Ayerd{dot}com :: Triathlon

Long time, no entry.

Still been working on the workouts. Lots of running and swimming. Big bike ride coming up this weekend. 100 miles. I'm kind of looking forward to it. It will be a great chance to practice the nutrition for the Ironman.

Speaking of Ironman: 26 weeks. 26 weeks from Saturday dragging my butt down the road hoping towards to finish. It is going to be great!

Looking at my schedule, I thought I had no life with all the training before the 26 week mark. I was wrong. Coming up, I'll have no life. Good thing I enjoy the pool, love the bike, and have great people to run with... oh yes, and a wife who doesn't mind the hours I'm putting in.

I'm also pretty psyched this week because after the bike ride, I get started on the tri- and open swim races. First tri- on the list, Columbia (17 days from this post), followed closely by Eagleman (38 days from this post). Eagleman will be a good test, a fun race and I can only hope to finish with the enthusiasm of the TriGeek crowd.

When you set out for a 100 mile ride on your bike, you tend to lay everything out the night before. No sense running around in circles getting everything set at 4:30 AM the day of the ride. That time is better spent stuffing food in the maw.

As I was putting everything I needed in a bag, bottle, or on the bike Friday evening I thought my checklist was golden: long sleeve undershirt, jersey, shorts to wear for the car ride, shoes, socks, helmet, gloves, sun glasses, windbreaker, bottles (1 of Heed, 2 of Perpetum, and one of Gatorade), a Red Bull for rest stop around mile 75, Gu, clothes to change into for the ride home, and lastly nutrition for breakfast so all I had to worry about in the morning was feeding my face.

Everything was going great that morning. Up about 5 minutes before the alarm went off. Breakfast down the pipes, wife and bikes packed in the car and zoom, we were off. Heck, the forcasted rain wasn't even present, just some clouds that you could tell would be burned off by mid-morning. Life was good.

Was. Notice the "was". If you look over my checklist, you'll see one very important piece of equipment missing from the list. Bike shorts. You know, the ones with the padding.

/insert colorful expletive here. repeat.

I know you're curious, so here it is. My 2005 training schedule. It is still evolving as some events — that won't crush the training plan — get added in. I'll try and update it every day.

I was thinking of how to get this posted when lo-and-behold, Open Office came to the rescue. It produced the HTML file and about 5 minutes of clean-up reduced the file size by 1/3. Nice huh? Word.

Share and enjoy.

Terrible. I feel terrible. Around Saturday I started to feel a little icky. Cough started and rapidly got worse. Nose running. Just felt tired. Yea, it is a cold. After the weekend run/swim came home and slept.

Sunday was weak. I was feeling worse as the day went on.

How crummy is this? The week before the first tri of the year and I'm to ill to even go through my taper. I had an appointment with my doctor to talk about knee problems (for some reason 2+ hours of running results in great knee pain) so while I was there I got my co-pay worth's out of him by getting hooked up with cold meds.

I'm not usually a big on pills and stuff but for this one I'm making an exception. I really want to get Columbia done in under 3 hours and if that means I got to take the antibotics for 5 days, go through the Crayon box and color me there.

After taking off Sunday and Monday, I went for an easy 2-hour bike ride today after work. The first 40-minute pace as a bit high — around 19-21mph — but then from 0:40 to 2:00 we went a more comfortable 15-18mph. It felt good to be moving again. I'm taking that as a sign the cold it starting to lose some power and I may be okay this weekend. I'll know more after trying a 40-minute run tomorrow.

Finally got around to making reservations for November. Probably could have acted sooner, but better late than never. On the Ironman Florida web site there is a list "event friendly" hotels — places that are supporting the event. Might as well go with one of them, right? That is what I thought too.

Called the Host hotel. Minimum 5-night stay. At this time the only place they had space was in the condos next to the hotel. Smallest room/condo was going for $149 a night — 1 bed job with a mini-fridge and a microwave. If you wanted something with a kitchen (important for pre-race meals as I found out during the marathon) it went up to $199 a night but it was a two-bedroom model. Plus taxes and stuff. Around $1,000 a week seemed a bit steep for the hotel if you're not splitting the costs with someone.

Next place I called was the Sugar Sands Beach Resort. Helpful staff. They had plenty of rooms on this date. Rates were lots better: $60 a night, full kitchen. Hot Dog, we have a weiner! Only downside, if you can call it that, is they are about 15 minutes away from the start. That just means I'll have to get moving 20 minutes earlier from my restless pre-race tossing and turning to get there. Since I don't have to worry about the bike — thank you Elite for bring the bike down, tuning it up, cleaning afterwards, and bringing her back home for only $200 — that isn't as big a deal as it could be.

Cold Update

Feeling better. Meds are doing their magic. As soon as the cough medicine phase of over I think I'll lose the groggy feeling. I do, however, need to get out and run or something. Been sitting fairly inactive for two days now and I'm getting twitchy.

