Quest to Kona

Been awhile, sorry

2009-11-02T08:41:00.002-05:00

Wow it's been a couple months since I have posted to my blog. Busy training I guess. This Ironman build I would mostly characterized as "weather challenged". Lot's of rain in Atlanta with lot's of flooding this Fall. I did an epic 120 mile ride / 8 mile run in what ended up turning into a record rain fall day, 10 inches. About 4 hours of that ride it was raining so hard I couldn't see the road more than 10 feet in front of me. At one point I had to carry my bike through thigh deep water as the roadway had flooded. It was crazy and I only came across 1 other biker the entire day. I was biking of the Silver Comet Trail, which is a rails to trails bike path which goes from Atlanta to Alabama and connects with another one there which goes all the way to Anniston, AL. Just to dangerous to ride on the roads with cars in these conditions. I typically see probably 500 other bikers on a Sunday ride, so yeah, I had the place to myself. A mental toughness day for certain.

The other epic workout, my longest run of this build, was a 22 mile run and yes you guessed it, it was raining. The Alpharetta Greenway (a paved running path) I typically run on was flooded so I had to run a route on the streets. It was 50 degrees and raining and to say Atlanta is hilly is an understatement. Over 1800 vertical ft of climbing for this run. The run course for Ironman Florida is pancake flat so I certainly have not been training the hills for I just don't need to. The cold, rain, and hills really stuck it to me on this run and it took a lot out of me. I had to travel that week and sitting on a plane for 5 hours to CA the next day wasn't a treat. Another mental toughness day for sure. If it rains during the race I will call upon these two day's to use as an advantage.

All told this IM build was pretty good, however the weather and shorter day's did prevent me from getting all my training in, especially on Thursday's which is a longer bike ride. As the training goes on the rides become longer, but the day's become shorter so by the middle of Oct. I was having to cut those rides more than an hour short. 4 hr rides turning into barley 3 hrs rides is not a good thing.

I think I am going to have to take some risks on the bike for this Ironman and push miles 40-90 a little harder than typical to stay in the hunt for my ticket to HI. The trick is to leave enough in your legs for the marathon you are about to start running. The problem is you don't know the answer to that question until mile 20 on the marathon. The first 20 miles leaves you thinking....did I leave enough, did I leave enough. If you didn't all kinds of hell starts to break loose and things start going wrong (cramps, stomach problems, amongst a whole host of others).

We shall see!

Ironman Florida Training build

2009-08-17T08:55:00.002-04:00

It's been awhile since my last post....sorry. I started my volume build for IMFL August 3. I had a great couple weeks of training with one more big one before my first recovery week. This will be a tough week for training, not only because it is a max week before the recovery week, but because I am in meetings across town M-Th and the extra 3 hrs of commuting comes out of rest time. It will be very important not to get injured this week with the reduced rest! Most would say just back off on the training, but sorry that just isn't in me. Undoubtably there will be train until 10pm, shower, do to bed nights this week. Terrific fun.

Ironman Couer d'Alene

2009-07-21T09:14:00.005-04:00

It's been awhile since I posted, sorry. Race has come and gone. Overall a pretty good race, but not what I had wished for. The weather through some major curve balls and I through in one myself the day before the race.

Arrived in CDA on Thursday afternoon, checked into cabin, picked up bike from Tribike Transport. Met up with my friends Chris, Jerry, Toby, and a few new friends from Atlanta on Fri morning at 6 am for a swim at the race site. 6 AM is 9 AM Atlanta time so it wasn't that early to us. We were the first to arrive, and we were running a little late to boot. It was cold with a nasty wind. The temp was mid 50's with 15 mph wind. Rain was in the forecast for the day, but wasn't raining at the moment. My Dad come with us to walk along the Lake while we trained. Got wetsuit on and swam about 20 mins. We were then going to ride an hour and I was going to run 20 mins. Chris and I got out of our wetsuits and got our bikes ready and headed over to Toby's hotel to get everyone else. There was an issue with a car and Jerry and Angela had to take it back to their hotel. We waited awhile for them to get back. It was now very cold and I only had a long sleeve t-shirt on with my wet tri shorts and wet tri top on under. The wind was whistling and I was freezing. We finally got started and rode the first out and back section of the course which was about 13 miles or so. I saw my Dad on the way out and slowed to tell him I'd meet him at the car at 9:30. I decided I'd run from the cabin later that day instead of making him wait. Well, it started to rain a little on the bike and an hour later it rained for the rest of the day. I didn't get my run in and should have just skipped it.

Saturday morning came and it was clear and crisp out. Mom and Dan went to town to walk along the lake. I decided to get that easy run in. I was planning on just a 3 mile run. About 2.5 miles in disaster struck. I was running on the oncoming traffic side of this windy lakeside narrow road carved into the side of the mountain when a large pickup truck approached. I moved as far over to the shoulder as I could to leave room for the truck. The edge of the blacktop was jagged and broken up a bit. As the truck was passing I stepped down and a piece of the blacktop broke off and I rolled my ankle. Next thing I know I am rolling on the ground as the truck wheel passed just inches from my face. At first I thought I may have broken my ankle as pain shot up my leg. I decided to get home as fast as possible to get ice on it. I was able to slowly hobble home, luckily only 1/2 mile away. I was in complete shock and disbelief that this had just happened. I iced and gobbled ibuprofen the rest of the day. The pain that night was intense and it woke me up about every 30 mins. A poor night of sleep before an Ironman for certain. The worst part of it was the distraction it created. The day's leading up to an Ironman are incredibly mental. You have to focus on being positive in your mind...you have done enough training, you are strong enough, you can endure the pain, YOU WILL DO THIS. Having a kink in your armor wrecks havoc in this mental preparation and I was the least prepared mentally for this ironman. Probably the most prepared physically, but at mile 20 on the run, it isn't physical - it's 100% mental. To say I was disappointed is a major understatement.

I'll copy and paste the details from the race from my race report in my training blog.....here you go...

Pre-race routine:Typical pre-race breakfast, nothing different. We were staying up at Lake Hayden (by the upper part of the bike course) so it was about a 15 min drive to the race site. Found a parking spot and walked about 5-6 blocks to the park. Planned on getting there at 5:30 and I was right on time. I had a very detailed list of todo's (I'm a list person) on my Blackberry and got right to it. Pumping tires was the frst on the list as if you don't find someone with a pump you have to get in line for one of the support pumps and that can take 15-20 minutes. Guy next to me who I met at the Cheah Challenge Century in May (he's from Atlanta) had a pump and let me use it. Then off to get T bags set up. Then drop off bike special needs bag which they had all the way on the other side of the park and required walking alone the waterfront sidewalk. This sidewalk was VERY crowded and it took about 10 mins each way moving through like a herd of cattle. Now time for the morning potty break. There were at least 300 (not exaggerating here) people in line so I went looking for another bathroom. I knew there were bathrooms on the other side of the park and headed that way. Of course there was a line but I got in it and waited. Pro start went....still in line, they they announced to start moving to the swim start. It was now 6:40 and I was still in line without wetsuit on. Finished bathroom and ran to get my wetsuit on. Found my parents and got my wetsuit on and headed back through the crowds. At 6:57 I stopped being polite and waiting for all of the non-racers moving through the crowd and just pushed my way through to the timing gate, which you had to walk over to register your chip into the race. Made my way over to the far left, inside the buoy line, got my goggles and hat on and 10 seconds later the cannon went off. Um, yeah, zero warm up. Not even any arm stretches.

Swim-

So no warm up and off I go. the wind was coming from the South, which is typical I understand, which means we were heading straight into the waves on the way out and with them on the way back. Going out was tough. About every 3-4 breaths a wave would come over my head just as I was inhaling and I would get a mouth full of water. I ended up swallowing a bunch of water on the first loop. I got much better at sensing the waves on the second and would just skip the breath when I could tell the wave was over my head, but the damage was done at that point. More on this later. The trip back to the beach on each lap was actually nice as I was riding the waves and I really stretched out my stroke and took advantage of the glide. This enabled me to bring my HR back down.

T1-

Ironman doesn't allow shoes clipped into bike in transition. wetsuit strippers took forever to get my suit off. I think I was laying on my back for about 15 seconds. I told them just to pull it off of my ankle. She kept trying to use her fingers to work it off. That's a tough volunteer job so I was nice. They had a shortage of volunteers at some of the stations and this was evident in the T1 tent. It was self serve all the way. I had to put everything in my bag and even find a volunteer to hand it off to when I had it loaded with my wetsuit, cap and goggles. Resulted in a slow T1. I was hoping for a sub 3:00 T1.

Bike-

In Ironman it's all about the bike, not just because it is the longest, but also because it is where you set up your run. I knew coming in that my nutritional plan needed modification. The low temperatures meant I wouldn't be drinking enough and therefore I wouldn't be getting those liquid calories. I made adjustments and packed more gels and bars. I started off fine and then about mile 20 my stomach started cramping. When I got on the bike my stomach was very bloated from the lake water I had taken in. I am guessing that upset things. I tried to get the calories in but things were getting ugly. I decided to switch over to water from GE and that helped, but made the caloric deficient even worst. I supplemented the lack of GE with salt tabs (1 per hr instead of the usual 3/hr I take while racing). All told I was about 3/4 of a bar and 4 gels short on calories at the end of the bike (about 600 calories).

T2-

forgot to take off bike race belt and replace with run race belt and had to turn around (still in the tent) to switch them out. Probably 5-6 seconds.

Run-

Not happy with this run. The lack of calories on the bike caught up to me about mile 8. I couldn't turn my legs over and I couldn't even get my HR into zone 1. I finally stopped at mile 11 aid station and pitched a little tent and had two hand fulls of pretzels, some chicken broth, 2 cookies, and some water. I was going to see if I could keep it down. Started running again and did the same thing at mile 12 aid station. Started running again and I could tell that stuff, to my surprise, was starting to help. Ate a bunch more at mile 15 aid station, then again at 20, but this time just jogged through them. My ankle was hurting, but I told myself the night before I wasn't going to allow it to be an "out", so I just mentally shut off the nerves in my left foot. If I focus everything I have, I can do this. It is very weird but my whole left foot was numb (like if it were frozen), not just my ankle, so I guess it worked.

Mental toughness wasn't there for me today on this run. First races can be like that as you just are wasting mental energy trying to figure out what the course will throw at you and the conditions were doing the same. My ankle took my head out of the race on Saturday. I need to spend the day before the race without any surprises, and man was that a big one. Calories, or lack of, was the issue. I'm not sure why I couldn't get my gels in. I may need to do some experimenting with run fueling?

My finishing time was 10:30:24, 178/2200, 32/362 in my age group. My friend Jerry, who missed Kona by 4 minutes at this race last year finished 18 mins faster and took the last Kona slot in our AG. Overall the AG was 18 mins faster in much tougher conditions. Every year the races get faster and faster. There is a lot of controversy brewing on whether AG athlete's who accept Kona slots should have to take a drug test (performance enhancing drugs) when they accept the slot. Many races are at the point where the last Kona slot winner's finishing time (typically, 12th place for my AG) would have won the AG just 4 or 5 years ago. Times have come down 25 or 30 mins. It is quite common for the 40-45 AG winner to finish the race top 10 overall (amongst the Pro's). That is just crazy, and in my opinion begs investigation!

So now it's on to Florida in November. I am feeling very good about this race. My recovery has been great and I am ahead of schedule and ready to hit it hard August 1!

The Hay is in the Barn

2009-06-17T14:53:00.002-04:00

The hay is in the barn is a saying which means the training is all done and there is nothing more to do but execute on race day. I started training for this Ironman on December 1, 2008 and here are the training totals:

Bike 219h 51m 4231.48 miles
Run 151h 58m 1275.76 miles
swim 43h 43m 160,371 yards (91.12 miles)

16 rides over 90 miles, 10 of those over 100 miles, 5 of those over 115 miles.
34 runs over 15 miles
3 swims over 2.5 miles

Just need a little luck with the weather and the Ironman God's to be kind and I'm in good shape!

Where to Start?

2009-06-13T10:31:00.003-04:00

Developing my starting strategy for the swim. Thinking far left inside buoy-line? What do ya think? :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLQUZwrH-kw&feature=related

In Need of Some Inspiration?

2009-06-12T12:48:00.002-04:00

A couple clips to get the racing blood flowing! Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo-nbnw8zSI

If this next one doesn't get you going....check your pulse you may not be alive :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTn1v5TGK_w

Trainings All Done

2009-06-08T08:27:00.002-04:00

I just finished my last scheduled workout before my taper begins for IMCDA. For those who don't remember what a taper is, it's when you back off your training intensity and volume to give your body a chance to fully rest. I do this before my "A" races. You can only effectively do a couple tapers a year.

All told the training leading up to this Ironman was:

Bike: 4136.68 Mi.
Run: 1225.46
Swim: 149107 yds.
Strength: 43.25 Hrs.

