Update

Let's see where to start. I've been lazy about blogging lately and that sucks because I'm forgetting stuff when I post here. Let's begin:

- Last week's running mileage was 12 miles
- Tuesday was a run with Texas Iron. I think I did 6.5 miles. It was a fartlek run and it was a pretty good run that hurt a bit.
- Wednesday was a bike ride that happened for only about 20 minutes. My HRM battery died so I know have 4 HRM watches, 3 straps, and none of them work.
- Thursday was a swim workout of about 1900m or so. It wasn't a great swim workout.
- Saturday was another Longhorn Tri course ride. It was a good ride and I didn't kill my legs so that was good. I did a 45min run afterwards and I couldn't breathe well.
- Sunday (today) was a 9.1 mile long run with a 2000yd swim in Deep Eddy afterwards.

Well, that's it for the workouts. I'm seeing a doctor about my breathing problems. I'm off the Asthmanex because I felt like it wasn't working. He gave me a peak flow meter to measure my lung output before and after exercise. He says that if I have a drop of 20% then I have some breathing obstructions that are induced by exercise. I also have Albuterol to try to see if that helps out. It'll be interesting to see. As for chaffing issues that I'm having when I run, bandaids on my nipples help tremendously. Today's lack of bandaids proved that theory. Also, Sportslick on the crotch is a miracle cure for my crotch chaffing. I've tried that the last 2 long runs and I can actually take a shower afterwards without wincing. The last thing of interest is that I'm peeing in the pool again and it feels good. ;-)

New Balance mileage: 160 miles
Nike mileage: 174.5 miles
Weekly run mileage: 21 miles

I'm being lazy and it feels good

I'm being lazy at this moment and it feels very good. This weekend was my last big weekend of training before the Longhorn Tri. I'm skipping all of it. The main reason is that I have some friends in town and I don't want to be like "Hey, watch TV while I go on a 4 hour bike ride." After sacrificing pretty much my entire social life for IMFL last year, I'm of the mindset that skipping some training to hang out with some good friends that I don't see very often is a very good compromise. Plus, I'm pretty sure that skipping the training isn't going to damage my race that much. I've also been very tired lately and sleeping in has been very good. The mental break is welcomed as well because I've lived more of a normal persons weekend instead of having training take up 6 hours of each day. Hopefully, this will be a very good thing when I look back at it in the next few weeks because this break allowed me to become more focused.

Other than that, I on Wednesday was another unscheduled rest day. Life just got in the way. I made that up by making my workouts on Thursday and Friday. Thursday was a 60 minute run in the morning and then a 3400m swim workout in the evening. The run felt great actually and I enjoyed it. Also, it's starting to cool off here a bit so it was about 72 when I started running. I got in about 7 miles or so for that run. That night's swim workout was actually a great workout for me. We did some interval sets and I really enjoyed them. Plus, there were only 3 people at the pool so I got some extra attention from my coach. Oh, my highlight was swimming 50m in 0:38 at a 95% pace for me and also swimming 100m in 1:24 at a 90% pace for me. It just felt good. Then, I got back in the water the next day. That wasn't fun because it was only 15 hours after getting out of the water from the previous night. My chest muscles were fatigued almost immediately. I tried keeping up the other people in my lane, but I fell off tremendously at the end and almost got lapped on a 300yd interval. I ended up getting out of the water after 3100yds and I was pretty happy about that. I need to get used to that though because I want to swim 4-5 days a week and run 4-5 days a week this winter so this will be a more common occurrence.

Eh

Eh, not much to write about. I haven't slept well the last 2 nights so I'm exhausted and I should be in bed by now, but I'm playing with the new TV. Monday was a weigh in of 186.5. I was suppose to do an easy 90 minutes spin, but I needed to study for class and work was busy so I couldn't come in at 9, leave for lunch at 11, come back at 1, and then leave for the day at 4. Class that night was good, though. Tuesday was a 2500m swim in the morning. I had only 1 swim in 3 weeks and it took a bit of getting used to it. My form came back but I still cut it short because I was tired and I usually ease back into it. Tonight was some shorter intervals with uphills and downhills. They hurt. I talked to my coach about my exercise induced asthma and I'm going to see a specialist about it within a week. Oh, I found my HRM, too. I was putting on my shoes for practice tonight, looked down and saw it sitting in the shoe.

New Balance mileage: 151 miles
Nike mileage: 156.5 miles

Stupid Ride

Sometimes I hate having testicles. They get in the way and cause guys to do stupid stuff. I went on a ride today. I was suppose to do a 4 hour easy ride. I talked to Maggie and she invited me for a ride so I joined her. A lot of other people showed up and they ended up being my AG rivals Sean, Noah, and a few other fastish guys. We started riding and I was keeping up with the faster guys. I needed to do a longer easy ride so I dropped back. At some point, I saw the faster guys in front and left the group I was with to go and try to catch them. I caught them, but it hurt like hell. It took me at least 20 minutes to catch them. I almost gave up a few times because it felt like I wasn't closing the gap. At one point, I was about 75yds back but I couldn't catch up. I finally caught up when they slowed down and I just stuck on their wheel. There was a long hill and I got dropped. My legs were fried and it was absolutely stupid for doing it, but it was fun. I stopped and waited for the others and it hurt like hell the rest of the ride. My quads were on fire. We did the 56 miles in about 2:48ish so we were booking it pretty well, but we were working together. I still think the bike course for the Longhorn Tri is a great one and it's pretty fast, too.

