Seeing Progress

I just finished my largest build segment to date. The last few workouts I did everything that I could to just hold on, I was feeling really tired and warn out. I had a 4 hour bike on Saturday followed by a 45 min run and was able to do it from my door step with a great new training partner Peter. We are matched really well and are helping each other get ready for CDA. The reason I posted that I am seeing progress is the fact that I was able to ride at a steady pace for 4 hours and then transition off the bike to a solid run. I am usually cooked by this time and do what ever I can to hold on and Saturday I was running at very solid 160-165 HR and a pace going up and down near the 10/min pace. As I write this I am feeling more confident in my plan to slow down to go faster. The biggest test of the last year and more particular the past 6 months will be in 14 days. I have never ran the last half of a 70.3 but have walked a perfect 3 for 3. I am excited to test what I have learned, test what I can do when making smart decisions. Today I am really excited for Rev3 Knoxville 70.3. I am excited to see the progress translate to a race performance. I am excited to have the support of my family. I know that Anne is getting sick and tired of hearing my pace/BPM's Average/Speed/Effort each day. She is kind, listens and then tells me how proud of me she is and that I am doing great! I am one lucky guy even on days where my resting HR is elevated and I am very nervous to tackle a Z3 run with slight pickups for 90 minutes.....She tells me that I will do great and she will see me later. Anne is my biggest fan and gets what I am doing and I love her for that.

Is hiding an option?

I have loaded my blog page wanting to update date with a new entry so many times and have not been able to get myself to do it. I think when times are challenging and are hard some of the regular stuff that you do get's tossed to the way-side. My blog has been one item that was tossed and now that I am getting back on top I have wanted to write a post several times. The events of the past few months have been blog worthy but I just can't seem to pick one and start. Today I decided that the moment has passed and I need to focus on what's in front of me and not what's behind. So I will say sorry to the 2nd half of the 2011 summer and look forward to the end of the year activites. To make it fun I will list the top 5 events of the past several months and what my top 5 are for the rest of the year.

Past Top 5:

1. Lake Powell with my Parents, Liz and Tyler and 2 days alone with my family
2. Dying a teriffic death at Harvest Moon 70.3 Triathlon
3. Watching Jackson play flag football
4. Watching Josh play baseball
5. Work getting better, then worse, then even more worse, then much better!


Future Top 5;

1. Pumpkinman Olympic Tri this Saturday
2. Sacramento marathon on December 4th with Anne, Beth, Keith, Jewles, Nancy, John and others.
3. Skiing/Snowboarding at Winter Park/Mary Jane
4. Training with Anne
5. IRONMAN Coeur D' Alene June 2012......I AM GOING FOR IT!


Stick with me as I make a transition from the all out short course triathlete to Ironman Distance. You will learn over the next few months why my biggest goal is to "Slow down to finish fast". Stick with me as I make my run at the bucket list and hear how it goes. The good, bad and ulgy.

Hello heat, glad to meet you

Getting ramped up for the Harvest moon 70.3 Triathlon my rides and runs have been getting longer. Anne is also getting ready for the Copper Triangle a huge mountain ride on August 6th and she takes the lead on training right now. She is riding with Nancy, Margaret and others that are getting ready like Julie and Beth. The core group of girls that are working together are Nancy and Margaret and the three of them have done so well getting ready for this years event. I think that they will have a great event and I am excited to see Anne's mileage increase on the bike.
Jackson was going to a be at a sleepover and I was going to pick him up after my early ride in the morning until Anne came downstairs and said "we have a problem". She was looking at the invite and realized that the party was going to be done at 9 and so I was not going to get the 4 hour ride that I had on my schedule. I waffled a bit about a shorter ride, blowing it off because of an oversight. But no, I jumped up...really I did I was very proud of how I was able to spring into action and headed up the stairs taking them by two's like a real cool guy. I told Anne that I was going to go now and get it done so everyone can be happy with the weekend training and kids. She looked at me like I was crazy but it only lasted for a minute until I was headed up to the bedroom to change again taking the stairs two by two. I smiled as I hit the top and thought to myself that I was a good start to my warm up and it was going to be the coolest part of the day. I stepped outside after getting everything ready and realized what 95 degrees in Colorado feels like at 12 noon.
My goal for the ride was to finish and do so in a very controlled effort during the entire ride. I live about 8 miles from the start of the Harvest Moon and so I decided that today was a good time to ride the course for the first time. Anne came outside with me to pump up my tires and asked 3 times if I was OK and made sure that my phone was on. She said she would keep her phone close and would come and get me if I needed. You see I have had heat issues in the past and they did not turn out well.
The first hour was great, I was eating, drinking and doing what I felt would allow for a good ride. I had to add extra miles on the bike portion of the race route to get my 4 hours done and so I went past the 3rd turn that was the one that took us back to transition. This bike course has about 3 main roads that you ride so you can work the rollers and hills and flat and false down hills ect. I stayed about 5-8 BPM higher than I wanted to and kept dropping my effort to keep me in a good way. I hit a gas station and filled up with another 60oz of water and Gatorade and headed back to the race course. The last 2 hours were crazy hot. I have never felt the heat this bad on a ride and so I worked hard to keep my HR down because I was dropping sweat a lot more that I normally do. The last turn was back on a road that I was familiar with and was also the sign that I was about 45 minutes from home. The bad part of that was I was out of liquid and was heating up and putting myself in the tank. I slowed down and took the next 5 miles very easy and turned into the 7/11 just as I was about done. I slowly got off my bike, walked to the bathroom and put cool water all over my face and back. I grabbed more ice water and took a second to get somewhat composed before I took on the last 25 minutes home. I had burned up in several ways and took the rest of the time to think about how to be better next time.
Home never looked so good and I was able to catch Anne as she was taking Jackson to the party and the kids to the mall for items they have been saving up for. I cooled down and it took me about 45 minutes before I was able to come back from crazy land. I jumped on the scale and over the 4 hour ride I took on 140oz of liquid and still lost over 5 pounds. I will work on trying to figure out how to allow my body to take on more liquid, calories and stuff to keep me rolling in the heat. This was a good experience to realize that I have to keep hydrated to keep going. I have to keep my effort low enough to allow my body to accept the H2o and calories because today I went past that point and it hurt way to much. I am glad for the training and lessons that I learn and will keep it up. Hopefully we don't see 95 degrees on the bike/run course on race day, but if we do I know what I need to do to make it a success.
Good luck with your ride tomorrow Anne.
Stay hydrated.

