Monthly Weight Loss Update

Well, 1 month ago today I weighed in at 190. This morning, I weighed in at 185.5. I lost about 4.5 pounds in April which is good, but it could've been better. I went from 190 on April 1st down to 186 on April 10th. Since then, my weight has been fluctuating between 186 and 189 from eating crap, drinking even more crap, and not exercising as much as I should. However, April showers bring May flowers or some shit like that, right? Well, this month I'm going to blossum and get down to 180 by the end of the month. I've gained the discipline to get my weight down and my gym is now open so that I can strengthen my shoulder and my left calf so that I can swim and run more.

Oh, speaking of my leg, I was cast for new orthodics yesterday and I should get them in 2-3 weeks. They are expensive, but I need them. To be a bit more specific, I have a tibial varum of my right leg and a bad forefoot varus of the left foot. With the forefoot varus, what is suppose to happen is your heel and forefoot are both to be on the ground at the same time in a certain alignment. I don't have that alignment. If my heel is on the ground properly, then I'm walking on the outside of my foot with my first metatarsal barely touching the ground if at all. If my forefoot is on the ground properly, I have a severe calcaneal eversion which makes me put a lot of pressure on the medial side of my heel which is what is causing my PF issues. It is good to know this because I can be conscious of it and do things to help out. I'll probably always have to have orthodics though because it is very unlikely that my foot will reform into a better shape. That's about $400/yr I have to spend on orthodics but I need to be able to run without pain.

LT Workout For Sure

I did the Tuesday Nighter and I actually was there on time. The B pack left and I was quite surprised. I was able to hold onto the pack for a full 2 laps. Most of the time I barely make 1/3 of a lap. I just have to say that it is really cool doing 25-30mph in a pack of 20 people about 1' from each other. It's fun as hell. My heart rate was 152 bpm or higher for about 55% of the time with a max of 178bpm. At one point it was a bit crazy because someone passed me on the left going around a left hand turn. Well, they brushed my shoulder and I ended up getting a bit squirrely. I thought I was going to completely bite it, but I didn't and was able to keep the rubber side down. Everyone else started yelling at this guy because he shouldn't have done that. It was fun and hopefully I'll have a good ride next week as well.

Taking a break from Texas Iron and falling off the wagon

I've fallen off the weight loss wagon lately. I was at 186 about two Fridays ago. This morning, I was 188 or so. This past weekend and the weekend before was a bit too much food, a bit too much beer, and not enough exercise. I'm getting back on it though. Well, I'm trying and I'll try to be around 180 by the end of May. I was on track to be 184 by the end of April but that isn't going to happen without some colon cleansing.

I'm taking a break from Texas Iron for awhile. The main reason why I'm doing Texas Iron is tie all the workouts together to get something more out of my workouts. I can do 3 swims, 3 bikes, and 3 runs a week. Doing the correct workouts is what I'm really trying to get out of it, but right now all that I'm doing is 2 swims and 3 bikes a week. If I'm not getting that much out of it, I can't justify the $75/month. I'll be back at some point once I'm running fully again. Hopefully it'll only be a month, but it could be as much as 6 months.

On the other hand, my PF is getting a bit better. Dr. Phil thinks I have some calcaneal eversion and wants to modify my orthodics to fix it a bit. I also have some tough ass exercises such as doing exercises for my posterior tibialis with 50lbs and my peroneals with 60lbs.

Other than that, not much else to add. I'm swimming twice a week because of my shoulder, but my biking is getting decent. I did the Taco Ride on Saturday and I did it under 1:30 which is the fastest time I've ever done that ride. My heart rate was 153bpm or above for 63% of the time. I was booking it.

Yep, that's about it. I just don't have much else to add at the moment.

Change in plans for exercising

Lately, I've been doubling up my workouts during the week. Monday will be off, Tuesday will be a swim and a bike, Wednesday will be off, Thursday will be a swim and a bike, and Friday will be off again. The weekend gets whatever I feel like but it is usually a swim and a 2 hour bike ride. Next week, I'm going to bike on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and then swim on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday morning. I keep having days where I work out a lot and need to eat a lot followed by days where I don't do any exercise and therefore my caloric intake is down those days as well. I think it is causing a bit too much of a difference in my energy levels and I'm going to try to even it out a bit and see how I feel.

The reason for this is that my workouts on Thursday were crap because I felt like I had absolutely no energy that day. My sleep has been off a bit between work and school and the biggest change is my diet and I'm dropping weight pretty quickly now. I'm down to 186 as of this morning and that is about 14 pounds off of my high of around 200 over the winter, but I need to slow it down for a while. It's starting to affect my training and that isn't good.

Tuesday was a decent swim in the morning with a Tuesday Nighter later that day. The thing about the Tuesday Nighter was that it was my 3rd one that I've been to, but I've participated in only 1 of them. The last 2 times I've showed up late riding from work. Wednesday was off and Thursday was a lazy swim in the morning and then a Texas Iron bike ride after work. We did some hill repeats and this is where I really didn't have the energy to get up the hills quickly. I ascended pretty fast, but I still felt like crap.

I had my orthodics adjusted this week and my heel is feeling much, much better now. The incidences of pain that I had where I was walking around are about 80-90% gone, but the heel is still sensitive to touch. It is getting better and I really want to run again soon.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The good stuff is that I took it pretty light this past weekend. My weigh in on Friday was 186.5, Monday was 188.5, but today I was back down to 187. I had a decent swim on Sunday morning and this morning.

The bad stuff was that I went 19:36 at the time trial on Thursday night and the last 3 times were 19:37, 19:39, and 19:45. I can't get much faster no matter what the conditions. Other than that, I didn't ride my bike the rest of the weekend partly because of The Ugly.

The ugly stuff was that as I was warming up for the time trial, I came --> <-- this close to getting hit by a car. I've been buzzed before but I ended up on the ground this time. I was barreling down Mopac for the warmup and there is a part where cars cut across to get to the tennis club. Someone went in front of me and I thought it was a bit too close. The person behind them was a complete idiot. They started, saw me and stopped. Not a problem until they decided that they could make it in front of me and started going again when I was doing about 28mph. Luckily, they stopped the second time without running me over but it was very close. I had to turn to the right or I would've hit their front bumper. I was in this mess of trying to stop, turn, get out of my pedals, trying bailing and trying to not bail at the same time. I got past the car and hit the ground. I got up immediately just in time to see the car drive off without stopping to check to see if I was OK. I have some nice bruises, I was mentally rattled a bit, and I have some scratches on my bike. I was pissed but lucky as well and now I don't want to talk about this anymore except for the fact that by the end of this weekend, there will be a Please Be Kind To Cyclist sign at that intersection.

Whoa, doggie!

Did the Tuesday Nighter again last night. I don't know what was up with me, but it felt like I was doing a cyclocross race. I had absolutely no energy riding out there and because of that, I ended up being late and riding by myself. I started feeling better the last half of the ride, but I'm still perplexed at what happened. Maybe my nutrition was off for some reason. It was hot but not that hot. Anyways, on the way back in, I put my head down and just kept pedaling. At one point, I looked up and there was this dog sauntering out into the road. When I got closer, it started coming after me and I had to pedal really quickly to get past him. I didn't know if he wanted to run alongside me or tip me over and eat my face. Either way, I used the adrenaline rush to get the hell out of there.

I swam 2800 yds this morning. I took it pretty easy to see how my shoulder reacted and it wasn't bad at all. It was good to get a nice, easy swim in where I work on form a bit. That's it for the last 2 days.

188!

My weigh in this morning was 188. After my weigh in of 189 on Friday, that means I'm officially no longer above 190. And I've lost 10 pounds since about February 8th. I'm almost back to my race of 187 before I did the Longhorn half last year. I think I have it figured out again and I think sub-180 is pretty doable at this point. It's only 8 more pounds and I've lost 10 so far. Should be cake, right? The biggest thing that I've done is just watch my calorie intake. I've reduced the candy and other sweets that I munch on at work by about 80%. Another trick that I've learned is that if I come home from class and I'm going to be going to bed within an hour for whatever reason, I'll just have a cup of cottage cheese for dinner. Yes, I know, but I don't mind it and a cup of it is enough to fill me up. I could load up on a normal dinner, but I keep hearing that if you eat right before you go to bed, it isn't that good for you if you are trying to lose weight. I'm eating a lot more fruit as well. I'm finally seeing some progress and it feels rewarding. Finally, if your doc says to avoid the sun because the antibiotics you are taking will make you sensitive to the sun, they really mean it!

I was a dirty, dirty boy

I took a shower earlier today at about 5:30pm and it was my first shower since Friday morning. Yeah, I know it's gross. I didn't shower on Saturday because I was working in the yard all day long and I was going to go out with one of my friends later that day and I was going to shower before that. He bailed on me so I lazily sat on the couch until I nearly passed out. I went straight to bed and got up this morning to swim of about 2000m. My shoulder was acting up a bit which wasn't a good sign. After that was about a 1:45 bike ride. It was an absolutely gorgeous day today as well. Not a cloud in the sky and about 75 degrees. Nearly perfect except for the wind. After the bike ride was some more yard work and it was a perfect day for that as well. Then, it was time for a shower where I shaved my head, my legs, and my face of which all of them were badly in need of a shave. I'm exhausted at this point and I'm looking forward to 9 hours of sleep tonight and a rest day tomorrow.

