Training, a fox, and a very angry goose

Well since my last post (ages ago), I've done a ton of training, almost ran over a fox on my bike and was very close to getting attacked by a giant Canadian Goose! Typically when I go through a week or two without posting a blog that seriously means that I'm way too busy. If I'm too busy, my journalism (is that what you call this?) is always the first to go. Last week on the traning front, I got in 22 hours for the week and this week it's even more....more like 23 or 24 if you count Yoga as working out. :)

The highlights of my training the past couple weeks is my trip to DC. I got to swim in that really cool outdoor meter pool and followed it up by a massage at Massage Envy. They had this $49 / hour special and I was in heaven. I really should treat myself to massages a lot more than I do, but I just can't justify spending all that extra money. Jen and I at one time considered taking massage therapy classes at the local community college but again...no time. My blog would really be in bad shape if I were to start classes.

Another highlight or close call might I say was my early morning run in DC. Before work I headed out from my hotel for an easy 30 minute recovery run. I was running with my head down, iPod blasting and in the background I heard this loud sound that sounded like a hisssss. I lifted my head out of my running daze and this giant Canadian Geese was lunging at me. I had to act quick with my Willie Parker spin-o-rama and jumped out of the way avoiding a duck bite. Coach, I'm sorry to say, but my heart rate might have gone anaerobic for just a second or two.

Later that night I went out for a 55 mile ride and as I was decending down this really big hill a sneaky fox ran out in front of me. I missed the thing by a hare and thank goodness I did.

The only other main highlight was my ride today. I managed to get in 5:30 on the bike followed by a 30 minute run. I felt great the entire ride! I still need to head to the pool for a long swim, but that can wait for another hour or two.

I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend and I'll try to do another post really soon. :)

Thanks Fuel Belt

I've never been the type of person to usually carry water or any sorts of hydration on my runs. I've tried just about everything from the camel back waist hydration to the 20 oz bottle around the waist. I just never found anything to be comfortable. I even tried the unit that straps a 20 oz bottle to your hand. I eventually gave up and decided to simply plan my long runs strategically from gas station to gas station. This would mean at times I would have to run around 10 miles at a clip without drinking. As you all know in Ironman racing, nutrition is very important and during racing I typically drink everything under the sun every mile.

So when we got home on Friday I had a box from Fuel belt sitting on my front porch. Fuel belt sponsors my MAO team and they were kind enough to send me a Helium 2 fuel belt. At first I thought that it would be another running accessory that would end up in my basement next to all of the other hydration kits that have gone terribly wrong, but luckily I decided to try it out first before I made my final decision to scrap it.

I went out on a 1 hour run this morning and figured that this was the perfect distance to try it out. The belt is equipped with two 8 oz bottles and as soon as I took one step out the front door I seriously couldn't even tell the thing was around my waist. You can tell that the Fuel belt design engineers put some serious thought into this belt (as I've also tried previous fuel belt versions...with little success).

All I have to say is THANKS FuelBelt, and you may even see me at my next IM race sporting a bright orange Helium 2 around my waist!!! Be sure to check out all they have to offer at www.fuelbelt.com .

Will you people just let me ride my bike?

A day in Boulder

Jen and I arrived in Boulder for Masters Swim practice with coach Luis Thursday around noon. I didn't know what to expect and to tell you the truth this was the first time I've ever done "Masters" swim. I quickly learned that swimmers have their own lingo. I should of bought a "Swimming for Dummies" book before going to Boulder. Apparently a "two, one, two" means swim 200, kick 100 and swim another 200. Also "on the top" means to start the interval at the when the second hand reaches 12 on the pool clock. I quickly caught on and we jumped right into the main set. The theme of the swim was "long stroke" and not speed. I was all about not swimming hard. Also since there were four people in my lane that meant every now and then I could draft just like in the open water! :) Practice flew by and coach Luis spent some time looking at my stroke and gave me some pointers. He said we'll spend some more time at the camp in June. Afterward, we lifted for about 45 minutes but it didn't go that great for me. I'm just not used to lifting besides doing free weight stuff on machines that aren't the machines at my normal gym.

