2019; the schedule!

Up until November/December the plan for 2019 had been for a fairly quiet race year with a DK200 as the goal event and if I failed to get in through the lottery (gone are the days of just signing up) I would throw my hat in the ring for the XL 350 mile version. Then things turned on a dime, everything got thrown in the air and landed mostly as follows;

January 20 Rivet Raid; mixed surface ride through the Santa Monica Mountains with proceeds going to restoration efforts post Woolsey Fire

February 9 Rock Cobbler 7.0; as per my last post I missed the 2018 edition. Rumor has it that the 2019 version involves some swimming?!?!

May 5 Belgian Waffle Ride; actually, I am 99% this will be the Belgian Wafer Ride, all the fun gravel bits and none of the remorseless Ramona suckfest

June 22 Haute Route Rockies, CO; seven days, 770km and 20,000m of elevation gain in the front range of the Colorado Rockies. This is my A event for the year

August 23 Haute Route Cedar City UT, similar format to the Rockies only this one is 3 days instead of 7 and this time Becca is riding too, we still working out if it’s going to be a team event or if we will ride it as solo riders

September 27 Haute Route San Francisco CA; detecting a theme yet? 3 days again, this time we head up the coast to San Francisco at hit some of Northern California climbs!

Other events not scheduled;

An Everesting/ High Rouleurs …I have been carrying the High Rouleurs monkey on my back for several years now and with all the climbing I will be putting it could be the year it gets shrugged off!

I’ll also be chasing Becca around as she does her crazy stuff…trust me, she is taking crazy to 11 this coming year!

So, what was going to be a quiet year, isn’t!

Stay tuned adventures to follow!!

Adventure Time

No, not this kind…

But this kind…

I’ve been a big fan of Topeak products for a while now, I actually have an original Alien Tool from circa 2000 which is still going strong.

I love their Quick Click feature that lets me switch saddle bags easily and I have them for all my bikes. Last year I added their Fuel Tank which is a top tube bag “Bento Box” for Dirty Kanza and it worked perfectly!

So following them on Facebook deemed natural and this week I won one of their giveaways and won a Backloader!

With Crushar my last registered race of the season and the summer holidays fast approaching this is whetting my Bike Adventuring whistle!

2016 Plans

Races are like vacations, it’s always good to have one, ideally two planned out. At least tentatively, so with that in mind this is the in pen and pencil plans…

• February 7;  The Rock Cobbler 3.0, 100m gravel grinder…sorta – registered
• February 6-14; Tour of Sufferlandria, the usual shenanigans!
• March 19 ; Redlands Strada Rossa 100km
• April 24; Belgium Waffle Ride, 135 miles and 11,000’ of gain on and off road
• May; Trainerroad 8 Days of California
• June 4; Dirty Kanza 200

This will dovetail into Becca’s plans for the year which look like this;

• April 2,  Oceanside 70.3
• July, Vineman 70.3
• October, Arizona 70.3
• November, Ironman Arizona

I am sure there are few other adventures that are off of the radar right now but that will come into focus as the year pans out.

42 shopping days to go…

Till I/we sign up for this little lot…

• 13.1 LA January ??, 2015 – Not sure if this really going to happen but just in case it is on the radar, it didn’t happen this year, hopefully it will next
• Calico 30K/50K January 25, 2015 – 30K for Becca, 50K for me
• Sean O’Brien 50K February 7, 2015
• LA Marathon, this is a Becca only race, I am over big city races
• The Great Race of Agoura 13.1 March 28, 2015- a fun local race
• Leona Divide 50 mile April 18, 2015 – Both Becca and I are throwing our hats on this one!
• Rim to Rim to Rim 46-50 miles May 9, 2015 – This will be a self supported crossing of the Grand Canyon..TWICE!
• Transrockies Run 120 miles over 6 days August 11-16, 2015 – What would be a better way to spend a week in Colorado with your best friend?