Now you know why they say triathlon is a lifestyle, there is no time for anything else :)

Some Last Minute Bike Tweaks

2009-06-06T13:24:00.004-04:00

Completed some last minute bike tweaks today. The first was to replace my XLAB rear bottle holder with a new carbon Beaker Concepts hydro Tail. The theory (supported by wind test results) is that if you lower your bottles the wind flows off of your back cleaner. Results in wind tunnel = .5 mph faster over 112 miles, which is huge. Not sure I am completely drinking the koolaid on this one, but even .25 mph faster is over 4 minutes (.5 mph is almost 9 minutes). Either way that is serious time. Here is a picture of it. Notice how low the bottles are. My XLAB, the bottle were about 6 inches higher.

For those of you who read my Ironman Florida race report and several other race reports for that matter, you may remember my issues with salt tabs and my lack of a good system to store them. Well I've solved that. I added something called a "salt stick". I have one on now and another later today. Each holds 6 salt tabs. You just simply turn the end of the unit and out pops a salt tab for you to grab. I used it during my Half Ironman last weekend and it worked perfectly!

May's in the book's

2009-06-03T15:47:00.002-04:00

The month of May was a huge training month. Swimming and running was nothing special, but it was my biggest month on the bike by over 350 miles. I raced 2 weekends in the month, which normally cuts into my training time as I typically train more hours on the weekend than a race takes up. These races were 'no taper" races so pretty much normal training resumes the next day. My Friday long run day's suffered though as I just can't race after a 24 - 30 running day the day before. This is why the running miles were not that great for the month. Here were the totals:

May's totals:
Bike: 60h 04m 56s - 1200.18 Mi
Run: 23h 11m 05s - 196.86 Mi
Swim: 9h 27m 03s - 35982 Yd
Strength: 3h 15m

I'm hoping the big bike month will pay dividends at Couer d'Alene! First week of June is a big training week, then I taper for the next 2 weeks (taper week 1 = 50% normal volume, week 2 = 25%). This sharp drop off in volume should have me climbing the walls for sure. Over eating will be a major concern. The amount of food I eat when the training is big like this is ridiculous. I have to try to pair the eating down with the volume, which is VERY hard to do.

Rock N' Rollman Half Ironman

2009-06-01T09:23:00.002-04:00

First Half Ironman of the season. It wasn't quite as hot as it has been in recent years for the this race. It was about 85 degrees, where in the past it had gotten up in the low 90's. Ended up 12th overall, 2nd age group. I beat my personal best for this race (5th time racing this one), by 18 mins and last years time by 20 mins. Last year I won my AG (go figure 20 mins slower). I was fighting to catch a guy the last 2 miles. I didn't know if he was in my age group or not because he was about 100 yds ahead of me. I saw him keep looking over his shoulder so I knew that he knew I was coming, which isn't good. You want to sneak up on them and catch them off guard. I could tell he was fighting to keep the gap. I closed it to about 50 yds, but was running out of real estate as it was mile 12.5 (13.1 miles in this run). There was a hill coming up at about 12.75 and I was watching him for signs of weakness. If he struggles up the hill, I would put the hammer down the last 1/4 mile and get him. Well he powered up the hill. He was a smart runner! That sent a signal to me that if I pushed, he would just push and we'd be in the same place, only with a ton more pain and potential for injury. I was already running on the verge of hamstring strain as I could feel my right one tightening. The announcer said his name when he crossed the line, "John Stein". Could that be John from Eau Claire, whom I swam with for aver 10 years on the YMCA swim team? Well he was in my AG and it was John. I went over to him and re-introduced myself as we hadn't spoken in over 25 years. We chatted for over 30 minutes and plan on getting together during the Augusta 70.3 (Half Ironman) in September. What a small world. Was disappointed about taking 2nd, but was happy to behind John.

Overall I am happy with my race. This was a no taper race, which mean you train hard right up and through the race. My "A" race is obviously Ironman Couer d'Alene, so I couldn't taper twice so close. Fresher legs would have lead to a different result for sure.

First Tri of the Season in the books

2009-05-22T11:18:00.002-04:00

So my early season running has had some success this year. I started my Triathlon season with an International Distance race (basically the distance raced in the Olympics), .93 mile swim, 25 mile bike, and 6.2 mile run. I beat my time from last year at this race by about 6 minutes, which I am pleased with, but some pretty fast folks showed up this year. I was 10th overall (8th last year), and won my Age Group (Masters Champion last year). Funny how that works, 6 mins faster and placed lower. I was happy with my swim and actually a little surprised. I was 1st in AG and 6th fastest. I haven't done a lot of speed work in my swim so I was happy with this time. My bike was disappointing. I was faster than last year by missed my goal. The bike was hillier than I remember and I just didn't have any juice in the legs. I ran a 38:03 10k, which was the second fastest run, which I was very happy with. I ran a bunch of people down on the run. Overall a good race and pretty much where I had hoped to be at this point in the season. Bike was disappointing and will be the focus over the next 3 weeks leading into Ironman Couer d'Alene.

Peachtree International Distance Triathlon

2009-05-15T09:50:00.003-04:00

First Tri of the season for me tomorrow. I raced this race last year and won the Masters Division (also would have been 1st place 30-34, 35-39, 40-44). I think I was 8th overall. This year may be a different story as I don't have any speed with all the of the Ironman training and the fact I haven't been able to do any speed work on the run due to my calf. This weeks training has been a bust. The past 2 weeks volume has finally caught up to me. Last week was 24 hours and the previous week was 25 hours. Wednesday's workout I cut short and didn't even do the run. Thursday's workout I cut about 30 mins short due to lack of daylight. I'm trying to get some rest on the legs as workouts where I am just pushing to "just get it done" are not quality workouts and lead to injury. You don't get faster that way. It's better to rest a little and get quality training in. The race on Saturday will be a good quality speed workout (2:10 speed workout). I am still hoping to beat last years time, always looking to improve. I plan on focusing on the bike. Last year I averaged 21.7 mph on the bike and am looking for 22.5 mph this year. I may fry my legs for the run, but I want to see where my bike legs are at. Yeah, I plan on being one of those guys who potentially leaves nothing left on the bike and suffers through the run. I normally avoid this like the plague because I see so many ppl go out too hard on the bike, but I want to test it out. I may find I can still run after a really tough bike. Don't know if you don't try right. We'll see how it goes. Oh, I am super nervous about how the calf is going to hold up on the run. I hope I don't have to stop and massage it. That would SUCK!

Another Soggy Day on the Bike

2009-05-12T07:46:00.004-04:00

Got caught in the rain on the bike again this past Sunday. 4.5 hours in the rain just wears you down. If it weren't 41 day's until IMCDA I can guarntee I wouldn't have been out there, unless it was a mistake. See how lovely my bike looked.Grit and muck in the gears grinding away for 75 miles. What a lovely sound.

On a separate and awesome note, I opened the mail on Monday and noticed an envelope from The ING Marathon. In it was this certificate that I actually was 1st place in the 40-49 Age Group. I thought I was 3rd Masters, but who knows how they place Masters, sometime they only take the 1st place Masters, which has me puzzled because then were would the person I thought got 2nd place Masters have gone? He wasn't over 50 and the Masters Division is 40 and older? Oh well, I'll take 1st AG.

what it Takes

2009-05-09T09:31:00.003-04:00

Many of us, especially athlete's, ask ourselves "what does it take to be the best"...pictures say it all. Team Astana (the team Lance is now on) training for the Tour of Italy, called the Giro. A 3 week race in Italy starting today. GO ASTANA!

Why Ironman???

2009-05-06T10:20:00.002-04:00

The other day someone at work asked me why I put myself through all this "Ironman stuff". It's certainly not the first time the question has been asked. It reminded me of these comments from Scott Tinley. Scott was one of the original pioneers of triathlon back in the early 90's and was a World Champion. Here are his thoughts.

"You ever wonder what regular people think when they hear that close to 20,000 people are trying to get an entry into Kona? They're thinking all those people must have a screw loose, that's what. Yet, I'd bet 1,000 sit-ups that more than a few of them dream about crossing the finish line, all tan and trim, the crowd screaming, their toothpaste commercial smiles caught and beamed out over the airwaves. And I bet that when they wake up in the morning, more than a few roll over and try to hide from the gnawing desire that they, too, could have that same screw loose. Maybe they are realizing that too many of us die too young or too late. Maybe they know that we pull ourselves up by making money, making the grade; all the while taking less and less time to face the fact that there are some things in life we need to do. Just because.
I think the Ironman is one of those things. For all those people, I can't pretend to know why. Hell, I barely have an idea why I did close to 50 of them myself. But I know people are changed by an Ironman. Ironman finishers leave a mark on the world.
Try to define that. Go ahead. The words will never come. It is enough to hear the stories, to watch the returning smiles. Witness the metamorphosis.
Yeah, there is a price--relationships, jobs, sunburns, missing toenails; there always is for the good stuff. But the call of the distant drum is too loud to ignore, too powerful to pawn off as some midlife crisis of the middle manager or desperate plea of a soccer mom. All they want is their one day. One day full of enough feeling and emotion to last an eternity.
But like war, marriage, tight jeans and stick shift cars, the Ironman isn't for everybody. As much as it can give, it can take. If it were easy, it wouldn't mean the same. Even dreams are fair game in the forecast of one's decisions.
I know there are ways to validate one's life. There has to be. The Pulitzer Prize winning author Katherine Anne Porter once said that salvation can only be found through religion and art. I believe that great feats of physical endurance include both those traits.
And in a world that tries its hardest to separate us from what matters, the Ironman helps us to reconnect with the pulse of our lives. As long as it does that, we will be happy to have made the decision to even attempt the dream."

Expanding the Capacity to Suffer

2009-05-04T10:51:00.004-04:00

Tough training weekend on the bike. 188 miles and about 15,00 vertical feet. All in all, I handled the volume well. The climbing certainly expanded that area of my training but I think I got the biggest expansion from riding through Saturday's conditions. The ride was almost entirely in the rain. The ride started at 8:00 and literally it started raining at 7:57. Moderate rain for the first 10 miles (enough to feel the rain puddle inside your shoes from it running down your legs into them). We started the first climb at about mile 12 or so. Nothing to bad and actually I was looking forward to the climb to warm up. We lined up in the middle of the pack at the start....A big mistake. My HR wasn't even close to zone 1 until this climb (wasted time in my mind). We passed about 100 or more riders on this first climb. As we started to get to the top the rain really started coming down. I'm talking the really big drops which actually hurt when they hit. Water was gushing down the road surface like a river. Riders started to turn around in droves at this point as the decent down the other side was a steep one and there was a lot of nervous energy in the air. I started to push harder to keep my HR up to produce more heat to fight off the shivering. My skin looked like a lizard it had so many goose bumps on it. Once at the top the rain was still pouring down. We started coming down and it got really cold (55 degrees). Without pedaling my body temperature started to plummet and I started shaking uncontrollably. I was pulling as hard as I could on my brakes just to get enough grip on the wet rims to keep the speeds under 30 mph. My shaking was leading to "speed wobbles" on my bike where the bike shakes side to side. I couldn't help it. I thought for sure I was going to crash an any time. The decent took about 15 mins or so I guess. I didn't time it but it seemed to last forever. About 2/3 through the decent my upper body started to cramp up. My arms and chest just got tighter and tighter. Now I really thought I was going to go down.

Finally the road flattened out and there were EMT and police cars all over the place helping riders. Chris and I decided we couldn't stop because we would never get going again and decided to push hard for the next 10 miles to get produce some heat. We pushed pretty hard, zone 2 and some zone 3 for the next 20 or so minutes, passing tons of riders. It was a catch 22 situation, the faster you rode the more body heat you produced, but the more the rain and air cooled you down. I tried to stay in my aerobars and much as I could to shield my upper body from the rain and to try to use the heat my body was producing. It stated to work. Everything was warming up except the tips of my index fingers. I still couldn't feel them and wouldn't be able to for about another hour or so. We stopped at the 30 mile rest stop to get some food and refill bottles. A cup of coffee really would have hit the spot :)

The last climb of the day, Lookout Mtn. was the toughest of the weekend. The final 1/3 mile is a 20% grade, with the entire climb of 1200 ft coming over just about 2 miles or so.

As I said the climbing was good, but the mental toughness I got from suffering through the weather conditions will be worth it's weight in gold come race time. You see racing for me is all about "he who can suffer the most wins". It isn't natural to handle the suffering. You have to train yourself to do it. Once a co-worker asked me if my legs were burning when I went on my 5-6 hour bike rides. Seemed like a strange question to me, but I answered politely, yes they are on fire the entire time (in my mind I was thinking, what would be the point if they weren't...just wasting time). Long rides are all about training the body how to handle the suffering, although there a different levels of suffering and the long bike days are the least intense, but none the less still a lot of suffering. Oh, by the way you still have to run a marathon when you are done suffering on the bike, so you better manage that too :)

April's in the Book's

2009-05-01T16:14:00.002-04:00

April all in all was a month plagued with my left calf injury. Run mileage was off over 100 miles. Mileage has just recently come back up in the >50 mpw range. I have been training with the pain, which gets mentally exhausting. I wish so badly this would heal up, but rest is the only thing which will do that, and frankly I don't have the time. 7 week's until race weekend. Big bike weekend starting today with >200 miles and ~16,000 verticle feet.