After we got done with working out for the day, we got a light snack and drove into town and walked around the Pearl Street Mall.

After a day of running around we were both pretty tired. We relaxed back at the hotel room, and later that night met coach Luis for drinks....when I say "drinks" I mean water. :)

After we said our goodbyes, Jen and I got our last taste of Noodles & Company...since the closest one to us is a five hour drive. Sorry Noodles, you're good, but not that good.

We finally made it home late Friday night. We slept in today, which was AWESOME, and began our Ironman training. Today called for a long swim and a 2 hour ride. Just the start of some hard weeks to come. Speaking of which, coach gave me my IM Lake Placid training plan and at first glance I thought it was going to be a doozie. After looking over it more closely, I mean YAAAA those 9 1/2 hour training days will be hard, but I'm sure I can handle it!

Oceanside 70.3 Pictures

I always love the facial expressions I make coming out of the water. Classic.

PR Swim!

Navigating the bike course.

Powering up one of the first of many hills.

Ahhh! The sand...

The finish. How sweet it is.

Time to celebrate a good showing at the first race of 2009.

The Denver Adventure

Sunday night we were to fly from San Diego to Denver but our flight was canceled causing us to miss a day of skiing in Vail. :( Yes, I'm still very upset over it and I'm already planning my complaint letter to the airlines. So we were stuck in San Diego an extra day and luckily there could have been many other places a lot worse to be stuck in. Sunday night we were fortunate to spend another evening with Beth and O. We had soooo much fun with them this weekend and Sunday night was no exception. We drove up to La Jolla, sort of watched the sun set and even saw some seals. Monday morning we were finally on our way to Denver. We didn't get in till late Monday night and ended up going straight to bed. I had to work all day here in the mile high city, but after work made up for the hourse of being stuck in a conference room.

We met up with my high school friend Erin (who is also a triathlete)...go figure, and I got to met her fiance Ryan for the first time. We went to this brew house that had seriously over 100 beers on tap. It was beer heaven! Coach Luis sent me an email this morning saying that this week was a recovery week, so I took that as a direct message to the hair down and have a beer or three. Ok, it was more like four. :)

The four of us chatted for like 3 hours about triathlon, high school track, how they got engaged, how we got engaged, wedding planning (they get married in November), and of course more triatlon. The two of them did their first Ironman last year and I wanted to know every detail. They also plan to do Wisconsin this year. I'll be definatly cheering for them this September from the burgh!

Jen and I didn't want the night to end and had such a great time.

Some Pictures From Oceanside

Here's a picture of Beth right after she dropped her cell phone into the Port-o-pot. We even tried calling Spanky to see if there was anything we could do.

Beth and I with our Clearwater Spots

Jen and I after the race at the top of Torrey Pines State Park. That hike to the top HURT!

Oceanside 70.3 Race Report

The alarm went off at 3:45 AM and both Jen and I were up and at em. 800 Calories later breakfast was complete and we were in the car still somewhat groggy, and on our way to the Oceanside 70.3 Triathlon. We arrived into transition at 4:30, right when it opened and we both setup our gear in the transition areas. This was the first race I've done since racing the 70.3 Worlds last November, and I had no idea if my "race legs" were here yet. My overall goal for the race was to finish top 5 and to get a Clearwater 70.3 Worlds Qualifying slot.

