  I was so clueless on what to do but after an entire year and some awesome help from Jeff and Don I at least know what I should do.  I still can't quite put it all together but I am faster.

I keep checking the weather in Penticton. Right now it looks like some showers during race week but sunny on Friday before the race day.  Hopefully that sunny trend would continue through the weekend for a mid 80 degree high on race day.  That's really my perfect workout temperature.  It's not super hot but it's still hot enough that the heat haters will not like it.

The Ironman Canada website still hasn't posted bib numbers yet.  Everyone who is interested in seeing some "splits" as I progress through the Ironman on race day here's the information right now.  First you need to hit up http://ironman.com/ironmanlive then find the Ironman Canada link.  It should be front and center.  Somewhere it should say "Athlete tracker".  You click that then either search on my last name, Sherman, through the 35-39 age group or on the bib number that I hope to post.  There will be a time for each event once I finish it.  So you'll see my swim time right after I finish that and my bike time, etc.  The event starts at 7AM pacific standard time.

It's kindof crazy when you think about the overall length of the race.  I'll be on the course for over 10 hours.  I rarely even sleep that long at night.  Some people don't even go to work that long.  During this time, I'll try to break it up in my head so it doesn't seem like forever.  It will be hard to stay mentally focused for that amount of time with the hardest being those last 10 miles on the marathon.  Luckily, it's the event that I have the most experience in oh wait I take that back.  Actually, I have swam more 2.4 mile swims now than I've run marathons just in my swim training.  That's crazy when you think about it.  I guess that's why the swim is first because it really doesn't destroy you like running does.  I'll stop blabbing if anyone has managed to read this far.

11 more days...

Light spinning

Today is going to me 2nd day of an easy 30 minute spin.  Cush!  Tomorrow will a hard day as relative to the taper week.  All in all it won't be really hard but it will be good push the legs a little in the cycling and running.  I will be doing Mayan pyramid swim workout in the morning to round out the workouts.

I'm still nursing the sore hamstring which just "is there" during hard workouts.  I feel it but it's not too limiting just not normal.  The foot extensor tendon is still inflamed as well but again it's not a major issue during the workouts.  I continue to ice all the time and stretch the hamstring as much as possible.  I'm still hoping to make it to morning of the 24th as healthy as possible.

Tomorrow will be 1 year swimming anniversary.  After the death pyramid, I'll do a slow trip down memory lane.  I'll dig up some workout numbers for some amusement.  I'm still god awful slow in the water but compared to last year it's just wild to think about it.

I'm still thinking about all the food I'm going to eat after the 24th.  I can't wait and have held off going to Costco until after the trip.  I'm running pretty low on all food in the house as I empty the cupboards in preparation for being gone for 10 days.  That Costco trip will be EPIC.  I'll have to get one of these for all the food.

 

I'm just going to go through the aisles like a debutante on Rodeo Drive.  I'll take one of those and some of these.  I'll be walking for a long enough time during this trip I'm sure I can count as a recovery workout.

Just 12 more days...

Only 1 left

What a weird weekend for me...I had so much free time I actually kindof got bored.  Luckily, the Olympics and PGA championship helped.  I did a simple hard 3 hour ride on Saturday and covered 56.2 miles.  Hmmm...perfect although I was a little disappointed in my speed.  I was pretty rested but my hamstring/glute is bugging me on the bike.  This definitely makes the bike a little harder than it should be.

So that was my lone workout on Saturday and the rest of the day I just sat and watched TV.  Of course as I watch TV I have a bad habit of snacking.  I did my best to limit calorie intake.  I set my DVR to record the various swim finals that would be on TV at god awful times in the late evening.

On Sunday morning, the plan was just do some technique in the pool and bust out an hour running with a 6 mile tempo run.  The technique worked out pretty well as I applied some of what I saw the Olympic swimmers doing to help my stroke.  I noticed that the 400m guys were actually gliding quite a bit so I tried that just to see and it wasn't too bad.  I'll decide to mix a little more glide into my stroke.  The technique went well and I had some decent times while focusing on form.  I went over to the park where I did my 8 mile tempo last weekend.

The legs felt a little heavy from the hard ride on Saturday but I settled in after the warmup and was able to create even splits for the 3 miles out and the 3 miles back.  This is even with the entire back being slightly uphill.  I cruised the last mile of warm down at about 7:10 while the tempo was rock steady at 6:30s.  My quads were in pain for workout which actually simulates how they will feel for those last 6 miles of marathon.  Overall, I'm feeling pretty good about my run.