April's totals:
Bike: 37h 18m 26s - 736.76 Mi
Run: 17h 38m 10s - 148 Mi
Swim: 10h 03m 52s - 37883 Yd
Strength: 7h 10m

Hoping May will be >1,000 miles on the bike and >230 miles running. It will all depend on the calf. Also, I start racing in May which will take my mileage down some.

Putting it all Together

2009-04-26T11:50:00.002-04:00

The biggest challenge, and frankly what makes triathlon a great sport in my mind, is putting all three sports together. What I mean by this is crafting your training to make sure one sport isn't lagging behind the others. I hear so many times at the end of races...."dude I had a personal record (that's called a PR) on the bike by 5 minutes." What they aren't talking about is that they had to start walking at mile 3 on the run because they had nothing left in their legs. All three sports have to progress at the same, or at least at race time you have to try to get your fitness as close as you can. This often means training your hardest on the sport you are the weakest in. Sounds easy, but for most this means they have to spend the most amount of time doing the sport they like the least. For me, I guess I'm lucky in that I like all 3 of the sports, but like running the best. For me they all are so different it is refreshing. Like yesterday I trained for 6.5 hours, doing a long bike, a short run, and a short swim later. It didn't feel like 6.5 hours of "training" because each sport is so different.

So speaking of training more on your weakest sport, which for me is biking. April and the first 1/2 of May are all about the bike, meaning biking is the focus. I hope to get 800 mils in on the bike in April and about that in May (I start racing in May so that impacts total miles by lowering them....which I know sounds funny). My calf injury has greatly reduced my run mileage in April to less than 1/2 of what it typically is, which is ok as I am in bike focus mode.

Speaking of the calf, I still haven't pinpointed exactly what is going on. I believe it is a strained muscle, but at times it has the characteristics of tendinitis. It is slowly healing and with any luck will be healed for my first Tri race mid May.

Yesterday's bike workout was in the mountains in North GA. and yes there are mountains in GA. 86 miles and 11,300 vertical ft of climbing. We did 6 gaps (mountains), think lot's of switchback and 7 miles of steady climbing and 2500 vertical ft. 40-42 mins to go 7 miles means you are just grinding. I am happy with my climbing ability and now believe it will be an advantage at IMCDA. I have been telling myself that for a couple months, because I have the perfect physical characteristics for a climber (very high strength to weight ratio). My lean build will wreck havoc on the big guys who are suited for pushing the big gears on the flats. I can get up the mountains faster with less effort. Hopefully this will all lead to less stress on my legs going into the marathon.

The biking is coming together! Need to do a little more work on the swim, which I am starting on today....4000 yd swim on the books for later today.

Epic Bike Weekend

2009-04-11T11:56:00.006-04:00

A couple days ago a friend of mine who is also racing Ironman Coeur d'Alene called and suggested we do an epic bike weekend the first weekend in May. A century bike ride is a 100 mile ride. There is also something called a metric century, which is 100 km (about 62 miles). He suggested we do the 3 State - 3 Mountain Century (100 miles) in Chattanooga, TN (about 90 mins for Atlanta) on Saturday, and then the Cheaha Challenge in Piedmont, AL on Sunday. Both are major climbing century rides. Here are the profiles:

All told, 200 miles of riding and about 15,000 vertical ft (3 miles) of climbing. Oh, and yeah we plan on running after each ride. That outta do it.

Love the New Bike Setup

2009-04-06T09:24:00.004-04:00

Rode my first ride on the new and improved bike a couple days ago. I moved my Sunday long ride to Saturday on account of crappy weather forecasted for Sunday (which never really happened). From the start I couldn't believe how much more power I could produce. I have spent a bunch of time thinking weather my legs were just fresher due to no running (my calf has sidelined my running this past week), or whether it is the new bike set up. At any rate I was faster. At the one hour mark I was about where I was a couple weeks ago, 21.1 miles, but no tail wind this time, and I was solo. At the 40 mile mark I was about 15 mins faster than I have ever been, and at the 45.5 mark I was over 13 mins faster than my previous record. I know this spot well as it used to be the end of the trail until they finished the connecting 5 mile section. You can now go from Atlanta all the way to Birmingham, AL on the trail system. I haven't been all the way to Birmingham, but I have rode 12 miles into AL from Atlanta on a 140 mile ride last fall. So it took me 2:10 to get to the 45.5 mile mark, where I turned around. I continued at this pace until about mile 69, when I started to crack. I didn't bring enough food and my heart rate was much higher than usual, which means I am burning more fuel. I stopped at mile 20 for a bottle fill....fountains still not turned on, rats. So, out of food, extremely low on Gatorade and now I have to ration drinking for the next 20 miles. Well it all caught up to my with 6 miles to go. Complete BONK! A bonk is when you have emptied your glycogen store and you muscles have no fuel. Your only source of fuel is fat and it is harder for your body to break that down, which results in you slowing down. There is nothing you can do at that point. Physically, it is a limitation there is no work around for. The training is to teach your body how to avoid this. I've been over this before. Well I am not really sure how I made it back to the car those last 6 miles as it was all I could do to not pass out. I too about 30 minutes once at the car to try to eat something, but I just couldn't get anything down and even water was a chore. I felt this same way after each of my 3 Ironman's. The drive home was a blur as I was in a haze. I made sure not to set the cruise control as passing out with the cruise on wouldn't be good. Not that passing out while driving with the cruise off is all that great.

When I cycle it has been VERY difficult for me to get my Heart rate out of zone 1 and to hold it in zone 2 required such mental focus it was just mentally too exhaustive to do for more than 10 minutes at a time. This has puzzled the hell out of me for months and months. Why can I not push on the bike and get my heart rate up? Well with the new set up I realized within the first 15 mins of my ride Saturday I was able to get my heart rate into zone 4 and hold it there relatively effortlessly. I was able to push hard and keep pushing without it taking complete mental focus. I am amazed at what some small tweaks to my body position can do for my power output! Simply amazing. Oh, finished my ride at 20.25 mph average, even after my complete collapse on the last part of the ride. Up until mile 69, I was averaging over 21 mph, which is smokin' fast for me on that course with 4200 ft of climbing.

My Baby's Back

2009-04-03T14:43:00.004-04:00

Got my bike back from "he who know's all things bike" today. Here's some bike porn for you, all be it a little blurry (probably because it is so shiny). :) New cassette, new chain rings, new chain, new aerobars, which I'm hoping will solve the speed wobble issue. New front and back wheel bearings when they arrive in the next couple weeks. Should be set for another 10,000 miles.

March is in the Books

2009-04-01T09:19:00.003-04:00

Overall March wasn't as big a month as it should have been. My calf injury, bike mechanical issues, and my marathon all reduced training in the last week of the month. Numbers were as follows:

March's totals:
Bike: 24h 15m 22s - 474.37 Mi
Run: 27h 36m 53s - 235.09 Mi
Swim: 6h 02m - 22218 Yd
Strength: 9h 05m

Run volume was pretty good, but the injury and race took about 15 miles off. A 250 mile month would have been amazing, but I"ll take 235. The bike miles were pretty pathetic, and should have been at least 150 miles more. April will be bike month for sure. I hope the weather holds out. If I have any chance to nail Ironman CDA, April has to be a big bike month, both quantity and quality. Swim volume is still way low, but planned that way. April will be about 12,000-17,000 more yds.

I've decided I'm not racing the Gulf Coast Half Ironman this Spring as my bike repairs cost a chunk of cash and the travel, registration fees, hotel for this race are pretty expensive (probably about $600). I may substitute a local Sprint distance race instead. I haven't raced a Sprint since 2005, so it should be interesting. They are usually like 600 meter swim, 12 mile bike, 3.1 mile run. I'd race it ALL OUT the who thing...as fast as you can go. Even though it's a short race, your HR is pegged for about an hour and it hurts for sure.

2009 ING Georgia Marathon

2009-03-30T16:49:00.003-04:00

Race went nearly perfectly as planned. As mentioned below my super stretch goal was sub 3 hours. Well I went 3:00:16 officially. My watch had :09 faster, but still not under 3 hours. My pacing was nearly perfect as I was never more than 70 seconds off of the mile splits. I have a complete race report up on my training blog - race report section, which goes into further detail. In summary it was a tough course with lot's of hills late in the run. It is said, and I agree, that mile 20 marks the half way point physically and mentally in a marathon and to throw hill after hill in those miles is brutal. I was fully expecting the hills so I was prepared. The really long one at mile 19 that was 1.3 miles. That took me about 40 seconds longer in that mile than my pacing chart called for and wiped out my time advantage I had built up.

I placed 3rd in the Masters Division which was a nice surprise and 29th overall. I'm pleased with the placing for this race as it was a large regional race. All 50 states represented and I think 23 countries. 15,000 runners, including the 1/2 marathoners. A personal recond by over 24 minutes!!

Georgia ING Marathon in 4 Day's

2009-03-25T15:24:00.004-04:00

So I haven't run just a marathon (that wasn't the run part in an Ironman) in 5 years, nearly to the day (3/27/2004). That was my first endurance event and I won my age group, which I guess is what started all this madness. If I had taken last in my AG, who know, maybe I wouldn't have caught the "bug", but I have always been competitive so I am guessing the bug would have come sooner or later :) I ran 3:24:26 back in 2004.

I have set a super stretch goal for myself of 2:59:59 for ING Georgia marathon on 3/29/2009. :24:27 is a lifetime difference in time, let alone being 5 years older. ING is a tough course. A buddy on mine, who ran Boston, New York, and Georgia last year said Georgia is by far the most difficult. Hill's baby, Hill's, I believe were his words. We'll see how it goes. My calf still isn't healed as it was bothering me on my Monday long run. I'm staying off it as much as possible this week. I'll probably only run 5-6 miles on Thursday, then the marathon on Sunday. Overall it will be a pitiful run volume week, but it is probably best to rest it anyway and I'd rather rest it before a marathon then to just rest it during normal training.

For this race I need to average 6:52 / mile, which is only :08 / mile faster than my long training run pace. Simple right.....well the "real" hills start at mile 18 and don't let up until the end. I've read last years race reports from folks who ran it and the main theme is BRUTAL. I'm scared for sure. Fatigue really starts to set in about mile 18 and then to start climbing....should be a real suffer fest!

March 3rd Week Summary

2009-03-22T22:34:00.002-04:00

Well last week was eventful. Monday's run was hampered by what I've now diagnosed as a fatigued left calf. This is a condition of an over trained muscle and can be pretty common in Ironman training. A muscle gets very fatigued from a workout and the following workouts start to add up as recovery just isn't happening. This last week was a recovery week. Training gets progressively longer / harder each week, every 4th week the volume backs off so your body can recover. Ironically, the Monday run of a recovery week I feel has a high chance of injury. Your body doesn't know it is recovery week until the run ends (shorter than usual). Well this is exactly what happened, at mile 7, I fell the calf. I think it is pretty much recovered at this point, but will keep an eye on it. I missed some training this week, as well. I took Wednesday's bike and run off to recover the Calf, also, Thursday's ride was cut about 60 minutes short due to rain. Sunday's long brick (a bike and run workout), was a total bust. I had planned 112 mile bike and a 6 mile run. 8.5 miles into the bike I noticed something wrong with my bike. I decided it best to turn around rather than get 55 miles out and have a real problem and not be able to ride back. I bumped my run up to 10 miles. All told 6 hours on the bike lost, about 2 hours on the run lost.

Weekly totals:
Bike 102 miles
Run 60 miles
Swim 4800 yds

March to date
Bike 429 miles
Run 189 miles
Swim 15,544 yds
Strength 6:20

What's a Good Weight?

2009-03-19T10:15:00.005-04:00

As a triathlete, ounces matter! Think of it this way, drop a 10 pound weight into a backpack and put it on and leave it on all day long. By the end of the day you will be tired. Same concept for racing. Dragging even 1 extra pound up and down the mountains on the bike and up and down hills on the run for 140.6 miles will take it's toll. So the name of the game is to get lean....but it ain't that simple unfortunatly.