Lazy on updates

I've been lazy about updates this week so let's do my usual quick recap. Monday was a rest day. Tuesday was a swim in the morning with T3. I only did about 2500m that morning. My upper body was feeling fatigued from the 3 tough swims last week. I had a great week of swimming last week, but I decided to make this a rest week a bit. On Tuesday night, I did the Tuesday Nighter unofficial bike race. I did the B pack and I was dropped after a lap. It was quite humbling. I rode out there from work and I got about 1:15 in the saddle. Wednesday was a weight session. Thursday was a workout at Steiner Ranch with Texas Iron. Everyone else did a brick workout but I did a pure bike workout and got about 55 minutes of riding in. It wasn't easy because we did a major hill climb on 620. Friday was suppose to be a swim in the morning but as I was driving out, I was seeing lightning. There's nothing worse than getting in the water, swimming 200m, and then getting out due to lightening. I decided to turn around and head into work. I arrived at about 5:30am. I also skipped a weight lifting sessions because work got in the way. What else? My Monday weigh in was 190 and my Friday weigh in was 189. I had an OK training week. I got some tough bike rides in but I slacked on swimming and weights a bit. I'll try to be more consistent next week.

I got my bike ride in!

I'm just going to recap today. I swam my lats off in the morning with a swim. I'm still surprised that I was able to hold those paces for that 8x100m. I'm starting to put some things together about using my lats more and stacking my hips when I swim. It's progress and it feels good. I then took a 3 hour nap that felt great. After that, I went for a 2:10 bike ride. BTW, I'm a bit grumpy when I wake up from naps and it takes awhile for me to get going. The first 30 minutes of the bike ride reflected this. It was a bit of a harder bike ride with my heart rate in the 140-150bpm for the entire time. That isn't super hard, but it's harder than what I've been doing and my heart rate was pretty consistently in that range. Also, my legs were pushing it almost the entire time. After that, I came home and did about 3 hours of yard work. Yard work is enjoyable, but it is exhausting. I mowed, put some sod down, and then put down fertilizer, fungicide, and bug treatment. For dinner, I went to Zen because I was starving and didn't want to wait for dinner to be made. Now, I'm sitting my butt on the couch, icing my foot, and watching The Girls Next Door which is one of the best TV shows ever!

Overall, I had a great day.

The Weather Man Sucks!

The weather man sucks! He's almost always wrong and he ruined my workouts this weekend. I went to swim this morning and I had a great swim. At one point, we did 8x100m on a 1:55 interval. I did the first one in 1:30 and all of them were 1:34 or lower. That's awesome! Afterwards, I wanted to go for a 2 hour bike ride, but it is raining. The only other thing that I'm suppose to do today is some yard work. However, I can't do that when it is raining as well. The forecast yesterday said there was a very small chance of rain. I'm going to take a nap (yay, naps!) and hopefully it'll dry up so I get go on a bike ride and do some yard work.

I didn't get a workout in yesterday. I was about to go on a ride, but it was 58 degrees. That's a bit too cold for me and I was going to be miserable. I ditched the ride and was going to do it today, but the rain issue came up.

Friday was a weight lifting session and a 1:15 bike ride. My weigh in was 190 on Friday morning. My foot is still bothering me. I'm about to try wearing an air cast to see if it'll help me heel get better. Well, it's nap time for me now.

Great Swim, Lazy Bike Ride, Part II

Yep, I pretty much had a copy of my workouts on Tuesday. I swam in the morning and I actually had a pretty good swim. I lifted weights yesterday and I could feel my muscles feeling a bit better today. My shoulder wasn't as wonky. The main set of the workout was a 600m swim. I was able to do it in about 10:06 which is about 1:40/100m pace.

The afternoon workout was a bike ride with Texas Iron. Everyone else did a transition workout at Barton Springs. However, it wasn't a good workout for me. I just did some 1 mile loops after a 20min warm up. It sucked and I didn't feel like I did much of a workout today at all. I tried to do one mount/dismount but as soon as I dismounted and started walking across the parking lot bare foot, I stepped on a rock with my left heel. That is the one that is hurt right now and it was quite painful. I decided to not do that again. I'm grumpy now.

Great Swim, Lazy Bike Ride

Well, that was my workout summary for yesterday. I had a great swim in the morning with T3. It was early but I made it there. After getting pissed off at my usually Tuesday meeting that pisses me off, I went for a bike ride. It wasn't a great bike ride for many reasons but the main reason was because of the wind. I estimate that I had a 20mph or so wind pretty much the entire ride but sometimes it was coming at my straight on, sometimes it was a crosswind, and sometimes it was a tailwind. That made the ride very difficult because the crosswinds would blow me all over the place and I couldn't get into aero because of that. When I had a tailwind, I would be in a 53-12 pedaling and my heart rate would be low. Headwinds are just miserable. I did get out for about 1:10. I have weights today and then a rough repeat of Tuesday's workout on Thursday and I'll definitely have 2 good workouts that day.

I want to run!

I want to run so badly right now! However, this damn foot is still holding me back. I may try to start running again next weekend because I think I found the magic bullet to this issue. I have a Dorsi Wedge that I've used in the past. It's kind of cumbersome sleeping in it though. I've been sleeping with it on every night for the last 4 nights and my foot feels great today. Absolutely fantastic. I'm going to get in the habit of sleeping with it every night to get this cleared up really quickly. Between this, the exercise, and my orthodics, I think I have this thing nailed. The only thing that Laurie tells me is that she doesn't want me running until my heel pain is gone. I want to run, damnit, so I'm going to do everything that I can to get rid of this now. The only other symptoms that I have is that my heel is sore when I'm on my feet all day long.

This past weekend wasn't much. I did a 1:45 hour ride on Saturday and then a good swim practice on Sunday. I went to go do yoga on Sunday, but it was closed for some sort of religious holiday or something like that. My weigh in this morning was 191. Damnit! On a good note, I did have a good swim on Sunday morning. After feeling like crap on Thursday morning, I've been building myself up mentally since then for a good swim on Sunday and it was successful. The interesting thing to note was at the end of the workout, we had to do 6x100m fast on an interval. My times for the first 4 were 1:34, 1:35, 1:37, 1:35. Mo told me to stack my hips more when I was swimming since I was getting tired. I followed his advice and the next two 100m intervals were 1:31 and 1:32. Not bad at all.

Hard bike ride with Texas Iron

I had a hard bike ride with Texas Iron last night. We did the Shoal Creek loop. Most of the others did a brick workout but since I'm not running at the moment, I just did a bike ride. I did 4 loops and each one was in the 9:28-9:38 range so I was pretty consistent. My heart rate was in the 160-165 range for each one with a few spikes and drops in there as well. My LT isn't high enough at the moment to push 170bpm or higher for nearly 10 minutes. Even doing 170+ for 4 minutes kills me at the moment. I'll break through that pretty soon though.

Yesterday morning was a horrible swim. I just felt completely off and uncoordinated. Chrissie said that my stroke looked fine, but I felt horrible. I cut it short after about 2600m. Here is the thing that. I really wanted to have a good, strong swim workout.

I didn't work out on Tuesday or Wednesday due to my anatomy lab test which kicked me butt. I don't know the score yet. Also, I blanked out and realized this morning that I misidentified the cerebellum. How the hell could I do that?

My weigh in this morning was 190 even without working out 2 days this week. Woohoo! I was hoping to break through the 190 barrier but I guess a weekend of spinach and rice cakes will get me there on Monday.

Done by 7:48am

Well, my workouts are done for the day. I'm sitting at work munching on breakfast and my workouts are finished. That's a nice feeling. I got up at 4:15 this morning to go swim. Surprisingly, I was pretty wide awake. I swam 3100yds at Courtyard and I was pushing it a bit as well. I was feeling really good. The main set was 16x100 and I did pretty well the first half. It is weird because my swim stroke can vary greatly even during a single workout. I did the first half of the main set fantastically because I was focusing on using my lats. I really wasn't changing the position of my arm at all but I was using my lats to propel myself through the water. I really like this feeling because it feels like I'm swimming very strong. Also, it lessens the burden on my bad left shoulder and my shoulder thanks me for it. Unfortunately, my lats aren't too happy and when I really concentrate on doing this, I can get about 700-1000 yards before my lats are done and my form goes to shit.

Other than that, my weigh in this morning was 195. I don't know how the fuck that happened. However, last week I've decided to forage from the candy jars at work a lot less. We'll see how that helps but it should help greatly. The problem is that last night I made some chewy gluten-free chocolate chip cookies and they are absolutely delicious. I'm a huge fan of chewy cookies and these are almost like eating raw cookie dough. Hopefully the lard asses at work will go through them by 10am today so I don't have eat anymore myself. BTW, xanthum gum is freaking expensive.

Also, I got chafed in my armpits when I rode yesterday. I didn't realize this until I sprayed my armpits this morning with deodorant. That woke me up a bit.

I'm done!

I'm done with my workouts for the weekend. All that I did was 2 bike rides. I did about an hour hard yesterday. I was going to do more but I got called in to help out at Performance Wellness in the afternoon. It was fine. Today was a 2 hour bike ride. I really think that my bike legs are coming back pretty well now. I'm not to the point where I was last October, but I'm not far off either. The reason why I say that was today was windy as hell. I was able to power through the wind pretty well and my legs felt fine. They were burning a bit, but they weren't anywhere near giving up. Also, I rode 2 days in a row and my crotch wasn't sore and that's a good sign! I was going to swim this morning, but I skipped that. I went to Sue's party last night with every intention of leaving by 10:30. I didn't leave until 12:30. I felt like I needed to sleep instead of swim but to make up for that, I plan on being at the pool at 5:30 tomorrow morning.

Light Weight Lifting Session

The only workout that I did today was a light weight lifting session at lunch. However, I'm exhausted right now. I've been running around doing errands all day long. Also, some good news. My morning weigh in was 191.5 this morning. I'm actually losing weight again!

