Big Olympic Coming up!

St. Anthony's Olympic Triathlon is on Sunday. Just like my training before Clermont's Olympic, I'm pretty much full of long, slow distance, and very little "fast". The reality of the situation...as much as I'd have liked to make this race an early "A" race, I really didn't. I'm totally looking past it for IMCdA - as I should be.


I did time it right to put a recovery week in the week before this race however.


So I will be racing on fresh legs. That aught to be fun. Last year I went 2:48 at this race. I'm certainly wanting to go faster, but I'm doubting I've got the speed to break into the top 10 of Clydesdales this year. I'm sure it will take 2:32 to get 10th place this year. I'm just hoping to get into the 2:30's....like 2:39:59 even.

After getting up and stretching this morning, "fresh" legs seems to be a far off fantasy. After 2 days of no training, but a lot of walking around, they still feel sore. Maybe that's due to hefting around 300lbs of metal shelving and moving storage boxes on to them in our garage. It's spring time, and like most folks, I get the urge to get stuff organized and cleaned up around this time of year. Well, I take that back. It's summer time here - spring was last Tuesday for about 2 seconds.

Great Clermont Pre-race

I feel kinda guilty, only making a 6 word post and getting so many well-wishings. Thanks everyone!

The Olympic tomorrow is the Great Clermont Triathlon Olympic and it happens to be a USAT National Qualifier. Excel Man chose this race specifically for that reason - he even opted out of our back-yard race, St. Anthony's, to focus on qualifying. Here's wishing him a kick ass day.

The bike course is the same as the one they used two years ago under the name of the Tri-America Series. I wasn't blogging then, so I have no old race report. From my Motion Based account, I see that I rode an average of 17.5mph, with 1100' of elevation gain. That aught not be too hard to beat. The run is also the same from '06, where I ran about an 11 min pace with almost 1,000 ft of elevation gain. It's a pretty hilly run course, but barring any catastrophic cramps I should have no problems bettering that run.

It will be neat to meet Cindy Jo and possibly Moonpie out there. The temps are supposed to be mid 60's to low 70's; perfect race conditions, as long as the rain holds off until the afternoon, winds are only supposed to be 4 - 6 mph. No excuses tomorrow!

Tonight we are actually going to stay in a hotel close to the race - even though its only an hour and a half away. There's an awesome Italian restaurant close by - Bruno's - that is becoming a pre-Clermont-race tradition.

So...remember...go out hard, hold it as long as I can. That's the plan. Early season "A" race is coming up fast (St. Anthony's) - this race will be a great indicator of my top 10 Clydesdale possibilities for late April.

B-Fit Birthday Challenge

What the heck was I thinking? Roman throws out this B-Fit Birthday Challenge and it all SOUNDS well and good. Then I see that being 44 this year, I have to swim the first number in miles (that would be 4 miles, Nytro...) then bike the total number of years in miles (44, duh) and



then follow that up with an easy run of 4 miles, the last number in my age. The swim, in a word, sucked.

My longest swim ever prior to this was 3500 meters. This one would be 6500 meters. Smart? No. Especially on a diet of 2k to 4k meters per WEEK of swimming up to this point. But, I figure I'll just take it slow and steady, plus....I had my new fangled swimming I-Pod setup to keep me company. For 3 hrs. Sort of.

Quick product review. In the Birthday spirit - Di got me the Nano...Dad got me the Earphones, and Mom got me the case. Thanks, everyone, for my birthday gifts! The H2Audio waterproof gear (case and headphones) for the Ipod Nano worked like a charm. Nano is easy to operate in the case. Easy to see, and most importantly, it stayed dry. I have a set of tri-shorts with a big pocket in the back for nutrition....and for I-pods it turns out. The waterproof headset also worked great. Well, actually - I don't have a big noggin - but I had to have the headset pushed out to it's max settings to get the buds in position for my ears.