During the Winter I put 8-10 pounds to train from and to keep me warm. You can't believer how cold you get on a 6 hour bike ride at 40 degrees. Seriously, it can take me 4 or 5 hours to warm up after that. It's not fun at all and takes every oune of will power to get out there. In the Spring, right now, I take the weight back off. Now where it gets complicated. Muscle weight more than fat, quite a bit more. All Winter long I have been strength training and have put a bit of muscle on, so what should my racing weight be? I won't share my weight with you because it tends to produce some strange looks as I tend to be pretty lean already. The trick is to shed the fat not the muscle. The process of shedding the fat can, if not careful shed the muscle first. The human body is amazing at self preservation. It doesn't want to let go of that fat if it doesn't have to. It is kind of the last resort of survival. So the key is to do it slowly and to eat the right things which keep the muscle. The right things are LOT'S of lean protein and very little fat, and cetainly no saturated fat. I try to target >100 g of lean protein and <20g of fat (<4g of saturated fat). My baseline caloric level at this time of year is about 1875, which means if I eat 1875 calories a day I will maintain my weight....in theory. It doesn't really work that way though because a lot has to do with when you eat what. I've went over the different types of fuel your body uses and which it prefers (glycogen and fat). What most people don't realize is how your body's efficiency can turn a good thing into a bad thing. For instance, the best fat free - high carb food will be converted to fat if not used. It changes from person to person but if carbs are not burned ro used to top off your glycogen reserves your very efficient body will "save them for later", it's way of saving them is to convert them to fat. So you have to be carfull of not only what you eat, but when you eat it. The when you eat it is my biggest issue. When I am done training it is sometimes almost 9:00 at night and I am damn hungry and want to eat a horse. Certain you have to refuel after the workout to get your gycogen reserves back in place for the next workout, especially if it is in the morning, but it is so hard to stop at what most people would call a snack.

So back to the original issue of what is the right weight. I have raced as low as about 2% bodyfat before and was fast, but didn't feel like I had a lot of energy. I am targeting 2.5% for my Ironman races, which means I have about 6 pounds to loose in 93 day's. Works out to about 1/2 pound a week, which is definitely doable. To do this I have to log everything I eat and anayze the carbs - protein - fat percentages. It's really a pain in the arse and I hate doing it, but at least my training log has a very handy tool for recording and tracking it. So long story short

I'm Back on the Wagon Again!!

What's the Difference Between Good and Bad Pain?

2009-03-18T15:30:00.004-04:00

Once I told a friend the best training session is the one where you come oh so close to injury but don't. After a few moments of blanks stares of "are you nuts" I explained what I was talking about. A lot of workouts, the exception being a recovery type workout, are designed to push your body. It's this pushing which makes you stronger. Some workouts push you via higher intensity, such as an interval workout. Interval workouts are speed workouts where you are going fast for short periods, think a track workout where you are doing 800m repeats with just a minute or two rest between. Other workouts you push yourself by going long where the length of the workout is what is providing the "work". The intensity is pretty low, but the miles add up and you get tired. Understanding these two workout extremes helps breakdown the different types of pain experienced. Intervals usually generate cardiovascular pain...out of breath, heart beating out of your chest type pain. The long workouts generate a whole different type of pain, ranging from my muscles are sore, to my energy levels are gone. Where it gets tricky is being able to identify what should be hurting and what shouldn't been hurting. Years of experience helps you with this.

Last night I had a long slow distance run of 2:07, which should have been just over 18 miles at my training pace for this level of workout (7:00 / mile). About 7 miles in my left calf started to tighten up and become painful. This was the type of pain which shouldn't be hurting. I walked for about a minute, then stopped and stretched for about 3 minutes to no avail. Now a 7 mile gimpy walk is going to take me about 2 hours and I wasn't dressed for a walk. I VERY RARELY ever walk during training, like maybe once every couple months, and only for an injury diagnosis like this. I call it the walk of shame. I guess it's just something about me....don't walk in a race, why would you allow yourself to do it in training.

Faced with the possibility of a 2 hour walk I decided to try to run it out, hoping not to worsen the injury. So I started out running at about 9:00 / mile and got it up to about 8:15 / mile, then a guy passes me. Ummm, I haven't been passed on a training run in like 5 years, and he didn't look like anything special (like a collegiate athlete), so I decided to HTFU (harden the F up) and get moving. My second run on Friday, 10 miles in the morning follow by 20 miles at night, didn't go so well as I was hurting all over and my mental toughness was gone and I actually ended the second run at 16 miles. I couldn't let 2 runs within a week end like this, so I decided to push through the pain and passed the guy and was running 7:00 miles again. After another 4 - 5 miles my calf pain was manageable so I finished the entire 2:07 run.

I certainly identified the calf pain as "unusual" and now I am left with some atypical fatigue there. I have another workout schedule for tonight, bike and run, and I am trying to decide if I should just take the day off to be safe. It's beautiful outside and I want to run. Oh the guilt of missing a workout is unbelievable, seriously I feel very guilty even though I know I should rest.

Not sure what I'll do????? I mean what do you do after work in the middle of the week until 9:00 at night? Go to a movie, I guess I could do tomorrow morning's swim workout early :)

March Week Two Update

2009-03-17T10:16:00.002-04:00

Last weeks weather was typical I guess for Georgia this time of year. Started off Sunny and upper 70's on Monday and ended rainy and 40's on Sunday. The rain wrecked havoc in my training for the week. I was able to get my run in on Friday as the rain didn't start until early Sat. morning. My planned bike in the north GA mountains on Sat was cancelled and moved indoors for a 2 hour spin class. It's a good substitute, but not the same and for those who think spinning is the same, you are mistaken. Gearing up while on a bike to increase intensity (to go faster) is not the same load on your legs as increasing the resistance on a stationary bike to "simulate" it. It certainly is better than nothing and beats the heck out of catching pneumonia from riding in 38 degree pouring rain. Sunday I missed a 6 hour ride and substituted a 60 min. spin class and a 9.25 mile - 1 hour run on a treadmill at the gym. I don't care much for treadmill running, I think I described that before in a post...lots of looks like "why is that guy sweating so much and 'sprinting.'" 9.25 mph is my zone 1 pace and I'm not sprinting, but it is true I produce a lot of sweat and general soak my running shoes in an hour run, which is another reason I don't like it...they start stinking then...aewwwww. March to date numbers:

March's totals:
Bike: 16h 45m 09s - 326.65 Mi
Run: 16h 21m 04s - 138.23 Mi
Swim: 2h 57m - 10740 Yd
Strength: 4h

March Week 1 Totals

2009-03-09T09:39:00.003-04:00

Ok so Feb is done and overall training was just "OK". Run is coming along good. Had a 1/2 marathon on Feb 14 and won the Masters Title. All races do it different but if they have a Masters Division, which is 40 years old and above, they figure out the over all 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers, then the Masters 1st, 2nd, and 3rd (this race they only had places for the Masters 1st place, which was me), then they name the individual Age Group Winners. So basically, they pull out the Overall and Masters winners first. I think I was 7th overall. All in all it was an ok race for me 1:24:07. It drizzled and then rained and there were more hills than I was trained for. Swim is still in dormant stage, swimming twice a week. March I'll start to bring the volume up. Bad weather in the later part of the month forced me inside and I missed a lot of mileage the last two Sunday's. Overall numbers were:

February's totals:
Bike: 30h 04m - 551.66 Mi
Run: 26h 00m 10s - 222.89 Mi
Swim: 3h 37m - 13531 Yd
Strength: 8h 00m

Week 1 in March off to a pretty good start, weather this past weekend was awesome with both day's in the mid 70's. Found a training partner for the bike who is a bit better than me. We are both from WI and actually went to the same University. Small world. I'll be MEGA painful to train long rides with him, but it is exactly what I need to improve on the bike. I have been throwing volume at it for 2 years and have seen some success, but to get to the next level, I need to PUSH, PUSH, PUSH. Yesterday was the first ride and we averaged a little over 20 mph with some good hills and LOT's of wind. That is probably 2 mph faster than I would have rode in those conditions, so it was tough. March to date numbers:

March's totals:
Bike: 9h 20m - 184.23 Mi
Run: 8h 12m 48s - 68.96 Mi
Swim: 56m - 3414 Yd
Strength: 1h 40m

Running in the Rain

2009-02-27T12:22:00.002-05:00

Ok, so it ain't like Singing in the Rain. I typically run 2 runs on Friday's as my training plan calls for ridiculous mileage on Friday's, so I break it up. Basically, for a runner, anything beyond 20 miles gets risky for injuries. It appears to be this way for all distance runners. Probably has something to do with how us humans are built. I have been trying to get my legs used to running 21 or 22, but sometimes I experience swelling in the ankles, which is a sign of too much pounding. So I usually break up my Friday runs by running 4-8 miles in the morning, and 20 or so in the evening, depending on the total minutes I need to run for the day, I keep the evening run at 20ish and vary the morning run.

There is some raining cold weather moving into Atlanta for the weekend so I figured I would flip flop my long and short runs so I could get the long one in outside. The long run is a mixture of several different training disciplines which don't lend themselves well for running on a treadmill. I guess it isn't that the discipline doesn't lend itself well to the treadmill, it's more I don't like doing the discipline on the treadmill. I'll tell you why in a moment. For example, Friday's long run typically has a tempo section, an interval section, and what is called strength (not normal strength like lifting weights) section. Tempo means pretty fast. On a scale of 1 - 10, 10 being as fast as you can go....being chased by a grizzly bear fast. Tempo would be a 7 or maybe 8. Intervals are sometime called "track work". I wear a GPS devise which keeps track of my distance, which reads out on my watch so I don't specifically need to go to a track as I can tell my distance traveled on my watch. As an example my interval section today was 47 minutes of 1/3 mile all out (as in 10 on the scale) followed by 1/3 mile easy recovery (2-3 on the scale). You don't actually ever stop running just slow down. I find it easier this way as my legs tend to tighten up when I stop after a hard interval. The Strength section is a little faster than normal, but not as fast as the tempo, about a 5-6 on the scale.

Today's workout was 40 min Tempo, 47 min of intervals, 55 min of strength (will do another 50 mins of strength this evening at the gym). This week I actually pulled an additional 40 mins and tacked in onto the end of my long bike. The true plan called for 3:57 running today, which would have been something like 34 miles, which obviously is just too much.

So back to the treadmill thing. As described above most of the long run part of Friday's run is pretty fast stuff. When I try to do this on a treadmill I get looked at like I am some sort of freak. First of all some treadmills won't go fast enough for my interval work. I need one which will go up to 12 mph (some top out at 11 or even 10). The fast - slow - fast thing about intervals I guess is something most don't understand with interval work. I usually will get someone trying to tell me I'm going to hurt myself if I keep changing my speed back and forth. The tempo section is pretty aggressive and I usually get very hot, so sweat is dripping off of my pretty good, which gets lots of strange looks. Basically, I don't like having to deal with all of this, so I prefer doing this part of the run outside....let alone running on a treadmill for 2 1/2 hours is not something that interests me.

Boy that was a long explanation as to why I was running "outside" and "in the morning"...so I am about 10.5 miles or so from home and it started raining. Drizzle at first which actually was really nice and peaceful. There really wasn't anyone else out and it seemed I had the world to myself. After awhile it started raining a little harder and the wind kicked up. Ok, not so peaceful now and I am actually starting to get really cold. Water is starting to run...not drip off the visor of my running hat and my legs are starting to get really tight from the cold rain on them. After about 5 miles of this I am finally back home where I sat in the hot shower for about 20 mins to get the chill out. Brrrrr!!!!

Some Might Get This, Some Might Not

2009-02-19T12:12:00.001-05:00

Ok, I was laughing to tears when I read this.....too funny not to share.

TRANSLATION OF A TRIATHLETE'S VOCABULARY:
"I am an outdoors type of person." Really means: I train in any type of weather. If its raining, snowing, 90 degrees w/100% humidity, or winds gusting at 30 mph. I don't want to hear any complaints because I will still train in it and you're just a big wuss for complaining about it.
"I enjoy riding my bike." Really means: with or w/o aero bars, alone or in a peleton, I don't care. If you can't do a spur of the moment 30 miler then you're not my type. I will let you draft, but if you can't hang and I drop you - I will see you later.
"I enjoy jogging." Really means: Lets run hills until we puke. I have just as many shoes as you only mine are better because they are functional and all look the same.
"I enjoy dining out." Really means: I enjoy eating out, in or anywhere else I can find food. Don't be shy because with the amount of food I eat, you can have that main entree instead of a salad and you will still look as though you eat like a rabbit in comparison. Don't get your limbs too close though as I may take a bite out of you. Most importantly don't expect any taste off my plate unless you can bring something to the party like more food. Oh, and don't ask me any questions during breakfast, Mid Morning Lunch, Lunch, Afternoon lunch, Dinner or Recovery Dinner as it does not lend to efficient food intake.
"I enjoy quiet walks on the beach." Really means: Walks on the beach warming up into an 8 mile run and then plunging myself in the ocean for a 2 miler. If you get in my way youre going to find out what mass start is and let me assure you that you don't want to find out.
"I find fulfillment in charitable work." Really means: If I am not racing, I am volunteering and I expect you to be there along side me as I stand out in 90 degree weather for 8 hours handing out sports drink to cyclists going 20 mph. Just stick the ol' arm out there and hope it doesn't get taken off.
"I enjoy sharing quiet moments together." Really means: It's taper time. Just back off because I am strategizing and in a pissy mood because I am worried about my "A" race and can't workout.
"I enjoy site seeing." Really means: Lets grab a bike and get our HR's up to 90%. There's plenty of time to look around on the descent as trees and bushes whiz by you at 40 mph.
"I like stimulating conversation. " Really means: while we are running, we can talk about food. Then we can talk about how we decided what to wear on this run based on the temperature at start time versus the temperature at the time we expect to finish, how horribly out of shape we are, how many miles we did last week, and how many we will do this week and next week. Then we can talk about food.
"I enjoy road trips and leisurely drives." Really means: You have your choice of Wisconsin, Idaho, Florida, California, Arizona, and New York, but don't expect to do much site seeing. If I get enough support from you we might be able to include Hawaii in there.
"I am an active person." Really means: Aside from my 40 hour job, and the 8 mandatory hours of sleep a night. 10 hours a week are devoted to me during the off-season and 20 during race season leaving us 4 hours. 2 of which are spent inhaling food and you not talking to me, so lets make the best of the 2 hours we will spend together on average each day. If you are a licensed massage therapist or doctor this would make the most optimal use of our time together. Nutritionist is also acceptable, but I probably already know just as much as you.