Revised plans…back to my roots!

After much kicking it around it’s shaped up like this! Heading back to the road and mostly trails!

Stand by for the infamous selfie trail shot

…or as they have become…the doubly!

2014 Redux…in pencil…just in case!

Some changes from what we thought back in October!

I guess this year is the year of the bike…only one repeat event TDBB, although this time the 70 mile ride which is enjoyable rather than the 100 which is just plain brutal!

So no IMSG! This year I managed to get 3 weeks more training that last year so I should actually be ready to go there by 2019!

L’Etape California is riding the last stage of the Amgen Tour of California, the route is to be announced but I expect it to be hilly!

Honeymoon, a week mountain biking in Moab, UT…should be a blast

Only one Tri this year, Vineman so that’s my summer A race followed by the 12 hours of Temecula in November…something very new! TribeccaTO can sit and watch me go by every hour as she tapers for IMAZ!

But as you can see…it’s all in pencil!

2014 plans…

Back of a napkin, I am not racing IMAZ, TriBeccaTO will be!

Active Advantage…is it really an advantage?

Earlier this year, well about 6 weeks ago I signed up for the much advertised Active Advantage. There were two driving factors, an additional 25% discount on schwaggle.com and the waiving of the “processing fee” that you are charged when registering for races on active.com.

In the last 12 months my race sign ups have obviously shifted from ultras to triathlons and with that the shift to using active.com race registration instead of more localized sites such as race360.com and ultrasignup.com. Added to which that a triathlon registration is expensive; a “small” Sprint race can cost $100, an IM branded 70.3 is around $275 and a full IM is around $675 so any opportunity to save $10 or $20 here or there soon adds up especially when you are signing up for 5-6 races in a year, it almost become a case of buy 5 get one free.

The initial cost was $1.99 for the first month and another $59.95 for the rest of the year after 30 days “trial”. My trail ended and my Visa was charged. Since paying my $59.95 and signing up to activeadvantage.com schwaggle.com was retired and is now powered by Left Lane Sports under the banner of activegearup.com Left Lane is an online broker of discounted gear. Both outlets had been around for a while and I have actually purchased several things through schwaggle in the last year whereas I have never purchased anything from Left Lane, I even have their app on my iPhone and receive a daily email from them but their selection is too broad for me they cover a lot of outdoor sports including; climbing, skating and surfing and these things are not any interest to me.

The really only left one compelling reason for the membership which was the waived processing fees. With that in mind I signed up for IMSG and had $10 waived. This week I went to sign up for the Desert Tri in March, it’s a work up race for IMSG. It was my first triathlon ever earlier this year…if you remember I had a disastrous swim. I had toyed with doing both the Sprint and International (Olympic) distances, the former as some form of redemption and the latter as training, but given the combined cost of nearly $200 plus travel and accommodation and the fact that 2013 is not a cheap race year already I decided that redemption can wait.

So to active.com I went in search of the race and registration, it was easy to find and it was advertised as “Save on this event”, great I thought another $10 saved. If you click on this link it takes you to the Active Advantage sign up page!

I went through the sign process but the waived processing fee would not show when I went to check out, I tried it several times and I couldn’t get it to work?!!?

The open window is what pops up when you click on the “?” by Processing Fee

I opened a help ticket with them and got an email back asking me to call them, which I did. After some discussion I was advised that the race did not participate in the processing fee waiver and I had to pay it. I questioned that they were advertising it as such? The Customer Service Rep told me that nearly all events are advertised with it but not every event participates! It wasn’t her fault but I was upset as this is really a case of double dipping, I pay for the “Advantage” but I don’t get it.

It was at that point that I cancelled my membership and today I was refunded my $59.99…the whole experience has been rather tasteless and in the end I saved $8.00 which I probably spent in time writing to them and being on the phone!

Don’t get me wrong, I get it that these companies are in business to make money…what I disagree with is their methods; falsely representing the discount is just plain wrong.