Breakthrough

As I've mentioned before, I'm not running. It's because I have some heel pain that I've been battling for 2 years now. It finally got pretty bad and that is when I went to see Dr. Laurie. I've been seeing her since December or so and I've made a bit of progress, but not what I was expecting. But I made a breakthrough last Monday. Laurie noticed that when I tried to dorsiflex my foot, it would try to dorsiflex but would also tend to evert pretty badly as well. Long story short is that the neuromuscular connections had gotten off somehow and/or the muscles in the posterior compartment of my lower leg had become really weak. With them weak, the muscles of the anterior compartment were pulling on them all the time which caused the inflammation where the posterior muscles inserted into my heel. I started doing some exercises to strengthen the posterior muscles and I've been doing them pretty regularly as well. Then, I also put my orthodics back in my shoes. Today, she was working on my foot. She was doing stuff that had me jumping off the table and sweating after 30 seconds not even 2 weeks ago. Today, it didn't hurt at all. Fucking hallelujah! I may actually be running again soon. I'm so happy that we've finally figure out what the hell is wrong with my foot and I'm amazed at how quickly it healed when the problem was discovered. I'm happy if you can't tell.

Today's workout was a tough training workout with Texas Iron. It was a good one and I needed it. Time for bed soon because I'm exhausted and I've got only 6 hours of sleep each of the last 2 nights.

Before I talk about my workouts, I want to talk about my orthostatic hypotension. It's annoying and it seems to be getting worse. However, I seem to have gotten really good and running around lightheaded with my vision going black with being on the verge of passing out.

I swam this morning. I haven't swam in the morning in over 2 months. It was tough. I almost Colleened the workout when I woke up this morning since it was so cold and dark. However, I powered through and went to the pool. I got in about 2800yds this morning. It wasn't bad. I'm trying to do more morning swims. It is nice because it gets me up and moving early and I'm at work by 7:30 or so which means I can leave early. In addition to that, my normal schedule is class on Monday and Wednesday and swimming on Tuesday and Thursday. This doesn't leave me any more weeknights to do other stuff. Since I'm starting to do more two-a-day workouts, I need to balance my time a bit better. At lunch, I did a brief weight lifting session. I had to cut it short because I had a "homework" assignment to do. I'm shadowing Dr. Phil as part of my requirements for getting into PT school. He had me look up some articles on femoroacetabular impingement. I looked up a few of them and really read one of them. I found it pretty interesting and stuff like this just reinforces my career change as the right thing to do for me.

Attack The Hills Ride

Before I talk about my workout, I want to complain about cycling. With swimming, all you need is a suit, goggles, and a towel. With running, you need shoes, socks, and shorts. With cycling, you need a bike, pedals, shoes, helmet, glasses, blowout bag, water bottle, gloves, cell phone, keys, air pump, jersey, and shorts. Before my ride today, I forget the shoes, air pump, and water bottle. Damnit.

I rode after work today. It was perfect cycling weather, too. It was sunny and about 70 degrees without much wind. You don't get cold but you can sweat a bit if you work hard. I was going to ride right after work, but see the first paragraph for why that didn't happen today. I came home and quickly got everything ready and left. My goal for this workout was to "attack the hills" and knowing how I ride, it turned into "attack everything". I only wanted to ride for an hour so I went out Southwest Pkwy. It has some OK hills I tried to attack every single one. I got my heart rate up to over 170bpm a couple of times. When I would crest the hill, I would relax a bit and then I would feel like I was going too slow so I kicked it up a notch. This went on for the entire ride. I only got buzzed once too and I was surprised at that since it was the middle of rush hour traffic. Overall, it was a great ride and has put me into a fabulous mood for the rest of the night.

Weekend Workouts

Not much new this past weekend. I did my 2 hour loop from my house. I think it is funny because no matter how fast or how easy that I do it, I always get back to my house in about 1:55. Sunday was a morning swim and then an afternoon yoga which I haven't been to in about 3 weeks. Laurie adjusted my back on Saturday morning to see if that would help out with my low back pain when I biked. It was better and didn't start hurting until about 1:15 into the ride. I have some gunk built up in my left shoulder when I swim and that feels weird. My foot is feeling much better, too. Oh, my weigh in on Monday morning was 192.5. I guess that's it.

I'm not a wuss like Colleen

Yesterday was a nasty day in Austin. It was cold and rainy for most of the day. I decided about midway through the day that I just really didn't want to swim that night. My typical schedule is class on Monday and Wednesday nights with swimming on Tuesday and Thursday nights. This leaves me no weekday nights to do stuff. Skipping the swim workout would be nice since it would allow me to have a weeknight off. I left work latish and was driving home and was determined to sit on the coach and/or do stuff around the house. It was going to be fantastic. However, at one point in the road, I go left to go home and I go right to go swim. I was going left until about 30 seconds before the split in the road. I decided to go right. Damn! I ended up getting to the pool about 5-10 minutes late but I jumped in my lane. It was freaking cold, too, and the wind was blowing pretty fiercely as well. I swam about 3000m last night. Also, I noticed that I'm getting faster, too! I can now swim 100m in 1:35 pretty easily where I was struggling to get it under 1:40 about 2 months ago. I feel better, too. I got out of the pool and quickly got dressed. Yes, I was out there in the cold unlike Colleen, but it still wasn't comfortable.

This morning's weigh in was 192.5. That is up 0.5 from last Friday, but down 2 from Monday's weigh in. I have sub-190 in sight, now! Within 2 weeks, I'll be under 190. Damnit, it is going to happen.

Windy Ride

I needed to get some good cardio in today so I brought my bike to work. I rode during lunch and it was a perfect 65 degrees which is my ideal temp to ride in. Unfortunately, it was windy and as usual, it was the windy from the southeast. It was about 27 miles or so and I did it in 1:40 for an avg speed of about 16mph. However, that time is including stops. Also, it was windy as hell so going out was a bitch but I barely pedaled coming back in. I saw about 4 other cyclist and it was just a great ride today.

For some more news, I put my orthodics back into my shoes on Monday and my feet are feeling so much better now. It's quite amazing. Also, my gym is having political issues so I don't have any access to it until the new one at work opens up which may be next week or next month.

Good Swim

Not much to write about. I had a good swim tonight. I was swimming strong and I felt like I was really pushing it. The workout was fun and I told Mo about it as well. I was pushing the other 2 guys in my lane. At the night practices, I'm usually one of the fastest people there. I haven't been to the morning practices in awhile and there are usually faster people there, but the lanes tend to be more crowded as well. My weigh in yesterday was 194.5 which was expected, but my weigh in this morning was 193.5 so I'm going down after splurging this weekend.

I killed Bambi

Before I get to my story about how I killed Bambi, let me review last week really quickly. Thursday was a pretty good swim with T3. I swam people out of my lane so that was a nice feeling and I was the fastest in the water that night. I'm afraid to go back to mornings because I'll definitely get my ass kicked. I do feel like I am getting faster though. My Friday weigh in was 192 so I've lost about 6 pounds since February 5th. That's a good sign. My weigh in tomorrow won't be close to that because of what I did this past weekend.

This past weekend I did the Leakey Death Ride. It's a ride put on by Richelle every year. I keep hearing that it is a fun time and I wanted to actually go this year and break in my sleeping bag and tent that I got last year and haven't used yet. I decided to go about a month ago and was actually looking forward to it. We camped at the Lost Pines State Nature Area in Vanderpool, TX. Each day is a ride if everyone feels like it. There are also some trails for those that want to run.

I meant to leave at around 1pm on Friday. I left at 3:45pm. Yeah, I was running behind but oh well. The trip up there was uneventful for the most part. The roads were very scenic, twisty, and turny. It was fun. I don't venture out of Austin into Texas much so this was a nice break. I was driving along and there were deer all over the place because it was getting close to dusk. I came upon a group of deer with about 4 on the right side of the road and 1 on the left. I thought it was pretty effective to honk my horn when I got near them to spook them away from me. Well, this time the one on the left ran in front of me at the last second. I was going well over 60mph and probably close to 70mph when it ran right in front of me. I heard a thud from where it hit the front and then there was a definite pause of a second or two. Ok, it could've been less than half a second but this was one of those time stands still moments. After this 2 seconds, I hear the thud, thud as my car tires run over something.

I pull over to the side of the road to make sure that the deer is dead and to see what happened to my car. I check out my car first. You hear all of these stories about people hitting deer in the road and it nearly totals their car. I checked my front bumper and found no damage because deer guts and deer hair. I check it over pretty carefully and I see no major damage at all. I walk down the road to check out the deer. It's out in the middle of the road and the speed that I was going as well as running over the damn thing, I'm pretty sure that it didn't suffer. I get up to it and check it out and it is definitely dead. It's still twitching for a few seconds but it stops pretty quickly. I'm glad that it was dead because I didn't want to have to run over it again to put it out of its misery. There are guts all over the place and then I see why it really didn't do much damage to my car. It was only about 40 pounds and it was definitely a fawn because it still had white spots. Yep, I just roadkilled Bambi. I drove back to the campsite which was about 5 minutes away and took these pictures. BTW, my car still smells like deer. I was calm, cool, and collected through all of this. I don't know why, but I was surprisingly. I felt bad for killing the deer because I don't like killing innocent animals and this is only the 2nd time I killed anything with my car. I did learn that I should be a lot more careful when there are deer out and about.









Got to the campsite and pitched my tent and slept that night. I have to say that my recent tent and sleeping bag purchase were damn good purchases because I'm really happy with both of them.

The next day was the ride. Richelle and Sharron tricked me into doing a 58 mile loop instead of the 40 miles that I wanted to do. I had brought my road bike because it has a triple chainring and I've heard about the killer hills here. I got out on the road and my hands went numb in about 5 minutes. Not a good sign but I get going. The temperate was fantastic. It was the low 60s and overcast at the beginning. It got warmer and the sun came out later though. The majority of the big hills are at the very beginning of the ride. I think it took us nearly an hour and 20 minutes to go 18 miles. The first hill was the worst though and I think that hill was a mile long. I got warmed up really quickly after that. It was very, very pretty though and the descents were scary as hell. After those 20 miles or so, it was more or less flat the rest of the way. One bad thing was that there was a lot of chip seal which is very uncomfortable to ride on. My ass and my arms were sore about half way through the ride. We chatted in our group and didn't have any major incidents during the ride. It was great. Sharron and I picked it up a bit at one point, put it in the big chainring, and was hauling ass. That was fun. We got back to the campsite and I think I nearly ate everything in sight. I had couscous and a package of tuna for dinner and that was a decent camping meal. The temp the rest of the day was nice but it was windy as hell. We all went to bed and the wind kept up the entire night. It was tough to sleep through but I got a decent amount of sleep that night.