2009-02-01T09:27:00.002-05:00

Oh my goodness it's been awhile since my last post, sorry. I'll improve, promise. Training has progressed pretty well thus far. I little touch of illness at the beginning of Jan. but no big deal. Run is coming along, but I am concerned my plan has be running too much too early. I am at about 55 miles per week already on 4 runs per week (that's over 13 miles average per run and one of the runs is only 6-8 miles so lot's of long runs). Bike hasn't come along as well as the weather has been so cold out and I went over a month without being able to get on my bike (still did spin classes 3-4 times a week, but it's not the same). Still in "maintenance mode" on the swim, which means swimming just enough to maintain strock and shoulder strength.

Numbers for Jan closed at:

January's totals:
Bike: 25h 45m - 469.79 Mi
Run: 23h 08m 10s - 196.02 Mi
Swim: 5h 07m - 15951 Yd
Strength: 7h 30m

2008 totals closed at:

Bike: 350h 43m 48s - 6518.86 Mi
Run: 238h 57m 21s - 1955.55 Mi
Swim: 62h 42m 14s - 227068 Yd
Strength: 108h 20m

Here is something I read on the site where I blog my daily training and laughed my rear end off because it is all sooo true. It's labeled the vocabulary of a Triathlete...

TRANSLATION OF A TRIATHLETE'S VOCABULARY:
"I am an outdoors type of person." Really means: I train in any type of weather. If its raining, snowing, 90 degrees w/100% humidity, or winds gusting at 30 mph. I don't want to hear any complaints because I will still train in it and you're just a big wuss for complaining about it.

"I enjoy riding my bike." Really means: with or w/o aero bars, alone or in a peleton, I don't care. If you can't do a spur of the moment 30 miler then you're not my type. I will let you draft, but if you can't hang and I drop you - I will see you later.

"I enjoy jogging." Really means: Lets run hills until we puke. I have just as many shoes as you only mine are better because they are functional and all look the same.

"I enjoy dining out." Really means: I enjoy eating out, in or anywhere else I can find food. Don't be shy because with the amount of food I eat, you can have that main entree instead of a salad and you will still look as though you eat like a rabbit in comparison. Don't get your limbs too close though as I may take a bite out of you. Most importantly don't expect any taste off my plate unless you can bring something to the party like more food. Oh, and don't ask me any questions during breakfast, Mid Morning Lunch, Lunch, Afternoon lunch, Dinner or Recovery Dinner as it does not lend to efficient food intake.

"I enjoy quiet walks on the beach." Really means: Walks on the beach warming up into an 8 mile run and then plunging myself in the ocean for a 2 miler. If you get in my way youre going to find out what mass start is and let me assure you that you don't want to find out.

"I find fulfillment in charitable work." Really means: If I am not racing, I am volunteering and I expect you to be there along side me as I stand out in 90 degree weather for 8 hours handing out sports drink to cyclists going 20 mph. Just stick the ol' arm out there and hope it doesn't get taken off.

"I enjoy sharing quiet moments together." Really means: It's taper time. Just back off because I am strategizing and in a pissy mood because I am worried about my "A" race and can't workout.

"I enjoy site seeing." Really means: Lets grab a bike and get our HR's up to 90%. There's plenty of time to look around on the descent as trees and bushes whiz by you at 40 mph.

"I like stimulating conversation. " Really means: while we are running, we can talk about food. Then we can talk about how we decided what to wear on this run based on the temperature at start time versus the temperature at the time we expect to finish, how horribly out of shape we are, how many miles we did last week, and how many we will do this week and next week. Then we can talk about food.

"I enjoy road trips and leisurely drives." Really means: You have your choice of Wisconsin, Idaho, Florida, California, Arizona, and New York, but don't expect to do much site seeing. If I get enough support from you we might be able to include Hawaii in there.

"I am an active person." Really means: Aside from my 40 hour job, and the 8 mandatory hours of sleep a night. 10 hours a week are devoted to me during the off-season and 20 during race season leaving us 4 hours. 2 of which are spent inhaling food and you not talking to me, so lets make the best of the 2 hours we will spend together on average each day. If you are a licensed massage therapist or doctor this would make the most optimal use of our time together. Nutritionist is also acceptable, but I probably already know just as much as you.

Christmas 2008

2009-01-01T11:51:00.005-05:00

Posting a little late here but time to write was at a premium. I had a great Christmas with the kids in Wisconsin. The weather didn't really cooperate in getting there as it took about a day and half starting off with a cancelled flight into Milwaukee. But hey, if you are going to travel to the Midwest in the Winter, you have to expect this.

We celebrated Birthday's as well. Emily's 6th and Ryan's 11th. Ryan is now taller than Grandma and soon approaching me. If he is anything like me though he has about 2 more years of growing and he'll stop. I was the tallest kid in the 6th grade, then I just stopped growing. Grandma baked a birthday cake which the kids loved.

Week 1 training Summary

2008-12-08T09:20:00.002-05:00

So week 1 is in the books. Overall an OK week. Weather is colder this year making training a bit more difficult. I prefer to train outdoors as much as possible, especially on the run. I would say unofficially it has been about 10 degrees below average. Upcoming week will start off a little warmer but rain is in the forecast for mid week.
Managed to get all my training sessions in, always a week 1 goal, but had to cut a strength session a little short and one swim a little short due to some scheduling. Sunday's long ride was the coldest ride I have ever done (38 degrees 15 mph wind not including wind chill from riding). Simply put it was miserable. It was 5 hours after my ride before I could put my right hand in water any warmer than luke warm without it feeling like it was on fire. I first noticed this when I got in the shower after my ride. I checked the water temp with that hand and it felt warm so I jumped in the shower and YIKES, the water was ice cold, yet my right (not my left) hand thought it was hot. Couldn't put my right hand under the water at all once the shower warmed up. I have had this before, but always on my feet, never my hand and certainly not just one hand. Even as I am typing this the next morning my right hand is considerably colder than my left, weird.

Training totals for the week were:

Bike:
7h 17m - 135 Mi
Run:
4h 30m 07s - 38.29 Mi
Swim:
1h 06m - 3750 Yd
Strength:
2h 25m

Overall assessment for the week: My bike fitness is in the dumper.

November Recap

2008-12-02T12:24:00.006-05:00

November training totals were:

Bike 387.21 Miles in 20H 9M 15S

Run 107.23 Miles in 12H 54M 31s

Swim 15,424 Yds in 4H 10M 24S

Strength 11H 5M

Certainly pitiful, but hey I"m not officially "training".

The Science behind endurance sports is simply amazing to me. I was doing some reading on expected race pace for running and came across the following, which uses a test data to determine your VDOT. A VDOT is determined by using standard values for running economy and by having a timed Performance over at least one running distance, a fitness ("VDOT") value can be assigned to you for training and race-prediction purposes. This VDOT value is then used to predict your running time during triathlon. Obviously your running times during a triathlon will be slower than during just a straight running race. Interestingly enough my VDOT predicted my 3:30 Ironman marathon time. This is significant for me because I was quite disappointed with my marathon time, looking for 10-12 minutes lower. Maybe I shouldn't have expected that faster time. Here are the tables: My VDOT is 55 (at least right now....will be at least 56 for this coming year) :)

Training Week of 11/17/09

2008-11-24T08:20:00.001-05:00

Training Totals November to date like this:

November's totals:
Bike:
14h 44m 58s - 286.34 Mi
Run:
9h 30m 56s - 77.79 Mi
Swim:
3h 07m 24s - 11724 Yd
Strength:
8h 25m

I start my ramp up training week this week, 60% of next week (1st week of 2009 training season). The numbers above look like weekly numbers from September.

2009 Ironman Training Plan

2008-11-19T13:59:00.004-05:00

So 2 1/2 weeks post Ironman Florida and I am considering myself fully healed and ready to rumble. Training a little more regularly this week with pretty much a normal training pattern, just much fewer hours. Did my first ride outside for 2 hours this past Sunday and everything felt great. I modified my bike position a little by lowering my aero bars. This lowers your upper body making you more aerodynamic. Very small change of only 1 spacer on my headset, which is about 3/4 of an inch. A headset is where your stem, the thing that you connect your handlebars to is attached. It is longer than it needs to be which enables you to attach the stem at high or lower positions by simply rearranging a set of 5 spacers, each about 3/4 inch tall. The more spacers above the stem the lower the stem is in relation to the ground, the more spacers below the stem, the higher the stem will be. Last year I lowered my stem (aerobars attached to the stem) 2 spacers, but did so in the middle of the season. Believe it or not but that little change of about 1 1/2 inches lowered the amount of power I could generate on the bike drastically, like 2 m.p.h. I had to build the new muscles which are now being work at the new angle I am in. I decided this year I would start the year off at the new position, a much wiser option. Live and learn. Believe it or not I could tell there was a position change, but not major.

So my 2009 plan is done and ready to go. Training officially begins Dec. 1. Decided to run a little less this year and swim a little less as well. I moved those hours to the bike. Overall training for the 48 week period will be 1,100 hours, which averages out to just under 23 hours / week.

Bimodal pattern again this year with 2 builds, the first for Ironman Couer d'Alene on June 21 and the second for Ironman Florida on November 7 (unless there is a surprise race added on October 10 in Hawaii). With 4 weeks between HI and FL, I would plan on racing FL as 4 weeks is enough recovery time. After IMCDA I am planning a similar recovery pattern as I just had for IMFL. 1 week with little to no training, next week with some light training in each of the three sports, and the following week with increased training. The 4th week after is a normal training week. This works well with when my kids will be with me as I won't have much training time anyway. I am planning 2 early season Half Ironman's (1.2 M swim, 56 M bike, 13.1 M run) and an international distance (.75 M swim, 25 M bike, 6.2 M run). All early season race will be taper free. A taper is when you reduce your training down in the 2 -3 week leading up to a big race. Your body recovers from all of the hard training and you race a lot faster. Each time you taper you cut into your total number of training hours, so you can't do it for every race otherwise you will not be training enough, so I only taper for the Full Ironman races. I am only planning a 2 week taper for IMCDA vs. the typical 3 week. Your performance isn't quite as fast as it could be for the non taper races but racing makes you faster in general. "Gotta go fast to be fast."

Max early season training week will be the week of June 1 at about 35 hours. Max workout calls for 10.5 hour bike followed by 52 min run. I will probably pare this back to a 9 hour ride and 52 min run which will be something like 155 mile bike and 7 mile run. It's a monster training session for sure as it will be only 1 minute less than it took me to finish IMFL.

Of course all of this is subject to change as there are many factors involved and there is a lot of time between now and then. Gotta stay healthy. Next week I do a ramp up week at 60% of my week 1 volume. CAN'T WAIT TO GET STARTED TRAINING!!

Ironman Recovery Process

2008-11-15T09:41:00.003-05:00

It's been 2 weeks ago today I raced. Everyone is different but most say it is at least a 3 week recovery process after an Ironman. You may feel fine a week or ten days out, but there is a lot of cellular damage that takes time to repair.

I have been doing some light training and have run twice, 6 miles and 8 miles. The runs really test your recovery as that is where the pounding happens. For the most part fr0m a muscular stand point I am recovered. My heart rate was elevated about 8-10 beats last Saturday when I ran, which indicates there is still some repairing going on in there. My run on Tuesday (8 miles) I don't' know as I forgot my watch and heart rate monitor (HRM) at home, but didn't feel like my HR was very elevated. Planning a run today, preferably outside if weather holds, but will do 5 on the dreadmill, I mean treadmill at the gym if I have to.