I’ll save any more rants and raves on this issue and leave you with active.com own words “In 2011, 205 million people attended 1.8 million meetings at a total cost of $263 billion in direct spending in the United States alone” all I can say is that’s a lot of $10 processing fees!

As for the Desert Tri, my processing fee was the price of a quick look at the race website and a stamp!

Twenty thirteen…

This is tentative (unless noted "Registered") for 2013.

A focus on shorter races for 2013 after 2012's goal of Ironman Arizona, This is very much a year of two halves. The first 6 months are focused on a good really good St George which is new but is based on the old Ironman course that notoriously hard. I am "hopeful" for a roll down slot to 70.3 Worlds in Las Vegas in September. The second half is focused on a Boston Qualifier time, which for my age group is a 3:25!

As for my sherpaing and head cheerleading duties I am sherpaing for my Partner in Tri' TribeccaTO who is adding another notch to her Ironman belt!

Along the way I am sure there will be a few 5kms, 10kms and some other fun and madness!

03/03 Desert Tri Olympic

04/15 Boston Marathon - Sherpa!

05/04 St George 70.3 - Registered 

07/27 Barbs Race 70.3 - Sherpa!

08/19 Challenge Pentiction - Sherpa!

11/03 Santa Clarita Marathon

11/10 Malibu Marathon*

12/01 California International Marathon+

* Depends on Santa Clarita result

+ Depends on Santa Clarita and Malibu

The Dance Card

2012 is shaping up to be a fun filled year, here is what is on the radar…

• 01/15/12 13.1 Los Angeles Registered
• 03/03/12 Desert Sprint Triathlon Registered
• 05/20/12 Pacific Coast Olympic Triathlon
• 07/15/12 Vineman 70.3 Registered
• 09/15/12 Bakersfield Olympic Triathlon
• 11/18/12 Ironman Arizona Registered

There will be a few others that will flesh it out but this is the framework!

Wordless Wednesday…first this, then that!

 

Sunday…

2012…

Nuts!

I knew I would have to register early, last year this race sold out in four days, this year the organizers guessed at 48 hours…registration opened on November 1st at 9am, I was done by 9:30am by noon it was sold out; three hours THREE HOURS!!!

When I looked again around 3pm there was 750 people on the waitlist! Like I said Nuts!

This has me really worried about being able to register for IMAZ the day after race day on November 21st…oh didn’t I mention I was doing an Ironman next year? Lets hope Nuts is an adjective not an expletive come the 21st!

Wordless Wednesday…

One season ends….another starts!

Things to do list…

Come the last weeks of July I am going to be at a loose end with myself! My wife and kids are leaving town for a trip to the East Coast and then onto the UK. I will be joining them in the UK but I have 2 1/2 weekends completely at my disposal! What to do? Here’s a shortlist:

R2R2R – Grand Canyon, could I knock out 46 miles in one day…maybe two days?

Tour de Big Bear – 50m bike ride at around 8000’?

Hike Mt Baldy – tried that a couple of years ago and blew up!

SF Half Marathon – I know loads of people doing this! SOLD OUT!

Mammoth Quake and Shake Half Marathon – 13.1 miles at 8000’?

A 5k or 10k…there are a few of those.

Spend a weekend lost at the Spearmint Rhino…ok this one maybe not!

Any other suggestions, I am willing to travel a bit too, which is good as there really is jack going on in SoCal, it's too hot?

Second Half…

Prompted by Stephanie when she asked me on Daily Mile what was I training for, I figured it was time to update my race schedule. But first let’s recap what I had on the agenda:
Hmm not such solid first half of the year, this may turn out to be my quietest race year yet, even after wrecking my leg in 2009! I did manage the 13.1 in January though! Plans to run some races with the kids didn’t really come to much fruition as I wasn’t racing neither were they although we did all run a 1 miler in March and we may squeeze in a 4th July something! That being said I am actually training for something…shut the front door! And I do have some semblance of a plan for the second half of the year and early part of next…yes I am talking about 2012 already; 178 shopping days till Christmas!

