Elliptical & 4th Day of Swimming

I did the elliptical machine last night at the gym for 60 minutes. I couldn't do another aquajog because I spent too much time in Barton Springs this weekend. I also wanted to do something that didn't leave me wanting to eat every piece of food in my house afterwards. Problem is the elliptical is boring as well and it doesn't really give me that good of a workout. I even up the resistance and keep my cadence up but not so much. Also, I think it shortens my stride. Well, I start running again next Tuesday so that should make me happy.

This morning I swam 3000yds. Did it in about 60min and I was resting a lot between sets. I did 5x200 warmup. Then, I did this weird set where I would do 1x200,1x133,1x66 and each one got faster. I did 2 of those. Then, I did 600yds easy followed by another descending set. 200yds cooldown and I was done. No major breakthroughs except that I was expecting to be toast this morning. I swam fine, though. I was a little fatigued, but not much. I had to cough and coughing while trying to swim and get in enough air to continue breathing is somewhat difficult.

Stacy was fairly warm this morning. I'm at work now and I had a single bowl of cereal and I feel OK. If I had swam in Barton Springs, I would've been through a bowl of cereal, an apple, a granola bar, and then eyeing my jar of peanut butter by now.

You know what, I'm so ready for this Ironman to be over with. This is probably the most difficult thing that I've done in my entire life. I set out a year ago DNF'ing my first half Ironman and determined to get through the year and make the sacrifices to get to Florida. I'm 30 days away now and those 30 days can't get here quick enough. I love training, but some weeks are just crazy because I have no free time at all. My social life sucks and I need more interaction than the old people at Barton Springs and Stacy. I want to expand my thinking besides what will I do at the next workout. Ironman training is not only a battle of your physical self, but it's also a battle of your psychological self. You have to be extremely determined and dedicated to set a stake in the ground and work towards it for a year. It's very solitary as well. I do 90% of my training alone. Why? It's very difficult to find a training partner that is the same speed as me and training for the same race. I've had a few in the last year but they all disappeared for different reasons. I've also had to learn to push myself on my own. I usually think that I get faster by training with people just a little bit faster than me. I catch up to them and then I gun for the next fastest person. Doing my training alone is a battle because I have to make myself hurt by chasing ghosts in the pool or that phantom rider that also just a few yards ahead of me. I have to beat them even though they aren't there because it's easy to go out and say "this speed is "hard" enough". Nope, you gotta take that extra step and push a little harder. You become accountable for yourself and in some ways that's very good.

This has opened my eyes for my future training, but I'm so ready for beer and burgers. 30 more days.

Fatigued Tuesday Swim

This morning I swam 5 laps at Barton Springs so that's a good 2500yds or so. It was a miserable swim though. Today is the 3rd day that I've swam in a row. I also went to the Jack & Adams core workout and toasted my arms. But I did 7 pullups at the beginning on my own and then 5 at the end, but the last 5 required minimal help. Point is my arms were tired. Then we did 6x1 warmups. After that, we did 4x1 mass start swims fast. I died after about 3.5 of them. I just couldn't go fast anymore. Tomorrow I have the 4th day of swimming and another core workout. Luckily, I won't have to use my arms again until Sunday.

Oh, 31 days until IMFL.

Finally, is anyone else absolutely sick of summer? I mean, it's October and we still have highs in the 90's. Not cool.

Massage & Swim

So far today, I've had a massage from Ron and a quick swim. The massage was very painful because I had a decent amount of sore spots in my butt, my lateral quads, and my calves. Ouch, that hurt. Afterwards, I went to Barton Springs and swam 4 laps. I should've done 6, but I didn't have time. Now I'm feeling pretty relaxed and good. It's nice.

I didn't get up to swim this morning. I got up at 5:30 and my body was like "More sleep!" I tried to go back to sleep for another 2 hours and I didn't get much sleep. Why do I listen to my body?

4 Hours in Barton Springs

And I'm frozen solid. OK, I'm not really that bad. My day started off with a quick 3 hour aquajog at Barton Springs. I had Laurie's waterproof mp3 player which entertained my for quite awhile. Then, Laurie showed up and kept me company for the last lap and a half. Overall, I did about 3 hours which is 7 laps or so. One problem though. The aquajogger belt tends to flap back and forth on my back whenever I "step". Well, 3 hours of this wore a sore spot on my back in a couple of places and I was bleeding. Don't worry, I don't have The Herpes so I didn't spread much stuff into the water. It hurt though.

I went out to breakfast with Richelle, Spencer, Laurie and Laurie's husband, Matt. I was so cold that I downed 2 cups of coffee pretty quickly. I really need to stop drinking coffee. I came home and finished off the pizza from yesterday.

Then, I cried. I looked at my training schedule and it said that I had to do a 30min swim in cold water and then another 30min run. Well, I headed back to Barton Springs at around 6:30pm and got home at about 8pm. I'm cold, but dinner is almost ready. I'm having spaghetti; big surprise there.

Friday & Saturday

I really need to start posting every day and on the day of a workout.

Friday, I was suppose to do a 75min swim but couldn't fit it in. Oh well.

Saturday was actually a great workout for me. I met Meg with some people from T3 (yeah, yeah, I know that they are the "other" triathlon group), but I like riding with other people from time to time. I left from my house and met them at Kiker Elementary School. From there, we did about 60 miles which consisted of the Dam Loop. I really wasn't looking forward to the Dam Loop because I wanted to do some flats. Also, it seems like the Dam Loop kills my legs every time. Well, we went out and I was taking it really easy. I wasn't pushing myself up the hills (yet). The weather was great and I was just on a nice, easy base ride. I kept my heart rate low and my cadence high. I hit a new personal speed record going down 2222. I hit 51.6mph. Wow, it was scary today, too. I had a lot of wind buffetting me around and that was pretty hairy. As usual, there was the Texas Wind from the southeast that made going east or south a total bitch. The Dam Loop protected us from a lot of it, but once we turned south on 360, it was back. I learned something today. I actually spun up the hills. I just put myself in a bigger cog than usual and tried to keep my cadence up. Of course my heart rate went up, but it seemed more controlled and less like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. I think this helped save my legs and my heart for the rest of the ride. I did power up one hill, though. The hill on 360 going south on 360 after the bridge. It's a nice long, steady climb and I dropped everyone on it. I got my heart rate up to 170 and held it there for a couple of minutes. I thought I was going to blow up but I didn't. I just held it there constant and get spinning up the hill. I dropped everyone. I had one person catch up to me at the stoplight and that's it. I just felt like showing that hill who's the boss. After that, I took the hills a lot easier since I was only abotu 50 miles into a century. We headed back to Kiker and had to battle the wind pretty much the entire way, but we got back without incident.

That reminds me, at one point I was behind Meg. I noticed something and then said "Meg, I can see your ladybug." Meg has this tattoo of a ladybug on her butt and when riding behind her yesterday, I could see it. That was absolutely the funniest thing that happened yesterday and I made her totally selfconscious about it as well. Her biking shorts were pretty old and you could see through them.

After I left Meg and then, I went back to my house to fill up on fluids. I was at least 1 water bottle behind when I left so I was getting worried. I didn't get dehydrated because it wasn't that hot for most of the ride. I still took down a half of liter of water when I got back to my house and then filled up 2 more bottles for the remaining 30 miles. The last 30 miles was a battle against the headwind and then some fun with the headwind. Coming back home I was pushing a biggish gear at 90rpm going 28mph. My heart rate was at 145 and I felt fine. I got back in my neighborhood and rode around a bit. I pulled into my driveway with 100.16 miles down for the day. Total ride time was 5:37 and I averaged 17.8mph. Not fast at all, but I was suppose to go easy and it was hilly and windy so I'm happy. And once I got off the bike, I felt fine.

After that, I went for a 60min aquajog at Barton Springs. I then search all of Austin for some breakfast tagos. Tacodeli was closed after 3pm, Rudy's stops selling them at 10am, and Taco Cabana stops selling them at noon. Bastards! I had a burrito from Taco C instead. I then got my Saturday milk shake from Amy's. I went home and ate half a bag of Central Market veggie chips. I was still hungry and craving pizza so I ordered Papa John's. I know it was bad, but I was crazying in really badly and since I burned probably glose to 4500 calories that day, I deserved it. I was exhausted for the rest of the day though, but surprisingly not that exhausted. I really think I'm almost ready for IMFL.

I think I forgot to post about Thursday. Went out with Texas Iron and did some hard bike intervals. I talked with Jamie and he trusts my LT and VO2max numbers but he thinks that my LT is actually higher that what was tested. His reasoning is that my performance at Buffalo Springs and the bike time trials don't match up with my LT numbers that I'm getting. Basically, my tests results are confusing and even though I wanted to use these results to pace myself for IMFL, I don't think I can right now. Sucks, but I'll deal with it. I'll just go off of feel and I think keeping my heart rate in the 145-150 range is probably well below my LT and should be good for me for Florida.

Oh, only 33 days away now.

LT & VO2max Results

So, I'll just go ahead and post them.

Old one:
http://marajade.dyndns.org/media/doc/LT-VO2max 01-11-06.pdf

Latest one:
http://marajade.dyndns.org/media/doc/LT VO2max 09-21-2006.pdf

My LT went up slightly, but my VO2max went from 56.6 to 62 which is about a 10% increase. My weight didn't go down much so it seems like it's just improved fitness. My VO2max probably won't change much unless I drop some lbs and that's the plan. I'm going to concentrate on increasing my LT next year. It seems that my LT right now is 155bpm @ 268w which I think for me is pretty good. For IMFL, I'm not going to push myself that hard, but it's good to know that I can do it for short periods of time during the race.

Any thoughts from everyone else?

Other thoughts:
- My weight is steady at 180.5. Water exercise sucks.
- My gastroc is hurting again, but my 3rd met seems to be fine.
- My body is craving a lot of sleep and food lately.
- Still no alcohol, sweets, or much other junk in my diet.
- I'm tracking my calories again.

Lots of Stuff

Ok, lots of stuff to post.

Monday was a rest day. However, I went to the core workout. It seems like my core has gotten weaker lately. All the ab exercises actually stress me out and I give up fairly quickly. I also did 7 pullups on my own and that's a new personal best. Afterwards, I tried to cheer Meg up since she got some bad news. I tried bouldering her car, but she gave me "the look" when I asked how strong her door handle is.

Tuesday was a morning swim at Barton Springs. I did 6 laps. Nothing special. I took it really easy though. I was freezing until about noon that day, too. That night I was back at Barton Springs after acupuncture. I only did about 70min of a 90min aquajog. I just couldn't take it. Came home and went to bed.

