Ayerd{dot}com :: Triathlon

Ahhhh, welcome back to cold and damp New Jersey! This weekend the Loving Wife™ and I headed down to Disney to run in the Disney World Half Marathon.

It was a pretty cool event: you get to run though the Magic Kingdom and Epcot! It was Bretta's first half marathon and the longest distance she has run to date. I just took the run as a nice, easy training run. My 10:15 pace reflects that. Over the whole distance I managed to keep my heartrate at or under my training rate of 150 so in that respected, I rocked the course.

Part of the new year is to sign up for all the cool events that open up registration on New Year's Day. On tap for from now until IM-CDA is a pretty good range of stuff.

• White Lake Half
• Einey-Meenie Half Marathon
• 100 x 100s (careful, PDF file)
• Belleplain (Sprint) Tri

Got some other swimming events including at least two meets to help support the local Master's Team. They better have some distance events!!

Add in an organized century ride or two and hopefully "The Donut Derby".(35-mile "race" with rest stops every 12 miles where racers can get water, use the bathroom, and get donuts. For every donut eaten, five minutes is deducted from your official finish time. There are only 2 rules: All donuts must be eaten in the Donut Zone: and if you chum, you're DNF. Wasn't held last year, technical problems. Hoping it works out this year.)

It is going to be a great year.

Whoa, went to the gym last night for a swim. It was packed. Beyond normally fully, we're talking "to the gills" full. Stupid New Year's Resolutions. People, you know you're going to abandon ship some time in the next few weeks. Stop early. Give me space to park and room to get in a flip-turn or two.

Don't get me wrong. I know you're trying and you do and should get props for that, but here is a hint: don't try to make up all the workouts you've missed in the last 10 years one month. You can't. Just start-up slow and go from there. 2 hours every night will make your heart explode and make you hate the idea of getting up off your butt. 30-minutes, that what I'm asking you to limit yourself to until you're truly able to do more.

Don't tell me about the freak diet you're on while attempting to drop down to mearly obese from the "need to be buried in a piano case" size you're currently at. I don't care. You're going about it all wrong. Carbs are actually good for you... as is fat and protein. Here's another hint: it doesn't matter so much what you eat. Try eating less! That combined with the 30 minutes will do the trick.

I hate January at the gym.

/end rant.

"Blah." That about sums up the first week+ of getting ready for IM-CDA. Started off with the Disney Half as a training run. Not bad, but coldness of the day in Florida should have tipped me off to the over "blah" that was about to show up on my door step.

It is so hard to find the juice to get moving when it is below 30°. You want to go, but actually deciding to run for an hour in the dark (oh so dark—sunrise isn't until around 7:00AM) and cold. Once you're moving it is okay, but that first step is brutal.

So, last week got moving on the swimming, biking, and running. The swim went pretty good. Once practice involved a 30-minute swim. For the first swim of the year I kept a pace between 1:20s and 1:25s per-100. Not too shabby for all the time away from the water. Then Wednesday the meat of the workout was 3x3x200s on 3:10, 3:00, and 2:50. The goal was the keep the same pace as the rest between 200s dropped off. Managed to keep 2:40s for all 9 while leading the lane. Only took 20 years, but I think I've got a handle on pace while swimming.

The biking parts actually worked out pretty well (save for a bike problem that I'll post about in a bit). The weather was petty warm on Saturday for a 2-hour ride with Karen. It went very well. Got to used my old-old bike as the new hotness was feeling under the weather. Riding the old wheels, I realized I love the elliptical front crank (Bio-Pace) installed on that thing. It was very cutting edge 15 years ago, then passé, and now hip again. Q-Rings seems to the way to go. I have to ask the folks at Elite about making the move from the standard round crank to the "Q".

The running... was the running. I'm starting to warm up to it, but, whoa, I'd rather do other stuff. Sunday was a 2-hour, 12 mile affair out and about from the gym. I was moving slow but it was all about the heart rate. I nailed the whole thing in Zone 2 and still managed 10-minute miles. For me, that is freaking unbelievable! I'm pretty stoked.

We'll have to see how this week plays out. Last night was another 4,000 yard swim. I am a tad under the weather so the laps were harder than they should have been. Still, I guess it says something that with no "umph" and feeling bad the 4K in the water was do-able. We did have a good laugh watching the (painfully young) blonde lifeguard nodding off while we swam.

So, now back to you regularly scheduled workouts!

This post can be summed up this way: Old and busted: new hotness. New hotness: red and white frame.

Can you dig it?

Well, okay, I can clarify. Two weeks ago my friend Karen went down to Elite to get a fitting for her road bike and to be talked into buying a tri-specific bike. When she got back with the fitted (loaner) frame, she wanted to take it for a spin in the unseasonably warm weather. So, I went down into the basement to grab the Orange Hotness from where she was placed after Florida and pulled her upstairs for a light dusting and some oil/lube. While wiping her down I noticed a small — about 1/4 of an inch — crack in the seat post. Needless to say, I had a slight seizure.

Dents, scrapes, scratches, Gatorade stains that you think wouldn't stain but do, and 1% of that sticky from race numbers that collects grime until the end of time... you can live with all of that stuff. A crack, however, is fatal. When I saw the crack in my orange beauty I was pretty upset.

I called the guys at Elite and was all like, "yo, crack in the frame near the top of the seat-post." The told me the bolt holding the seat was proably overtighened. Since I'm pretty much useless when it comes to bike repair I knew that wasn't me and they are the only guys who have ever worked on the bike. Wiping it down after riding is about the extent of my skillset with bikes. They said I'd probably live though a short ride but I should bring it in for them to look at.

Had I realized it would be my last ride on the Orange Hotness, I would stretched it out.

So, the next day I drive down to Philly and get the news. They'll try to fix it, but it would probably be easier/faster to just give me a new frame. The new frame wouldn't be orange. Now, I was really torn. While I was very psyched to be getting über customer service I was bummed I would be losing the orange hotness.

I have problems with colors. Reds and greens tend to fade out of sight and everyone has a black bike (damn carbon frames). Not too many orange frames out there. In the transition area, she really stuck out. Just run to around where I left her and look for the orange. That frame got me through Ironman. I didn't want to give it up! Dave said they'd give repair a shot, but don't hold my breath.

A few days later I got the email. Repair possible, 10 weeks for repair and repaint. 10 weeks! Too long. He did have this Pearl White with red decals he could give me instead.

White... not orange. White!

So, today I'm heading down to Elite to have the white frame fitted. I'm not sure how much I'll be digging it. I'm sure it will be okay, but even though it will still be a Magnus frame, it won't be the same. It is, infact, bringing me down.

If I can get a good picture of the White Hotness on my camera phone, I'll post it. Until then, in lieu of flowers, please send Gu or CO2 cartridges.