Official training for 2009 season starts on Dec. 1, which a ramp up week the week before (70% if first week. Need a ramp up week so it isn't such a shock to your system that first week. Too much potential for injury by ramping up the volume too quickly. More details on my 2009 training plan later as I have it done. A little less running and a lot more biking.

Ironman Florida Race Report

2008-11-12T14:09:00.031-05:00

Couldn't think of a more fitting initial post than to post my detailed (you have been warned) 2008 Ironman Florida race report. This report is written keeping a non triathlete in mind so I will try to explain a lot of things that would be foreign to you if you are not a triathlete.

First off, my training this year leading up to IMFL was much better than last year. Last year I was nursing a hamstring injury which pretty much sidelined me from running in September and the first 2 weeks of October. Started running very slowly mid October and worked up to 13 miles 7 days before the race, then backed off to rest for the race. Needless to say I was very nervous about the run last year. My hamstring didn't bother me on the bike (unless I pushed really hard), so I just converted the training minutes I was supposed to be running into biking. I was pretty confident in my bike last year.

Well as I stated above things went well this year and I wasn't injured and was actually felling really good about my run and was easily (relatively speaking) holding 7:00 / mile pace on my long runs (longest being 23 miles). This translates to 3:03 marathon time, which I wasn't crazy enough to think I could do in an Ironman, but it sure built the confidence. My goal times heading into this race were:

Swim 1:00:00

T1 :02:30

Bike 5:15:00

T2 :02:30

Run 3:20:00

Total 9:40:00

Other goals in priority were:

-Finish Race (always a goal for an Ironman)

-NO WALKING

-Follow nutrition Plan to the letter of the law

-Pee twice on the bike (translation-hydrate well on bike)

-No sub 7:00 /miles for first 5 miles of the marathon.

So here is how it went....

Actualy got about 7 hours of sleep before the race. I am finding I am able to get pretty good sleep before my races, not the case my first couple years of racing.

Up at 4:00 AM

Followed pre-race routine perfectly, won't bore with all the details. 2 cups coffee to get the digestive system up and going, 2 oatmeal packets, 1 bagel. Double and triple checked the 6 lists I had to ensure I did everything I needed to and had everything I needed to bring and do once in transition. Getting to a stage of a race to only find you don't have a piece of equipment you have trained all year to use because you forgot it, is something that can throw your race off. Ironman racing is different from all other races because of the transition bags. Everything you need on race day has to be in these bags. Not in the bag, you don't have it, period. Dad and I off to transition at about 5:10, right on schedule. Dad was just dropping me off and going back to the condo for breakfast and to pick up my Mon to meet me before the swim start. I dropped off my run and bike special needs bags (you can access these half way through both the bike and the run, different bags for each). Things like extra old tire and a tube and an extra CO2 cartridge are things in bike SNB. Extra salt tablets, a small first aid kit of band aids and body glide, and for me this year a complete filled set of fuel belt bottles for the second 13.1 miles on the run. Basically, the stuff in these bags can be considered "race savers". Things that you can access to save your race.

Got bodymarked, they write your number on you with markers in several spots, before entering transition. Only athletes in transition. As an athlete you receive a bracelet (like the ones you would get in a hospital) with your race number on it. No bracelet, no entry. What happens is all of the non racers (family and friends) hover around the entrance to transition making it very difficult to get in. This is probably one of the main reasons you much check your bike into transition the day before and can't get it out on race morning. It would be completely ridiculous if folks were trying to get bike through this mob.

Filled aero bottle on bike with my pre mixed Gatorade Endurance bottle. I train with regular strength Gatorade, the power, as it is made with sucrose vs. fructose in the liquid bottles you buy. Sucrose is easier for your stomach to digest over long periods of time. The plan was to hydrate with 28oz of Gatorade each hour, which is less than usual due to the lower temperatures and probably lower sweat rate. That works out to 1.75 gallons of Gatorade. They serve bottled endurance Gatorade on the bike coarse and powdered regular mix on the run coarse. So that is about 150 oz of Endurance Gatorade (with fructose) on the bike. I figured if I can get a couple bottles, on in my aero bottle and another I was bringing along, of the sucrose version, that would be a good thing. I did label this as my detailed IMFL race report, so you have been forewarned :). Put my cut up 1/4 cliff bars and my salt tab dispenser in my bento box (this is a small bag that is secured on your top tube which you can easily access on your bike. As I stated above race nutrition was a major goal. Here was my nutrition plan by race times:

note: a gel is something which is pretty much all simple carbohydrates and comes is several forms, mostly single use packets. I use gel flasks where you empty 5 gels into a small squeeze bottle and use from there. They are easier to carry and use. I have perfected this nutrition plan over the past several years and Tailor all my training to it. You have to train your body to be able to absorb your calories. Basically, you should never do anything different on race day that you don't do in training. It's amazing how little tolerance your body has for something new or different when it is operating at peak performance. So needless to say, I am VERY used to eating this stuff. And yes I had this plan committed to memory, I know totally anal and cookoo crazy!

Full Ironman Nutrition
:30 gel (between swim loops while running on the beach)
1:00 gel (once first on bike)
1:15 bar (1/4 cliff bar)
1:30 bar
1:40 salt
1:45 gel
2:00 bar
2:10 salt
2:15 bar
2:30 gel
2:35 1/2 banana (from aid station)
2:40 salt
2:45 bar
3:00 bar
3:10 salt
3:15 bar extra bar in case hungry
3:30 gel
3:35 1/2 banana
3:40 salt
3:45 bar
4:00 bar
4:10 salt
4:15 gel
4:30 bar
4:35 1/2 banana
4:40 salt
4:45 bar
5:00 gel
5:05 salt
5:15 bar
5:30 bar
5:35 salt
5:45 bar (extra bar to set up run)
5:55 salt
6:00 gel
6:10 salt
6:15 gel (last one on the bike)
6:25 salt
6:30 gel (2/3 gel)
6:45 gel
6:50 salt
7:00 gel
7:10 salt
7:15 gel
7:30 salt
7:30 gel
7:45 gel
7:50 salt
8:00 gel
8:10 salt
8:15 gel (from fresh flask)
8:30 salt
8:30 gel
8:45 gel
8:50 salt
9:00 gel
9:10 salt
9:15 gel
9:30 salt
9:30 gel
9:45 gel
9:50 salt
10:00 gel
hydrate at each aid station, plus 1/4 fuelbelt bottle every mile
if cool, cut salt down to every 20 minutes at :10 and :40
8 gels in flasks for bike (5 in one 4 in the other 1 extra to be safe) + 2 (1 pre-race 1 swim =11 gels
2 run flasks with 5 gels each + 2 in belt=12 gels
11 salt tabs on bike (12 in dispenser) 4 in back up small bag = 16 for bike
11 salt tabs on run (12 in dispense) 6 in back up small bag on belt = 18 for run
14 1/4 cliff bars on bike. 16 to be safe
totals with safety factor
4 cliff bars
23 gels
34 salt tabs

So your initial thoughts may be....all that salt, you are gonna have a heart attack. Well, my body is well trained on sweating. It is called heat training. You get this by training in the heat of the day when ever you can. For Ironman, the marathon starts at 1:00 -1:30 in the afternoon so it is very different from just running a marathon, which typically starts at 7:00 in the morning. So you are going to be running in the heat. You have to get your body used to that and the best and really only way to do that is to train in the heat. So everyone of my long run days was in the afternoon, most 90+ degrees out. So my body knows how to sweat. When you know how to sweat, you know how to use up electrolytes. There is no way to get in enough electrolytes, mainly sodium, by drinking. You just can't drink that much, meaning you can't get your stomach to process that much liquid, so you have to supplement with salt capsules or tablets (tabs for short). I can't stress enough how key this is. I have blown this on too many races to over look it. Knowing this is critical to understanding my performance during this race as there was an issue here I'll explain later.

So morning prep continued, took my bike off the rack and stood in line for 20 minutes or so to use one of the tire pumps. Pumped up my tires to just under the rated psi. You want your tires as pumped up as possible. The high the psi the faster they are. There is a fine line there in that it you pump them up too much, you could pop the tube. Every pre race transition I have been at there is always at least one loud POP, where someone has blown a tube. Yes two extra tubes in my pre race back pack. Again Ironman is different, you can't have "race gear" in transition so all of the things which are typically in my transition bag aren't there. I had to transfer those things to a back pack which I was going to give to my Mom before the start. Every possible scenario has to be covered. Most of this is learned by good old fashion trial and error, some though others pain. Things like spare goggles, spare bike tubes, bodyglide (like a clear deodorant type stick which you put on to eliminate/reduce chaffing and blisters), anything where you would be "screwed" if you didn't have it, needs to have a spare in the bag. I even had a plan if I couldn't find my Mom and Dad before the race....everything in a dry clothes special needs bag they keep for you until after the race. Put the empty bag in the back pack, just in case. Have a plan for as many variables as you can think of.

Bike tires pumped, bike back on rack in my spot, down the todo list I go. Bike computer reset to zero (it has an auto start function where the clock will start once the wheel starts moving, but you have to make sure it's reset it to zero or it will just start adding to your last ride). Make sure bike it in an easy gear. Can't tell you how many time I see racers once on their bikes trying to get going in a super hard gear only to have to change gears to get started. This area is called the "mount line". You can't get on your bike before this line and it is chaos here. You need to get the hell out of here as soon as possible. Lot's of potential for crashes and minor altercations, all of which can lead to small injuries or bike malfunctions. Anything you can do to get clear of this area quickly, you need to. Being in an easy gear means you get on your bike get pedaling quicker.

forgot to bring any water with me so I had to fill a bottle I had used to fill my aero bottle. I just filled it at the bottle filling station to keep hydrated before the race. Off to the port-a-potty lines I go. At this point I am starting to get a little concerned as things are "moving" yet in this department, if you know what I mean. I figure standing in line and thinking about it might do the trick. My turn to use the potty, and nothing. This is not good and could mean a potty stop for #2 on the race course. I am pretty nervous at this point. Warning the following can get a little gross.....My race plan doesn't call for any potty stops. You may say, but your goal is to go pee twice on the bike...well it is meant literally, you pee while you ride (spray yourself down with water when you're done). The reason a #2 potty stop is a problem, is you obviously have to stop. This presents a host of issues. First there are only port-a-potties at the aid stations, roughly every 10 miles. There is usually a line for them which means you are just standing there waiting. When you stop your legs moving you open up the door for cramps and all kinds of other fun stuff, all of which is not in the race plan. So, the theme has been prepare for as much as you can. Believe it or not you have to train your body to "take care of business" in the mornings. You start this way in the off season (year round for me now), so that you don't have to deal with it in races. So here I am 60 minutes before the start and I can't get my business done. Plan B (a plan for everything right), I specifically where an old pair of running shoes in the morning just in case I have to go for a short run to get things moving, which in this case I needed to. This is the first time in all my races where I had to utilize this contingency plan. So off through the mob at the entrance to transition I go, by now it is just short of pandemonium there. There are a lot of concerned / worried family member. I run for about 3/4 mile and make my way back through the mob and stand in line at the port-a-potty again. This time the line is twice as long and is looping back and forth. Good thing there are like 30 port-a-potty's so it is moving pretty good. When it's my turn, there is only a little movement, damn. Well I did what I can, hope it doesn't trash my race, but I'll deal with it if it happens.

I make my way to the boardwalk, where I agreed to meet my Mom and Dad. I spot Dad right away and we walk to where my Mom is standing. She is right where we were last year, which is right where I wanted to head, perfect. We take a couple pictures and I start putting on my wetsuit, which can take as long as 12-15 minutes. They are extremely tight and you need to be careful not to rip them when you put them on. I have a new suit this year. Exact same as the one I have, only one size larger. The one I have is just too tight on my arms and is very difficult to get off, which leads to slow transitions. I picked this one up on eBay, brand new for $60. It retails for $499, so I couldn't pass it up. The old one has several repaired rips from putting too quickly, so it was time for a replacement anyway. I used a lot of bodyglide in the typical areas which I hadn't already applied. I had already got the "sensitive spots" on my rear end. The spots which need to sit on that saddle, which no padding at all (not even kidding, it's just leather stretched over carbon fiber). I applied bodyblide heavily to the back of my neck. This is the ares your wetsuit rubs every time you take a breath. This is called a "wetsuit kiss". You usually get an abrasion on the back of your neck. Really bad cases of it start bleeding. I have seen my fair share of bleeding wetsuit kisses while people of on the run. Keep in mind the run won't start for about 6 1/2 hours so that is a long time of dealing with that irritation. I figure I take 3,000 breaths on the swim in an Ironman, so you can see how that could lead to some abrasion. Westsuit's now on. At this point the adrenaline is pumping so much my hands are shaking emotions are EXTREMELY high. It is almost too much to take. The air before an Ironman is completely different than other races. Every person racing has made huge sacrifices to family, friends, their jobs, their bodies. Self doubt...did I train enough, did I think of everything, is my race plan right... is thick in the air. There isn't a lot of talking and cutting up going on. There is just too much on the line...too many sacrifices to get here. It is as serious as a heart attack!!!