We got up the next day and almost no one rode. The wind was brutal and I hate riding into the wind so I had no problems skipping it. Without a ride, that means it is time for breakfast! Rob and Cindy were heading to breakfast while most other people ran. I joined them because I wasn't running. We got to the Lost Pines Cafe in Utopia, TX and had a damn good country breakfast. I had French toast, ham, and hashbrowns as well as Rob's hashbrowns and Cindy's bacon. Yum! We headed back and I found out that Lisa and Lynda were now going to breakfast. Alright, second breakfast! We went there and I had some scrambled eggs and a bit of Lisa's delicious hubcap sized pancakes. When we were leaving, we saw a stray dog across the street. I walked up to it and it scurried away a bit but I worked my dog whispering magic and it came up to me and enjoyed me petting it. It was a sweet little dog, too. Lisa came over to pet it and then Lynda went back inside to get the dog the leftover pancake. She came back out and the dog definitely was hungry. You could tell it was protective of its new food and it was really funny. At first we thought it was trying to eat the entire pancake at once but it was just trying to get it all in its mouth to walk away and eat it somewhere else. It would try to pick up all the little pieces and when it would pick up one, two would fall out. Imagine carrying your laundry around the house. It finally put down the pancake, ate a bit of it, and then carried the rest off the entire time it was dropping a piece here and there and picking it back up. It did seem like a sweet dog.

We were off from the cafe and about 5 minutes around the corner, we saw the last bit of a wreck. Apparently, a couple of guys were riding their motorcycles when one lost control and bit the dust. Since both Lisa and Lynda are two (very hot) nurses, they pulled over to help. The guy that bit it was off to the side of the road sitting down. His buddy was pushing the injured guy's bike out of the road. The nurses took over and were examining the downed guy. He seemed to be doing pretty well and he was very receptive for the help. Luckily, he was wearing a helmet, chaps, and a ton of protective gear. He seemed to have his wits about him and was doing decently well. Another couple of guys pulled up and called the ambulance. Within about 2 minutes, we heard the sirens starting to wail and they were there in about 3 minutes. The nurses relayed all the information to the paramedics. He probably had a concussion and the patient realized it. He was actually pretty cool. I know a lot of tough guys that'll just try to get up once something like this happens and try to walk it off. Luckily, this guy didn't do anything like that, just sat down, and was very cooperative. He got strapped to a stretcher and loaded into the ambulance. He had a neck brace and that was just a precaution. I snapped some pics with my camera phone and they are below. I thought this entire ordeal was interesting and it makes me glad that I am going to go into the medical field soon.












The guy seemed like he was going to be OK so we went back to the campsite. We exchanged numbers and email addresses because it seemed like nearly everyone wanted to go to Big Bend so we'll keep in touch about that. I really want to go now! I miss how much fun backpacking is and I've been browsing REI all night long for gear that I want, I mean gear that I need. The drive home was uneventful. Now, I have to finish cleaning up and I'm going to hit the sack soon. My back is really looking forward to having my bed again.

Overall, I had a pretty kick ass weekend. The good thing is I think I've met some more people to hang out with because even though I've been here for nearly 4 years now, I still have issues meeting people to hang out with.

184bpm

That is what I got my heart rate up to today. It hurt a bit, too. I did a spin this morning and did 10x1min fast, 2 min easy over the course of 60 minutes. I also needed to burn off some stress so taking my heart rate higher usually does that. I really haven't worked out the last 2 days because I've been studying for an Anatomy test. It was a good workout this morning and I'm happy with it.

Nice ride

I had a nice ride yesterday. I rode with some Texas Iron people. We did about an hour and 45 minutes. I got some nice cycling tan lines now as well. Damnit. Well, I was going to get them sooner or later. I swam with T3 this morning. I had every intent to go riding afterwards, but that didn't happen. I needed to do things around the house and my body was telling me to rest so I did. I'm about to go to bed soon and hopefully I will be able to actually sleep tonight.

Eh, my foot still hurts

Eh, my foot still hurts. Against doctor's orders, I went and did the elliptical machine today for about 30 minutes. I did it just to confirm that doing it still bothers my heel and I was write. I had to do it to make sure that I had two data points instead of just one. It looks like now all that I'm capable of doing is swimming, biking, weights and yoga. Running and elliptical are out. Bummer. However, Laurie and I have think we've found what has been keeping my heel from getting better. I'll post more about that tomorrow.

Also, I can't sleep right now even though I'm dead tired. I think I had too much sugar today in the form of Girl Scout cookies.

Hard swim

I had a hard swim last night thanks to Chrissy pushing me. I swam 3450m and my chest was hurting by half way through it. I also lifted in the morning and I find it strange but I really think that I swim better after lifting weights earlier in the day. I can't explain it. Oh, I think the 4th pair of tri shorts in 2 weeks is about to go see-through. Damnit, this is going to be expensive replacing all the shorts at once. My weigh in today was 193.5 so I'm finally start to win the Battle of the Pudge.

I got my heart rate up!

The only exercise today was a 60min spin with 10x1min fast, 2min easy. I was able to get my heart rate up to 172 or so on some of the intervals which hasn't been that high in awhile. It felt great, too. The last time I was on a spin bike my legs felt dead and tired. I had a pretty good bike workout today. My ass was a bit sore still but it is getting better. Also, I've thrown away 3 pairs of tri shorts in the last week from them being worn out and see through. I'm sure most people don't want to see an outline of my junk flopping around when I run.

Triple

Lately, I don't do a double workout that often. Maybe once or twice a week at most. School has been keeping me busy as well as the house and work so I've been taking it easy with the workouts for the most part. Yesterday was my first triple in quite a while. I lifted weights in the morning before work. Also, it was the day where I decided to increase the weight for a lot of exercises as well. At lunch was 60 minutes on the elliptical. This still made my foot sore even though it was a no impact exercise. I gotta run that by Dr. Laurie. In the evening was 2700m swim with T3. That was fun after the weights this morning. Oh, I slept like a rock last night, too.

I'm tired

Well, I went for a 2 hour ride today. It was a great day since it was sunny and about 65-70 degrees. I felt great and it wasn't bad at all. My ass didn't hurt much either. Afterwards, I was tired as hell but I felt great. Eh, that's all I have for today.

A sore ass and the taste of sweat and sunscreen

I've ridden twice in the last 2 weeks. My ass is really sore each time from the ride. That'll get better though. Each ride was about 25-35 miles so I'm getting a decent base in. I'm not going that fast though and it feels good to be back on the bike. I don't think I've lost much bike fitness either.

I swam tonight. I don't know what got into me, but I definitely felt like swimming strong tonight. I felt well the entire night and was able to push it a bit too. My shoulder felt great, too.

I ran this morning for the first time in about a month. My heel starting acting up the rest of the day. This isn't good at all. I guess I'm biking more since I can't run at the moment.

I'm not feeling healthy

I had this feeling since right around Thanksgiving. Yes, it is the holidays but even at this point after the glutony of sugar rich foods, I still feel unhealthy. I'm exercising more days than not, I'm getting about 8 hours of sleep a night, and I'm eating somewhat healthy (for me, not *that* healthy but I would still get called a health nut by 95% of the population). Even with all of this, I still feel like crap. I don't know what the hell is going on right now. I was sick the weekend before last weekend and I've been a booger factory since then, but I should be feeling better by now, right?

This past weekend was a 4.5 mile run on Saturday and then 2800m swim on Sunday. I still wasn't feeling that strong. Monday's weigh in was 198. I did 4.5 miles yesterday around the track at work and I have another run tonight with Texas Iron.

New Balance mileage: 101.5 miles

Weekly run mileage: 13.5 miles
Weekly swim distance: 5500m

I'm swimming again

I swam about 2700m last night with T3. Before that, I ran 3.1 miles around the track at work. I weighed in at 195.5 this morning. I'm recovering from being sick decently well, but I still have some sickness lingering. Not much else is new.

New Balance mileage: 92.5 miles

It's On! 196.5!

I weighed in at 196.5 on Monday. I have no excuses about holidays or vacation or any other shit like that. I will be at 185 by the end of April, hopefully.

I ran some speed loops around Barton Springs last night with Texas Iron. I wasn't feeling that great from being sickish for about 3 days. It actually probably wasn't that smart of me because I was somewhat sick to begin with, it was cold, I was sweaty, and I didn't have warm clothes on. I felt like ass when I woke up this morning, but I did a decent run last night of about 6 miles total.

New Balance mileage: 89.5

I'm sick

I'm sick. This sucks. I've been feeling bad since yesterday. I did get out and do a 7 mile easy run though. I felt better afterwards, but I've been a lump on my couch since then. Not much else is going on. It's been an easy week workout wise. I did some volunteer work on Thursday and Friday. I haven't swam because my shoulder is really acting up. Seriously, not much is going on workout wise with me right now.

New Balance mileage: 83.5

Weekly run mileage: 15 miles
Weekly swim distance: 3300m

Kick Ass Book!

In addition to being a balancing bad ass, I got The Human Body Book today from amazon.com. This is so cool and disgusting! It's amazing! I haven't looked through it much yet, but I'm sure I'm going to waste half this weekend reading through it.

Badass Balancing on the Bosu Ball

I did some volunteer work at Performance Wellness today. I had some down time between patients and I wanted to play a bit with some exercises that I was showing patients. One of the exercises was doing leg squats on a Bosu Ball. Instead of having the black part down, the black part is up and you stand on it, balance on it, and then do squats. It's really tough. I started doing it and quickly figured out. Of course, I had to try to make it a bit harder, I decided to try to do squats on the Bosu ball, but with one leg instead of two. I did a set of 10 reps on each leg. Yeah, I totally kick ass! I told Dr. Laurie about it and she called me an insane bad ass as well.

