Nationals

Swim – 1500 meters, with two-thirds of it upstream. “Severe flooding throughout the area” was the race director’s message at 5AM… in addition to “army corps suggest too strong of a current to be in the river.” Imagine a muddy, flooded, dirty, fast moving river with logs, cups, HUGE dead floating catfish, and anything else the rain over the past several days had washed down into it. As I stood on the side watching the trash sail by while waiting for my wave, I really wondered if I could even swim as fast as that current was moving. So did many others. My waved was called to warm up. 90 people in my wave (the biggest wave, representing nearly 10% of the race). I jumped in and instantly noticed that I could not see ANYTHING through the water. You could only see dirt/debris particles moving past your face in what reminded me of how the stars looked when the Star Ship Enterprise was entering warp speed (just a mass blur of stuff). I could not see my forearm in front of me as I took strokes upstream for warmup.

This was an in water start (i.e. in the water, not touching the bottom, and trying to not get washed downstream before the horn blew). The horn sounded, 90 people starting kicking and slapping the water JUST like the mass triathlon starts you see. It looked like a crazy mosh pit you’d see at a rock concert, except in water. I was right in the middle of it facing my biggest fear. Not once did I get nervous or lose control of my breathing. Absolutely an incredible accomplishment for me! Partly because most of my wave dropped me within five minutes, but I did survive the male 30-34 age that caught me and swam over, under, and around me.

We first swam downstream for about 200 meters to the first right turn. When I checked my watch at the turn buoy, I noticed that I had swum that distance in under 3 mins (very FAST). Once we made the right turn to cross the river, the current began to wash us downstream. To make it to the next right turn buoy on the other side of the river, you had to swim at a 45 degree angle. 150 meters across – 7 mins. YUCK. That right turn put you directly into the current for roughly 1,000 meters. We had two large course marking buoys then the last right turn buoy so I mentally (and then physically) divided it into 3x350 segments. As I made my way to the first buoy, my arms were burning and my heart rate escalated. I felt as if I was going NOWHERE. After 15mins of effort, I made it to the first buoy. A grabbed hold for a rest, as did many others, and looked around the course noting several people giving up. After what seemed like no time but was probably more like a couple minutes of rest, I headed for the second buoy. As I made my way to the next buoy over the next 20 minutes or so, a lot of things went through my head: let’s quit, no way am I quitting, there’s someone else quitting and getting into a boat, where’s a damn kayak to hold onto, did that old lady really just fly by me, I can’t quit because they gave us an awesome backpack that I really want to use, ok I’m quitting and this is pointless, no wait I am facing my fears and who CARES about my time. Then finally I latched onto the second buoy.

With only about another 300 meters or so to the last right turn buoy to cross the river, I was exahausted. I’m a terrible swimmer anyway and the current took everything out of me. My half-ass stroke was now looking full-assed. Anyway, I decided that there was NOWAY I was quitting. No matter how long it took me to finish this swim, I was NOT going to get a DNF. This was now more about a personal goal of overcoming my open water racing fear than anything else. I pulled upstream for about 10 minutes when I looked back to see that I couldn’t have been more than 125 meters or so from the buoy I’d just left. I kept fighting, I kept thinking of my mom who was about to undergo open heart surgery again and if she could endure that pain, then I could swim this. I kept fighting and pulling my way to the turn buoy. Once I made that right turn, the current washed my body, and many others, down. DAMN! WHY? So again fighting at a 45 degree angle just to swim strait across the river. I, and many others, were completely worn out by this time and it was all we could do to make it across. The current had ended up washing us downstream so much that the last 25 meters was swimming directly into the current up the side of the river bank JUST to get to the swim exit. DONE! I felt like I had accomplished the biggest thing in my life. I did what should have taken me less than 30 minutes in 1:20:55.

Bike – The bike as a decent course with only a couple inclines forcing my speed below 10mph. Even with the SIX 180 degree U-Turns (and not to mention after the most challenge swim of my life), I still managed to average 20.3mph. I should have been closer to 22, but hey, I’ll take that given how tired I was.

Run – The run was harder than expected; it had three very steep short hills that I actually walked up. I wasn’t going any faster up them running, so why not take a break and walk them right? I finished the run in an 8:37 pace.