Wednesday was a morning spin bike ride. I didn't cut it short, either. No core workout though. I need some sleep though so I'm going to bed soon.

After Tuesday and Wednesday, I'm sure I have to get out of the water. I was hungry all day on Tuesday and I barely burned any calories from working out in the cold water. Today, I was hungry, but I burned about 1200 calories.

Ok, I'm way too tired so I'm going to bed now.

Weekend Update

It was a low training weekend. 2 hour base ride on Saturday with a 30min aquajog brick in Barton Springs. The wind was horrendous on Saturday and I estimated that we had 20-25mph headwind the entire time. I was doing about 16mph on the way out and then about 27mph easily on the way back in. It was crazy.

This morning was light as well. I did a 90min aquajog in Barton Springs. Pretty much any shorts that I use will chaff the insides of my thights. Not cool. Also, my aquajogger belt is chaffing me as well. Double not cool. I was completely frozen this morning because it's getting colder here. It's nice but not when you are wet. I came home and napped for 1.5 hours to warm up. I had all my blankets on me and I was wearing my flannel pants and a hooded sweatshirt, too. Still cold.

Nuun!

I got more nuun today in the mail. I'm so happy. I got a 9-tube multipack and also picked up a 3-tube pack of Tri Berry since that's my favorite. I love this stuff!

Had my VO2max tested today. I'll get the results next week but it's definitely higher than last time. I think part of it is because I'm on Advair for exercise induced asthma and I'm breathing better because of it.

I had an Oreo today. Well, half of one.

At the beginning of last week, I implemented my "no junk food" rule and cut out a lot of crap from my diet cold turkey style. I gave in a bit today. There has been some Caramel Creme Oreos sitting on the fridge for a few days now. They've been tempting me all week. I decided to indulge in one today for some reason. I ate half of the Oreo and threw the other half away. It was nasty. I didn't like it because of the flavor, but most importantly it was too sweet. They say that it takes 21 days of doing something to form a habit. On the reverse side of that it should take 21 days to break a habit, right? Ok, that makes no sense, but that's been my goal: 21 days of no sugar. I'm on Day 12 right now and I wanted to vomit because I ate an Oreo. I haven't had any chocolate or donuts or candy bars or cupcakes or other sweets which are so prevelant at work. I've been good and I'll keep being good. Hopefully this will disappear my sweet tooth (except for ice cream) and that's a good step towards living healthier. I still crave some foods that are unhealthy like pizza and breakfast tacos, but they aren't the sweet things that I seem to have an addiction to and constantly defeats my will power. Well, no more.

I had an LT test done today. I'm getting my VO2max test done today. My finger hurts from getting stuck like 8 times. Ouchie. I'll post the results once I get them.

I did a 60min bike workout with Texas Iron yesterday. 2 easy laps and then 3 hard laps with 3min rest in between. It was fun to get my heart rate up. My legs were dead, heavy, and tired at first, but they loosened up quite a bit. I talked to Jamie about my foot and this is what he recommends. In 2.5 weeks so the week starting 09 OCT, to do 2 15min runs. Next week, 3 15min runs. Week after that, a 15min, 20min, 15min run. Next week, do 2 20min runs before IMFL on that Saturday. He says to get my body used to some impact so IMFL will be easier. I'll take his advice because I really want to run again and these runs will be short enough and at a low enough intensity that they shouldn't bother my foot too badly. So, I will be running somewhat before IMFL and that makes me happy.

I love the smell of chlorine in the morning

I went to Stacy today. It actually wasn't too bad. The water was actually cooler and I was cold for about 400yds so it was about 76 degrees or so. I just did an easy 2000yds. Yesterday, I did 30min on the elliptical machine. I didn't have the heart to go to Barton Springs to aquajog.

Also, it's almost that time of the year. What I'm talking about is the portion of the year from about October to about March where I freeze my ass off. I'll still swim at Stacy at 6am when it's 34 degrees outside, but I'll be bitching about it the entire time. I need to get some more cold weather gear, too. I want to pick up another piece of REI Power Stretch longsleeve top, but it's $75 a pop, but it's totally worth it. I also want to get another warm hooded sweatshirt and a swim parka. On a side note, my work's webfilter blocks http://tyr.com and http://lanefour.com.

I'm only doing 30-45min of exercise a day and I feel lazy because of it. Most people don't get 60-90min of exercise a week and I'm complaining because I feel lazy. I've also been very good about restraining from eating crap. I had a piece of birthday cake at work yesterday. Well, I ate two bites and threw the rest away. Right now there are half a dozen cupcakes sitting in the fridge and I haven't had one either. Will power strong! Fat cells weak!

Well, that might make some sense

As I've been vocal about lately, I've been plagued with injuries this year, all in my left leg. One contribution to them is the wart on my foot. I think the other is my plantar fasciitis. Now, the plantar fascia are thick connective tissues that support the arch of the foot and run from the heel to the toes. I started having PF problems in December of last year and I thought I worked through them, but if I slacked off at them even for a week, my PF would come back. Now, let's say that I didn't really work through them that well. The pain has gone away, but the fascia are still tight given the quickness at the pain coming back when I didn't do anything. What I've also noticed is that compared to me other foot and the other fascia in my left foot, the 3rd fascia is really tight. I work on it with a ball and stretch it and stuff, but it's still tight. Let's assume that it has been tight for so long that it has actually caused my metatarsal head to become misaligned and actually bring my 3rd metatarsal head down. With the 3rd metatarsal head in this position and not in the natural arch shape, it hits first when I take a step or run and caused the bruising that I started experiencing back in June.

Now, is this a plausable explanation or it just a pure coincidence that my 3rd fascia is really tight and my 3rd metatarsal head has fallen and become bruised?

"They" are staring at me

All day long, whenever I go over there. They are staring at me. They won't quit. I wish They would go away, but They won't. Who are They? They are They! They are the bowl of chocolates and candy that is a mere 10 feet away from my chair at work. Every time that I go to the fridge to get some fruit or yogurt, They keep whispering to me in the wind ala the voices in LOST. But so far since last week, I have resisted the sweet whispers of milk chocolate, crisped rice, peanuts, and caramel. And I won't fall into temptation until after 46 days from now.

Sunday

2+ hour aquajog. Boring as fuck. I have the thought in the back of my mind to not do IMFL because of my injury, but I don't want to do it. I want to back out because I want to be completely prepared for my first IM, but then again if I don't do it, pretty much everything that I've worked for over the last 45 weeks has been for nothing. It's just really, really frustrating that I spent 4 years playing ultimate and plagued with injuries and now that I'm doing triathlons, I'm still plagued with running injuries. My goal next year is just to not have any injuries.

Saturday Workout

I went on a 5 hour ride today. I got in almost 90 miles and I average about 17mph. I went slow today because I just wasn't up to working out today and it was windy as hell. I did 3 loops and each loop was windier than the last. And this was my second attempt to ride today. The first time, I went out and it started raining. So, I headed back to my house and watched TV for an hour. I really need to find a way to stay hydrated. I was drinking 2 bottles of fluid per hour and I was still feeling parched after about 3 hours of riding. I think I need to up my fluid intake during IMFL. Also, I was noticing that my heart rate was slowly climbing throughout the entire ride. Something is up.

I went for a run afterwards. I did 2.5 miles in 22:15 or so. It hurt like hell to run and IMFL is going to be a huge drag if I can't run before then. This really fucking sucks.

Ok, time to shower.

Shoe Mileage: 42.5 miles

Friday Update

181 pounds. 60min on the elliptical. 3200yds in 60min swim.

50 Days!

50 days to IMFL. Shit, it's really close now. But one good thing is that I weighed 183 yesterday and 180.5 today. I think I had a lot of water weight after last weekend and I'm slightly dehydrated to. Also, no alcohol and no candy at work so far this week.

Tuesday was a Barton Springs swim. I did 1 warmup, 3 easy, 2 mod, 1 fast, 1 cooldown. On the 1 fast, I was swimming with some other guys that had wetsuits on. I beat them to the dam and I wasn't wearing a wetsuit. That one fast was really fast for me. I was wheezing about a third into it but I kept up the pain. That night, I was going to do a 75min aquajog, but did 60 minutes on the elliptical instead since it was raining. My knee was bothering me so that's not a good sign. I'm going to have to watch that closely when I start running on land again.

Wednesday was a J&A core workout. I'm a little sore from it now. Then, I did about 80min on the bike with some hill sprints. It was slightly painful. I also had other knee problems going on as well. I had this weird popping on the outside of my knee. That's a first.

I got some acupuncture done today. I heard it can help the healing process and since my entire left leg is fucked, I thought it wouldn't hurt. We'll see how it helps me out.

Today is the last day. . .

. . . that I'll weigh 185 pounds before IMFL

. . . that I'll drink alcohol before IMFL

. . . that I'll eat candy and other crap at work before IMFL (this will be the toughest)

Sunday Aquajog

Today, I had a 90min aquajog. Nothing special, but I got Laurie's waterproof mp3 player to work. I thought that I had screwed it up so that makes me happy. My left leg was bothering me eventhough I was aquajogging. I really need to do something about it. No matter what I do, there still are a lot of problems with my left leg. I stretch it. I strengthen it. I quadroll it. I massage it. Nothing really works to help it get better except for time. A lot of time. But I'm about to go do some worthless quadrolling to hopefully help it a long.

Saturday Ride

I rode for about 40 miles on Saturday. I was suppose to do a 30min run (aquajog) afterwards, but I left my wallet at home so I went and had breakfast tacos at ATC afterwards instead. I was going to go and do an aquajog later, but I was busy for the rest of the day. Making my workout plans around aquajogging is really a fucking pain in the ass. Barton Springs is closed next weekend and I have to do at least one 2.5 hour aquajog. I don't know where I'm going go now. Maybe Deep Eddy but that's really a short distance to aquajog. That's nearly like a hamster running in a wheel, but if I have to do it, I'll do it.

I'm trying to come up with ideas about coaching for after Florida. I'm on a limited budget for tri coaching. I want to start taking a masters swim class so that I have others to swim with and I don't have to deal with the people at Stacy in the morning. I feel like I get much faster much quicker if I do this instead of swimming by myself. I also want someone to work with me on my running form. Anyone have any suggestions?

Not so smart

Today I did the J&A core workout. I did 55 pushups, 41 situp (pitiful), 103 dips, and 5 and 3/4 pullups. Afterwards, I tried to go swim. I went and swam 4 laps and I was done. My arms were just toast after the core workout and I called it quits. I wasn't going to have a quality a workout so I decided to skip it.