Obviously, the first leg of the triathlon today was the swim. The swim takes place in an enclosed harbor connected to the Pacific Ocean. The water temperature was a chilly 59 degrees, but fortunately 4 degrees warmer than when I did this race in 2006. I made sure to line up in the front of my wave and at 6:48 AM, the cannon sounded and my wave was off. Prior this race, the fastest I have ever swam 1.2 miles in was 29:05, and that was at the Worlds last November. Since November I've spent endless hours in the pool and knew that I would be dissapointed if I did not swim to a personal best. So the swim course starts off by going straight for about a quarter mile and then takes a hard left out into the open harbor. The swim is an out and back course and at the halfway point I glanced at my watch and it read somewhere around 13:00 minutes. Knowing that the swim back was against the current I knew that the first half of the swim would be easier than the second half. None the less I made sure to draft as efficient as possible even though I caught up to the wave in front of me that went off four minutes ahead. I ran into some snags along the way, but my slightly aggressive swim style allowed me to worm my way through the masses. When I entered the boat ramp at the end of the swim and crossed the timing mat my watch read 28:32. If you do the math, that means I swam 33 seconds faster than 5 months ago. Not sure if that equates to the extra thousands and thousands of yards I put in the pool during that time, but none the less my swim is getting faster. I think a 28:32 works out to a 1:21 per 100 yard swim pace.

At this point in the race I was very excited and a quick glance at the bike racks indicated that not many were gone. Afterwards I found out that I had the 14th fastest swim in my age group. Seriously, I never even come close to breaking the top 20 in the swim. In transition, I tried to hustle but getting off the wetsuit is never easy and I decided to wear socks for the bike since the air temp was in the low 50's.

The first 20 miles of the bike are fast, flat and a little technical at times. I felt like I was averaging around 23-24 mph but my heart rate for some reason was sky high compaired to the power I was putting out. Looking at my HR file after the race, my average HR for the first 20 miles was 170 bpm. Regardless I felt good and kept pushing on. The first 40 miles I was seriously riding by myself, passing guys and the pro women every 5 miles or so. It was pretty lonely having no one to pace off of. Since there weren't many people around me I had assumed that I was riding good given my HR. Around mile 40 two of the 35-40 AG Men caught me so I decided to pace off of them. I worked a little hard to stay with them, but managed to ride hard the last 16 miles. When I entered Transition I knew my bike split was about 10-15 minutes slower than I wanted. Feeling a little discusted I put my head down and went out hard on the run.

Training for a early season race in Pittsburgh is very hard. I'd have to say that 85% of my bike workouts were done indoors on the trainer. I wonder if that equates to my poor bike performance? Seriously I can't think of anything else because the volume was certainly there.

The first couple miles of the run were tough. My watch was not working for some reason and I had no idea what pace I was running. I started to have some GI issued during the first couple of miles and it felt like my body wasn't absorbing any calories. Typically I don't have these types of problems. The entire first half of the 13.1 mile run I thought about stopping at a Port-O-Potty to empty the tank, but decided to keep going. I'm glad I decided to keep going because by the time the second half of the run came along the stomach issues went away and I was running even stronger.

Overall I felt okay on the run considering I've been nursing a foot injury the past six weeks. During the past six weeks, I hardly did any speed work. Surprisingly, I was still able to pull out a 1:30:49 half marathon off the bike to finish with a time of 4:39:07.

After I finished, I headed straight to my Blackberry to call home to see what place I finished in. I talked to my parents who were following me all day long on www.ironman.com, and they said that I finished 12th in my age group. Okay, so not a very good showing I initially thought, but then again it's still April and there is a lot of racing left for 2009.

I decided to chance it and go to the Clearwater "roll down" and crossed my fingers. I was wishing that a slot would roll down to 12th place. There was one spot that rolled down in my age group and they started off with 4th place. 4th place said no, then it went to 5th, then 6th, then 7th...........then they called my name. I was shocked that is rolled down that far, and of course I took the last spot!

Even though I didn't have my best race, I still achieved my goal of qualifying for the 70.3 Half Ironman World Championships again in November 2009. I already made hotel reservations and Jen and I are both looking forward to sandy beaches in November.

I just hope I can make it through seven more months of intense training! :)

A big congrats goes out to Beth Shutt who also qualified for 70.3 Worlds, Jen Harrison who had an awesome race and Marit who qualified for Kona. All of you had an awesome race! Jen also had a great race and was excited to cross another 70.3 finish line!!!

I plan to take it easy for about a week and then I begin Ironman training. Let the fun times begin!