Why do I do this?

Why do I look up photos of the swim start at IM Florida?  I was just starting to sleep through the night again.  And then these beauties found their way into my google search.

I think I'll start putting myself in the washing machine as part of my training.  One or two spin cycles per day.  Or feel free to just elbow me right in the nose whenever you see me.  Time to start getting used to it.

For Your Reading Pleasure ...

It's here!  The Athlete Guide for IM Florida.

Inside, you'll find gems like Running Rule #1:

So if you find yourself crawling the final 26.2 miles to the finish, please relax!  You aren't violating the official rules.  But if you decide to Moon Walk, brace yourself for a penalty.

Squeezing in workouts ... like a rat stuffs its cheeks with D-Con.

Ironman is in 5 Saturdays.  Five Saturdays.  Five.

I think I make the same mistake every season:  Plan on completing a "long ride" or a "long run" or both on Saturdays, plan on taking naps and staying off my feet all day, blah blah blah.  Saturdays in 2012 consist of working on the shed behind our house, going to soccer games, helping friends with home projects, taking the kids to Chic-Fil-A, and then maybe ... MAYBE ... squeezing in a run in the evening after everyone has gone to bed. 

Some Saturdays have started well -- Nobody in our house besides me is interested in anything that happens at 5:00am on Saturdays, so I've taken advantage of the early-early workouts.  But after a 4 or 5 hour ride, it's off to the races -- shed work, kids stuff, and lots of Diet Coke.

I have a fantastic wife who sacrifices her own workout time to let me get in workouts wherever possible.  But sometimes the only option is to fire up the treadmill at 8:30pm or put on a headlamp and head out the door.  Yes, this is a hobby that I do of my own volition.

Friday night I ran 10 miles on the treadmill between 8:30-10, taking periodic breaks to rock Emory back to sleep.  Sunday night I ran almost 7 miles on the treadmill from 9-10.  Monday morning I got rolling by 5:30am for a 50-mile tri bike ride to work, then lifted weights at lunch.  Tonight I'll ride home and try not to throw up!

Training for Ironman sometimes feels like a secret addiction.  I can't tell my friends or my spouse just how many miles, how many laps, how many hours I've spent, because it sounds ridiculous.  Sometimes I just keep it to myself and hope nobody notices.  I hide my bike behind my door at work, I stash Muscle Milks under my desk, and I keep workout clothes in my desk drawers.  Every day I get grim satisfaction from filling in my daily workout totals.  It's pathetic.  On second thought, November 3rd can't come soon enough!

Some Days Are Easier Than Others. Today Is Not Some Days.

Training for Ironman is the easy part.  The hard part is all the other unrelated stuff that is part of a normal life.  Last night, I went to bed by 10 because I had a long workout day/week planned.  At 2am, Fairfax County started grinding off the road surface 150 meters from our house.  Between 2-3am, I was wide awake, listening to the grinding noise.  Then Genevieve couldn't sleep either, and kept coming into our room to complain about the noise.  Finally, at 4:30am, 2.5 hours after the noise started, Genevieve was sound asleep, the sounds stopped, and I had a restless 60 minutes of sleep until my alarm.

This week is the first of 3 weeks where I'm "maxing out" my mileage and workout time.  No excuses allowed.  My plan for Monday was to ride to the office in time for a 7am weights session with a personal trainer.  I felt awful this morning, but because I was the only person scheduled for the workout, I couldn't back out. 

So I rode my bike to the office.  Halfway there, my rear shifter cable broke, and I was forced to ride in my toughest gear the rest of the way to the office.  That includes the hills in Rosslyn.

Yep, that's the 11-tooth cog that carried me to work.  Note the loose cable hanging off the right side of the photo.  The good news is that this didn't happen during a race.  However, I was exhausted by the time I got to the office.  My legs felt like they were on fire, and I already felt like garbage from last night's lack of sleep.  And of course, the personal trainer started right away with jump squats.

All the Coke in the world can't fix a day like today. 

Looking for a Good Christmas Present?

Order one of these lovely photographs from TriCycle Studios.  https://tricyclephoto.com/  You know you want a large copy to go above your fireplace.

 

Race Report: Patriots Half-Ironman 2012

Overall: 5:22:56, 11/52 in age group, 42/304 overall men.