The headset comes with these black ear "inserts" that cup around the buds and then insert into the ear, in an effort to seal the ear of water. These work...not so much. Probably a function of the shape of the ear canal, but I could not get a good seal, and as a result, could hear when I turned my head to breathe and my one ear drained, but as soon as that ear went back in the water, the ear would fill and the sound would go away. Well, not totally away, but it was very muffled. The directions suggest using swimmers' ear wax and form some sort of cone-dealy...I'm willing to try it for good tunes while swimming. I'd adjust during breaks and get a few laps of good clean sound in - I'll tell ya, it really made the laps go by faster! Good rocking songs with plenty of Base worked the best. Folk music with girly tunes could barely be heard (sorry Trimama)

And I had 3 hrs to mess with it.

I read, a little too late, that a "swimmer's mile" is 1500 meters or 1650 yards. I should have swam 6000 meters, but I did 6500 meters or 7108 yards 'cause I did the math, and that's what it came up to for 4 miles. I don't know...towards the end I did one set of 500m in 13:09, so if I take that off of my total swim time, I'll have 6000 meters in 2:38:24. With 17:12 in total breaks. If you keep the other 500 in, just add that time and another 1:28 break. Good grief. About 2:20 per 100 yards. Did I mention I started slowly?

T1: 1:16:00 - time to eat a hearty lunch at Boston Market (mmmm...1/2 rotisserie chicken, green beans and potatoes...) and drive the 23 miles to Flatwoods, my training loop.

Everything else was fairly uneventful. I was thoroughly smoked from that self-imposed Chinese water torture and had nothing to give to the 44 mile bike other than some easy turning of the crank. I could tell my ass was still sore from the Century only 2 days prior - wearing the still damp tri-shorts was probably not the best idea. I went 2:21:43 for 44 miles; an average of 18.63 mph. Winds were steady at around 12 mph with gusts approaching 30mph. Nice.

T2: 3:15:00 - yes, that's 3 hrs and 15 minutes. I thought I had to work at 5pm, so I didn't brick that last little run. Turns out, no work, so before American Idol started and my Chinese food got delivered, I knocked out the neighborhood lap times 4.

Oh yea, I tore it up! 41:23 for 4 miles; yes, yes, that's only a 10:20 per mile pace - hey - absolutely NO records were harmed in the completion of this Challenge!

And for everyone wondering, yes, the next day, my shoulders are like rusty gates. I'll see tomorrow if I can still do a swim-motion. After a day of lawn work, they really feel much better then they did when I woke up. At least my perception of swim distance has taken a paradigm shift to the extreme. 4k ain't shit anymore!

Ironweek 14

This week had the makings for a great week. Instead, it was so-so. I swam. I biked. I ran. I guess that's all you can ask for, when you are OLD, like me (turning 44 today - crap!)

I capped the week off with the Clean Air Century on the Withlahoochie Trail. Picture an old rail-road line paved over with lots of wooded areas covering the path. Flattened for the train, the trail is cut and raised through the rolling hills of Central Florida. It passes through a couple of really small towns but for the most part, it goes 46 miles from top to bottom in the middle of nowhere. The hardest part of the ride were the 8 miles off the trail that went up and down the hills on normal roads...that was the Central Florida I was used to!

I showed up to the Clean Air with an un-charged Garmin. Of course, I took it off the cradle when I left the house, so how it was uncharged remains a mystery. 100 miles on Perceived Effort is kinda cool - but I still would have rather had the data. I did it in 5:54 - no records were set in the posting of this blog. My first SAG stop was at least 10 minutes - the bathrooms were set back off the trail in a park that we had to walk back to...I really really had to go! I stopped at two other SAGs just for water and cookies - mmmm....cookies.

I guess I went out pretty slow, and came back in even slower, but actually felt like I could run afterward if I had to - and that was a first for me on a century. I also did zero pack-riding; another first. For $25, I got a t-shirt, a medal, 3 aid-Stations (for 6 possible stops...) some food before we left, and some good chili, hot dogs, and drinks (no beer....oh well) at the finish line. It was worth traveling 50 miles one-way for this one!