Afterwards, I went to go swim, but Deep Eddy was packed. I soaked for 10 minutes and then went home.

Update for the week

Eh, I'll be brief because I can't concentrate at the moment. Monday was the Austin Tri which I just posted. Tuesday was a rest day. Wednesday was a spin workout and the core workout. Thursday was a 6.5 mile run in the morning. Friday was an easy ride after work. Saturday was a 15 mile easy run that hurt like hell. I lost my HRM so I need to get a new one and because of that, today was a naked run.

New Balance mileage: 151 miles
Nike mileage: 151.5 miles
Weekly run mileage: 27.5 miles

"If you are talking that much, then you aren't going hard enough"

This report will attempt to be pretty short. Well, we'll see how that goes.

Prerace

Not much different here. I didn't do any carb loading except the day before the race. All that I did was eat a decent amount of food the day before and had a pretty big dinner. That morning, I ate a big breakfast and that was all the solid food that I had that morning. After I left, I had a bottle of water and then a bottle of Gatorade about 30 minutes before the start of the race. I had at least 3, maybe 4, RPs and that was it. I wish the had more porta potties because there wasn't enough.

The Swim - 29:24

The swim was barely wetsuit legal. I still wore it because I get a benefit from it, but I don't know how much of a benefit it was during the race. Also, the waves were sane and I was the wave after the open wave. The swim wasn't a good one for me. It's either because the swim course was long or it was accurate and I'm used to short swim courses. The swim was horrible because I couldn't breathe the entire time. I don't think it was the wetsuit, either. I think my exercise induced asthma was acting up. I breathed on every single stroke and when I did, I felt like I was breathing through a straw. I almost puked, too. I swallowed a huge mouthful of the water in Town Lake and that didn't sit well with my stomach. I came out of the swim and my time was horrible, but I was done with it. It was good for 7th in my AG and a pace of 1:58/100m.

T1 - 3:00

I consider that's a pretty good time considering I felt like I was almost going to pass out. I got my wetsuit off and then grabbed my bike. I started running out of T2 and bad things started to happen. My vision started to, I couldn't breathe, and I started to get light headed. I have orthostatic hypotension but this was different. It felt almost like asthma attack. I was going to sit down so that I didn't pass out and keel over, but it passed. I kept going out of T1 and I was on the bike course. Oh, I was 15th in my AG. Not bad considering I had a wetsuit on and not many people were wearing them.

The Bike - 1:06:35

I really like this bike course. I think it's much faster and safer than the CapTexTri course. There are only two U-turns per loop and there are only 3 loops. There are some challenging sections, especially the part going up southbound Congress south of Lady Bird Lake. The first loop I took pretty easy, I pushed it really hard on the 2nd loop, and took it somewhat hard on the 3rd loop. My back was hurting as well. I gotta figure out how to prevent that. I saw a lot of people riding on the left and they should've been on the right. I also witnessed a near crash because of this. Some slow guy was riding to the left and some faster guy tried passing him on the left. The guy on the right went all squirrely and was definitely not a good bike handler. The touched bikes and the squirrely guy nearly went down. I was 5th in my AG and averaged 22.4mph.

T2 - 1:23

Nothing special. I think I had a pretty quick T2 and don't have much to note except that putting on socks really wastes a lot of time. 8th in my AG.

The Run - 46:14

The run felt great. I took it a bit easy on the bike and it paid in the run. I felt fine pretty much the entire time and coming off the bike was fine as well. No cramps, side stitches, or anything like that. Actually, I could've gone harder. I saw Amy on the run and I chatted with her a bit on the 2nd loop. She told me "If you are talking that much, then you aren't going hard enough". That was pretty much the truth. Like I said, I felt good. Actually, too good. I really should've pushed harder and gone faster. I finish strong. Oh, one more thing. I had a Gu on the run and I shouldn't have done that. I didn't feel like I needed it and it upset my stomach a bit. I was 15th in my AG with a pace of 7:27/mile. That is my fastest 10K distance pace that I've ever done in a race so I'm happy with that.

My total time was 2:26:36 and I got 4th in my AG out of 52 people. Overall, I was 59th out of about 700 people. I was almost on the podium. Oh, here is another interesting fact. My swim, bike, and run time was 2:22:13. The guy behind me was 2:22:06, but he finished 5th. I totally kicked his ass in the transitions and got 4th instead of 5th because of that. I'm pretty happy with my race. I need to not skip swimming the week and a half before the race and I need to practice in a wetsuit if I haven't worn it in 4 months.

This was the inaugural Austin Tri. I really like this race. It was well organized and I like this race much better than CapTex. It was less crowded. Well, that's it. I had a good race at a good race.

Austin Tri is tomorrow

OK, quick update. Thursday was a run workout with some hilly intervals. The intervals were 1.2 miles each and there were about 2 major hills and 1 minor hill. I did the first one in about 9:10 and the second one was about 9:40. I fell off, obviously, but I felt pretty strong on both of them. Oh, I forgot that Wednesday's swim workout was rained out, but the core workout was pretty good. Friday was a rest day with a weigh in of 186. Saturday was also a rest day. Sunday was a tuneup workout. The pool was closed so I skipped that. I did do the bike workout. I skipped the run workout because it has been raining since the middle of the afternoon. This looks like it might be a repeat of CapTex in may. I'll be disappointed because I really want to race. I've been tapering the last few days and I'm getting jumpy and I want to race. Well, the next time that I post, it'll be a race report tomorrow.

New Balance mileage: 130 miles
Nike mileage: 145 miles