This morning was my last long really long swim before the actual event.  The plan was to swim for 75 minutes.  I decided to wear my tri-shorts to eliminate drag and really go for a good time.  The splits were going pretty good but about 2/3 through I always have a mental lapse and wimp out some splits.  It's amazing my arms were getting tired but if I focused on my stroke technique I could keep my times close.  I averaged 1:51s which is the fastest so far for that distance.  I actually swam just under 80 minutes and covered the actual 2.4 mile swim distance.  If I can swim straight and not get clobbered too much, I should have a chance at a 75 minute swim split at Canada with the wetsuit.  That would rule and really set me up for a chance a great time.

13 days left...

The Little Karate Kid

As promised here's a little snippet of Elena's karate graduation.  For her age she's one of the shortest in her group but still packs a wallop.  She's doing sidekicks which are her favorite for winning points in the sparring contests.  She's on the far right..



Can you believe it?  Ironman Canada is just 2 weeks away.  WOW!

Found it

Okay so I found something in my swim stroke this morning.  I was back to moving through the water at a decent pace.  It's just amazing at how the "catch" is so important that if you miss it you basically don't move forward.  So that's a positive and now I can just hope I don't lose it again.  Argh...swimming.  I am coming up on my one year swim anniversary.  It should be fun to give all my loyal blog readers all 2 of you some comparisons for your amusement.

Now onto Desoto Sports clothing and their customer support...so last week I mentioned that I sent back in my tri-shorts that they make.  The pad sewing had ripped so they said they'd repair it.  Perfect so at that time I ordered another pair of the tri-shorts and I also got a pair of their bib shorts.  My current bib shorts are way old and totally falling apart.  I've waited to buy a new pair of bib shorts becaues they always rip in the pad for me.  I figured since Desoto has such cool customer support that I'd drop the money on their bib shorts.  I wore the new bib shorts for a simple 90 minute ride and they actually felt quite comfortable.  Sweet!  I threw them in the wash with my other workout clothes.  I took them out and wouldn't you know their have stitching coming out in the pad again.  WTF!!  I called Desoto and they sent me a return invoice for them.  I just wanted to give a shout out for sweet customer support on their products.  Once I get these shorts back, I'll probably buy another pair post Ironman.

I'm going to start putting together my "lists" for packing and the entire Ironman event to help reduce my type "A" stress that will consume me.  Plus I'll try to give my cheering squad enough information so they can see me at various points during the race.

Oh yeah I apologize for the Blog sidebar as it seems there's a bug with blogger...

Under 16 days...

Day off

Today was first day off from training for in like forever.  Other than when I travel for business, I'm always doing at least one sport of the three.  It was so nice to sleep in, work and not have to worry about getting outside to workout.  It was extra cool because at my usual afternoon workout time there was this massive thunderstorm.

Tomorrow I have an easy technique swim in the morning at the usual wake up time and then an aerobic 90 minute ride.  This weekend's workouts will be the last real hard workouts although because the duration is short they won't be too bad.

I'm started to get excited that I actually will be able to become an Ironman.  I mean it's really weird but man if I finish it will be awesome.  I mean sure I've been training for almost a year but even when I was a kid I always thought of doing after seeing it on TV.  Sure Canada isn't Kona but man the distance is what was there.  2.4 mile swim which is like forever and then go do a 112 mile bike and just for fun after that run a marathon.  All those distances when I was kid were super huge by themselves.  I was a runner as a kid but the farthest I had gone was 8 miles during cross country.

So yes I'm already getting butterflies and it's 17 days away.  Race morning, I'm going to be a mess.  It's going to be hard to keep focused on the plan for the day and all the little things to make sure the event goes well.

I'm trying my best to monitor my calorie intake as I've cut back on the duration of my workouts so I don't gain 5 lbs between now and race day.  I really don't want to carry that extra weight up all the hills on the bike course as well as for the 26.2 miles of running.  It's hard because my stomach is probably the size of an elephant all expanded over the year of just stuffing tons of food in it.  So it's complaining right now as I've only put a simple cereal bar and a bowl of salad in it today.  I'm going to eat some pasta tonight and try my best to limit after dinner snacks.  The hardest part will be eating healthy while at the race site for the 6 days leading up to the race.

The official athlete's guide is out so it's just a matter of time before they publish bib numbers.  Once they are up, I'll post all the details for anyone wanting to check on my status during or after the event.

Under 17 days...