So...I got a longish run of 10 miles in - and that was it for running. 2 swims for a whopping 4483 yards - but the water is becoming my friend again. Lots of bike this week - 174 miles - for a total training time of 12:52. Coming up I've got the Strawberry Century on Saturday, The B-Fit Birthday Challenge on Tuesday, and some training in-between. It will definitely be a good swim week (what with my 4-mile swim tomorrow...jeesh), and a good bike week (44 on Tuesday, 100 at the Strawberry, plus...) and I'll be sure to get in 20+ on the run. Only 13 weeks to go!

Clobber Time!

So the marathon is in 2 days, and I've thankfully stopped blowing my nose every hour. Actually, I didn't have to drain the sinuses once today. No headache. No fatigue. I'm just about there.

Before the sickness, my goal was a sub 4:30 mary. Can't say as though I've changed my goal all that much. Using the Merv Scale and subsequent servey from 1997, revisited in 2003, my predicted Marathon time based on a 50 min 10k and 30 miles average running per week is 4:34 (using a factor of 5.5). Not sure if the folks in the survey took 2 weeks off prior to thier marathons, but hey, what the heck!

Looking forward to seeing my Mom run her half marathon, and Excel Man's wife Green Eyed Lady running her first half marathon with Team in Training. They'll be undoubtedly enjoying a cold one or two before I cross the line a couple hours later. The weather is supposed to be perfect - 50 or so at sunrise, highs in the 70's, clear and low humidity.

One of the cool things about this race route is that the last 6 miles are run along Tampa Bay, and from 21.5 miles out you can probalby see the finish line across the Bay. There's nothing soft about that road, however - it's all concrete, if I remember correctly. I had wanted to (planned on) getting some new running shoes 2 weeks ago, before I got sick. I've got 407 miles on these puppies now - I know, I know - but I'm not about to wear new, unbroken-in shoes to run 26 point 2.

So...it's time to take on the persona of my alter-ego - my personal super-hero - The Thing, put my head down and HTFU! I'm fighting the residual cold, the historical data, and my 250 lb belly to break into my sub 4:30 goal. The race plan - go out slow and steady with Mom; I think her plan is to run 11 min miles. I'm kinda hoping she can go 10:30's, but if it's 11's, so be it. Then pick up the pace after 6 miles when we go our seperate ways to 10's for a while. Somewhere in that mix, I'm going to have to run a few 9:30's. I'm planning to have to back it off at the end to 10 again.

The feel good plan is to drop it in gear and hang at 9:45 or so for as long as I can hold it. When it all goes to s$it, I'll be happy to finish under my 1st Marathon time of 4:55.

Iron Weak 36

Well, I've played on your sympathy for too long now, that shot of my back burn got way too much mileage - but thanks for your comments and well wishes. I did not spell "week" incorrectly - it was a weak week.


Highlights: One swim for all of 2296 yards. Two runs, one 6 miler, and one 4 miler as a brick run. NOT a great run week. Two bikes, both 50 miles, and both over 20mph in windy conditions. That would be the highlight - the bikes, and even though one was the cause of my wicked new back scar-to-be, at least for one out of three events next Saturday, I'll be ready.


So what are we in store for at the Florida Challenge? Well, I'll be lucky to pull out a 2:00/100 yd swim pace, which will net me around 38 min. The bike will have around 2,500 feet of elevation, so I'm hoping to go about 18.5mph average for the 58 miles, giving me a bike split of 3:08 (yes, you read that right - the bike is an extra 2 miles due to some course changes). The the run...my long shot hope is to run 10:30's - for a 2:17 half. So that's a 6:04 plus transitions...not where I'd like to be, which is under 6 hrs. Those extra 2 miles on the bike will account for about 6.5 minutes, so I can take that into consideration.

The main goal is to run the half marathon, and get that 10:30 pace nailed. But since starting this lawn business, I've really not had the energy to train much - mentally or physically. So lets call this race a fun day, and use it as a benchmark for my train up for IMCdA.