Well, that wasn't pretty.  The downside:  My worst swim time in a very long time, and my overall time was 18 minutes slower than my PR in May.  The upside:  I ranked higher in every category than in May -- swim, bike, run, and overall.  Apparently the course was hard for everyone, and I'm gradually moving my way up the rankings.

I knew coming into the Patriots Half that it would be difficult to get a personal record.  No wetsuit, a longer bike course, and the heat didn't help.  It was intended to be a "workout" more than a race, though I still raced the bike course as if my life depended on it.  In the end, I put up a great bike time and a respectable run, but my swim was an absolute disaster.  After swimming over 100 miles in the pool over the last 10 months, I'm not sure where to go with the swim, other than accept that I'll always have to pass 80% of the other participants on the bike course.

No major injuries, good experience, and some new lessons learned.  Ironman Florida is right on track.  Here's the race report:

Swim: 1.2 miles in 51:35 (42/52 in age group, 241/304 overall men)

I was back and forth on whether to wear a wetsuit literally until the morning of the race.  The water temperature just prior to the race was 80.9 degrees, so the wetsuit would have disqualified me.  I decided to "keep the rules" and swim with no suit.  It's been a few years since I've raced in open water without a wetsuit.  And I forgot just how SLOW I am without one!

The James River isn't really brackish -- it's sort of lightly salted like a chick'n a biscuit.  We were allowed to wade out about 50 meters to start the race, probably because the river is only about waist-high for 75 meters out.  When the gun sounded, I started "in the front" and was quickly squeezed out of my spot.  "In the back" is where I spent the rest of my time swimming.  After the first buoy, there is a long straightaway -- probably 3/4 of a mile -- during which I swam "downstream."  But the current pulled at something of an angle, and I kept finding myself drifting to the left when the marker was on my right.  In hindsight, I should have taken the first corner wide and let the current pull me back in the direction of the marker, but instead I let the current drag me toward shore, then cut 90 degrees across the current to get back on track, then let the current drag me, then cut 90 degrees ... and so on for 3/4 of a mile.  I don't look at my watch while I swim, but I didn't have to.  I knew I was hemorrhaging time during the swim.

About 75 meters from the shore, people were standing up and walking all around me.  Every other stroke, I caught a handful of mud.  But to stand and walk meant a very slow finish, so I resorted to putting down my feet, leaping out of the water into a quick surface dive, followed by 2-3 strokes and another dive.  It was a relatively effective way to get to shore, and it probably kept me from being 52nd out of 52 (instead of 42nd).  When I got out of the water, my watch said 51-something, and I knew my hopes of a PR were over.  That said, I don't give up easily, so I ran to the transition and prepared for a blistering bike ride.

I apparently didn't pray enough to the Gods of Transition this week -- my bike was lost in the middle of nowhere-transition-land, and the dude next to me had a towel that took up about 3 spaces.  I had to wait over 5 minutes for him to leave so that I could kick his stuff out of the way and roll out my own big towel.

Bike:  58 miles in 2:39:08, avg. pace 22.0mph (9/52 in age group, 29/304 overall men)

One upside of being a slow swimmer is that I get to pass literally hundreds of people on the bike.  I averaged a slightly higher pace for the 58 miles than at the Kinetic in May, and I kept the pace relatively constant.  I have been practicing on flat courses for several weeks now, and the work really paid off.  However, a flat ride with only slightly rolling hills can cause cramps and some real discomfort, even though my bike fits me very well.  I periodically had to get out of the saddle and pump my legs just to get circulation moving to all parts of my legs.  The bike fitting was worth every penny.

It took me over an hour to finally catch up with Rob Stone, who was having a spectacular race.  (He started 3 minutes after me, and finished swimming 6 minutes before me!)  It was good to see a friendly face on the course.

The only real drawback of the bike leg was a group of 4 "drafters" who tucked in behind me and followed me for 35-40 of the 58 miles.  In triathlon, drafting is illegal, and race officials tack on penalties ... if they catch you.  These guys feigned passes and played musical chairs behind me, but they were clearly going along for the ride.  It was obvious that they were cheating, and I even called out #95 for it.  In fact, three different people at the finish line told me, "Oh yeah, 166, you had a bunch of guys behind you -- number 95, 155, 175, etc."  After the race, I eagerly checked the results to see if any of them had been flagged by the numerous race officials on motorcycles.  Only one -- 155 -- and he wasn't the most egregious drafter. 