Here are the numbers for my 2005 Columbia Triahtlon:

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the sub 3-hour time. The cold I had all week continuted to work it's magic on race day. My stomach was a nightmare and we won't even talk about my nose was up to. Still, the day was beautiful: sunny and cool from a slight breeze.

The swim was pretty good. The lake is fresh water and a little on the cold side when you first jump in. The kind of cold that takes your breath away the first couple of times you stick your face in. I missed my goal time of 21-ish minutes, and actually went almost 1 full minute slower than last year. The problem was that when the guy said "go" I was in the the process of working towards the outter edge of the pack. I got boned, dead center near the front. The fools around me decided become a wall with all the normal kicking and extra arms you expect in the middle of a swim pack. It took a while to work around them. I also had problems once I hit the back-end of the wave that started before us. It was a pretty good time and I think if I had been swimming strong the last two weeks instead of other stuff, it would have been better.

T1 sucked ass. I not sure exactly what went wrong but 5 minutes is too long. Maybe I had more problems with the wetsuit than I realized? Maybe I was trying to run in the clip-shoes? Maybe, it was just a bad day for transitions.

The bike was nice. The new hotness made it happen and I felt fairly good on the bike. Telling moment for me was when I was going down hill at around 35 mph and dudes were passing me. Sup wit dat? But, yo, it was a good ride. Killed last year's time by almost 10 minutes and 2 mph. My bike computer claims a top speed of 38.1 — Sweet. I think I could have done better with my liquid and nutrition on the bike but my stomach wasn't going to allow that. It was a pretty unhappy beastie out there with me.

Look at that cumulative place 361! Nice. I will now lobby the race director to stop all future events at this point and simply call it a day!

Hopping off the bike into T2 wasn't all it could be either. My stomach was really rolling by then and I needed to really take a leak. Dumped the bike and headed to the port-a-potty for a wiz. I think that cost me a minute or two.

The run wasn't too bad by my standards. Way better than last year's, but still pretty slow compared to most people. I was hoping for less than an hour and was fairly close (even counting the bathroom break). Stupid stomach was doing me wrong and was plenty uncomfortable for the first 4 or so miles. Right near the end it started to come to terms with the idea it wasn't going to make me stop and we got into a groove. At least I finished strong!

Overall, not unhappy. See all those "better than last year" references above and you know I cannot complain too much. Without the cold (and flood and car problems) the two weeks before the race it would have been better, but hey, that is why we get to race again next year.

Next up Eagleman. I can't wait for a race with no hills. I'll take my chances with the wind. And, the damn cold better be done soon so I can get back to some real training. I miss the pool.

Found some information on open water swim dates for NJ and the surrounding area. Man, I loves me some open ocean swims. Can't wait for the calendar to roll around to the right dates.

I'm also hoping to talk some of my training pals into a nice brick or two around these events. Bike to the event and then swim. Maybe swim the event and then hop out and run a mile or two. What could be more fun.

Don't answer we all know the answer is 'nothing'!

Bike, bike, bike. Swim, swim, swim. That is what went down over the long weekend. The weather was wonderful! Sunny. Warm. Breezy. Loved it!

Saturday was a big ride. Really didn't feel riding at the start but rationalized the pain/shame/agony of not finishing my Ironman would be a zillion times worse than any joy I would feel at slacking. Went 57 miles in a combination of mostly rolling hills with big up-hills over the last 15 miles. Started out around 7:00 AM with a group of 6 other folks. Average speed for our little group was 16.8 mph with a big downhill speed 36.3 at some point in the 3:23 hours. After the ride was a 15 minute run just to get the legs moving. Yes, the mood did improve as the ride wore on.

Sunday was a recovery ride of 24 miles. Met Angela at the gym. We took an easy ride into Princeton and then over to ETS to view the prison-esque environment (Yes, that address is correct). After the 1:45 ride it was into the pool for an easy 2,500 yards.

Monday was a dedicated swim day. Cranked out 5,000 yards in just under 2 hours. Felt pretty good but was clearly getting near the end of my limits for the weekend.

I do know I kept thinking out that entry on Tri-Geek Dreams by Tri-Geek Kahuna about being special:

We are special. Statistics show we are among .007363 percent of the American population who can complete a triathlon. It's a nice feeling, isn't it? The Tri-Geek Kahuna feels especially satisfied on Sunday night, when his body is worn out from a weekend's worth of workouts. He doesn't want to admit it, but the dark part of his heart wants to say to the other 99.93848% of the American population: "Hey, I'm better than you. I just rode 30 miles, ran 10 more and swam 3,000 yards and what the hell did you do? Put on a few more pounds and worked on bettering your chances for a heart attack?"

He's right you know.