Also, DeSoto tri shorts suck for aquajogging. Too much chaffing in odd places.

Jack's Generic Tri & A Setback

I did Jack's Generic Tri on Monday morning. Nothing special since it's a local sprint tri. It was going to be interesting though since I had a tough weekend of training. I got up and got ready for the race. I was thinking about cleaning off my bike since it was nasty, but it was going to get dirty at the race anyways. I got to the race site and set up everything. I saw some of my friends and chatted with people. I only had 3 RP's with two of them at the race site. I found Meg and hung out with her a bit. We went to do a bit of a warmup swim. Meg tackled Charles and caused him to drop his goggles into the water. While Meg tried to find the goggles, I went and swam an easy 250yds or so. Then, it was time to start.

My wave went off first and that was nice. I lined up to the outside like I usually do in races. A lot of other people lined up there as well. The gun went off. It was crazy. It was just a clusterfuck. It really seemed like no one was moving anywhere. People were flailing their arms, but weren't going anywhere. I got in the water and I kept getting hit. People were swimming on top of me and I was swimming on top of people. I went out right more to get away from people and that helped. This flogging by people was good because I think it was good prep for IMFL. I went out and turned left at the buoy. Well, Noah was swimming in the inside of me and when I took a left, he kept swimming straight for at least 5 yards past the buoy. Well, I swam over him, pushed him out of the way, and kept going. As usual, I kept passing people towards the end of the swim and that makes me feel good. I tried drafting off of people, but I always end up on some feet that are slower than me. I usually rest behind them for a few strokes and then keep going past them. As I was reaching the end of the swim, I picked up the pace a bit. I found one guy that was slightly slower than me. I went on the inside of him and tried to get to the first buoy before him. Well, I kind of made it. I tried to push him over since I was mostly in front of him. Well, he kept trying to swim on top of me. I started kicking pretty hard to try to get him off of me. Well, a foot landed in some soft tissues on this guy and then he was gone. Whoever you are, sorry for kicking you in the nuts, man.

I headed into transition and was pretty tired. It was a fairly quick transition and nothing special or that I could've done better. Then, I was on the bike. It took a bit to get into my shoes. I headed up the first hill. I kept going on the bike and my heart rate was kind of high. At this point, I already had dead legs. Actually, I had dead legs on the swim so this was going to be an interesting race. I kept going and I was going pretty quickly. I played leap frog with the eventual female winner and some other guy. I kept pushing though. At one point, I checked my computer to see how far I was into the race. I thought I was 8 miles or so. I was at 4. Shit. I slowed down a bit because I was going too hard. The roads were in pretty good condition and this is worth noting because I heard that they were a little rough. They weren't bad. There were a few hills but nothing too bad until we got back on the I35 access road. That was the toughest hill the entire course.

I headed into T2. My T2 was slow because I had problems putting my socks on my feet and then I had to tie my laces instead of speed laces. I was running! Woohoo! I think I paced myself fairly well on the run. It felt like my speed was maintained the entire time and this was good since I really hadn't ran in 6 weeks. The run hurt, but I kept it up and I didn't walk the entire time. No heart rate monitor either the entire race so I had no clue how hard I was pushing. The run course was very boring; just a simple out and back. My foot started to hurt. Well, I think it was but I can't remember now. I'm pretty sure it was and I should've stopped and walked, but I got caught up in the moment and just kept running. My form was crap though. I dropped at least one place on the run though when Noah finally caught up with me and passed me. I came into the finish line area and heard Adam announcing. I picked up the pace a bit and ran through the crowd. I heard people yelling my name, but I had tunnel vision and really didn't see anyone. I crossed the line and I was done. I felt pretty good, too.

I did pretty well. I finished 6th in my age group of 32 and 46th overall of 452. That put me in the top 20% of my age group and top 10% overall for this small sprint tri. If I didn't ride 107 miles 2 days before and then aquajogged 2 and a half hours the day before, I might have done a little bit better. I'm really happy though with the run. I averaged 7:43/mile for a total time of 23:09. My swim was great with 30th place overal and a time of 8:06. T1 was fairly quick at 1:00 flat and T2 was slower at 0:54. I was disappointed with my bike at 41:03 which is 21.6mph. Final time was 1:14:14.

Good race overall. I'm happy with it. One problem though is that my foot is hurting again. Not a very good sign. I'm pretty sure that the next time that I run will be IMFL. I called my PT today and she'll call me back tomorrow. I think the bone bruise is probably back. I did some exercises today and I think it might just be soft tissue stuff. The new orthodics are great, but I'm in the old one to help ease the pressure off the 3rd met. We'll see what Rebecca says and I'll keep up the work. I'm very disappointed that this happened, but I gotta keep pushing forward.

Shoe mileage: 40 miles

Exercise Induced Asthma?

I posted a thread on Slowtwitch over the weekend. I posted that I thought I had exercise induced asthma and based upon what others said, I probably do have it. When it's happening, I get a tightness in my chest when I take a really deep breath. It hurts right where my trachea and bronchi are located. Afterwards, that same area is sore for a couple of days when I take a deep breath and I describe it as "sore lungs". Also, sometimes after I race really hard, I'll get these monster coughing fits that last for minutes. I don't think I have a bad case of it, but I think it's enough to concern me when I get this "sore lungs" feeling.

Lots of Stuff

Let's start with Saturday. I was suppose to do a 5.5 hour ride and I actually completed the ride and I even followed the schedule pretty closely. I got 8 hours of sleep on Friday night and woke up naturally on Saturday. I got kind of a late start since I wanted to be on the road at 7am, but 8:30 will do. The plan was to do 2 loops that were about 50ish miles each and start from my house. That way, I could circle back to my house and do an extended special needs stop to top off my water bottles and stuff. This was critical this weekend because I was dehydrated last weekend. I had to have 6 bottles in 3 hours to see how my body would do. I also used the stock IM InfinIT formulation since I wanted to see how I would handle that alone. I started with 3 bottles of Infinit and a single plain water bottle. I would stop along the way to fill up 2 more water bottles once I poured my second bottle of InfinIT into my aerobottle. I also had some gels as backups though. I also took some Thermolytes with me and some nuun. By the end of the day, I ended up using almost an entire tube of nuun. I also discovered that each tablet of nuun has 360mg of sodium which is quite nice.

Ok, I was off on my ride. The first loop was fairly uneventful. It was slightly overcast and wasn't too hot for Texas summer standards. It was pretty windy though and heading south or west wasn't much fun. I did the 30mile ATC/Bee Caves loop so this was the first time in a few weeks that I saw any hills. They were torturous to me. One thing to note was when I started doing this loop back last winter, it seemed like it took forever. Now, I would consider it a very quick ride. I stopped at Southwest Cycleworks to pee and to fill up my bottles. I had to pee and that was a very good sign. I was also on scheduled drinking 2 bottles every hour. My plan for IMFL is to take 1 bottle of InfinIT in 30 minutes. That will give me 600mg of sodium. The next 30 minutes will be plain water with 1 nuun and then a couple of Thermolytes. Since I don't have this new formulation yet, I had to add some nuun to the InfinIT to give me more electrolytes. Once I was done with this loop, I headed south on Mopac and went and did the Autobahn. At this point, I was in a big gear workout for an hour heading into the wind. This really, really wore me out by the end of the day. I caught the tailwind going back north and headed back to my house.

I took an extended special needs stop. I filled up my InfinIT bottles, grabbed some nuun, had a Rice Krispy treat, and peed again! I was feeling pretty good at this point. My roommate had just woken up and I asked him if he wanted to join me. He said yes so I waited until he got ready. We were dicking around in my driveway and I tried to take off. I was in the wrong gear, I had something in my hand, and I had the wrong cleat clipped in. I fell over. No permanent damage was done except I felt like a dumbass. Well, we headed out and I started to get tired fairly quickly. I think Mile 80 was the breaking point. I wasn't bonking and I wasn't dehydrated, but I was just tired. The hills that day took a lot out of me. I was still pushing a decent amouth though but I just had dead legs. I kept going though, but I really wanted off the bike. Chaffing was in the usual spots, too. It felt like my calves were about to cramp, but they didn't. I also passed 100 miles so this ride was my first century. I was feeling slightly better towards the end because I was getting towards the end of the ride. But I still felt beat.

I finally got home. I logged about 107 miles today. I went inside my house and got my shoes. I headed out for the run and this was the first brick that I've done in almost 2 months. Wow, they hurt a lot. I did 2.5 miles around my neighborhood. My first run on Monday was a 21:45. Today, I did 22:54 so I consider that pretty good consider I'd just ridden 107 miles.

From today, I really need to get my new InfinIT formulation here. Like I said, I'll take 600mg from the InfinIT, and then 360mg from nuun and 300mg from two Thermolytes. That should be enough electrolytes. Also, I should probably take average 5 bottles of fluid instead of 4 over 2 hours. I was feeling a little parched at the end of the ride. I didn't have to pee for the last half of the ride and I thought that I might have stopped sweating too, a sure sign of dehydration. I was sweating on the run though so that's a good sign that I wasn't dehydrated. Also, I think I need to take an extra Gu per hour on the last half of my race.

The rest of the day, I was fatigued, but I really wasn't sore. Well, I'm slighly sore but not bad consider how much I did on Saturday.

Sunday was an aquajog at Barton Springs. I did about 2:15 today which was my longest "run" so far. Richelle let me borrow her aquajogging belt and Laurie let me borrow her waterproof mp3 player. Both of these made my run today much, much better. I peed in each of my first 4 laps eventhough I wasn't drinking water. It took a while before my hip flexors were getting tired. Not much to say about that.

Overall, a good weekend so far and it's not even over yet. I do have a sprint tri in the morning.

Shoe Mileage: 37 miles

"You need to eat more fat"

That's what the nurse at my work told me this morning. I came in to get my cholesterol tested just because I like to see about twice a year how my numbers are doing. This is what I had about a year ago:

Total Cholesterol: 155
Triglycerides: 64
Glucose: 92
HDL: 49
LDL: 94
TC/HDL Ratio: 3.2
LDL/HDL Ratio: 1.9
Blood pressure: 112/64

These are my numbers today:

Total Cholesterol: 127 (I've never seen it that low before)
Triglycerides: 67
Glucose: 90
HDL: 45
LDL: 69
TC/HDL Ratio: 2.8
LDL/HDL Ratio: 1.5
Blood pressure: 104/74

My TC and my LDL have plummeted which I'm happy about. Blood pressure is good as well. The nurse told me that I need to eat more fat to get the triglycerides up a bit. I told her that I do eat fat, but it's mostly healthy fat. I wish my HDL was higher though but my LDL/HDL ratio is really low since 3 is the bottom of the normal range. Having a lower HDL level like this is probably a genetic thing since I don't think I've ever seen mine above 50 and I know some people that have 70+.