I give my Mom and Dad a huge, thank them for everything, give my Mom my back pack and make my way to the beach. The Pro's start before everyone else, about 15 minutes, because there is prize money and Kona World Championship spots on the line for them as well. This is what they do for a living (I'm so jealous and in another life, this is what I'm doing for a living). The Pro's had already started and the National Anthem started playing so I stopped, I noticed how cold the sand was. The temperature was about 48 degrees, brrr! Getting out of the water and riding a bike while wet at 48 degrees was not sounding appealing at this point. My body fat was at about 2% so the cold just cuts right through me and I can't warm up. This could lead to cramping, which is a huge issue. Once the anthem was done they started getting everyone out of the water. Looks like I'm not going to get my swim warm-up in, damn. I wasn't too concerned because I had a short run warm-up, so everything was evening out.

They called out 5 minutes until the start. I made my way to the far left front. This is called the buoy line as it is the shortest distance and pretty much a straight shot to the first turn buoy. So this is why you do swim sprints in your swim training. If you know anything about an Ironman swim start you know why this is important. 2225 athlete's + a shotgun start = a blender of elbow, knees, arms, kicking feet. It is true chaos! That is the only way to describe it. Survival is the first order of business. Your arms are hitting others, you are getting kicked, your legs are getting pulled, it is full on molestation. You have to get out in front of this full on assault as quickly as possible. This is why you train with swim sprints, get out in front of it. Now the tricky part is that everyone else has trained with swim sprint as well, so it comes down to who is faster. There is also a fine line in how fast you can go. By this I mean, you have to manage your heart rate. I'll try not to get overly technical here, but I train with a heart rate monitor, which is a thin (about 1 inch way) strap held with an elastic strap you wear around your chest. It measure the electronic pulses your heart gives off each time it beats and transmits this, wirelessly, in the form of beats per minute to your watch. This information is EXTREMELY important as you have different heart rate zone, which indicates different exertion levels your body is going through. Again, trying to over simplicate here, but you physically can not race for 10 hours above a certain heart rate. Your body can not hold, process, and refuel itself at a rate to continue this rate. The major threshold is called your anarobic threshold heart rate. This is the threshold where your body can not process enough oxygen your body needs. This creates some conditions in your muscles where they fatigue rapidly. Also, once your body crosses this threshold for too long (about 10 - 15 minutes), it stays in this anarobic state. Translation, your day is pretty much done. So you have to go fast, but not too fast. So much of the training is to get your body to function at these peak levels longer and longer without the negative effects. This is one of those type things. If I can swim at an anarobic stat 2 minutes longer than the guy next to me, I get in front of him and get out of the chaos. There is a trade off to this though, yet another example of the great equalizing factors of triathlon. You can legally draft on the swim. Believe it or not, if you get behind another swimmer, there is a small current they produce and you swim in that current which sucks you along a little. So you need to go out fast to avoid the mess, but not the fastest as you want to try to find someone to draft off of. The trick is to find someone who is just a little bit faster than you are so when they suck you along, you can keep up with still swimming hard. It is a science for sure with a whole bunch of luck mixed in there.

The canon shot and I was off. The blender started. The beach water was very shallow, about mid thigh, for the first 20 yds or so. I tried a few dolphins (this is where you dive forward and glide, then use your feet to jump out of the water a little and dive forward again, you look a little like a dolphin when you do it) which is quicker but the waves were coming in. Started swimming and then it got shallow again and had to wade for a few seconds. Once past this shallow area the long day begins.

Got clobbered a couple good times and never really broke free of the madness. I did find some feet after about 5 minutes and drafted for about 5 minutes. Decided they were going too slow so I passed only to find I was getting clobbered a whole bunch more. Passed the first buoy, then the second, then the third and fourth. I can't remember if there was a fifth before the bid orange turn buoy. This is an area you need to watch out for. Everyone is converging on this turn buoy as you need to go around it. If you don't you are disqualified. Getting kicked in the face and loosing a contact is a huge fear of mine and I read in a race report of someone who's training I follow that is happened to him. Major bummer. So I made sure to look out for kicking feet. made it through the first turn buoy fine, a little slow as I had to tread water for 3 - 4 seconds, but safe. I remember thinking to myself, I'm gonna been happy to pass this one the second lap. It's a 2 lap course, each 1.2 miles. Around the second turn buoy without incident, how heading back to the beach. I remember thinking I'm 33% done with the swim at this point. I do this a lot. I calculate stuff. Weird I know, but one thing I have learned about myself is when I can't calculate, I'm anaerobic. It is the funniest thing, my brain can't do math. Your body is the most amazing thing and does an excellent job and controlling energy. It knows you don't need any of that precious oxygen, that it isn't getting enough of when you are anaerobic, to do any excess thinking. So, no extra oxygen to the brain means I can't do math. I slow down a little and the number start crunching. I know I'm a little off :). I say a couple jellyfish about 4 feet down and remember thinking good, stay down there. There is always a lot of talk about jellyfish stings on the swim. They sound painful and I don't want to deal with it. I started to wonder if there was going to be a current. In May I was in a Half Ironman (half the distances of all three sports) and the swim was unbelievable. The waves 5 - 8 feet and there was a huge current which pulled you from left to right as you came back in. Every time I sighted (you have to look up every 15 strokes or so to make sure you are swimming straight) I was heading too far to the right. It was miserable. Not the case today. Pointed myself towards the host hotel and just kept plugging away. The water started to get more shallow and the water got really cold, probably 15 degrees colder. Thoughts of "this bike is going to be cold" crept in my head. The air temp cools the shallow water along the shore much quicker than the deeper water. Getting close to the beach now. I rode a couple waves in and passed about 5 guys. Popped up and reached for my gel I had tucked in my forearm. Opened it and squeezed it in my mouth. As I ran across the timing mat I handed the wrapper to a volunteer. A timing mat is a mat with antennas in it. Each racer wears a timing chip on their ankle held on by a special strap. This chip is a unique number and the system knows you by your chip number (cross referenced to your race number). Cross the timing mat and the system knows you have been there and at what time. Took a left after the mat and headed down the beach for about 30 yds and back in the water for lap #2. Pulled my wetsuit sleeve back a little to peak at my watch, :28:43, I was ahead of schedule, sweet!

Did the wading and waddling through the shallow water and did a few Dolphins until I was in deep enough water to swim. Still in traffic as the kicking and elbows were still flying occasionally. The swim was much more crowded this year vs. last year. Found a set of feet to get behind and off I was. Around the first turn buoy and just as I thought earlier I was happy to be there. Calculated I was about 70% finished at this point. Around the second turn buoy and back to the beach. I remember thinking on this section that I have savings quite a bit of energy as I didn't feel I was exerting myself much. My split at the beach told me a would be pretty close to my goal time and for me the difference between a good swim and an ok swim is only a couple minutes, but a big difference in energy output. I would gladly give up a minute or two to save this much energy. I'm gonna need it later in the day. Rode a couple waves in just like last time. I can't figure out why everyone was stopping and standing up, the waves pounding against their backs. I ride these waves like a surfer. Granted the waves weren't very big today, but the concept still applies.

Out of the water and reach back to grab my wetsuit zipper cord (the zipper is in the back). My wetsuit has a breakaway zipper so you actually pull up on the zipper and the zipper comes apart, kind of like when your zipper is broken on the end and the two parts of the zipper just peal apart easily. Peal the wetsuit over my shoulders and peal the arms off. I get the top down to my waist. All of this before I cross the timing map. Over the timing mat and up the shoot, lined with "wetsuit strippers". These are volunteers who are there to grab your wetsuit and strip it off of you. This is an incredibly confusing area as there are a lot of people, both strippers and racers and everyone is frantic to get moving. The best approach is to run past the first 15 or 20 strippers as most racers stop at the first one they see and wait for them to finish stripping the racer in front of them. One thing to note is once you cross the timing mat this second time, your T1 (transition 1, which is alway swim to bike) time starts. It is said that transitions are free speed. You don't need to do long interval sessions (these are workout where you focus on sprints and are exhausting), just be smart and you save time in transitions. ABSOLUTELY no standing and waiting for anything in transitions. So I ran past the first 15 or so strippers and ran to a stripper who was waiting, pointed right at him and yelled "you" and promptly plopped my but in the sand. He grabbed my wetsuit arms, I lifted up my butt and 3 seconds later I am up and he is handing me my wetsuit. Continued to run up the shoot. Heard Mom and Dad yell out my name, with Dad's traditional "come on Brent", which I remember since I was 6 years old as a swimmer. Everyone quiets down for the swim start and Dad yells, "come on Brent". Ran under the shower to wash off some of the salt water and between the two building and into the transition area. I was told to yell out my race number so volunteers could locate my Swim to Bike transition bag. when I got there 10 or so seconds later they didn't have my bag so I ran down to where it was and grabbed it myself. Remember no standing around and waiting during transitions. Into the transition tent I go. I dumped my bag on the ground and a volunteer helped sort my stuff. Put on my bike shoes, clipped on my helmet, put on my arm warmers, grabbed my race belt and two gel flasks and off I go. Put the racebelt (this is a belt with an easy clasp that you pin your race number to so you don't have to pin it to your jersey). The night before the race I was thinking that I have never raced with arm warmers before (the are sleeves that cover your forearms and have elastic to hold them in place just below your shoulder). I have never tried to put them on when my arms were wet. I couldn't practice at that point because I had to put them in the transition bag the day before when I dropped off my bike. Well my worries were true. It seemed like an eternity to get them on. If I would have known, I would have rolled them so I could just roll them on. Oh well, lesson learned. I decided to wear them as they lowered the temperature forecast for the morning. Later I would be happy I had them. Total time in the tent was maybe 70 seconds.

My rack placement within transition (think racks holding 2225 bikes, its a big parking lot) was near the back, away from the mount line, which I explained earlier. Transition placement works a little different for IM. Normally, wherever you are in transition, you may have an advantage for the bike (close to the mount line), but have a long run out for the run (which is on the other end of transition). Well for IM they take your bike from you at the end of the bike and everyone MUST go into the changing tent (can't just put your shoe on by the transition bags). So in this case, having a rack in the back of the transition area is a slight disadvantage.

Ran with bike to the mount line and slightly past the line to get around the folks who just stop right at the line. On the bike and off I go. The first 10 miles on the bike were cold. Passed several guys who were off of their bikes and trying to work out cramps. Happy I had the arm warmers, those they wouldn't do anything to help with leg cramps they did keep me a little warmer.
Slight head wind for the first 20 miles. It wasn't noticeable until the other side of the bride, about mile 10. There were a LOT of "packs" on the bike. It is illegal to draft on the bike. The packs of bikes you see in bike races on TV are not allowed. Refs were trying their best to hand out the penalties, but at one point they would have had to give out 30 or 40 to a group which went by. I saw 8 or 10 of them standing in the next penalty tent. If you get a penalty the ref will indicate you need to stop at the next penalty tent, usually at each aid station, every 10 miles. The time penalty for drafting is 4 minutes. You have to wait in the tent for 4 minutes. The "legal" follow distance is 4 bike lengths, which if you are behind a single rider, you really don't feel any draft. If there are 3 or more riders legally in a row you definitely feel the draft, especially if there is a head wind. I know this because I tucked in behind 6 or 7 riders in a row (all legal), and my speed went up 2 mph and my heart rate went down 12 beats. Followed these guys for 3 or 4 miles and got dropped at an aid station. I worked for 20 minutes or so, way too hard, to catch back up but never did. Tried to hang with another group which came up but couldn't without getting my HR into zone 3. They were really moving and we were going 24 - 25 mph for a little while. I think I was with them for maybe 5 minutes or so. Guys kept passing me because I think they thought I was keeping too much room between me and the rider in front of me. Even though I was 4 bike lengths. Pee'd twice in the first 60 miles. About mile 30 on the bike I went to reach for my pill dispenser, where I had my salt tabs and it blew out of my bento box and the rider behind me ran it over. Oh SHIT. During the Half Ironman earlier in the year on this course my salt tabs blew out of my bag. I had them in a little bag. I thought the solution was this pill dispenser, guess not. I did have a back up plan as I had a small bag with 6 salt tabs in it, just in case. With the 2 I had taken out of the dispenser before it blew out and the 6 I had in the back up bag, I would be 4 tabs short of my nutrition plan. I explained the importance of salt earlier, but didn't say what would happen if you don't replace salt. The biggest issue is cramping. Your body needs the salt to conduct the electrical pulses telling your muscles when to fire. With out the proper level of conductivity your muscles start to spasm, also know as a cramp. A huge issue as you can imagine. There are other things which can happen is you can have digestive issues, called GI issues (stands for gastenal intestinal). Your stomach actually needs to have salt to get what's in it through the membrane and into your bloodstream. If what's in your stomach can't get through the membrane, trouble is on the way! The first sign is that your stomach is distended (sticks out), you can feel the liquid sloshing around in it, and you start feeling sick to your stomach. If you throw up, you solve the stomach issue, but now you are very behind on your nutrition and it is a very hard road to get that back. Again without getting real technical, your body can only process so many calories per hour and uses calories determined by how much effort you are putting out. This is oversimplifying a bit but it gets the point across. So, if you toss your cookies (throw up) you are behind on your nutrition. Actually, you are behind before you throw up because you have lost time getting it in to your system as it is sitting in your stomach. Once you loose this time, it is REALLY hard to make it up. The most effective way to get the calories in is to slow down so your body can send more blood to your stomach. This kind of defeats the whole I'm racing thing. Slowing down isn't in the plan. When the pill dispenser blew out and I did a quick calculation of tabs needed, I knew I was in a little trouble. So some of the things I needed to focus on for the next 3 1/2 hours is proper hydration and I would take a couple extra 1/2 bananas at aid stations (they have a lot of potassium in them).