This is good for me because yesterday I went and did yoga for the first time in a few months. Man, it was tough. I have lost a lot of my flexibility and balance and that prompted my one legged insane exercises today. I'm happy that I was able to find my balance back today.

Town Lake Trail distance changes

I normally run around Town Lake for all of my long runs. The trail is crushed gravel so it's easier on my joints, there are water stops, and the "scenery" is quite nice. I used to use the distances from this map, but a new map was published and this is it. If you compared the two maps, I usually run the 3 shorter loops and the changes in the distances is quite significant. The short loop went from 2.9 to 3.47 miles, the middle loop went from 4.1 to 4.55 miles and the long loop is now 4.94 miles instead of 4.5 miles. I measured out the longer loop using MyMyRun and it also got around 4.94 miles or so. A lot of other people have complained how the old 4.5 mile loop is closer to 5 miles and this map reflects it. With that stated, I like to think that the newer map is more accurate for the short and medium loops as well.

Now, today I ran a medium loop and then a short loop. Based on the old distances, I ran 7 miles, but ran 8 miles based on the new distances. This is huge because it's a difference of 8:43/mile versus 7:38/mile. What the hell? That's around a 10% improvement without me doing a single thing. Ok, that's not bad at all, but it's frustrating that I've been using wrong distances to calculate my pace around Town Lake for years now. I guess I'm happy that I'm running "faster" now.

New Balance mileage: 76.5

I met my goals

As of yesterday, I had 3150m to go until I met my goal of 50km of swimming in December. Today, I put in about 3300m so I beat my goal by 150m. For running, I beat it by 13 miles. In retrospect, the running goal was too low. As for swimming, I met it but I don't think I'm necessarily a better swimmer because of it. The reason why is that the increase in swimming really bothered my shoulder a bit. Also, I put in a lot of junk meters where I was swimming just to get the distance and didn't get a quality workout. There were a lot of workouts where I would just get in the water and just swim because I was fatigued or my shoulder hurt. Eh, at least I tried. For January, I'm just going to try to get 3 quality workouts in a week and that's it.

Also, my morning weigh in was 197.

Remaining run miles: -13
Remaining swim meters -150

Easy week

I had an easy week this week for training because I skipped a lot of workouts because of vacation. I'm probably going to ditch my plans of running the AT&T half marathon in February. My body is just too heavy at the moment to do that kind of distance. I feel like I'm on the verge of getting really injured again and I don't want that. I may still do it, but I probably won't necessarily train for it. Oh, I ran 5 miles in 41:35 today and that was after 3550 yards in the pool.

New Balance mileage: 68.5

Remaining run miles: -13
Remaining swim meters 3,150

Weekly run mileage: 10 miles
Weekly swim distance: 6,550m

I swam!

I swam on Friday afternoon after I got back from TN on Thursday. I swam 3000m at the pool and my shoulder felt OK. I felt like I was swimming through syrup at first but I warmed up a bit after that. Nothing special. My knee still hurts from scraping dog crap off of my shoe. I also weighed in at 199.5 on Friday morning. Ugh.

New Balance mileage: 63.5

Remaining run miles: -8
Remaining swim meters 6,700

1 Year: Running (Relatively) Injury Free

Well, I started a year ago on Christmas Day of last year on a mission to run injury free. A year later, that mission was successful! I ran from December 25th. 2006 until December 25th, 2007 injury free! Woohoo! That is the longest stretch of consistent running for me in my entire life. I've had some issues such as the chronic PF that I've had in my left foot and the usual creaks and strains. Hopefully, this will keep up for a long time and I can continue to improve my running. I did somewhat hurt myself the other day but it is in one of the most embarrassing ways. I hurt my left knee by scraping dog shit of the bottom of my shoe. Yep, that's right.

New Balance mileage: 63.5

Remaining run miles: -8
Remaining swim meters 9,700

Long Run

I did a long run today. 14 miles in 2 hours exactly for a pace of 8:35/mile. Not bad. It was cold and my legs felt heavy though. My PF really acted up after the run and I was walking funny pretty much the rest of the day because of it and it's still bothering me right now. Being on my feet from traveling didn't help either. I really did a lot of calf and PF stretched when I could and it seems to help. I'm starting to think that I should trash my goal of doing the half mary in February and just try to get over this PF. I'll think about it some more and see how my foot does this week. Oh, I did reach my goal of 75 run miles this month! I may be able to hit 100 but we'll see how my PF dictates that.

New Balance mileage: 58.5

Weekly run mileage: 28.5 miles
Weekly swim distance: 12,000m

Remaining run miles: -3
Remaining swim meters 9,700

Shoulder Hurts

My shoulder hurts from swim practice. We basically did 21x100 on some insane interval and doing that much power hurt my shoulder. I ended up calling it quits after about 14 of the intervals and with the warmup and cooldown, I got in 2100m. Afterwards, I ran 5 miles easy around the neighborhood in about 43 minutes.

New Balance mileage: 44.5

Remaining run miles: 11
Remaining swim meters 9,700

My weigh in this morning was 197.5 which is much better than the 200.5 of yesterday. I'm glad that the holiday season is almost over and this is my last day of work for 2 weeks. The last couple of days have been OK. I swam Wednesday morning and then ran Thursday morning and swam Thursday night. Nothing special I guess. As you can see below, I'm blowing my goals out of the water for the month. I should meet the run after this weekend and meet the swim some point next week. The problem is that I won't swim for 4 days next week when I'm in TN for Xmas.

New Balance mileage: 39.5

Remaining run miles: 16
Remaining swim meters 11,800

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Man, I gotta be quick because I have to go to bed to swim in the morning, but I had a great workout tonight. We met at Peace Park and after the warm up, we did 2x1.25 mile loops with 2min rest in between. We left on the first loop and about 4 of us took the lead. The 4 of us ended up finishing pretty close to each other but it quickly became obvious about our strengths. On the inclines, Chris blew everyone away. On the downhills, I blew everyone away. This course was hilly so it became a battle of who could do better at their strength and the others' weakness. I "won" the first loop and had a time of 9:35.4 for the 1.25 miles or so. That's a pace of 7:40min/mile which isn't bad for this hilly of a loop. Chris came in a few seconds behind me and then Matt a few behind that. We started off on the next loop and we were all gunning for each other. Chris made a move about half way up a long, medium grade hill and I stuck with him but a bit back. On the next downhill, I blew him away and carried the momentum up the next incline. He knew he had me beat on the incline so he powered up it and actually came by me pretty damn quickly. I picked up a gear and stuck with him about 4' off of him. We crested the hill and had a quarter mile descend. I put on some speed but at the end, he ended up catching me and passed about 6' in front of me. The last move up the hill worked because it burned me out enough that I didn't have much left on the descent. My time for the second loop was 9:36.9. After going balls out for 2 of these hillacious loops, I fell off only bet a second and a half. Most other people fell off by 10-20 seconds. Not bad.

I started figuring some things out though. I think I found the form that I need for descending. I've been working on it for awhile, but I think it clicked today. I had to because that was where I was going to put some time on the other guys and if I slowed down with bad form, they would catch me. Basically, I opened up my stride a bit, land on the front of my food and not the heel which will slow me down, and lean forward. Whenever I get tired, I get more of an upright posture and land on my heels. Not good. I just had a great time this workout because I pushed myself when I was feeling very slovenly.

The swim workout this morning was also great because I decided to throw some speed back into the workout. My supraspinatus was a bit fatigued, but it wasn't bothering me. I need to work on that a bit but the workout today were pretty good. A B on the swim with an A on the run.


New Balance mileage: 35.5

Remaining run miles: 20
Remaining swim meters 18,400

Lazy Week

First of all, I hate holiday season. 198.5 this morning and I don't think the next 2 weeks are going to be any better but I'll try. Last week was the laziest week that I've had in awhile. I only swam 3 times and ran twice. I skipped 1 swim, 2 run workouts, and 2 weight sessions for various reasons. Most of it was work related though. Hopefully, this week will be much better since it is the week before Xmas and my boss is off this entire week!

For my shoulder, it is getting better. My chiropractor, Dr. Laurie Buob, thinks that I have injured my supraspinatus. I'm getting some ART done and it feels better. I'm also not going to use paddles for the rest of the year since that tends to bother my shoulder more.

Finally, I'm putting it all on the line. Warning! There are about to be gross pics posted. I've been worrisome about my weight lately since I just can't stop gaining weight especially with my weigh in this morning. To give myself more motivation, I'm posting pics of myself with my shirt off to show my progress. Be careful because there is pasty, doughy white skin about to be shown. And imagine the jiggle in those rolls when I run!

Fitness 1
Fitness 2

Yep, it's out there now. These were actually taken 2 weeks ago when I was 195. It's out in the public now and I won't post more pics until I get down to 180 or so.

New Balance mileage: 30

Weekly run mileage: 11.5 miles
Weekly swim distance: 9650m

Remaining run miles: 25.5
Remaining swim meters 21,700

Well, I'm on track to blow both of my goals out of the water, no pun intended.

Weigh In

This morning's weigh in was 195.5. Sucks because I barely ate 2000 calories yesterday but ran for nearly 2 hours and burned off over 1500 calories from working out. However, I did eat and drink like crap on Saturday night, woke up at 10am and went to bed at 8pm. Eh, I can't wait until the holidays are over. Also, my PF is bothering me pretty badly today and my IT band on my left leg flared up yesterday and is hurting moderately today.

