Achilles Monster

This past week of training was really focused more on swimming and biking since I’ve been experiencing some lingering pain in my left Achilles tendon. I ran one 6 miler this past week at a 7:22 pace and decided to just take 7 days off running to let the tendon rest. I had a few good swims to speak of though. I did a 2500 meter long course swim and a 2000 yard pull with a buoy which were both a decent paces (57mins and sub 40 mins respectively). James Banker (team Clementine’s official Panckae Coordinator – see older post) came out for the lake swim on Friday and did a phenomenal job considering he hadn’t really swam more than ten times in the past 12 months. James went out to the 1.2 mile round-trip buoy (see photo) and hung out while me and another guy headed out for the 1.5 mile buoy. We joined back up with James and swam back in. Total time was 58:33 I believe. Not too bad, still rather slow but I’ll take it. To put that picture into perspective, those are rather large sailboats.



Tuesday, I rode my bike to work. While not a lot of distance, it’s a good speed workout because I try my best to keep with the traffic. Thursday was the typical group ride. Jeff Davis and I got in about a 12 mile warm-up before the group ride though. As always, the group ride turns in to a lung-bleeding hammer fest because we can’t EVER just ride for fun… it’s always a race. Lucas, Jeff, and Jon left me on a decent climb (I suck at longer ones once they top out over 6% or so). It took me a few miles, but I ended up catching them. Lucas said the three of them were working hard together so that I couldn’t catch them… but I did. I was pretty happy with that and really really wanted to vomit once I did though.

We ended up getting a great 60 mile ride in on Saturday. I headed out with Lucas, Rusty, Rachel, and Jon around 7AM. We covered a rather challenging 60 mile route with over 2,700 feet of climbing and still maintained a 19.1 mile average. It was a beautiful route… lots of low fog/mist early in the morning, buffalo, little towns, and other wildlife along the course. While maybe not the best route for triathlon training, I’m sure those hills will make us stronger on race day

In all, I ended up doing 1 run, 3 swims, and 3 bike rides this past week. Not the hardest of weeks. All of the swims and bikes were very strong workouts though, so I’m not too worried about missing a couple runs. I’m hoping Frankenstein has recovered from his injury and can join in on the training this week. We miss you Brett!

Braves Rest Week

This past week was a nice rest week. Training was brought down a few notches and I took the entire weekend off. The biggest accomplishment would have to be the 1.75 mile open water swim on Friday in 1:03:12. We spent the weekend in Atlanta for a Braves Game (see photo) which forced me to take the whole weekend off (granted, I could have taken my running shoes, but decided to actually rest and spend time with friends). I ended up getting 8 workouts compared to the typical 11-12. 4 swims (almost 6 miles), 2 runs (14 miles), and two bikes (65 miles) – like I said, far less than normal but I did come back this past Monday feeling GREAT! I plan on having a moderate week of training this week followed by two really hard weeks, then a taper week to our next race (Fall Creek Falls). Augusta is only 10 weeks away!

Twenty One Point One

This past week proved to be a great week for training, setting TWO PR’s on the bike, and the longest OW swim. First of all, I got my aero bars put on my Madone before Brett and I did the Full Moon ride. The Full Mood ride starts at the first parking lot of the Trace and is a 25 mile out and back trip. Brett and I ended up averaging exactly 20mph on the ride. This was very exciting because the most we had ever averaged on the trace was 19mph and it wasn’t without incredible effort. Plus, riding in the dark was a blast.

Then, the following day, I went out for the Friday afternoon open water swim at Hamilton Creek. Only two others showed up since there was a big race this weekend. We headed out to the 1.5 mile loop buoy and about halfway out the other two guys announced they were heading back. So, I finished my first 1.5 mile loop by myself. In the picture, we start to the left of the boats and swim way out around them and out into the main body of water… then back. It got a bit choppy once I got out of the cove area and into the main lake, but as evidenced by this post, I MADE IT. Anyone that knows me knows that this was an incredible accomplishment for me. I used to not do well in OW. It wasn’t fast, but it was very manageable and built up some great confidence in OW racing.

Saturday marked an incredible brick workout. I was back in KY and did an old 44 mile loop through Livermore, KY that I learned about last year with some buddies. There were some short 5% and 6% climbs, but most are around 2% and 3% so I was able to remain in the aero position nearly 90% of the time. Total climbing was only about 1,600 feet which is comparable to the 25 mile ride on the trace that I referred to above. I believe this route best reflects that of Augusta’s Half Ironman that Brett and I are doing later this year. I ended up setting another PR by averaging 21.1mph on this course by myself (and then ran a 5k immediately after at a 7:43 pace). This gave me great hope that I might be able to break 5:30 in Augusta. Later that day, as the family was out on the lake, I swam about another mile. It was a great day of training.

This past week’s training ended up yielding 6 swims (8 miles in the water), 2 bike rides (@ 20 and 21.1 mph), and 4 runs (all at sub 8 min miles, including a 10 miler). Took Sunday off and plan on only swimming today (Monday) since I have some recovering to do. In all, I feel great and honestly don’t have much soreness at all. I get two days off this weekend!!!

Open Water and Brick Training

Ok, I’ve finally gotten this thing up to date. Make sure you scroll through to the end and you may even have to click "older post" to get caught up. I’ll try to post something weekly now (whether we’re racing or just training).