At the timing mat, mile 73, I was 12 minutes down from my goal time. I knew the head winds would put me down and I needed to be careful not to be too concerned about being off my time. I couldn't expend too much energy to just hold to the time plan. There is a saying I have on my training blog which goes "so you think you rode too slow. You now have 26.2 miles to fix that. Think you rode too hard, that now has 26.2 miles to express itself." The meaning here is you have to make sure you save enough energy for the run. After all you have a marathon to run. I was still feeling pretty good at the 73 mile mark I decided to push and make up some time. I have about 40 miles to go and I knew I could make up 6 or 8 minutes. Some sections had a little tail wind, which was nice. The bikes have thinned out pretty good in this section. Very little passing. Made it back to transition and I was excited to get to the run, not sure if it was because I was ready to run or that I just needed to get off the bike as I was sick of pedaling. Ended up finishing the bike in 5:17:55. just under 3 minutes behind schedule. I had at least 15 dreams in the months leading up to the race where I had dreamed my bike split was 5:17, amazing.
While approaching transition I got my feet out of my shoes and pedaled on top of my shoes. Got to the dismount line, same concept as before only you need to be off your bike before the line. Hopped off the bike (shoes stay on the bike clipped into the pedals). Ran to the bike to run transition bag area and it was mass confusion as I was yelling my number and they were just looking at me. They weren't letting racers into the area so I am pointing to it until someone handed it to me....seemed like an eternity, but was probably 10-15 seconds. Ran with bag in hand to changing tent, while unlatching my helmet. Helmet strap must always be latch when on the bike or it's a penalty. Got into the tent and dumped the bag out. Rolled on my right sock and slipped on my shoe, rolled on my left sock and slipped on that shoe. unclipped my race belt from the bike and grabbed everything else, run race belt, fuelbelt, and run visor. The trick is to do as much in motion as you can. Some education here. a fuelbelt is a running belt which holds small bottles (7oz bottles on my belt). It also holds one gel flask. The belt keeps the bottle weight evenly distributed, which keeps it from bouncing as you run.

I hooked my arm through the fuelbelt, put my running visor on, put my race belt on, then my fuelbelt, all while running. I was probably 200 yds out of transition before I had everything situated, again, free speed. The reason I had a different racebelt for the run was that this belt was designed to hold a pill dispenser as well as gels in their packets. So I had a fresh supply of salt tabs, as well as a back up small bag in a small pouch on the fuelbelt as a back up plan. First thing I did was get a salt tab in me as I was behind 4 tabs.

Started running and tried to keep the pace down. I have a tendency to run too fast off of the bike. Probably because your legs are turning over at a pretty high cadence on the bike, about 90-95 revolutions per minute. Your legs have been doing this for over 5 hours, so your legs want to keep that cadence up. I have to continually remind myself to slow down, slow down. this is why I had the goal for run pace for the first 5 miles. Well ran too fast first 5 miles. My average pace was about 6:45 per mile. The faster you go the higher your HR which makes a difference as to what type of fuel your body is burning. I'll save the technical stuff here, but it leads to trouble when you are burning too high a % of carbohydrates or more accurately glycogen.

At mile 5 I was feeling REALLY bad, probably the worst I have felt in any race or training session. My stomach was sloshing around and I was getting tunnel vision. I was on the cusps of a serious BONK. OK, a bit of the science here, sorry. I'll try to explain it as easily as possible. This is when your body runs out of glycogen, which is it's primary fuel source. Glycogen is easy for the body to break down and use for fuel. It is replaced primarily from carbohydrates. Your body only can store a limited amount of glycogen and can only replace it at a specific rate. You body can run on some other fuels, like fat and protein, but these sources are not preferred because they require a lot of work to convert to fuel. Let's try an analogy, I love them and use them al the time (people from work are rolling their eyes for sure).

Let's say your body is a car engine which runs on gasoline, and you are driving from Atlanta to California. Now there are 3 primary blends of gas, regular, mid-grade, and premium. Your engine is one of those fine tuned racing engines which run best on the premium stuff, but can run on the others with some spitting and sputtering. The Premium gas is glycogen, the mid-grade is protein, and the regular is fat. Now let's say there is a gas shortage and gas rationing. You can only buy 20% premium (glycogen), 30% mid-grade (protein), and 50% regular (fat). So you are running on a gas blend. Actually, you can buy as much regular as you want, but your car has to slow down to run only on regular. Your body can store many thousand calories of fat (really an endless supply), but then you have to lug it around and the more you weigh the more energy it takes to move. A pound of fat is about 3500 calories, so we are only talking about a few pounds of fat needed for an Ironman race. At 3% body fat I still have over 4 pounds of fat to work with. Now the faster your car goes the more of the premium and mid-grade it burns, or the more glycogen and protein, and remember they are rationed. When you "bonk" you run out of glycogen and you have to slow down in order for your body, your engine, to be able to burn the other types of fuel. When I started feeling the sloshing in my stomach I knew I hadn't been getting the calories into my system for awhile, which leads to trouble. You can't just dump them in, just like the gas, you can only pump it in at a certain rate.

So I am faced with a decision, do a stop into a port-a-potty and make myself throw up to empty out my stomach and start over or do I see what I can do to get it to empty out. I decided to try to get it to empty out and ran past the potties at mile 5. At mile 6 however I was thinking I was going to blackout, so I thought I better see what I can do and stopped at a potty. I was in there maybe 20 seconds and once inside decided to just try to go pee and try to relieve some pressure on my stomach. Went a little and then back to running. This helped, or maybe it was the short break I don't know but started feeling a little better and kept plugging away until mile 7 where I saw Mom and Dad again. Can't tell you how much that helps to see friends and family. It's only for a few seconds but it is what you look forward to and it gets you from A to B. Ironman racing is tough for the spectators. It is hour after hour of the same just to see your racer for 20 seconds and then another could hours for another peak, but it is much appreciated!

I Kept moving until I was back at the transition area to start lap two. As I approached the turn around I yelled out my number where a volunteer grabbed my Special Needs bag and I dumped everything out of it and dropped my empty bottles from my fuelbelt. Pick up the new bottles, thanked her and started running again. This took probably 6 – 8 seconds. Watch beeps now are extremely annoying. I have my watch programmed to count down 15 minutes and beep 10 times and repeat the count down again. This is my Eating reminder. In a long race you sometimes have to do some major disassociating and this keeps you on task to keep the calories coming in per your nutrition plan. Speaking of disassociating, my most effective form is counting steps. Every right step is a number and it goes like this: 1,2,3,4,2,2,3,4,3,2,3,4,4,2,3,4,5,2,3,4…..up to 20,2,3,4, then back to 1,2,3,4,2,2,3,4. When it gets bad, you gotta mentally go somewhere else or you will be walking. It is just that simple. Your mind is throwing every trick in the book at you to stop. Self preservation / survival instincts I guess. When you disassociate, you essentially shut off you mind from telling you what it would like you to do. For this marathon, I started counting at mile 5… at that point I knew it was going to be a long day! So the watch beeping brings you back to reality and the pain that is shooting through every muscle in your body. Take care of business, gel, salt, drink, whatever, and back to my beloved numbers.

Mile 18 and there are Mom and Dad again, looking a little concerned at this point as I think I may have looked a bit beat. I kept plugging away, miles are now in the 8:00 – 8:20 per mile, which is slower than any of my training runs. Nutrition is not good at this point. I just can’t get the gel down. We are only talking about 1 ½ ounces per shot, but it seems like a gallon. When you take a salt tab or a gel you have to have a bit of fluid to get it in (get your stomach to absorb it). Mile 19 is coming up. I started walking though aid stations last year at mile 19. I AM NOT WALKING I told myself. I walked last year to get more fluids in. At least that is the argument my mind convinced me of, and at the time it made so much sense. Not falling for it this year! Past mile 19 aid station, still running. A guy in my age group passes me. His name is Norbert. It’s a strange, old fashioned name, which is why I remembered it. The reason I knew he was in my age group was because they right your age on the back of your calf (back in body marking In the morning). Crap! I can’t stand getting passed and he is the first in my age group (AG) to pass me on the run. Just keep moving forward, focus on my numbers, focus on my numbers. Mile marker 20, just an easy 10k now (a 10k is 6.2 miles, the marathon is 26.2 miles) keep going…no walking. I started catching up to Norbert now and passed him just before mile 21. At mile 22 I see Dad and he asked me “how’s it going” to which I respond with crossed eyes. At this point I can’t put anything in my stomach, no gel, no liquid, which means no salt. I make a decision I am just going to gut it out from here. Even the thought of drinking is making me nearly get sick and throw up. Really focusing on the numbers now, trying to visualize them, trying to smell them, even trying to taste them, which didn’t work as it got my stomach going again. Running right through the aid stations now, not grabbing Gatorade like I had been all day. Mile 23 comes and goes, mile 24 comes and goes. Then my friend Mr. Norbert pulls up and passes me. He is looking strong at this point and there is just no way I am going to keep up. He ended up crossing about a minute before me, which is a probably a couple blocks at this pace. Starting just after mile 25 the crowd gets pretty raucous. Lot’s of music and partying going on. The cheering is great, but I was way past the need for cheering stage and just needed for this race to be done. I just needed to focus on my numbers and all this yelling and music is distracting me from this. Usually this section is great and certainly was on my first lap, but it was really knocking me out of my disassociating and was actually the most painful stretch of the day. At about mile 26 someone yelled “Brent” (your name is on your race number), but this was more of a question. Kind of like is that you? I heard it and would have loved to turn around and see who it was but I would have stumbled and fell. I still don’t know who it was. Home stretch now. This time I ran to the right of the turnaround which said, “this way to finish”. I see Mom yell at me that she will meet me at the end. The finish shoot is an amazing place, kind of a holy ground if you will. Lots of cheering and music. The I hear Mike Riley (the voice of Ironman) say those beloved words…”Brent Schulte, you are an Ironman”.

I made it without walking a step, which is probably my proudest accomplishment. The level of will and determination required for this is unimaginable, this I know. I was not broken, I did not falter, I did not give in to the demons, I was happy for this. Time was 9:53:55, a personal record by 27 minutes, but off my goal time by just under 14. Mixed emotions altogether. I wasn’t happy with my run as I knew I had a 3:18 in me, but just put too much energy into the last 40 miles on the bike to make up time. Finished 154/2268 overall, and 24/378 within my AG. Kona slots went 12 deep I think (first 12 in AG get a slot to Kona, HI World Championships). In retrospect, my goal time of 9:40 wouldn’t have qualified me. Last slot was 9:33, so I need to find another 20 minutes, 25 to be safe. I think it needs to be 15 minutes on the bike, and 10 minutes on the run. Back to the drawing board.

Mom walked me to the recovery area and she grabbed a few grapes which looked good. Dad was still parking the car. Put one grape in my mouth and nearly threw up. I sat down and was getting tunnel vision. Mom ran down a volunteer from medical and the next thing I know I’m in a wheel chair without time to even put up an admirable rejection. A couple IV’s later and 4 cups of chicken broth later and I’m back. You need the warm chicken broth because the IV solution makes you so cold. Got a quick massage and ate a couple pieces of pizza and a bagel with Mom and Dad. It’s crazy to even write it but at this point I was ready to get training for my next IM in Coeur d’Alene, ID on June 21, 2009. This race will be much different as there are some mountains (hills) on the bike and run. Times won’t be close to this, probably mid 10 hour’s. I still need to determine goal times for this race.

I went back into transition to check out my bike and gear bags, loaded bike on the car and off to the condo we headed. Ate a couple bowls of cereal and sat in the hot tub for 30 minutes or so to get things loosened up. Took a shower and then Dad and I went back down to the finish line to cheer others in. We were there from race time 14:40 – 16:10. Grabbed a couple more slices of pizza and some water and joined in on the party. Certainly one of those few epic days you will remember for the rest of your life!

Unfinished Business as I still need to figure out how to claim one of those coveted slots to Kona.