In all, it was a great event for me. I got to race (race behind) with the country’s best triathletes. I got to experience what will be the WORST swim of my triathlon career (as I do not expect anything any worse). I did not finish last in my age group either… next to last. 4 DNFs in my group too. It’s been 6 days since this race, I still haven’t swam, I probably won’t until next week either.

Another Great Week of Training

It seems like I keep having a lot of good training weeks with each one topping the previous. Much like the week before, I was able to get quality workouts in each discipline. It’s a good thing though because I need to be pretty much in taper mood now since I have 4 big events over the next 5 weeks.

Swimming: I ended up with two 1.5 mile swims and two 1.2 mile swims. I’m still not getting much faster in the water but I can tell my endurance is really building because I’m not nearly as tired when I’m finished with the workout. However, no matter how hard I pull through the water, I don’t get faster, I just get out of breath. That’s ok though, I’m focused more on building a base for IM next year anyway.

Bike: I had planned on riding 3 days this week but only ended up with two. I decided to take Sunday off as part of my taper for Nationals this weekend. Thursday night was the quickest Thursday ride we’ve had so far; 27 miles @ 20.6 average. Then, on Saturday, Jeff and I ended up getting a 53 miler at 22.5 mph average. This is nearly 1 mph faster than our previous best. It was an incredible feeling. Jeff and I took turns pulling on the areas of the course that we're each best at. This was the third weekend I have done this course and I now have my nutrition for the half IM perfected. Jeff road another 60-70 on Sunday but as I noted above, I needed a rest for my taper.

Run: This week seemed all out the long/moderately long runs. Monday was they typical 6 miler. However, on Wednesday, I ended up with a 10 miler at close to an 8:00 min pace. Then, I decided to run long on Friday with Brett and ended up with an 8 miler at nearly an 8:00 min pace. To some people, these aren’t “LONG” runs, but they are long runs for half marathon training as part of a half ironman training program. Plus, I ran them all at roughly my race pace… I got 24 miles in at race pace this week. Maybe I should consider lowering my half ironman race pace?

Nationals is this weekend. I’m in taper mood right now which is incredibly hard for me. Those of you who know me know that I love training and to really cut back and/or take a rest day is hard. I plan on only swimming twice, running twice, and biking once this week. I’ll take Friday off and then race on Saturday. I plan on doing a 50-60 mile ride with Doug and Jeff on Sunday to at least get some decent mileage in this week. Not sure how Nationals is going to go. I plan on taking a long time in the water (probably 35 mins as compared to 20-25 mins for most of my age group), complete the bike course at around a 21-22mph average, and run a sub 7:30 for the run portion. In all, I hope to complete it somewhere around 2 hours and 35 mins. Not a bad time at all, but compared to the professionals and other age group winners there, I will probably come in towards the bottom of the field.
Week totals: 4 swims (5.5 miles), 3 runs (24 miles @ race pace), and two bikes (80 miles @ 20+mph).

Upcoming Events:
-Nationals (this weekend)
-Hood to Coast (next weekend)
-Clarksville Century (the following weekend)
-Augusta Half Ironman (five weeks away)
-Jack/Back 150 miler (six weeks away)

Solid Week of Training

This past week may have been the best week of training yet; it just felt like I had great solid workouts in all three sports. Most weeks are good, but I typical only have killer workouts in one area each week.

Swimming – Got three good swims in, four would have been nice, but the quality of the swims was outstanding. Ended up with two 1.5 mile long course swims in well under an hour (which is good for me) and one 1.2 mile open water swim in just under 42 mins (which is fantastic for me). Regardless of how good my swims are, swimming will always be my weakness.

Bike – Got three great rides in, two really memorable ones. Thursday night as always was around 27-28 miles and averaged just under 20. Always some hard hills for me and the speed is just so impulsive. Saturday was a great 50 mile solo ride, no breaks, no stops, only riding 50 miles as hard as I could to see what would happen. The goal was to push out something over 21mph. I do have to thank Jeff Davis for suggesting that anything over 21 by yourself would be pretty hard because anytime I saw my speed drop below 21, I thought of that and just pushed through the pain as hard as I could. I was at a 21.3 average around mile 47, so I hunkered down on the tip of my saddle and pushed out everything I had for the last 3 miles. I ended up hitting 21.5mph for the 50 mile course. Just the weekend before, I did the same course with 4 guys and averaged only 0.1 faster. I now think we could have pushed over 22 if we’d wanted to. I followed this ride up with a 3 mile brick run at a 7:37 pace. The first 10 mins sucked bad, but I started to feel really good. I only stopped because I was trying to make it to breakfast with Kiki and the Meurers.