This morning, I checked my resting heart rate again and it was 50bpm. So, the average over 3 days this week is 51bpm and that is now my new official resting heart rate. My weight is down to 181 so I'm happy that I'm making some progress there as well.

Last night, I ended up running for 32 minutes. I didn't really have many issues. It felt like I was protecting my left leg and that's probably true. My 3rd metatarsal was starting to hurt very slightly towards the end of the run. On a scale of 1 to 10, it was a 0.5. I could feel something down there but not much. Today it seems perfectly OK. If there is any pain in my metatarsal, it's towards the 4th metatarsal and it's closer to the toes than the bone. I see my PT today and I'll discuss it with her. The met pad has raised my 3rd met up, but now it seems like the 4th met takes the brunt of the impact now. I'll discuss that with Rebecca today when I get my new orthodics.

Shoe Mileage: 34.5 miles

3000yds, 6 pullups, 7 chinups, Texas Tri Series

This morning was the first time that I swam at Stacy in months, probably like 3 months. I don't miss it. The pool was really warm, like 85-90 degrees. It wasn't comfortable swimming at all. I was doing nice, long, slow intervals. Nothing special though. There was this cute girl, but I thought she was a lot less attractive once I saw her horrible swim stroke. That's just so wrong.

At the core workout tonight, I did 6 pullups at the beginning and then 7 chinups at the end. Both are new PR's for me.

Finally, Adam announced the Texas Tri Series. It's a series of tris similar to The Distance Challenge. There are 6 races starting with a short sprint capping out with the first that I know of half Ironman distance race in Austin in October. This is a new race as well as a new Oly race through downtown Austin on Labor Day Weekend. Hopefully, the course of this race will be different than CapTexTri just to mix things up a bit. We'll see, but I'm really looking forward to next year. Like The Distance Challenge, if you participate in all the races, there is a party and stuff at the end. However, if you volunteer for a race instead of participating, it still counts as participation. This is another awesome thing put on by Jack & Adam's.

Resting Heart Rate: 51bpm

I measured my resting heart rate this morning. I woke up naturally and I had my HRM beside my bed. I put it on and ran the stopwatch for about 6 minutes. The average rate during that time was 51bpm. I'll probably measure it again later this week to get another data point, but I was worried a few weeks ago that my resting heart rate had risen to 60bpm for some reason. Usually that's a sign of something not right. I wanted to get another baseline because right now I feel well rested and like there's nothing wrong.

Ok, time to go for a quick bike ride.

EDIT: I'm off the bike now. I did 75min easy spin so nothing special. The only was that I wanted to ride outside today since this is the first day in awhile where I could do that, but it was threatening rain this morning. Here's the catch, if I went and rode, it would've rained, but since I stayed inside and rode on the trainer, it didn't pour outside today.

My quads are slightly sore from the run yesterday. That's to be expected and I'm trying to get ready for a lot more soreness soon.

I ran today!

Woohoo, I ran today for the first time in like 6 weeks! I ran for 22 minutes around my neighborhood which was probably about 2.5 miles. I didn't stop the entire time and I took it nice and easy. It was a little hard at first but once I got warmed up, it was a lot easier. I felt like I could go and run about 6-8 miles at that pace. It wasn't fast at all, but I didn't need a fast run; I just need a slow but constant run. There weren't any problems with my 3rd metatarsal either after the first couple of minutes. The met pad was pressing into my foot at first but that went away. Also, the rest of my body had some little aches and pains but nothing major, even from the knees.

I'm so happy that I can run again. I'll do a 30min run on Thursday with Texas Iron and then I see my PT on Friday and we'll reasses how I'm doing and I'll get my new orthodics.

Shoe mileage: 31 miles

Core Temp & Aquajogging

After my dehydration episode yesterday, I've been hot and more sensitive to the heat. It felt like my core temp was higher than normal and almost like I had a fever. Very strange so I don't think you can recover from dehydration that quickly. This morning, I was suppose to do an aquajog. I was debating on doing it or not since I wasn't feeling that great, but I thought it would be a good idea since Barton Springs is so cold and I was so hot so I decided to go ahead and do an aquajog. I aquajogged for about an hour and 40 minutes and it was boring as hell as usual. I saw some Texas Iron chicas and they were correcting my form. After the jog, I came home. Now, usually after I get out of Barton Springs, I'm starving and I always thought that I got this way because my core temp is lowered due to the cold water. Today, I wasn't so hungry, but I wasn't cold afterwards. I think that since my core temp was high from yesterday that it was lowered to a normal temp from the cold water and therefore I wasn't starving afterwards.

Any thoughts on this?

Also, tonight I get to do my first run on the land in like 6 weeks. I'll post how that goes.

Dehydrated

I went for a swim and a ride with Charles, Tiffany, and Mike this morning. We went for a longish swim. Total time was about 45min which is about 2400yds with some rest in there as well. That swim was probably the most comfortable open water swim that I've had in awhile.

We got on the road at about 8:15. As we headed out, it was fine. We turned east and had some crosswinds. We turned south and we hit a wall. The wind was absolutely brutal and demoralizing. I was trying to push, but I just couldn't go. Our plan was to do a 56 mile loop, go back to the cars to do a special needs stop, and then do another 56 mile loop. We got back to the cars and I was beat. There were no convenience stores along the way. The problem is that this is a 3 hour ride and I need 6 bottles of fluid or 2/hr. I only had 4, 3 with InfinIT and 1 with water. I thought I was going to be in trouble when I finished the 2nd bottle at about 1:20 into the ride and I was getting thirstier. By the special needs stop, I was dying for some water. Charles filled up his bottles and gave me the rest and I got about just over a bottle of water and he also gave me some Gatorade Endurance.

We headed back out and I was debating on whether or not to go back out. I was sick earlier this week and I think I might have not recovered. the wind beat the shit out of me. It was also getting hot, but I headed back out. At about Mile 62, I was starting to feel bad. I dropped back to ride with Tiff and Charles went ahead. I was starting to fade fast and I finally cracked at Mile 65. We took a right and headed into the Wall of Wind again. I was just done. I turned around and headed back by myself and faded even faster. I finally had to pull over and stop. My heartrate was elevated, I was getting a headache, I couldn't push any harder, and I was slightly lightheaded.

I'm pretty sure that I was dehydrated. I don't think I was bonking because I was taking in at least 300 calories per hour, but it was hot, probably 96+ at this point, and I wasn't drinking fluids. After I stopped in the shade, I peed a bit which was the first time that I peed the entire ride which was 4 hours into the ride. Even now which is 4 hours later, I still haven't peed again. I kept going and I stopped at a church to get some water from a faucet. I had one bottle almost immediately and then filled up 2 more bottles. My resting heartrate there was 95 at rest. Not good. I got on the bike and kept going. I figured I had about 15 miles to go and it wasn't going to be fun. It was hot, it was windy, and I was by myself. Also, my right calf was wanting to cramp a couple of times, but it never siezed up hard.

The last 15 miles were painful. I couldn't generate any power. I was doing everything to keep my legs turning over. I eventually got back and I wasn't feeling good the entire time, but I got back. I got in my car really quickly and headed out. I needed food and fluids. I stopped at HEB and got a turkey sandwich and some Gatorade. Like I said before, I'm at home now and I finished my ride about 3 hours ago. I lost 4 pounds during the ride and I haven't peed since then. I'm about to get some more water and try to rehydrate.

The next time I go out for that long, I'll make sure that I bring enough fluids. Other than that, the InfinIT only seemed to work. Also, my Desoto tri shorts tend to chaffe on my ass and not my crotch. I need to put some Chamois Buttr there next time. The bike rode fine after the incident last weekend.

And that's about it.

100% RDA of Sodium

As I stated before, I'm sick. Well, what does one do when they are sick? I ate some chicken noodle soup. Then I looked at the nutritional facts. 39% of my RDA of sodium. Wow, that's a lot. Then I looked at the serving size which was 2.5 servings for the can. Wait, that gave me nearly 100% of my RDA of sodium from one can of soup. Shit, that's disgusting!

I got my bike back. The damage was a new derailleur hanger, 8 new spokes, 2 new sprockets for the derailleur, new chain (upgraded to DuraAce), and a new tire. $125 total so it wasn't that bad, but it still sucks.

Sick

Well, I'm home sick today. I have some head stuff and that isn't fun. Sucks. I took off yesterday and today from training. I may get a short swim or bike ride in tomorrow, but we'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow.

Tuesday was a Tx Iron swim. I swam only 5 laps when I was suppose to do 6. I ran out of energy fairly quickly because at the time, I thought I just went out way too hard. I think I didn't have much energy because I was getting sick. Also, my back was getting sore that day and it was really sore the rest of Tuesday. Today, it's still sore. Tuesday evening was an aquajog for about 50 minutes. Since Jamie showed me the proper way to aquajog, it really, really wears me out. My hip flexors were toast and I was actually breathing pretty hard after each lap. Hopefully all of this really, really boring water running actually pays off.

Also, I get to start running on land again this weekend. I get to run 2 30min stints next week before I see my PT again. At that point, I can start ramping up the land running. Woohoo! Hopefully I'll start losing some weight as well since I think running is the key to me losing weight.

6 Pullups!

Yesterday, at the J&A core workout, I actually did 6 pullups on my own. Holy shit! When I first started doing this, I could do 2 and maybe struggle for 3. I'm actually making progress.

Also, for the record, I ride a 56cm 2004 Cervelo Dual with Ultegra components for a tri bike and then a 58cm 2003 (?) Fuji Roubaix with Shimano 105 components as my road bike. I'm very happy with both bikes, but I would be thrilled if I road a 55cm P3SL and a 56cm Litespeed instead, but that would be about $7K in bikes, and right now I only spent just over $2k for my bikes.

Thursday Swim & Sunday Aquajog

Oh, I never mentioned my swim last Thursday. We did a workout at Lake Austin again. Traffic was horrible and I was late, but I swam 1500yds and then 2x800yds. My arms were pretty sore the next day, too. It was a good swim.

Yesterday, I did about a 2hr aquajog at Barton Springs. I'm really starting to hate BS because of all the AJ that I'm doing. Later that day, I went and did a 30min swim. I was going to do another 30min of aquajogging, but I really hate my Sugoi tri shorts now. They caused me a couple of chaffed spots yesterday and I couldn't do my evening aquajog last night because of raw spots in my crotch. Not fun. Today, my hip flexors are toast after the AJ yesterday so that's a good sign.