So it’s looks kinda like this:

8/28 Half Marathon of the Harbors – this is what I am training for and I am aiming for a sub 1:30. Then I head back to the dirt…

10/22 Coastal Trail Runs Malibu Creek 25k – there are several races that run this loop each year; along, up, along, down, easy!

11/12 Catalina Island Eco Marathon – this race claimed two toe nails and whole chunk of pride last year, time for some revenge!

11/20 PCTR Santa Monica Mountains 50k – I have run either the 30k or 50k 4 out of the last 5 years, it was my very first Ultra

1/16 Calico Ghost Town 50k – I raced this in 2008, four years later seems about right, just like the Olympics right!

2/25 Ray Miller 50m – this follows a similar course to the PCTR race, this is up in the air for now…we’ll see, but I do need a sub 11:00 finish!

As we all know it’s very easy to write a list of races for the future, it’s another thing to get the training done and then turn up to the start line uninjured and healthy!

I intend to take these one at a time and hopefully enjoy some success.

Mojo + Motivation = MoJoVation

So with one eye on the future, only one eye mind you, my mojo and motivation has flamed on to coin a phrase of the Human Torch!

It would seem strange that I was not motivated when running the best part of three marathons and a 5k in a little over 4 weeks, don’t get me wrong I was, I always aim to leave it all out there although with the races so close together there was a little conservatism employed. But while the motivation was high the mojo was low. I was lacking that float that I get from running trails, that sheer joy of chasing the horizon. I cheated Long Beach; I went in knowing I would finish if I ran smart, but I didn’t really race it. The Eco Marathon was a real ball buster made better with good company. Come PCTR the fun was coming back and by the time the Turkey Day Dash came around it was all about family shits and giggles.

The main driver of the loss of mojo was a niggling injury, I don’t know what caused and more frustrating I don’t know why it went away, it’s impact was to knock my training out by 2 nearly 3 months, needless to say it was insanely frustrating, I tried ice, heat, massage, electro-stim, yoga, crossing training and this thing that finally made it go away was good old fashioned rest. It’s not reared it’s head lately (hopefully not famous last words)! The lingering effect is a big hole in my base which only now I am able to start to shore up.

So enough of all that gloom and doom, I currently I have a real spring in my step and it’s only be added to due to these; Saucony Kinvaras, it’s early days they only have a week in them but so far so good and yes there is a review in the works.

So the one eye has me looking towards the 13.1 race in January, yeah it’s only 6 weeks away but the hopeful plan is to have transitioned through the Kinvara’s back into these, Newtons while adding miles to the bank. I got them back in February, ran in them a couple of times and then they lived in the closet ever since.

I am a lazy heel striker, that is when I am tired I resort to heel striking but when I am ‘fresh’ I am a pretty good mid foot striker. So it’s a double edged sword, one being a thin base and the other and the bigger challenge; never really a break in the racing schedule to fit the transition fully in, (at least one without injury), so hopefully this will give me the window to effect the change. One of the challenges has been the actual planning of the transition and beyond everyone saying to only run in them for a mile or so and ramp up from there there is nothing specific…until now. I picked up Danny Abshire’s, the founder of Newton’s, new book Natural Running which comes complete with an 8 week transition program, yeah the race is in 6 weeks so hopefully I can get up to speed pretty quickly…I’ll obviously be documenting the process as I go.

Let the fun begin!

Thinking ahead of myself…

Training with a purpose, I am really not sure if I didn’t have a race (or races) on my radar that I could drag my self out of bed in the wee hours and get things done. I have always been an outcomes based kind of person, give me a target and I am totally up for the challenge, doing it for the sake of doing it doesn't’ really fit! Maybe it would but it doesn’t fit like it does with a race entry filled out.