Run:  13.1 miles in 1:46:23 (7/52 in age group, 32/304 overall men)

The run course is flat, about 60% shaded, and 40% blazing HOT.  About 11am, the sun came out from behind the clouds and the temperature rose to 85.  My legs were in good condition for the run, but the heat threatened to make this a difficult half-marathon.  If I had been in the running for a PR, I probably would have pushed the pace a little.  A little bit of math told me a PR was impossible, so I decided to stick to an 8min/mile pace with stops at every water table.  It was a good strategy for a "workout" race, and I still had a good amount of energy by the end of the race.  There was no need to completely burn myself out and risk injury, so I tried to enjoy the run as much as possible after nearly 4 hours of racing. 

There were a few mishaps on the course.  I accidentally squirted a coffee-flavored GU into my mouth and about vomited.  My breath still smelled like coffee at the end of the race.  (Note to self -- read the freaking label before you eat.)  I also had a really hard time opening GUs at the end, and had to stop and gnaw on one to poke a hole in it around mile 7.  (Note to self -- dry off your hands before trying to open a GU, because your teeth just aren't that sharp.)  I also violated my fundamental rule of keeping my feet dry and accidentally dropped a cup of water on my toes.  Had the run been any longer, I would have had some black & blue toenails instead of just a few sore toes.

In the end, I'm still a runner, and my run is peaking right now.  So the run was not nearly as painful or labored as usual.  I even had enough energy to flex, hoot, and holler at the crowd for the last 100 meters.  "Yeahhhh!!!  Whooooot!!!  Ohhh Yeahhh!!!"  I was 2 minutes off my PR run time, but glad to finish without any serious problems.

There are no "B priority" races, that's for sure.  I'm disappointed to have missed my PR, and by a longshot.  But I'm not disappointed that I finished the race and was able to jump around in a moon bounce with my kids a few hours after the race.  I'm lucky to have these opportunities to push my body to the limits, and to enter these races in the first place. 

This is the final tune-up race before Ironman in November.  My body is certanly not excited about the inevitable pains of that distance, but I think my physical and mental training is right on track.  I'll take a day or two off training, then ease back into it for one final push.

The Transition Area Closes at Ten PM ...

This is the front entryway of our house Thursday night.  Some people have piles of shoes in the entryway.  We have a transition area.

To Disqualify Or Not To Disqualify. That Is the Question.

Imagine a scenario in which you knew you would be disqualified from a race before you ran it.  The race organizers would simply put a "DQ" next to your name, and your times would not count for anything.  In fact, they may not even record your time.  And imagine that you were in the shape of your life, and that you felt confident that a PR was right around the corner.

Would you still run it?

This is the dilemma I'm facing right now.  Triathlon rules are tricky.  And among the trickiest are the wetsuit rules.  Whether you can wear a wetsuit depends on the water temperature:

78 degrees or colder = wetsuit legal.
78.1 degrees to 83.9 degrees = wetsuit optional, but you are disqualified.
84 degrees or warmer = wetsuit illegal.

48 hours before the race, this email showed up in my inbox:

80 degrees = disqualification for a wetsuit. 

This Saturday's Patriot's Half-Ironman is supposed to be a "tune-up" for Florida, in conditions as similar as possible to the real deal.  In theory, I'm not racing for a PR, and my time shouldn't matter at all.  It is, after all, a "B" priority race I entered to practice swimming in brackish water (presumably in a wetsuit), ride on flat roads, and run a flat half-marathon.  In fact, the course is longer than regulation distance, so I would have to carve an additional 8 minutes or so off my previous best time to actually PR.  It's like a long workout in race conditions, but not a race.  Right?

But THERE ARE NO "B" PRIORITY RACES.  The thought of disqualifying myself from the start causes me real anxiety.  It's a mark of shame.  It's as if I got caught drafting 3 times and got the maximum penalty.  I should simply ignore my pride and stick to my training plan, even if it means being the only one in a wetsuit at the start line.  But I can't get over the thought of choosing to disqualify myself in any race, and especially when I'm in the shape of my life.

Monday I went for my 73 mile ride on the Assassin and totally crushed my previous best time.  Tuesday night I swam the fastest mile of my life -- 30:42, a 90-second improvement over my previous PR.  I am possibly in better run shape than when I ran marathons.  And to top it off, I'm not battling any injuries.  I was really looking forward to this race before that email hit my inbox. 

So what now?