Finally, I had some really, really good pluots today for lunch.

Mile 95, Mile 96, Mile 97, Kablammie

Ok, I'm having really shitty luck on the bike lately. 6 weeks ago, I sliced a tire. The weekend after that, my boot on the tire blew out, I bent my rim, and got another flat. Last weekend, I broke a pedal. Yesterday was another mechanical issue, but this one was major.

I went on a ride with Mike, Charles, and Tiffany. It was way the hell up in Plugerville, but at least I'm riding with others. I was suppose to do a 4.5 hour ride with a 30min run. Instead, we did a 30min swim to start and then headed out on the bike. The bike was nice with nice roads, smooth pavement most of the way, and wide shoulders. After about 65 miles, we had to make a decision. Head back to the cars for 75 miles or go out and do 30 more miles. We did 30 more and tried to get in a century. I quickly started falling apart. My crotch was sore from the saddle and my legs were dead. I was also losing mental focus. Hey, this sounds like a bonk. I started taking in a lot of calories and about 15 minutes later, I was feeling better. I was definitely tired, but I kept pushing myself and I felt like I could keep it up.

We finally got back to our cars and it was Mile 96. Since we were so close to a century, we decided to head out to log a century for the day. Since I didn't have to run afterwards, I headed out pretty hard, but not too hard. The odometer clicked over Mile 97 and I kept riding. I was approaching a hill so I shifted to an easier gear. Click, KACHINK, SCREEEEEEEECHHHH, stop. My wheel had stopped spinning and I was going about 22mph at the time. I quickly stopped and I'm surprised that I didn't fall over, but I did have time to get unclipped.

I looked down and my derailleur and it was above my chainstay and between my seatstays and my seat tube. The chain was completely twisted up as well. My riding buddies came by and saw what happened to me. Charles turned around to get his truck. Luckily, I was only 1 mile from the cars, but I was pissed that I was 3 miles away from logging my first century ride.

I took the bike to ATC. The derailleur went into the spokes, broke off the derailleur hanger, broke at least 2 spokes, scratched the paint on the bike as well. The derailleur might be salvageable, but I need a new hanger and at least 2 spokes. They are going to try to rebuild the wheel by replacing the spokes that were damaged when the chain got stuck between the cogs and the spokes.

Now, I'm trying to figure out how this happened. I was in the 5th cog and shifted to the 4th cog. Then the derailleur went into the spokes. I wasn't in the biggest cog, but somehow the derailleur went into the spokes. I might have dropped the chain in the front but I doubt it. Who knows what the hell happened exactly but it fucked up my bike.

Well, I had a good training ride. It was my longest ride ever but I was fine. I had some comfort issues from being in the saddle so long and I had some minor chaffing issues. I also had some nutritional issues, but it was from not taking in enough calories. Towards the end, my stomach wasn't feeling great but it was barely noticeable.

Triathlon Compound

I now official am the owner of a triathlon compound. I found a 2nd roommate who is also a triathlete so we now have 3 triathletes and at least 6 bikes under one roof. This new guy will only be here for 3 months, but that's better than not having anyone. I go from having 2 frat boys living with me to have 2 other triathletes. Much better!

Update

Man, I haven't posted in like 4 days. I'm starting to slack on this.

Monday was a rest day with the J&A core workout. Nothing special, except we did 2 sets of 10 pullups at the end. The first set, I did 5 on my own. The second set was quite impressive since I thought I would be dead after the first set. Well, I did 4 on my own. Also, I'm not getting so sore after these workouts anymore.

Tuesday was an aquajog in the morning. Jamie showed me how to aquajog properly. It freaking wore me the hell out! Basically, I have to exaggerate the high knees and the push off at the end. Very tough doing it that way. I went back to Barton Springs later that night and got in a swim in the dark. It was very womby. It was just dark, wet, peaceful, but not warm so it wasn't quite womby. A ton of people were there that were getting in the way though.

On Tuesday night, my roommate got me my new Shimano SPD-SL pedals. I put them on and rode a test ride on Wednesday morning at the spin bike at the work gym. I like them. They seem easier to get into, but kind of tough to get out of even with the release tension completely released. Maybe they'll loosen up after I use them more. One problem that I had is that I didn't tighten the screws down all the way. Therefore, when I clipped out, the cleats rotated on the shoes. When I clipped back in, it felt like my heels were kicked out and that was causing me knee pain. After about 30 minutes, I couldn't take the pain anymore, got off the bike, borrowed some tools, and relocated the cleats and really tightened down the screws. It worked. Then, I did a 20 minute brick on the elliptical machine since I can't run yet.

Right now, my weight is at 183.5. I'm up 4.5 pounds in like 3 weeks. This is what happens when I'm not super strict about my diet. The thing is that I'm eating more food, but it's mostly clean foods and not crap. My body just loves to gain weight and I doubt that I'll ever be able to get down to under 170 and maintain that. I'll keep trying though. I'll get strict about my diet again and cut out all remaining crap that I'm eating. I can't stand the fact that my body is like this. Any ideas on what I can do to change this besides picking up a cocaine habit?

Another broken bike thingy

This time, I broke the pedal. I did about a 55 mile ride with Texas Iron. The ride left before 7am so it was nice and coolish. We left and I was riding with Joe and Suzanne for a bit. I got whacked in the thigh by a branch. It hurt and left a welt. It felt like I was in Singapore and I got caught putting gum underneath the subway seat. At the turnoff point, I rode by myself since Joe and Suzanne were doing the 100 mile loop. I kept riding by myself and I was pushing pretty good. The route took us on Hwy 12 and man, that is a nice road to ride on. It is smooth and fast. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a shoulder and a decent amount of traffic. I stopped at the last stop with Robbie. I ate a cookie and kept riding. At some point, I couldn't get clipped into my pedal. I kept trying and trying and nothing was happened. After a few miles, I stopped and looked at my pedal. Well, I broke the damn thing. The back part of the pedal that clips into the rear of the cleat was loose. That assembly is held in place by two springs and the springs had came out of place. I rode the rest of the way, about 10-15 miles, without being clipped into the pedal. Basically, I had one clipped pedal and one platform pedal. That didn't stop me from hammering it for the rest of the ride. My calf was sore from slipping off the pedal.

Sunday was a 60min aquajog. Boring!

Wed & Thurs

Wednesday morning was an easy bike ride with some fast 1min intervals thrown in. Wednesday night was a core workout. First one in a few weeks. I'm a little sore in the abs today but not bad at all, but I met a cute chick. Thursday morning was an aquajog. I'm to a point where my body is used to aquajogging so I can really work hard at it. I was actually breathing hard today. Tonight was a great open water swim with Texas Iron. We did about 7 150yd intervals. We started from the shore so it was simulating a mass start. We took a right turn around Andrea in a kayak and headed towards Jamie in a kayak. Turned around him, headed towards Andrea again, and then went to the shore. Like I said, it was great mass swim start practice. I got hit, I hit people, and I ate some weeds. It was awesome.

I'm feeling pretty good after my rest the last week or so. I think it's exactly what I needed to recharge. Tomorrow is a rest day and then my training will ramp up again after this weekend. It'll be awesome.

Bad Luck & Rest

I swear I have the worst luck when it comes to my knees. At my sister's wedding this weekend, one of the groom's cousins is in a wheelchair. After the wedding, someone asked me to go and get it. I went and got it and I picked it up. Well, I picked it up by the wheels and the actual seat part swung down and clipped me in my left knee. This is the same knee that I've dislocated twice and it has bothered me for years. 3 days later, it has a nice bruise on it and I can't even aquajog with it because it hurts and then I start compensating for it. I'm just going to rest it until I can aquajog again.

This morning was the first workout that I've had since last Tuesday. I took a few days off to rest and I'm feeling better now. This is a recovery week so I'm just easing back into it before my IM training really ramps up over the next few months. We'll see if this really helped, but I'm feeling better mentally.

I'm up to 183.5. I feel fat and lazy. Ugh.

Wow

I found a video of Rick and Dick Hoyt. I don't need to say anything because the video says it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjPrL3n63yg

And a little more about their story:

http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/6/6_1/famed-fatherson-team-hoyt.shtml

This puts things into perspective.

The Ride. From Hell.

Man, the ride on Saturday was a bitch. I went out drinking the night before, but I wasn't out that late or drank that much. I still woke up with a slight headache. I headed out and the headwind was a pain in the ass. It was completely unrelenting. I just went out and headed around down south. Other than the wind, the ride was fine. However, I headed back and caught a great tailwind. I crossed over east of I35 and kept riding. After a bit, I flatted. The boot that I used last weekend blew out. I ate a Gu and used the wrapper as a boot. It worked fine.

I kept going and about 15 minutes later, I was heading down the road that I haven't ridden in months, but was great asphalt 6 months ago. It's a fast uphill, a left turn at the top of the hill, a fast downhill, and then a long right turn onto some more nice asphalt. I peaked the hill, turned left, and headed down the hill. I was going pretty fast and then I noticed something. There was a ravine in the middle of the road. Ok, it wasn't a ravine, but the asphalt washed out or something like that. So, here's what's going on through my mind. shitshitshitfucKfuCKfUCKFUCKKABLAAAAAAAMMMMMMwobblewobblewobblewobble I tried to jump the ravine Evil Canevil style and I got the first tire over it, but the back tire hit pretty hard. I thought I jumped it perpendicularly, but I guess the side of my rim hid the ditch. My back wheel was wobbling and I pulled over to check it out. There was a decent dent in the rim and it was definitely wobbly. I'm surprised that I didn't blow out the tire because I hit teh pothole so fast. I adjusted my break and kept going. I wasn't going that fast and I decided to cut my ride short because I just was having problems.

I headed back on Slaughter and I was feeling better. I wanted to add a few more miles to get over 70 miles so I headed past Brodie and went to Mopac. I turned north on Mopac, hit something in the road, and flatted fucking again. This time, I put the old busted tube from the first flat in first. After I wasted half a CO2 cartridge on that, I got the right tube in and slowly got home. I was ready to get off the bike. No brick run because of my foot.

Sunday was an aquajog in Barton Springs. 1:40 of aquajogging is boring. Nothing special to write about there.

Today, I just spun for 1:10 easily with some faster work in there as well.

I posted on Slowtwitch about my training lately. I'm feeling overtrained or bored with my training. My mental motivation is just gone. I'm not looking forward to workouts and stuff like that. I got some great information there and I'm going to take 3 days off this weekend when I go to Tara's wedding. Hopefully this will help jump start me for IMFL.