Love you,

T

A weekend away and watching IMAZ

From the deck of our room at the Biltmore

"You should come and watch the race, it would totally be fun and cool." This is was stayed in my mind for the next 2 miles on a regular run with Sonja and Michelle in CC res. We had a good time talking and running slow and were about 30 days away from Ironman Arizona. We moved through several topics and as usual the run was over really fast and we all took off to finish the rest of the day.
I called Anne and asked if we could change our Arizona trip that was planned in February to November. She did not see a problem with it so I made all the arrangements and we were booked. We were going to give the kids to my brother Rob whom we kid exchange with and our dog to my other brother John who we dog exchange with.
The month rolled by fast and after a fast day we were headed to the airport. We did not end up flying together because we used miles and only had enough for 1 ticket with each of the airlines I fly. So I was on Frontier and Anne was on United. We stayed at the Arizona Biltmore for two nights and then moved down to the race site with the rest of the gang.
ARIZONA BILTMORE is one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in. It is a hi stoical hotel dating back to the early 1930's. It had 8 pools, restaurants, shopping and 2 golf courses. The rooms were great and we just sunk into the bed after getting checked in after 1am. We slept in and started to count the things that we were not able to do at home. Sleep in is high on the list. Second was a calm and relaxed breakfast.



We took a long run along the canal and ended up running for 2.25 hours, which was the longest run Anne had done by over 45 minutes. We talked and ran and laughed and had fun looking at the Arizona desert and making plans for the rest of our lives. I love running with my best friend and wow will this stage of life be fun.
We went to fancy dinners, lunch at the pool, hiked up Camelback mountain and went dancing.


Anne and I on the top of Camelback Mountain AZ

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Me overlooking where the IMAZ race is the following day

We slept in again for the second day and as we left we felt that we made the most out of our time at the Biltmore
The best part of the Biltmore was sitting at night by the fire pits relaxing to the sounds of a fountain nearby and looking at a full moon. This was a place to remember and I did it with my best friend!
IMAZ
Travel to triathlon races are always fun for me and it was interesting being a spectator and not a racer this time. This was also much longer of a race than I normally do and so the preparation time was a bit longer than normal. After getting plans made and a group dinner by the pool we said our good nights to Sonja and Michelle as they made final arrangements and headed to bed. Anne and I headed to the hottub and was joined by Michael.
The rock start support crew

Calm before the start

The first 30 seconds of the swim start, can you see Michelle in the front?

The Swim:
Finding a spot on the bridge was tougher than I thought. I am not use to being the spectator and was off my game. We ended up taking a spot on the far end of the bridge and was able to see everything really well. The amount of families that were present to watch loved ones at this race was huge. Of the 2700 racers just under 1100 were first timers. The gun went off and the mostly calm water turned white and you could only see limbs and caps for the next 2 minutes. The talk about the brutal swim start is more true 5 stories above than ever and I was amazed to see the crazy efforts that were going on. We did not have much time and so we headed back to transition to were we could watch them come out of T1. We stood and waited on the fence line close to where Michelle and Sonja racked there bikes and after about 20 minutes they laid down the mount line right in front of us. We watched the pro's come by and shortly after the age groupers were next.

We almost wanted to give her a push to start but in the end she did not need it as she smashed the all time record

Watching the pro's and then finally seeing Michelle out of the water was awesome. She was in the top 20 of all age group swimmers (out of 2700) and was looking really good. We yelled as loud as we possible could as she grabbed her bike and headed for the bike exit.

Michelle kept this smile all day long!!!


Sonja getting out of T1


We had enough time to get Michelle of and then came Sonja. She looked good and it was again awesome to see a her exit the water faster than expected. We cheered her on loudly, maybe a little too loudly but we wanted to make sure she remembered it until the next time we saw her.
The bike course was fun since it was 3 loops, we settled on the course about a mile out and so we would be able to see the riders 6 times on the bike.
The run course was the same where the racers did 3 loops and we the spectators sat where we could see them 6 times. We spent most of the day with Michael and Charlot. Once we settled on the bike course we found Chris, Troy and Anne with Helen. Eric was out on the course most of the day.



The finish was spectacular and I was inspired to see the racers as they came through the finish line. We were impressed with Sonja taking a 1 place AG finish and Michelle taking a 3rd place finish. They both took their Kona slots and will be racing on the big island next year.
The whole weekend was great and as I had a few days to reflect, I am even more impressed with the commitment it takes to make it to the start line let alone the finish. If you hear the words coming down the finish line "you are an Ironman" it is something pretty spectacular not only for the racer but the ones that supported you all the way.

Great job girls,

Love the weekend with you Anne,

T

This is a picture of Anne looking at a finisher run in. Or could it possible be a sign of another finisher in the future running down the shoot?????