This past Friday, I did my first real open water swim practice. I found a group that swims a 1.5 mile loop (sometimes 2 and 3 times) on Percy Priest Lake on Friday afternoons. We met at 6AM since it was the Holiday weekend and we didn’t wanna get hit by some drunken redneck boaters (although we were in a cove full of sailboats, so I’m not sure how many rednecks actually prefer sailboats over loud outboard Bayliners). Anyway, once again, up at 5am… this half ironman training requires me to get up WAY to early every day of the week. It was about 60 degrees outside and the water was warm, so at 6AM there was about 3 feet of thick fog sitting on the water. As weird as it felt swimming through fog (as if some large crustacean creature from the Paleolithic era named Nessie was gonna pop up at an moment, maybe she’d give me a ride?), I think not being able to see how far I had to go actually helped me. I ended up comfortably swimming about 1 mile in 36 mins. Not fast, but all I want to do is get through the swim portion. I then ran about 6 miles at a 7:14 pace. Later this week, I’ll go the full 1.5 loop.

Saturday’s ride (again, waking up at 5AM) got cut short to 40 miles because a few members needed to get back for the 4th Parade. Brett Kennedy and I had originally planned on 50ish, but 40 at about 19mph on the Trace was good enough. We quickly put on our running shoes after the ride and went for a 24 min run. My guess is that we covered about 3 miles. It was a good brick workout considering everything we had done previously this week (28 running, 140 bike, and 4.5 swim). We met back up at Jim’s, had some coffee, had some laughs, played with Happy, and was back home by 10am (and into a nice ice bath). That’s the best part of starting workouts at 6AM.

Remainder of season includes:
- Fall Creek Falls Olympic Tri
- Nationals – Olympic Tri
- Hood to Coast
- August Half Iron
- Jack & Back
- Huntsville Marathon
- Other random events that get thrown in

Hulk Piss 2009

The Old Hickory Tri is nicknamed the Hulk Piss Tri (copyright James Banker 2007) because the water is a nasty murky green with visibility of about 11 inches. Plus, when you jump in, it’s even warm and doesn’t smell that pleasant! One can only assume that this best describes the Hulk’s urine.

This sprint tri consist of a 400 yard swim (or close to 600 when Team Magic’s buoys notoriously drift WAY off course), a 1.5 mile run, 12.5 mile bike, and another 1.5 mile run. Not a bad little practice workout with all the transitions. Three of Team Clementine’s members participated in this event: James Banker (3 yr Veteran), Jeff Rooks, and Jonathan Minton. Some of the greatest highlights of this event include James breaking a 1:40 with NO training in the past several months, Jeff Rooks averaging 18.7mph on an old bottom tube shifting bike without bike shoes to clip in, and Jonathan spending over 14 minutes frolicking around like a 7 yr old sissy in the water in what SHOULD have taken him 10 mins. Again, another pathetic swim by Jonathan (however, I did break well over 20mph on the bike – 20.9 to be exact).

Finish Times:
James Banker – 1:37:19
Jeff Rooks – 1:18:31
Jonathan Minton – 1:16:42

In the end, it wasn’t a bad race at all considering James tapers for 6 months, this was only Rooks’ third race, Rooks and Minton raced the previous weekend (Monster, see post below), and Minton hadn’t had a day off training since before the previous race.

Monster Tri – Monster Day

When I woke up at 4am, I thought, “what the hell is wrong with me, this is insane.” I had to hit the road by 4:15am to meet my buddy Mark because our bikes were to be racked in Pulaski, TN for our first Sprint Tri of the season. Not only did I have to drive about 2 hours south to this race, I also had to come back home and get ready for a wedding in KY (2 hours north). The entire day was a sprint race.

The Monster Tri turned out better for everyone this year. Mark’s peddle didn’t fall off, Jeff won third place in his age group and this was only his second triathlon every, and I won my age group again this year… which qualified me for Nationals later this year. The swim was a 200 yard pool swim: Mark – 4:03, Jeff – 4:18, Jonathan – 4:46 (PATHETIC). The bike had about 1,400 feet of climbing over 16.7 miles: Mark – 14.8, Jeff – 16.8, Jonathan – 19.2. The run was supposed to be a 3 miler but I don’t think it was quit 3 miles. It started and ended in the Giles County Old Cemetery and at this point, it was about 90 degrees. It appeared that the left the computer programmed at 3 miles though because the paces published (which I think are impossible) were as follows: Mark – 6:23, Jeff – 6:47, Jonathan – 5:46.

Overall times and places
Mark Womack – 1:32:34 and 4th in age group
Jeff Rooks – 1:25:07 and 3rd in age group
Jonathan Minton – 1:15:22 and 1st in age group (by over 7 minutes)

The day didn’t end there for me. I drove 2 hours back home, got cleaned up, and drove two more hours north to a wedding at 4pm. After the wedding and reception, Kristin drove us back home (I was just too tired). We finally got home and in bed around midnight after a total of 8 hours in the car, a race, and a wedding. I had to speed through my race-to-wedding transition and was still painted up with body markings at the wedding… classic trashy redneck huh?

Tour de’ Caves – Kentucky

Ok, so I’ve not been that great on keeping this updated. I will try to do much better since more races and training events are picking up this summer. The Tour de’ Caves in Kentucky (June 6, 2009) turned out to be a great little ride. I went up there with a few guys that I had met just the weekend before (David Runkle, Wes Allen, and the Bachus family). This ride also marked Shrek’s maiden voyage (my new green Trek Madone 6.5). The ride was small, only about 200 bikes or so, and the roads were really nice. Not as many hills as the typical deliverance back roads of middle TN, but still about 4,000 feet of climbing over 68 miles. We averaged 19.9 mph over the course… me and another guy kept riding past the end to try and hit a 20 average, but it just wasn’t happening and we were tired. I felt pretty good on my new bike and it was exciting to see my average speed improve with just the addition of a better bike. It still makes me sick to think how much I had to pay for just those couple extra mph’s though

Check back soon for updates on the Monster Tri and Old Hickory Tri.