I have mentioned in the past that I am racing the Catalina Island Eco Marathon in November and hope to pace a friend to her first 50k finish also in November, I’ll not mention her name but she likes to run with her dog and lives around these parts. But I am starting to think about a few others that I can build out around them that will carry me into next year; there's this one; DRTE in Santa Barbara in October and/or the Over The Hill Track Club High Desert in December; the 50k option for both. My season is totally messed up with me peaking in Oct/Nov but it might actually work out if I can double dip and peak in the spring too which will set me up for a return trip to finish off some unfinished business at Twin Peaks, and Leona Divide…again! Neither of which I had a good showing in the last 18 months one due to weather the other my stomach. You can read the reports here; Twin Peaks, Leona Divide.

Anyway am I thinking ahead of myself, maybe, but I always did wonder what was the other side of the horizon.

Plan the work…work the plan!

The next two months mapped out. It obviously started last weekend. Bare bones, run, bike, swim, weights, stretch! Keep it simple and get it done!

Don't forget to post your entry to win an race entry to the Catalina Island Eco Marathon here and I’ll see the winner on the start line in November!

It's on like Donkey Kong!

Yesterday was my long tempo run, 8 miles at 7:05, first and last are a warm up and cool down. My mind wasn’t in it, in fact I had said on Twitter…

So after some procrastination I just got changed and got on with it. I knew within a quarter mile it was going to be good run. The route takes me around my local neighborhood; there are some short steepish hills both up and down and some longer sweeping ones too, as well as some traffic lights that I have to stop at and where I pause my Garmin. The miles were just clicking by and when I hit the end of mile 4 in 28:06 I knew it was going well and I decided to keep the pressure on I clocked through the 10k distance and hit the lap counter, this would completely throw me off at mile 7 but I wanted to see where I was at for the 10k. I finished the 7 miles in 50:03 and then added the eighth mile in 6:56 for a total of 8.21 in 56:59 just under three minutes faster than my run on Thursday which was over a quarter mile less.

My 10k came in at 42:48, needless to say I am happy, ecstatic, cartwheeling around the lounge, that’s 5:05 minutes off my PR…as for next Sunday, oh yeah it is, as they say, on like Donkey Kong!

The Speed of Lite!

My last post, where I documented my increase in pace, got me thinking. It really got me thinking what do I need to get faster, I am, after all, looking for every edge I can but the reality is that I am forty cough-cough year old so there is a limit to the improvement.

Like most people I put on a little ‘Christmas Pudding’ or should I call it padding! In fact since September I have probably put on, depending on the day, somewhere between 15-20lbs! This is the downside of eating like you running 50 miles a week and actually running nothing, teens and now early twenties! Now there’s a correlation here heavy equals slow; well to a point. I remember reading somewhere an article which indicated what you can expect to gain per pound of weight lost!

After a bit of rummage on the interwebthingy I turned it up and the details are quite amazing; for every pound you lose you can expect a gain in speed of 2 seconds per mile, 2 seconds per mile, what’s that you say well if you lose, say, 5lbs: over a 5k that’s 31 seconds, over a 10k that’s 1:02, over a Half Marathon that’s 2:11 and over a Marathon 4:22!

If I apply that to my 5k PR from 2008 when I was probably 10-15lbs lighter that extra 5lbs would reduce it down to 19:10. So let’s extrapolate that; I need to lose; well I actually want to lose, 20lbs, over a marathon that’s 17:28, 17:28! Well, I’ll take some of that please, that’s completely free time, which off of my existing marathon PR would get me under the 3:30 marker in fact that makes me pretty close to 3:26, so what that really means is I need to go a bit more than one minute per mile faster that I did in June of 2007!

Am I being too simplistic, maybe, but it strikes me that a combination of the weight loss and the speed training from the FIRST plan may just get me to the finish line with a 2:**:** on the clock face?

Now if I was to throw together a little weight loss competition who would be interested?