2:24:56

My goal: 2:30:00
My official time: 2:24:56

Results:
Swim: 28:32 (42nd, 1:54min/100m pace)
T1: 1:54
Bike: 1:04:50 (17th, 23mph pace)
T2: 1:29
Run: 48:13 (55th, 7:47min/mile pace)

I finished 27th out of 134 in my age group and 346th overall out of about 3500 participants.

Overall, I had a great race. I freaked out during the swim, but I ended up not having that bad of a swim. I kicked ass on the bike and I did better than expected on the run. A full race report will be on my website shortly.

2 days, 23 hours, 32 minutes

I have that much time until my swim wave starts for my race, St. Anthony's Triathlon. I can't wait, except for the fact that I have had major sleep problems all week long. That's fun!

7 More Days

I have 7 days until my race. Actually, I have roughly 6 days, 12 hours, and 50 minutes from this posting before my swim wave starts. I'll just round up to 7.

I swam this morning at Barton Springs in my tri suit and wetsuit. It was my final wetsuit test before St. Anthony's. Man, my swimming has improved a lot recently. I was able to swim a mile in 28:27 today. My previous best was about 31:25. A 28:27 swim time will put in at about 26:30 for a 1500m swim, but we will see if I'm capable of going that fast in the ocean in a pack of people.

I went riding yesterday. My bike skills when cornering improved dramatically yesterday. I kept getting coaching about how to take my turns more aggressively. I was told to keep my inside arm straight and my outside arm bent and that my bike will be at a steep angle. Also, to keep pedaling through the turn. Well, I did all of this and I kept finding the cornering clearance of either my shoes or my pedals. So, I guess I was doing it right. On the ride, I averaged about 21mph for almost an hour. I was really slowed down because I had to slow and stop for traffic lights and stop signs. I also had a couple of hills which Florida doesn't have. I keep hearing that the race course at St. Anthony's is flat and fast, but has some turns. I am hoping to keep an average speed of 22-23mph. I like going fast, but let's see if I have legs to run afterwards.

I Will Post One Of These Someday

Now, this is an awesome race report. I hope to post one of these from an IM
distance event someday. Hopefully, more than one of them. I will be
posting my race report for St. Anthony's shortly after my race in 11 days.

7:40 & Yoga

My workout today was suppose to be 10M Z1, 45M race pace, and 5M Z1. I stuck to it pretty closely, except that I had an 8M cooldown instead of 5M. Well, I ended up pushing myself really hard. Over the course of 1:02:57, I ran 8.2 miles which is two loops around Town Lake. Over the entire distance, I averaged 7:40min/mile. For the first 4.1 miles, I averaged 7:25min/mile which is faster than my college best pace of 7:31min/mile. In college, my heart rate for that run was 180+ for the last 5 minutes. Now, my heart rate didn't get over 170 except for the hills. I am now running faster than I did in college and my heart rate is lower. I'm not fast compared to fast runners, but this is freaking fast for me. Hopefully I can pull out sub-8:00min/mile times for St. Anthony's.

After running today, I went to yoga. As usual, yoga rocked and I feel much, much more relaxed and loose now. But it had it's price. Doing yoga after running today was especially painful since I hurt from running. My knees were sore, but I feel better now.

Overall, I considered that I had a freaking great workout today.

Bricks hurt!

Went out for a 90min ride today with my TNT group. Then we did about a 20 minute brick (a brick is a workout where you ride a bike and then immediately start running) after that. It was fun, but it hurt. We did some good hills and I rode on virgin (to me) roads which is always cool. Great scenery. Great hills. I feel so freaking good after working out. Makes the rest of my day. I can't wait until after my triathlon so that I can start doing some 50+ mile bike rides.

Swimming in the abyss

So, yesterday I got up at 5am to be swimming in Barton Springs at 5:30am. It was totally dark at that time of the morning. I started swimming. It was weird swimming when it was dark. I would look up to site where I was going and I couldn't see anything. I would swim and look down and I couldn't see anything. It felt like I was swimming in the abyss of outer space. Really weird.