Another Overdue Update

I can't remember when I posted last. I think it was Monday. Monday was a short (75min) spin and then the J&A core workout that night. Tuesday was a 5 lap swim at Barton Springs with some sprints thrown in. Those hurt. Afterwards was a 40min aquajog. Wednesday was a swim at The Dick (aka Dick Nichols pool). I did 400 warmup, 3x800 pull, swim, pull, 200 cooldown. It was a good swim because I felt strong on the long intervals. No J&A workout because I wasn't feeling well later that day, but I did get my new cleats adjusted.

Thursday deserves it's own paragraph. I was suppose to do a run in the morning, but I skipped that because of my foot issues. However, there was a Texas Iron time trial on the Mopac (aka Autobahn) loop. This is the same course that Run-Far puts on once a month. The last time I did this course, I came in at 20:13 for a speed of 23.7mph. I kicked the course's ass last night. I came in at 19:45 for a speed of 24.3mph. Also, there was a very strong wind and Jamie said that it was the toughest conditions he's ever seen at a TT on that course. I had Chris Spencer pass me but after that, he slowly pulled away from me. I passed everyone that started in front of me. I went out strong, but not too strong. I powered up the first hill and that was when the pain started to hurt. I was also getting blown around a lot by the wind. At the turn around, it was tough because I was now heading back into the wind. If the course is going to be windy, I prefer it to be like the wind today. A strong tailwind helped me going out since it's uphill, but the headwind coming back wasn't as bad because it was downhill. Yes, I had to pedal harder but the gentle slope down helped. About half way back, I was starting to hurt a bit mostly with a beating heart that was about to explode through my chest. The last time I did this TT, I was hurting really badly at the turnaround. By the finish line, it took everything to get my across the line. This time around, I had enough juice to pop it into a 54-13 gear and power up the last hill. I was throwing my bike around so hard that my front wheel was popping off the ground. I finished the TT and I new I had a great ride. I was hoping for something under 20 minutes and I got 19:45 and I was 6th overall and only 60 seconds behind the 1st place guy. I think next time I can cut about 20 seconds off my time. Also, I had absolutely nothing special like race wheels or an aero helmet so I consider my performance on Thursday quite a good one and I'm happy with it, but I can always do better.

4-Day Update

I weighed in at 179 the last few days. That's good, but I'm concerned. I'm begining to believe that this weight loss might be from overtraining and not healthy weight loss. The last week or so it's been somewhat tough to get motivated to train and that's one sign of overtraining. Rapid weight loss is another sign. We'll see but I'm feeling much more trim now, too.

Wednesday was a missed core workout. Work juts got in the way.

Thursday was suppose to be a LT bike workout with Texas Iron, but the sky opened up and drowned the earth on our warmup lap. No real workout for me, then. When it started to rain, I put my bike in my car and then left. I wished I stayed and played in the rain for a bit.

Friday was a rest day.

Saturday was a 60min swim and then a 90min bike ride. My swim was actually only 52:07 and in that time I swam 3000yds. The workout was 400yds warmup, 6x400yds, and then 200yds cooldown. The 6x400 intervals were brutal. I went from 6:14 on the first one down to 5:57 on the last one and that last one really hurt, too. I think each one was faster than the previous one, too.

After that was an easy 90min ride. It was fairly uneventful until I was heading back to ATC. I was hammering it, put my head down, looked up just in time to see something in the road which I hit. Blew the tire out immediately. I changed the tire and noticed a slit in the side of the tire. At this point, another cyclist came up and helped me out and his name was Jim. He gave me some tape to use as a boot. I pumped up the tire and the tube was sticking out. Then, I had to get in touch with my inner McGyver and find something on the road to use as a boot. I used some thin cardboard found on the side of the road. It worked and it got me back to ATC. I was quite surprised because I was able to get 2 fillups out of my CO2 cartridge.

Today, I did a 8.2 mile run around Town Lake. Total time was 69:30 which put me at a 8:29 pace. That's OK since it was an easy run, but I really feel like my running fitness has gone to shit lately and I'm not getting it back at all. Also, my foot started to bother me again as well. This is a very annoying injury.

Shoe Mileage: 28.5 Miles

12.2%

I got my body fat measured today. I weighed in at 180lbs with 12.2% body fat. That means I have a lean mass of 158lbs and 22lbs of fat. That's not too bad. My last measurements were at 14.8%, 27.2 lbs fat, 156.8 lbs lean with 184 lbs overall. I think that was about 3 months ago so I've made a decent improvement in the last 3 months. I'm watching weight and I'm frustrated that I'm not losing weight that quickly, but I've lost 5 lbs of fat and gained 1.5 lbs of lean mass in that time. That leads me to the next thing. My body loves to put on weight. I'm doing endurance exercise and I have a calorie deficit almost every day, but I still put on muscle. What the fuck?

I had an easy 60min spin this morning. I have a core workout tonight. It'll hurt since I haven't been in a week.

BS Swim

Swam at BS this morning. Did 6 laps. Nothing special, but I get some chaffage on my the right side of the back of my neck. I need to start using BodyGlide there.

I've been having problems in the ball of my left foot. I called my PT yesterday and she said it might be a stress fracture. I went to the doc and get my foot X-rayed. No stress fracture which is good. We also ruled out Morton's neuroma. It's probably just some soft tissue problems of various degrees including plantar fasciitis. I'll be working on that for the next few days until I see my PT on Monday. Also, on Tuesday I'm getting reevaluated for my orthodics. They are suppose to last 2 years with normal use, but I'm in the middle of Ironman training so I'm sure that I've worn them out quicker. Also, I think my feet have changed since it seems like I need a metatarsal pad on my left foot.

My weight is steady at 179.5 this morning.

14.5 Miles - My Longest Run Ever!

I did 14.5 miles today around Town Lake Trail. That was my longest run ever which is awesome. The run felt fine. The last 2 miles were tougher, but they were easy. I was suppose to do 30min easy, 75min moderate, and then 15min easy. I soaked in Barton Springs afterwards and because of that, my legs are feeling fine right now. I need to stretch a bit, but other than that, I'm not hurting. I was suppose to swim, but BS was way too busy to attempt swimming there.

Speaking of pain, the ball of my left foot was bothering me, but not that badly. Well, it was maybe a 5 on the pain scale. It hurt but I could still run. Everything else with my legs felt fine.

Shoe Mileage: 20 Miles

I'm such a slacker

Today, I was suppose to do a 4 hr ride (70+ miles) and then a 50 min run afterwards. All I did was a very easy 56 miles at 16.2mph average. I rode with Meg and Logan and we didn't get started until 12:30. It was very, very hot. Also, the ball of my left foot is causing me trouble so I wanted to rest it again today before I put in 14 miles tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty bad about skipping the run though. Next week is a recovery weekend, the weekend after that is a hard weekend that I must complete everything, and then the weekend after that I'm in TN for my sister's wedding. I'm about 3.5 months out from IMFL so doing 70 mile rides and hour bricks afterwards may be a little too much. I'm also starting to feel slightly fatigued and overtrained so having an easier today isn't such a bad thing.

About my foot, I don't think the ball of my foot is bruised. I really think that there is something wrong with it. It even hurts when I'm cycling and it's been this way for over a week now. I'll see my PT next week and see if there is anything else that I can do. Other than that, I'm feeling pretty good. Not much is hurting on me. The back of my left knee/hamstring/gastroc issues have subsided a bit as well as my plantar fasciitis. I think the kinesiotape is a miracle tool for me. It just works and fixes things. I'll order some more soon.

Ok, time to weed eat the yard, run some errands, and then go drink a bit tonight.

It was hot yesterday

It was hot yesterday. Very hot. I went for a 40min run and I was completely drenched in sweat. I did a Texas Iron bike workout in the afternoon. Still freaking hot. Nearly 100 degrees. I had a decent run, but a great bike workout. Nothing special to report.

This morning, I weighed in at 179.5. I dropped 4 pounds since yesterday for some reason. It's probably dehydration because I was really, really thirsty after the workouts and I don't think I was taking in enough fluids. I'm also feeling sick with some head stuff going on as well. Not cool.

I'm really enjoying the tour this year. It's fun to watch not knowing who the hell is going to win. I think it would be a great slap in the face to the French (sorry guys, I'm biased against the French) that after Lance, another American wins Le Tour. Everyone still has a shot, but I'm pulling for Landis. He's having one hell of a year and after hip surgery after Le Tour, his cycling career is probably over. Way to go out with a bang, though.

Shoe mileage: 5 miles

Weight Is Back Up

My weight is back up to 183.5. I've been eating a little more lately because I've been hungrier and working out more, but I've been eating mostly clean foods, too. I'm going back to tracking my calories again. This is ridiculous that I'm working out 6 days a week and I'm gaining weight. I think I'm looking more toned, but I'll get my body fat % checked out soon, too.

I swam 2600yds yesterday. 400 warmup, 5x400 with each 100 faster than the last, and 200 cooldown. Nothing special. I skipped the J&A workout yesterday because I wasn't feeling that hot and I got caught up with work.

Today is going to be a tough day. I have a 50min run and then 1 hour+ bike ride. However, I got less than 6 hours of sleep last night with me waking up at 4am, having a lot of stuff on my mind, and not being able to go back to sleep. I also remembered that I had my alarm set for 6:15, but I walked out the door at 6. That'll wake my roommates up. Oops.

Felt good today

Did a swim with Texas Iron this morning at Barton Springs. Nothing special but I had slight problems breathing today. I was a dumbass though and though Jamie meant laps instead of lengths. I almost did a little too much this morning.

The run this evening was great. Did a 15 minute warmup. Then, we did 2x1 mile, 1x0.5 mile twice. A total of about 1.5 mile warmup and then 5 miles for the main set, and then another mile cooldown for a total of 7.5 miles. Wow, now that I think about it, that's a decent run for tonight. Each mile was at about an 8:00/mile pace which what the workout called for tonight.

I've been having issues with the ball of my left foot hurting after a run. I talked to Geoff and Jamie and they said to get new shoes. Well, the problem is that I only put 150-200 miles on the Brooks Glycerin 4's before I start getting foot pain. I went to RunTex, Geoff was working today, and I ended up getting a pair of New Balance 1060's. I'm breaking them in now to see if they are any better than the Glycerin's.

Now, I'm about to shower and then go to bed. Hopefully, I'll take a nice huge dump in the morning. If not, I'm eating 3 bowls of All Bran tomorrow.

Something's Missing

Oh, I know what it is. I haven't taken a significant dump in over 2 days now. I think this weekend really fucked up my system and I haven't had to do a #2 in 2 days now. This is very, very odd for me because I'm usually going to the office twice a day at least. Yay, fiber. I don't feel bad because of it, but it's just weird that my bidaily dump isn't happening.