Sunday Run

Well, I did my long run today. I did 12.5 miles in 1:51:00 for a pace of 8:53 per mile. I wasn't exactly well nourished today (i.e. hungover) and it was getting hot so it wasn't a great run for me. My PF was bothering my left heel was really hurting today. I did 2 laps at Barton Springs afterwards and man it was cold. Also, the temp dropped about 15 degrees in 30 minutes today. A cold front must have blown through while I was swimming. I had Chipotle as a post workout meal and I'm now about to go to bed at 8pm.

New Balance mileage: 18.5

Weekly run mileage: 28 miles
Weekly swim distance: 13,850m

Remaining run miles: 37
Remaining swim meters 31,350

Nothing special

Man, my workouts have been pretty mundane lately. Nothing special and nothing really new to add. My weigh in yesterday was 195 so I am making some progress. I swam another 3300m and ran 6 miles in 49 minutes today. I'm feeling OK as well. I had some ART done on my shoulder this afternoon and it is feeling a lot better. I tried out my new pair of New Balance shoes and they were fine. Eh, that's it.

New Balance mileage: 6
Nike mileage: retired

Remaining run miles: 49.5
Remaining swim meters 32,250

Thursday Run and Swim

A 4.5 mile easy run and 3400m swim today. My shoulder was fine during the swim. Nothing special.

New Balance mileage: 0
Nike mileage: 235.5 miles

Remaining run miles: 55.5
Remaining swim meters 35,550

Wednesday Swim

Did 2850m. Shoulder was acting up a bit and other than that, not much to say.

Remaining run miles: 60
Remaining swim meters 38,950

Eh

Eh, not much to say. I weighed in at 196.5 this morning. Hmmmm. This morning, I swam 3400m and this evening, I ran about 5 miles. The weather this morning was freaking freezing. It was about 32 degrees or so. Burrrr! This even was a run around the neighborhood, but I took a new route. It was perfect running weather though. It was in the upper 50's, maybe 60. I wore a short sleeve shirt without a hat or gloves and I felt great while running. It was cool when I stopped, but perfect while running. Also, my Nike's are about flat, too.

New Balance mileage: 0
Nike mileage: 231 miles

Remaining run miles: 60
Remaining swim meters 41,800

10 Miles Today

Today was the longest run that I've done since Longhorn. I was going to take it easy and I thought I did, but I must be getting faster or something. I did the 10 miles in 1:23:28 which is a pace of 8:20/mile. Not bad for an easy run. I felt pretty good but my heart rate was a bit elevated the second half of it. No matter what, I thought it was a good run. I felt comfortable and the weather was excellent. Oh, for those of you that are in the colder parts of the country right now, thin Austin "winter" had a high of 82 degrees today. Most excellent. After the run was 2000 yards of recovery swimming. I just did 10x200yds and wasn't pushing it at all.\

New Balance mileage: 0
Nike mileage: 231 miles

Weekly run mileage: 23 miles
Weekly swim distance: 12,850m

Remaining run miles: 65
Remaining swim meters 45,200

75 miles & 50,000 meters

Since it is December 1st, I've decided to set a goal for the month. I will add a couple of metrics (man, I hate that word but it fits) to my blog to track. Here they are:

Remaining run miles: 75
Remaining swim meters 50,000

This should easily be accomplished if I swim 4-5 days per week and run 4-5 days per week. I almost went 100 run miles, but I think that might be a bit too much for me. We'll see if a month of fairly focused training will help me out.

I didn't do any workouts on Thursday. I wasn't feeling that well. I woke up that morning and was pretty dizzy and lightheaded and I had those spells throughout the day. Thursday was a run day and I was going to do about 6 miles with some intervals and fartleks in there. I did a run on Friday to make up for it but I didn't do the mileage. I just did the 3.1 mile neighborhood loop and did 5x1min strong, 1 min easy. Total time was about 27:09. It was a decent run. It was raining slightly but it was around 65 degrees so it was comfortable. It also feels good to run faster than to run slower. Before the run, I did a weight lifting session at the gym. I was focused and I was able to do it in about 30 minutes which is about all the weights that I think that I need right now. Well, I do it twice a week but that's it.

Before that in the morning, I went to the pool. I wasn't feeling it that morning. I still got in the water but did about 1350m. I got out because I just wasn't there mentally and my should was bothering me a bit. I talked with my swim coach about my shoulder and we agreed to move me down a lane. I won't be doing any faster intervals and I especially won't be doing them with paddles. I've noticed that paddles tend to hurt my shoulder as well as the faster intervals. Also, I've greatly increased the yardage while increasing the intensity at the same time and that's just a recipe for disaster. For the next 2 weeks, I'll keep the yardage up but I'll take the intensity down a bit. I may do 1 faster workout a week if that. I followed this advice this morning and my shoulder hurt a bit at first but once I warmed it up, it felt fine for the rest of the practice and that was about 3000m, too. I'll keep up with my shoulder exercises and keep it easy for 2 weeks and I should be fine.

Other than that, not much is going on. I weighed in at 196.5 on Friday so I've barely gone down in weight this week. For some motivation, I need to take a before shot and then hopefully take an after shot in a few months when I've lost 20 pounds or so.

New Balance mileage: 0
Nike mileage: 221 miles
Remaining run miles: 75
Remaining swim meters 47,000

"Eric, your underwater stroke looks amazing!"

That is what my swim coach said to me last night at practice. Like I said before, something clicked with my stroke in the last week and I've really been working on making it more permanent. She said this to me in warm up and it made my night! I swam 3400m last night and I moved up a lane as well. I was the slowest in the lane, but I moved up. The workout was a pretty good workout with lots of fast stuff at the end of long intervals and then 16x50 at the end that was pretty fast. I thought I seriously hurt my shoulder at one point, but I modified my stroke a bit and it went a way. I was also going to do the core workout, but I needed to work on some school stuff instead.

Hey, another update!

Let's see here. Monday's weigh in was 195.5 and Tuesday's was 197. I'm flirting with 200 and I don't like it. Time to get serious about this diet crap. Monday's workout at lunch was a weight lifting session followed by a 3.1 mile run around the track at work. It wasn't that bad. Tuesday morning was a swim with T3 and 3300m. It was cold and I mean C-O-L-D. There was ice on the ground. OK, not on the ground but on the wooden planks on the deck. However, the pool was toasty and warm. It's a good sign when you drive up to the outdoor pool and there is a 10m column of steam rising from the pool. Yes, 10m and not the usual meter or two that I'm used to seeing. I did something weird this morning. I jumped into the pool. Most of the time, I sit on the side and kind of procrastinate and psyche myself out before I finally lower myself in. This morning, the air was cold and the water was warm so I ran and jumped in. Man, that water felt nice this morning. The workout was good. I'm still working on engaging my lats more but I only really do it when I'm swimming. I don't feel it with paddles or when I do drills. At the end of the workout, it was me and some other guy and we were doing 4x50. I lead the first two and then he lead the third one. I gave him 5 seconds and ended up getting back to the wall about half an arm ahead of him. Needless to say, I lead the 4th one. Getting out was tough. One of the girls at swim practice had a pair of Crocs Mammoths. She loved them when getting out of the pool so I went and picked up a pair at lunch today. We'll see how they work out tomorrow night. Tonight's workout was a tempo run with Texas Iron. It was about 7 miles or so and it was OK. I don't think it was a particularly excellent workout for me but I showed up and put in the work.

New Balance mileage: 0 miles
Nike mileage: 218 miles

Weekly Update

I'm horrible about this. I try to update every day but I only end up updating on a biweekly or weekly basis. I suck at this.

Tuesday: Track workout with Texas Iron. We were suppose to do 8x200m fast, 200m easy. I think I descended pretty much each one. The first 200m was 47s or something like that and the last one was 39.1s. With the warm up and cool down, it was something like 5 miles or so.

Wednesday: I had a really good workout on Wednesday. I did a swim workout and we had to do 10x100 intervals. They weren't as tough as they were the week before but something happened. About the 7th interval or so, something clicked in my stroke. I realized what it felt like to use my lats more and how to engage them. This felt weird but it also felt like what my swim coaches have been describing to me. After a few more intervals, it started feeling right. I've been working on my catch as well with focus on not breaking my wrist as well as the action at the start of my stroke beginning with my hand moving and then my elbow doesn't move until my forearm is perpendicular with the bottom of the pool. That's a lot of words, but it is what my coaches have been teaching me. With the catch part and the lats part, something clicked and it felt great. Now, whenever I swim this way, I get tired quickly because my lats aren't used to being used this much while swimming.

Thursday, Friday: Rest days because I was lazy.

Saturday: 6 mile run in the rain and cold.

Sunday: 3300m swim with T3. Once again, I worked on my stroke and my lats got tired pretty quickly but that's a good thing.

Overall, it was a light week of training. With T-day, I got lazy and out of my routine. I swam only twice and ran only twice as well. Actually, that's the only 4 workouts that I've done this week. Eh, oh well. The weather changed in Austin this week. It got very cold, rainy, and nasty. And I liked it! It's a decent change form the heat that I'm used to. Running is more comfortable and swimming in a heated pool this morning was nice even though it was outside. I like the change and hopefully it'll stay this way for the entire winter.

Finally, my New Balance shoes have been retired and they are now my everyday shoes. I bought a new pair of the NB 1061 shoes and I have decided to not pick up another pair of Nike Air Pegasus. The NBs work a lot better for me and my physical therapist agrees with me.

New Balance mileage: 0 miles
Nike mileage: 208 miles
Weekly run mileage: 11 miles
Weekly swim distance: 6600m

Weekend of Running

I had a lot of running this weekend. Sunday was a 6 mile run around Town Lake. Nothing special but I feel like I'm running with lead legs. Yesterday was a swim with T3 in the morning. After that was a 3.1 mile run around the neighborhood. I cut the swim a bit short because I was feeling fatigued and my shoulder was hurting. Since I want to swim a lot, I need to stop the workout when I need to. Friday was a weight lifting session and then a 6 mile run around Town Lake again that afternoon. Thursday was a rest day since I was so worn out from the swim workout on Wednesday night. Oh, I was still feeling the intervals on Wednesday night even on Saturday morning. Friday's weigh in was 197 so I need to start to get more serious about that.