I rode on the spin bikes at the gym for a bit on Tuesday. My quads are always on fire when I start biking. I hate that feeling.

I went for a good run today. I thought I was running really fast, but I don't know for sure because I lost track of the laps. If I ran 5 laps, I ran an average of 7:05min/mile. If I ran 4 laps, I ran an average of 8:35min/mile. I think 7:05 might have been a little fast.

How to spend $2000: new bike or Doug Stern

So, I am now saving up for a house among paying down credit card bills and the such. Now, I am interesting in putting my money towards something else that I don't really need, but is a good thing for me as an athlete. A want either a new road bike such as a Felt F2C or a training vacation to Curacao, Netherland Antilles in January 2006 with Doug Stern. I want the road bike so that I can race in road cycling races and go on longer rides, but I just bought a 2004 Cervelo Dual 6 months ago which isn't exactly cheap. I could also get a used high end road bike and be perfectly happy with it.

However, if I go on the training vacation, I have the potential to greatly improve my performance as an athlete. This would be great since I am preparing to complete my first Ironman at the end of 2006. It would also make me insane. Most people's idea of an ideal vacation is sitting on the beach sitting mai tais for a week doing nothing. My idea of an ideal vacation is going to the beach and not sipping mai tais, but instead going on a 2-mile open water swim in the ocean and 60-mile bike rides in the same day.

Am I crazy?

Practice Tri

For my Team In Training practice yesterday, we had a practice triathlon. It was even shorter than a sprint distance, but it was just practice to get us used to transitions and stuff like that. It was freaking awesome. I feel really comfortable in open water now. My mom has a fear of water when she can't touch the bottom and I developed that fear slightly when I found out that Mommy is also afraid of it when I was 5 years old. Now, I have no problems with open water swimming.

My T1 transition went pretty smoothly, I felt. I could get better at getting the wetsuit off, but I am not bad at it. I don't do the cool thing of having my cycling shoes attached to the pedals, but I may try it out next weekend. I also think I hurt my shoulder when I tried to get out of my wetsuit. I'm a dumbass. My T2 completely sucked, though. When I went to dismount from the bike, I took my shoes off instead of taking my feet out of the shoes. Then, I had trouble getting my socks on my wet feet. The bunched up and if I tried to run with them like that, it was going to cause major problems. So, I decided to take a few extra seconds to fix my socks by sitting on the ground. Well, my calf cramped up. Twice. That really blew. I started the run with a cramping calf, but it finally worked itself out. My calf is sore today. Also, I had cramps in other places. Sometimes I get a stitch in my right side when I run really fast. Yesterday, I had cramps in my lower right side, my left side, as well as my calf. I was in bad shape.

Overall, it went well. I felt like I was going to puke afterwards, but I was fine 30 seconds later.

Today, I rode for about 90 minutes with Helen and Spencer. It was a great day outside. I didn't get to ride as fast as I wanted to, but I tried to get sprints in whenever I could. It's difficult being at a level completely above your training group.

Weekly Update

On Tuesday, I went for a short ride. I organized a weekly riding group at work and this was our maiden ride. I set a new personal land speed record of 42.3mph on my bike. That was fun, but my workout wasn't long enough.

Swam on Wednesday. Nothing special.

I was suppose to run on Thursday, but work has been getting in the way of fun stuff like biking on Tuesday and running on Thursday. It was a nice long, fast workout and I missed it. Damnit.

Today, I weighed in at 177.5lbs. I am dropping, but slowly. On 16 APR, that will be the day that I weigh in before my race and see how much weight that I have dropped since I began triathlon training. I want to see if I am still losing fat while putting on muscle.

I am a little over 3 weeks away from my race. I think I am prepared, but I am not sure. Work has become really stressful lately and because of that, I am putting in longer hours and getting less sleep. In a perfect world, this wouldn't be the case so I am trying to adapt. We will see how I do in 3 weeks.