12.3 Miles

That's how far I ran today. I tried to take in nice and slow because I haven't done any distance since BSLT and I barely did any distance the couple of weeks before BSLT. Also, I had very dead legs from the ride yesterday. Like I said, I started off slow because my goal was to just make it through. It was tough immediately and it didn't get much better. I took in a couple of gels and some salt tablets. My iPod died at about Mile 4 or so. I was really, really thirsty the entire time and every water stop I took in 6 cups of water whereas most of the time I only take in 3 or so. I also rested a lot at these stops. I wasn't trying to simulate race conditions, but I was just trying to get through the workout today.

Afterwards, I went to Barton Springs, soaked my legs, swam 3 laps, and didn't see any boobies. Walking back to my car was very tough because my legs hurt so badly. Now I'm at home and I'm going to stretch out my legs and do some PT while I watch the World Cup.

You ain't experienced pain until you experience taint pain

I had a 3.5 hour ride to do today. I got a route from Mark and headed out at about 10 this morning. I got all the way to San Marcos before I had to turn around. I stopped at some light and when it turned green, I tried to take off. I attempted to put my right cleat into the pedal. Instead, it slipped and the entire weight of my body fell onto the nose of the saddle. It hit right in my taint and let me tell you that that doesn't feel good at all. My balls hurt, my dick hurt, and my asshole hurt all from one finely placed saddle nose. I tried to keep moving through the light, but the pain was way too much. I pulled over to some store to let the pain subside and I'm glad that I did. I was starting to see spots, I was getting lightheaded, and I felt like vomiting all at the same time. Not good at all. I got off my bike pretty quickly and laid down on the ground. After a couple of minutes, the pain in my kidneys, my crotch, and my stomach subsided. I don't think I did any major damage, so I gingerly got back on my bike and kept going.

Let me tell you that that saddle nose hit just the right spot to make all of my intimate areas hurt really, really badly. Not fun.

After that incident, I kept up the ride fine. I ended up doing 70 miles in a time of 3:37 for an average speed of 19.2mph. This has been my longest bike ride in a long, long time. Then, I stupidly tried to run off the bike after that. I was suppose to do 50 minutes, but I thought I would try 30 minutes around my neighborhood since this was a long ride and this was my toughest workout since Buffalo Springs. I'll just try to ease back into it. Well, the run was the most painful run that I've had in quite a long time. I walked about 10 times and took me about 35 minutes to do a loop that usually takes me 31 minutes. I just hurt and was worn out.

With all of this riding, I took in I think 9, maybe 10 or 11, bottles of fluid during the ride by filling up at gas stations. After the ride, I weighed 177.5 which is 3 lbs off of the 180.5 that I weighed this morning. That means I dropped a fucking shitload of fluid out there today through sweat. I didn't take in too many calories today; 2 bottles of InfinIT, 2 rice crispy treats, and 1 Gu. Ok, that's maybe 1000 calories so that isn't so bad. Towards the end of the ride, my legs were getting pretty tired. Ofcourse the run sucked and now that I'm sitting on my couch, I don't want to move at all. I'm completely wiped out right now. I'm not really sore, but just tired and struggling to keep my eyes open while I watch Stage 7 of Le Tour. Man, it's a shitty day for American riders.

It was good that I'm trashed today because it shows that I still have a ton of work to do before IMFL and this just gives me more motivation to do what I need to do to kick ass at IMFL. It's less than 4 months away!

Thursday

Thursday was another brick workout with Texas Iron. After 2 warmup loops we did bike loop, run loop, bike loop, run loop, bike loop, run loop. Nothing really special, but I should've pushed it harder on the last run loop. I had too much energy left afterwards. It hurt running though since I hadn't run in about 5 days.

I weighed in at 181.5 this morning. I should be lower after this weekend since I have some long, tough workouts ahead of me.

One problem though. I have a monster wart on my foot. I went to the doc today and he froze part of it. Now I can't walk very well because it hurts a lot. I'll try it out tomorrow on my brick workout and see if I can run on Sunday since I have a 1.75 hour run. If not, I'm not going to get anymore treatments for this wart since IMFL is less than 4 months away and I have to run.

Swim

I swam 2100 yds this morning. Did about a 500yd warmup and then 16x100yds steady pace. I was pushing a bit and I did the entire workout in about 40 minutes which is great freaking time. Deep Eddy was very cold and very empty which is nice. I would've swam another 4x100 and then a 200yd cooldown but I had to get to work. My lats and arms overall are still sore from the workout on Monday. I really wish I could hit every one of those workouts for a month but fucking work gets in the damn way too often. If I hit them up for a month, I think I would make great progress.

I'm also feeling fat and lazy today. I weighed in at 183 but that's expecting since I drank 3 times this past weekend. Man, the older I get the less place alcohol has in my life. I drink from time to time but I can't remember the last time I was actually drunk. I'll be drinking when I go home for my sister's wedding and even then I'll probably have just 3-4 drink throughout a night with my family and that's saying a lot that it's that few.

4th Update

Yesterday was suppose to be a rest day, but as usual I did the J&A core workout. Today I'm pretty sore in my arms and my stomach. Swimming this morning was interesting. I was also suppose to run today but I skipped it. I just didn't feel like it and I wasn't feeling good either. I feel bad because I really needed to run because I'm not going to get another run in until Saturday or Sunday. Well, there is the TexasIron brick workout on Thursday so that'll be a run. I don't think I'm fully recovered from Buffalo Springs yet, but resting up a lot this weekend will probably help a bit. I also have gotten a lot of sleep lately.

Le Tour

Man, I'm excited that the Tour de France is back, but it's tough to go out for an easy 75 minute ride like your coaches said to when you watch Le Tour in the morning.

Today was McDonald's Day

As I posted before, I ate McDonald's today. I had a Number 2 combo which is a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. I also had an extra cheeseburger which was horrible, but the Quarter Pounder was actually decent. Well, now when someone says "I can't remember the last time I ate at McDonald's!", I can turn around and tell them exactly when the last time I ate McDonald's. Also, I'm feeling like crap already.

Buffalo Springs Race Report

After almost being done with my report on Tuesday night and me doing something stupid on the computer to erace the entire report, I've now found time to rewrite the report. Right now I'm watching the Prologue for Le Tour so since I'm sitting on my ass, I might as well type at the same time.

Buffalo Springs was my first half Ironman that I attempted and expected to complete. I tried to do Ironstar last year, but I DNF'ed about 1 mile into the run. Life was really rough at that point and my training wasn't there. Also, during the run, a running injury was acting up so I was expecting to DNF if something bothered me. I was prepared for the race and I wasn't going to risk further injury at a race that wasn't going to be phenomenal.

I was ready for Buffalo Springs. Of course I've had some running injuries acting up back in April, but those are mostly recovered. I left on Friday with Mike Coker. We met up with Meg, Charles, Anna, and Logan. The trip up to Lubbock was quite boring. The only interest things were the trail mix and the FlyingJ. About the trail mix, we stopped at a gas station. I got out my trail mix and left it on the top of my car. I drove off, heard this scraping sound for about 5 seconds and watched the trail mix fall off the back of my new Outback. BTW, my Outback did great on its first road trip. So, trail mix falls off, but it is saved! It falls off and lands on my rear window wiper. And with the joys of modern technology, Mike took a picture of it:

http://tri.phat32.com/photos/Buffalo_Springs_2006/P6230680.JPG

Yeah, that's a one in a million shot right there.

The FlyingJ was interesting. We stopped in Abilene to get some food and we just couldn't find anything healthy. All we could find were various Asian cuisines and fast food. We drove some more and stopped at the FlyingJ which had a Country Market restaurant attached. It was funny watching 6 fit, healthy people go into the restaurant, check out the buffet bar, walk out with their noses turned up, and say "Ugh, I guess I can eat here. There's nothing better around." We discovered an Italian menu that was better to eat from, but we completely stuck out in that place.

We pulled into Lubbock at around 9:30pm. Unfortunately, the only room that they had left when I made my reservation was a smoking room. Yay, it reminded me of my parents' homes and why I don't go home anymore. I think I had withdrawal symptoms for a few days afterwards. Other than smelling like ass, the room was decent.

Saturday wasn't that special. Mike and I got up, went to the race site, did a short swim, bike, and run, and then headed back to the rooms. We picked up our packets and headed back to the hotel room. Mike wanted to chill out in his room so I went to dinner with some Texas Iron folks. I was OK about this race until around 4pm that day. For some reason at that point, I started getting really nervous about the race. I was worried about the descents on the bike and the entire run. I mean, I've done the training and I know I'm ready, but I just got really nervous and anxious, mostly because this is my first race over an Oly where I have a shot at finishing. I had a ton of pasta at the Italian place and then went back to the hotel room. I chilled out and tried to go to bed at around 8:30. I just couldn't sleep. I was up until around 11:30 or so that night. Nerves and anxiousness for the race as well as other stuff going on in my life lately were on my mind. Not a great way to spend a night before a half Ironman.

I woke up the next and felt like crap. Well, I was just tired because the entire night before was very restless sleep. I got up, ate and got ready. I had everything laid out on the other bed so it was pretty easy to pack everything up. From training so much the last almost 2 years now, getting up at 4am isn't so bad anymore. I had 3 RP's even before I left the hotel room that morning. I met mike at 5 and we left for the course. I'm glad I talked Mike into leaving early because there was a long line to get to the parking area for the race. I like showing up as early as possible because you just never know what'll happen. Got parked, got our bikes out of the car, and started heading down to the transition area. Of course, I was still full of nervous energy.. It seemed like it took me forever to get my gear ready in the morning. I just felt rushed and nervous. I chatted with some other TexasIron guys as well. I got ready, and headed out of the T area. I ate my last ClifBar, had my Gatorade, and had my 4th and last RP.

At this point, it was about 20 minutes from the start of my wave and the pros had just gone off. I put on my wetsuit and got into the water. Once I got in the water, I relaxed a bit because I had a way to burn off some of my energy. Got out of the water and queued up behind the wave in front of me. I was still quite nervous though. The wave before us went off and now it was the fast, aggressive, and mean 25-29 men. I was still very nervous, but I lined up in an aggressive swim start position. I lined up on the inside and the second row from the front. finally, though, I calmed down. About 2 minutes from the horn blowing, I became absolutely calm and collected. I knew I could do this. I've done the work and I had nothing to worry about. I wished Geoff from TexasIron good luck and just chilled. The horn went off and my race had begun.