New Balance mileage: 209.5 miles
Nike mileage: 202 miles
Weekly run mileage: 21 miles
Weekly swim distance: 6000m

Torturous Swim Workout

I had an absolutely torturous swim workout tonight. It was a total of 3200m. It was about 1100m of various warmup sets and then it was the main set. 20x100m on an interval with about 10sec rest after each interval. First 5 were swim, next 5 were with a pull buoy, next 5 were swim again, and the last 5 were with paddles. That workout killed me and that was my first full swim workout in almost 2 months. I came home and all that I wanted to do was sleep. I was completely exhausted. I ate dinner, watched TV a bit, and then slept so hard last night. I woke up about 20 minutes ago and after 8.5 hours of sleep, I still had no clue where I was when my alarm went off. I felt like that I could probably sleep in for another 1.5 hours but that isn't going to happen because I need to go to work. I'm very happy with the workout because I was able to hold my interval for the entire workout and I felt completely exhausted at the end of it.

I went to the core workout last night as well. It was tough getting back but I'll back to normal in no time.

Update

Another long overdue update. Thursday of last week was a swim with T3. Friday was nothing because I was dealing with 2 sicks cats. Saturday was a swim. I checked at 11pm on Friday night to see what time my 9am swim was at on Saturday morning. It was at 7am. I still made it though. Sunday was a 3 mile run to recover from a hangover. Monday was another hangover recovery day. Yesterday was going to be my first 3 workout day but I got up and got ready to go swimming. Practice started at 5:45am and I wasn't ready to leave until 5:45am. I bagged it and watched Heroes from the night before instead. I did lift weights at lunch and do some run intervals with Texas Iron in the evening. I'm still a bit sore from lifting yesterday and my legs weren't happy for the run, but I'm fine now. My weigh in on Monday was 194.5 so I'm starting to feel like a chunky monkey. Man, I always hate November and December because I gain so much weight after the season is over. I also haven't looked at my training schedule since I printed it out on Halloween. I pretty much try to get 4+ swims per week, 4+ runs, and 1-2 weight lifting sessions. I need to start looking at it to keep me honest. Plus, I get lazy and I probably should be doing a few more 2-a-day workouts than I'm doing now.

New Balance mileage: 203.5 miles
Nike mileage: 193 miles

Speed is fun!

What was Tuesday's workouts? Oh, yes, a 1700m swim in the morning. Man, that was rough because it was the first before 6am workout I've had in about 6 weeks. I'm still tired from it. And I continued my dumbassedry as well. I went to the wrong pool. On M,W,F, my swim is at Courtyard in the morning and on T,TH it is at Lost Creek. On Tuesday morning, I went to Courtyard. I'm an idiot, wasted a bunch of sleep and gas. Eh, oh well. I was pretty sore from lifting weights on Monday so I didn't do that hard of a workout, but the swimming did help with the soreness. Speaking of lifting weights, I was fairly sore after Monday. My pecs, shoulders, hamstrings, glutes, and groin were sore.

I ended up doing a double workout on Tuesday and did my first workout with Texas Iron since before Longhorn. It was actually a really good workout. My legs were sore from running and lifting weights yesterday but I still pushed myself. The workout was a 15min warmup. Then, we did 3-5 1km loops that were hilly, too. I only did 3 loops since I'm just getting back into it. The pace was as fast as we could sustain for as many loops that we were doing. My 3 loops had times of 4:15, 4:09, and 4:00. I was pretty stoked about that because it felt like I was running through oatmeal on the last loop. Also, my max heart rate during all of these intervals was 183. With my max of around 190-192, this shows me that I was pushing pretty hard the entire time. Then we did a 1km cooldown and that was the workout.

Today is a rest day because I'm still sore in most places.

New Balance mileage: 200.5 miles
Nike mileage: 187 miles

First weights lifted in 6+ months

I lifted weights for the first time in about 6 months or so. I'm a little fatigued but I took it pretty easy. My upper body is feeling fatigued from swimming this past week as well so I don't want to overtax it too much. Overtaxing it a bit is fine though. We'll see how I feel in the morning though.

This morning's weigh in was 192.5. I'm starting to work that down again. I also ran my 3.1 mile loop in 25:20 or so. Not bad. I'm not doing much LSD in running now. I just want to do some 8-10 mile distances and then work on speed. Actually, I'm just going to follow my coach's plan after I get used to running again which should be after this coming weekend.

New Balance mileage: 195.5 miles
Nike mileage: 187 miles

2500m Today

I swam about 2500m today. Nothing special about it. I'm going to ease into it and not do a 3300m workout for the next week. I'm just doing 2000-2500m per workout, but I'm doing that 4 days this week. No run this weekend because of Halo 3, working on the house, and drinking beer. I need to get my ass in gear though. My half marathon is 3 months away and I want to go 1:30 in it as a super goal and 1:35 as a satisfied goal. I'm going to be ramping up my running this week as well as starting to lift weights too.

Also, I've decided that of all the athletic body types of females out there, I prefer the body type of a swimmer. Female runners are great if you like small boobs. Cyclists are great if you want nice legs and gnarly scars. However, swimmers can be athletic and muscular but still have some curves and softness to them. That's all that I have to say about that.

I'm working out liike a sane person

I've been working out like a sane person lately. Tuesday and Wednesday morning were 3.1 mile runs. Both were fine. Nothing wrong with them and they both were in the mornings with the cool 55* air that is fantastic to run in. Thursday night was a swim with T3. It was my first swim and I put in 2150m that night. I was a bit rusty at first but my stroke was coming back at the end. The cool thing was that we were suppose to do a 200m swim pretty much as fast as we could go. After being off of swimming for about a month, I was still able to do 200m in 3:01. That is a pace of 1:22/100yds which I'm quite happy with. Not much else is going on. I'm busy on the weekends playing Halo, watching TV, and working on the house. My plan is to get a 6 mile run and a swim in this weekend but we'll see how that goes. I'm going to start lifting weights next week as well.

New Balance mileage: 192.5 miles
Nike mileage: 187 miles

Back to running

I went running yesterday morning. I did the 3.1 mile loop around my neighborhood. It was nice. I didn't go out super easy but I didn't go out hard and strong either. Just a comfortable medium pace. I have no clue what my time was because my HRM came in the mail yesterday. It was a good run. Nothing hurt but my breathing was off a bit because it was around 55* when I started the run. Oh, yes, I'm so happy that the heat has broken and we now have some chilly temperatures in the morning. I like the lows around 55-60 with a high around 75-80 and this entire week is suppose to be like that. I'm probably going to be outside all weekend working in the yard and it'll be beautiful! I'm also going swimming tonight.

New Balance mileage: 192.5 miles
Nike mileage: 180.5 miles

I'm back on the wagon

I'm just checking in here to let myself know that I'm back on the wagon. I'm going to start working out again which I'm actually looking forward to again. My weigh in this morning was 191 which I'm quite surprised. After IMFL, I gained 10 pounds in a week. After the Longhorn Tri, I only gained 4 pounds. Not bad.

Season Recap

Well, it's been 2 weeks since the cap to my tri season. I should've posted a season recap sooner, but I've enjoyed being a normal person. And what does that entail? Being fat, lazy, and bored. The only working out that I've done in the last 3 weeks is a 2 hour hike, some yoga, and a 3 mile run. I've been watching a lot of TV, a decent amount of beer, and eating a good amount of junk food. I'm about to get back to working out though. I miss it. I won't be doing 10-12 workouts a week, but I'll still be doing stuff. I'm also going to take it a lot more relaxed for awhile as well. I'm a little burned out. I worked in the yard today and I miss doing stuff like that.

Oh, back to my season. My goal this season was to run injury free. As of right now, I've been running injury free for 10 months now. My season has been a success! I didn't really make that much progress in gaining running speed but that's OK. I've also had some unexpected outcomes from this season. I've actually been competitive. I've had two 3rd place finishes, two 4th place finishes and a 6th place finish. This is from sprint distance races all the way up to a half Ironman 2 weeks ago. My swimming has stagnated but I'm going to work on that over the winter. My biking has been strong as usual and here's the weird thing. I haven't been working on it. As I mentioned, my running has improved slightly. I've had some set backs this year. I just haven't been that mentally focused or motivated this year. I got through it though. It hasn't been that bad because I'm actually have had a bit of a social life this year. I'm going to try to keep that up next year as well.

So, I guess that's it. Not much else to say. Nothing spectacular in my opinion, but I'm happy with it overall.

New Balance mileage: 189.5 miles
Nike mileage: 180.5 miles

Longhorn Tri Race Report

I have been excited about this race since last year when they announced the Texas Tri Series. This would be the first half Ironman within an hour of Austin that I remember. Also, Keith Jordan is the race director and I hear that he puts on great races. This would be a great cap to my season as well. So, my season was planned last year and this was the last race. I was really looking forward to the end of this season as well. I was just ready to sleep in and drink beer.

Prerace

The weather was hot lately. The highs were around 92-95 and the lows were around 73 or so for the last month straight. It wasn't a wet suit legal swim by any means. I heard that the water temp actually went up by 4 degrees over the last week. I picked up my packet on Saturday and checked out the schwag. There was a lot of decent stuff and as usual for Keith's races, there was a nice tech long sleeve shirt in the bag instead of a plain Jane cotton shirt. I'm willing to pay $10 more for a race entry to get a tech fabric instead of a cotton shirt. The bike course changed so I went and drove it to make sure that I knew what the new parts were like. That night, I went to the Olive Garden and had their bottomless bowl of pasta. I could only eat 2 of them. I came home, had a beer, and went to bed pretty early.