The first 500yds or so of the swim weren't fun. I wasn't comfortable and I couldn't get into a rhythm. I was breathing on almost every stroke on the right side. I got hit in the head a few times, I was swimming on top of people a lot and had people swimming on top of me. I had some guy's chest on my feet but a couple of hard kicks later and miraculously, my feet were clear. After the first left turn, I went to the inside of the course and just stopped. I took off my goggles, cleared them off water, put them back on, and just sat there for a few seconds. I had to catch my breath, scope out the rest of the course, and just regained my composure. I'm glad that I did this because after that I had a great swim. I relaxed, got into a rhythm and kept going. I passed 2 huge packs of swimmers from the previous wave, but I was also started to pass some orange caps, my wave, as well. I tend to do this where I get dropped fairly quickly in the beginning, but I end up passing people after awhile. I took the final left turn and started heading to the swim exit and I passed what seemed like at least 5 people in my age group in the last 500 meters.

I got up to the swim exit and had people help me out of the water. I really like this because I'm always dizzy and discombobulated out of the water. I had people trying to get my pull cord free and I was waving them off. I can do that on my own. I ran through the T area, but not that fast. My platar fasciitis was acting up so it didn't feel good to run on asphalt in bare feet. Also, I was just taking this race easy. It took me forever to get out of T1. I had a ton of stuff to put in my jersey pockets. I came out of T1 and passed the mount/dismount line by a few yards. Everyone bottlenecks up there and I just wanted to get out of that mess. I don't do the shoes on the pedals thing because with my current pedals, they unclip way too easily and I've dropped shoes twice in races this year alone.

I got clipped in and I was on the bike. Turq gave me some advice before the race. He said to not power up the first 2 hills and just to take them easy. I followed this advice pretty well. I got up out of the saddle, but I just needed to get my legs moving, but I didn't spike my heart rate at all. After these 2 hills, we were on some flats in the park with a decent tailwind. Nice! I headed out of the park and then headed back into the wind. Not nice! I tried to ease into the bike. I felt fine at first and like I wasn't pushing too hard. It felt good, but fast. Around Mile 18 though, I started having problems. One thing were that my hip flexors were starting to hurt already. Secondly, I was getting chaffing on some soft tissues in my crotch that don't feel that good. I found out that it is probably the edge of the pad in my shorts that's rubbing. Nothing I could do so I kept going.

Headwinds were punishing, tailwinds were great, and crosswinds were squirrely. I was bombing the straight downhills and taking it strong but not too strong on the hills. My fluid plan was working out well. I started out with a bottle of InfinIT with about 320 calories in it. I sucked on this for 30 minutes and then switched to a bottle of water for another 30 minutes. I kept up this pattern for the race which yielded me 3 bottles of InfinIT with about 1000 calories and 3 more bottles of water. I was also taking in Thermolytes, based upon Jamie's suggestion, the entire race. I was feeling good, but starting to hurt a bit. The first 20 miles took forever to go through, but 20-40 were better. The course is straight and mostly flat, but there is nothing to really look at which makes it very, very boring and therefore mentally challenging. I kept riding and my chaffing pain went away, but my hip flexor pain was growing. Not a good sign. I was actually looking forward to the hills so that I could get out of my saddle and stretch my hip flexors. I was also having lower left back pain which I only get in races, never in training. Weird.

At around Mile 40, I had some issues. I looked down and back and saw that my saddleback wasn't doing good. I should've replaced it before, but I just didn't. The two saddle straps had come off and it was hanging on only by the seatpost strap. I reached down, took it off, and put it in my jersey pocket. About a mile later, I hit a bump and the saddle bag came out. What happened is that my race belt was going around the middle of my jersey pockets which kept the saddle bag from going all the way into the pocket. I stopped, picked up the bag, and kept going. I was passed by about 5 guys and I had caught up with all of them within 10 minutes. I got stopped on hte bottom of the longest hill and I was able to catch up with them by powering up the hill.

I was heading back to the transition area and I was feeling good. My average speed was a little lower than what I wanted, but my hip flexors were on fire. I was also trying to push but yet save myself for the run as well. Luckily, heading back into the race site was a great tailwind. At one point, I saw Eric Gilmore, a fellow TexasIron athlete, ahead of me. When he heard me yell at him, he picked up the pace and of course, I kept up. For most of the race, I was in the 95-100rpm range. At this point, I had nice, flat, smooth roads with a tailwind. I was pusing 80-85rpm in a big gear and doing 25-26mph. I finally passed Eric and kept going. He said something like "I'm just waiting to get my running shoes on!" or something like that. It seems that Eric and I have developed some friendly competitiveness which is good because I push him on the swim and the bike and he pushes me on the run. I turned into the park and hit a headwind. Not fun going back into the transition area. My hip flexors were gone, but I don't need them on the run. Other than that, I felt pretty good.

I came down the last hill and headed into the T2 area. I came in fast and stopped short of the dismount line. Once again, I wasn't in a rush through T2. I didn't have much stuff to grab, but I grabbed it and headed out. I saw Megan on the way out and gave her a high five. This run was going to be brutal and it was going to be a test of my will power and determination to get through it. I realized a few days later that before this race, I had run more than 12 miles at once only twice before. Interesting.

Of course, the first mile and a half hurt. I stopped at the first portapotty and peed. It was the only time that I peed the entire race even with taking in almost 150oz of fluid on the bike. I then stopped at the first aid station. At previous races, I've taken in 2 cups of fluid, poured 1 cup on my head, and poured 1 cup down my crotch to cool me off. Well, this last step wasn't that fun this time. I poured the water down my shorts, and immediately stopped in my tracks because of the pain. Apparently, my chaffing issue got worse even though it really didn't hurt. The cold water mixed with the sweat and completely stung my chaffed area. I was wondering how I was going to keep going because this hurt really badly. Well, I just kept putting one foot in front of another and kept pushing. After about 45-60 seconds, the pain from my crotch went away. I was still hurting getting used to the run, but I eased up at about 2 miles into the run. I got my running legs and did pretty well climbing the first hill. I wasn't pushing myself, but I was still passing people. At around Mile 3, I saw Mark sitting underneath a tree. I also saw Betsy coming in from the bike at this point as well and I cheered her on. I was chatting with people as well and then we turned and hit a downhill. I've been practicing downhills and I try to put some time between me and others on the downhill. Having big quads and being a little heavier than other runners makes this easy. I powered down the hill, hit the Mile 4 rest stop and kept putting one foot in front of the other.

My nutrition plan for the run was to take some gels that have 150cals and 230mg of sodium per packet. I think I took them at Miles 2, 5, 8, and 11. In between, I took a Thermolyte at each rest stop. Because of this, I felt fine, no cramps, but I was a little tired. After Mile 4, there was another big hill. This one, I walked a total of about 10 seconds up that hill whereas everyone else was walking. That felt good. I topped the hill and then took a right turn down the most brutal part of the run. This was a little more than 1.5 miles out and then 1.5 miles back. Going out was a false flat up and then a slight downhill after the midway point. There was absolutely nothing to look at except other runners. I was talking to people and cheering on people I know and this helped me to keep going. After turning around, I started struggling mentally. I was walking the aid stations a lot and actually walking about 10 yards before the aid stations and 10 yards after the aid stations. I shouldn't have done this because it wasn't really giving me that much race. I just need to be tougher mentally next time. I finished the out and back and then turned left to go back down the hill.

I powered down the hill again and was cheering on others. At the bottom of the hill, I hit Mile 9 and it was getting tough. One guy in my age group started battling back and forth at this point. He got a head of me, but I passed him on the last big hill. He passed me on the flat, and I passed him on the downhill. At the bottom of the hill, I think I had about 20yds on him. I stopped at the aid station and he just flew by. I couldn't keep up because my energy was waning quickly. I tried to get some Dr. Pepper at that aid station to keep me going because I've heard of several people that do that. The caffeine and sugar keeps them going. I tried some Dr. P and I didn't like it. Too sweet and syrupy. It would have been great if it was warm and flat, but cold and fizzy is not cool.

I kept going. At some point, a 37 year old woman caught up with me and she and I ran together for about a mile. I was getting really, really tired. At the last aid station, I stopped again and she kept going and put some time on me. Well, I had nothing else to lose so I just kept going. The last mile was very, very tough. I walked maybe a total of 4 times the entire run and 2 of them were in the last mile. I almost stopped a couple of other times but someone passed me or someone cheered me on and kept me going. There was no reason for me to stop. I was still going strong, but I was just getting lazy and tired. I finally started hearing the announcer at the finish line and I was so happy about this. I was almost done. Someone said "100yd to the finish!" and I picked up the pace the best I could. As I was approaching the line, I tried to raise my arms. I couldn't do it; I was zapped on energy. I tried one arm. A little bit better. Finally, as I crossed the line, I put both arms up and I was done. I kept walking and I felt drained. I left everything on the course. I kept walking because I did not want to stop. I walked past the med tent and went to get some food and water. Damnit, no pizza! All I want afterwards is pizza! Bagels, fruit, beer, water and Gatorade.

I saw Andrea, Geoff, and Jamie. They asked my time and I said I think I crossed at 5:08. I crossed at 5:28 minus 20 minutes because of my wave and yep, 5:08ish was what I did. I was happy about this. I kind of wanted sub-5, but 5:08 is amazing and I'm happy with it. When the results came out, my official time was 5:07:59. I had a swim time of 28:31 which is good with a pace of 1:30, but the swim was about 150m short. Put me 19th in my age group. T1 was 2:10 but I knew that was slow. My bike was good with a 2:43:10 which is an average of 20.59mph which is also 19th in my age group. T2 was 1:43 which is OK, but I had a run time of 1:52:25. That put me at an 8:35min/mile pace and I'm happy about that considering this run course was very brutal. That put me at 22nd on the run, but 19th overall in my age group. This race was odd because I'm usually higher on the bike, higher on the swim, but lower on the run. I was pretty consistent in my age group across each leg which is odd. I'll take it because it means that my run is getting better.

I learned a lot this race. I want to run more and get better at running off the bike. My fluid intake technique worked this time and this race is hot and brutal. I need to do something about my hip flexors because it isn't going to be fun in Florida with burnt out hip flexors at Mile 20. I can do well in the heat, and I just need to not worry about the races. I'm sure I'll be nervous for IMFL, but I won't be for another HIM anymore.

Of course, my coaches have been great and they helped out a lot with training. Well, I don't have much to say but it took me almost 2 hours to write this, no wait, almost 4 hours since I lost it all on Tuesday night.

Well, I had a good race, it hurt, but I had fun. Thanks everyone for your support.