I got about 7 hours of sleep that night so that was pretty nice. I got up and ate my usual big breakfast. I left the house nearly on time. I had most of the stuff packed up the night before so I just put on my tri suit, my sweatshirt, and my iPod and left. Unfortunately, I left a little too late and got there kinda late. There is only 1 way into the park with a lot of people trying to get in. I waited about 25 minutes getting into the park. This left me in a hurried state to get ready which I don't like to be in before a race. I felt like I had a lot to do and I kinda did. I did get all of my stuff set up and then headed into the water. I did about 150yds warm up and was ready to go.

The Swim - 35:41

The swim was in Decker Lake so the water wasn't that nice. There's a power plant on it so the temp is usually somewhat warm. This causes a lot of hydrila to grow which we had to fight through in the first 100yds or so. The first few hundred yards were a washing machine and then it eased up a bit after that. The course was laid out so that you could sight off the power plant. Then next leg of the course was a little weird because I think that leg wasn't straight. I first started off and then I eventually had to sight off a tall power line tower thing.

I drafted a bit on this swim. I tend to start off slow and then when I want to draft, there aren't any faster people around me. That means that I swim in a lot of open water. It sucks. I also had to go through a lot of other people from the previous waves. I took the last turn in and just swam for it. Nothing special happened except that I'm sure a volunteer from Texas Iron grabbed my ass when I was getting out of the water. Oh, I think this is a good time to mention that I had no clue what my swim time was. Or my bike time, my run time, or my heart rate. I raced completely naked since my HRM battery died about 2 months ago and I haven't had a bike computer on Sophia the Cervelo since IMFL last year. This race was done completely by perceived effort. Back to the swim, I think the swim times were a little slow because there was quite a jog to get to the T area. My pace was 1:51/100m which isn't that great, but it's much better than what I did at Austin Tri. I also felt very comfortable breathing which was a problem at the Austin Tri. I did get a bit of chafing on my neck from where my tri top was rubbing on my neck because I was breathing on my right side about 95% of the time. I was 68th overall on the swim and 5th in my AG.

T1 - 1:33

As usual, my T1 time kicks ass. I came into T1, put a Rice Krispy treat in my back pocket, sunglasses, helmet, unracked my bike and I was off. Here's the thing because I took my time a bit as well. I stopped and chatted for about 2 seconds with people around me. I also though about how to get my bike off the rack. I racked it by the seat but the bottles in my bottle cage were in the way. I just tilted the bike a lot, got it out, and was on my way. I also think I've figured out how to run with the bike while holding onto it by the saddle instead of the stem. I had the fastest T1 time of my age group by 10 seconds, too. Oh, I actually ran when I could coming out of the water and heading to the dismount line.

The Bike - 2:31:22

I fucking rocked the bike. I preroad the course about 4 times and that really helped out. I knew which hills to power up, which ones to take easy, which corners to take fast, which corners to take slow, and a bunch of other stuff. It was juts great knowing what was coming up as well. This is the first time that I really knew a bike course going into it and it really paid off. I normally don't use race wheels but I borrowed some ZIPP 808's from Austin Tri Cyclist. Of all the wheels that I've ridden, I think they are by far my favorite. I just felt super fast on them, even more so than a disc wheel in the back.

As usual, my lower left bike starting killing me about an hour into the bike. My hip flexors later started acting up as well, but I was able to get through it. There was only 1 person that passed me on the bike. I passed some people and they passed me later and there were a few that passed me but I passed them back. Like I said, only 1 person passed me on the bike. My nutrition on the bike was spot on as well. I drank at least 4 bottles of fluid as well as my single Rice Krispy treat, Nuun, and Thermolytes. I also want to mention that the course was well marked and well supported. I saw a bunch of Mavic support vehicles as well. They were patrolling the entire course. The only thing that I would add would be a sign about 1 mile before each aid station so I had time to switch bottles and stuff. I also said thanks to as many volunteers and sheriffs as possible. The weather started out cloudy but then the sun came out and it warmed up quite a bit. Not cool. I still rocked the bike with a time of 2:31:22. I was 3rd in my AG and 14th overall. Totally kicked ass and I'm very happy with it. I also felt like I could've gone a bit faster but I'll save them for 2 years from now.

T2 - 1:36

My T2 sucked as usual. The reason why is that I had to sit down and actually pull 7 burrs out of my feet. I knew there were burrs from setting up in the morning, but I missed all of them in T1. Man, I hate burrs and I had to pull another 2-3 out of my socks on the run. Oh, I forgot to mention this. I used a bento box on the bike and it worked well mostly. I had all of my nutrition in the BB for both the run and the bike before the race started. Then, about the last 2 miles on the bike, I started taking stuff out of the BB and putting it in my pockets of my tri shorts. I put in SportSlick, Thermolytes, and eGels as well. I felt like it did save me time since I was loading up my pockets while still moving forward. T2 had me putting on my socks, grabbing my hat, race belt, another eGel (I don't know why I needed this one), and a bottle of fluid. That entire sock thing slows me down and I need to figure out a way to hurry my ass up. I run through T2 so it isn't that. Well, it's not going to get fixed in the next week. 14th fastest T2 in my AG.

The Run - 1:59:57

I heard this run course was a kick in the nuts. I really think that it was a kick in the nuts, a punch in the kidneys, and then dirt with burrs kicked into my face. I started off a bit slow for the first few hundred yards while I was getting situated. I had some chafing under my arms from the bike and the swim so I reached for my small tube of SportSlick. It was gone. That really sucks because I hate chafing. Also, it had gotten hot. A lot of the run course was on asphalt with no shade and that wasn't pleasant. I felt horrible for the first 2 miles and then I started feeling a bit better. I kept up with my usual plan of 1 cup of water in my mouth and 1 cup of water on my head/down my shorts at every aid station. I took my first eGel at about Mile 3 and it didn't sit that well with me. I didn't puke, but I had to really think about my nutrition. I decided to risk bonking and had only 1 more eGel for the rest of the course. I had some Gatorade which helped and I also had some chips which my stomach didn't like either. I still took Thermolytes as well to keep up with my electrolytes. I was already seeing people puking and walking at this point in the race. It was around Mile 3! This was going to be a long day for a lot of people, but I wasn't going to let the heat beat me.

All the aid stations had great volunteers. I said thanks a lot but I felt horrible. I was also approaching the worst part of the course. Part of the course goes off into grass and trails which I don't like. I have bad knees and they dislocated very easily. Any kind of rough terrain will increase that. The offroad portion also had The Hill from Hell. This is the worst hill on the bike course where you also run up it, too. It's just a bitch of a hill. Actually, the entire course is hilly. It's constant up and down and you couldn't get in a good rhythm at all. This is much different than Buffalo Springs which this race is compared to a lot. At BSLT, there are 3 big ascents and 3 big descents but the rest of the course is flat. This run course is much more of a bitch.

I started out on the 2nd loop of the run and there were a lot of others starting their first loop. They were already walking up the hills and had that look in their eye that it was going to be a long day. I get moving though. I walked some of the hills but for the most part, I was still moving my feet in some horrible imitation of a run. I just stuck to my plan and get moving. Nothing special to really mention besides the heat, other people melting, and the great support on the run course. There was something like 8 aid stations per loop. I had another eGel at Mile 8 or so and that was my last one. My stomach was done with them. I started feel somewhat bad around Mile 9 as well. I had only 4 to go and I could do it. My biggest thing was to not fall apart in the last mile and a half like I did at BSLT last year. So, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other until I crossed the finish line which I was very happy to do.

I was the 34th person across the line. I was 27th overall and finished 3rd in my AG. My run time was 1:59:57 and I had the 96th fastest run split overall and the 11th fastest in my AG. I'm actually really happy with that. I had a pace of 9:09min/mile but it was a slow day for most people. My pace wasn't that far off considering the training runs that I've been doing over the summer of similar distances and similar temps.

The Finale

I went to the med tent and had some ice put on me. My arms started tingling about Mile 9 and then it spread. Also, I was getting headaches on the run and the only thing to make it go away was the ice cold water on my head but it worked every time. I basically did the same thing in the med tent because that is why they are there and it wouldn't really hurt. I was also out of it mentally a bit. Once I started feeling better, I got some food, some beer, and talked to some friends.

The race is very well run. Lots of supplies, lots of aid stations, cool shirt, cool medal, etc. The coolest thing that others haven't thought of is what do you do when you are done with the race? You need to turn in your chip. You have to balance on one foot while someone takes it off your ankle. They made this kind of contraption where you put your put on this bar while a volunteer takes off your ankle strap. Also, they have a metal bar at about chest level to put your arms to balance yourself. It's a very good idea and was one of those "Why didn't I think of it?" moments. There were signs marking all the turns on the bike and there were mile markers on the run course. It was just a great race and I don't have that much to suggest for improvements. Good job, Keith!

New Balance mileage: 186.5 miles
Nike mileage: 180.5 miles

Another Update

Yeah, it's been awhile since I've posted an update. I'm getting lazy and I'm ready for the season to be over. I actually have to look at my training program to see what I've done. It doesn't really matter because the only thing that I really worry about tracking is my running.

Last week was an easy ride on Monday. I was suppose to do 2 hrs but I can't stand being inside without intervals so I only did an hour. Tuesday was a swim and then a run in the evening. I can't remember the run anymore but I think it was a trackish workout. Let's just say that it was 6 miles in the Nikes. Wednesday was an unintentional rest day. Thursday was a brick workout and it was a good, hour long LT workout. 4 miles in the New Balance. Friday was a swim in the morning. The rest of the weekend was a rest weekend because I went to me 10 year high school reunion. That was actually a lot of fun.

This past week was a taper week. Monday was a rest day. Tuesday was a track workout with some shorter, faster sprints. I can't remember what Wednesday was. I think it was another unintentional rest day. Thursday was a 30 minute swim with some faster 100yds. Later that day was another brick workout. Friday was a rest day. Today are some tune up workouts and that tomorrow is the Longhorn Tri.

New Balance mileage: 173 miles
Nike mileage: 180.5 miles