The third ride, Sunday (on my rest day, but I was feeling unusually good), was about 53 miles and averaged around 17mph. A bit slower than the previous day, but there was close to 4,000 feet of climbing this day as compared to the 1,200ish the prior day. I went out with a couple other guys and it was just fun to ride along, talk, and enjoy the ride instead of killing yourself for training. We stopped about midway at a little café/coffee shop and had espresso out on their porch. For some reason, I felt like a true cyclist in Europe training for one of the grand tours. Doug always puts together great rides.

Run – (wow, this is already getting long) Got 4 runs in. Brett kept me running this week, had he not shown up in the morning to run, I’m not sure I would have pushed out the runs I got. This was some incredible running by Brett too. I mean, let’s face it, if he can hang with me, he’s quit a badass right? HAHAHA, just means he’ll probably end up with a running injury like I so love to keep all year. Anyway, I got 6 easy miles on Monday. Brett and I ran an 8 miler (moderate long run for half IM training) on Wednesday at a rather fast long run pace of 7:53. We then started out for a 6 miler on Friday but felt great around mile 5 so we tacked on some extra making it an 8 miler at a 7:57 pace. These two 8 milers were great runs for both of us since the pace was around my expected race pace and well below Brett’s race pace. However, Brett might need to start recalculating his race pace… his running has really ramped up lately. My last run of the week was the 3 mile 7:37 paced brick run after my ride on Saturday.

In all, a fantastic week (however no off day, maybe I’ll take Tuesday off this week since it is an exceptionally easy day anyway). 4.2 miles in the water, a tad over 130 on the bike, and 25 running and all at pretty intense efforts. I just realized that the entire week of training is only 18.6 miles longer than a Full Ironman Race... hmm, that is going to kill us next year. I’d say this was a breakthrough week for Brett’s running too. Way to go man! GOOD LUCK to Lucas and Rachel on the on the crit racing this week and the Olympic Tri this weekend… these two never stop!

21.6mph over 54 miles

Friday’s 1.5 mile swim seemed a lot harder than normal. If you know me, you know swimming is by far my biggest weakness. I was getting out of breath, taking in lots of water, and having a hard time sighting for direction. That turnaround buoy could not have come any faster. Once I made it to the 1.2 mile loop buoy, I was going to head back but EVERYONE kept going to the 1.5… so I followed. There were huge waves coming in from all the boats out in the main lake and my body felt like it was being tossed around in a washing machine. I just knew when I got back to shore my watch was going to have clocked well over an hour (I refuse to look at it as I swim as my friend Colleen said you swim faster when you don’t look at it). Well, I looked once we hit the shore and it said “55:50”. Are you kidding me? This isn’t fast by no means and I (as usual) was the last person out of the water, but this was about 3 minutes faster than last week’s split. Hmm, I guess the swim sucked and was hard because I was actually pulling hard.

Ok, so this past weekend proved to be another great bike training workout. We mapped out a ride from the bike shop out to Fernvale and back. It was a rather flat two-loop course with a big hill at the beginning and a smaller one at the end. Only about 1,600 feet of climbing per my Garmin but we averaged 21.6mph. This was by far the fastest training ride I have ever done (previous was 21.1 over 44 miles); especially for 54 miles and a near 4 mile run at a 7:34 pace after. I think I got my nutrition down too: 1 gel every 15 miles, half a payday every 20 miles, 1 bottle of Gatorade every 18 miles, and 2 endurodytes every hour. This left me feeling pretty good for the run after. I gotta thank Jeff for pulling some of the way though, we could have kept that pace without he and I giving each other some rest. I’m hoping with a taper and fresh legs that I can manage a 21.0mph average of my half ironman course in Augusta later this year because this workout was at the end of a very long/hard week of training and I was FAR from fresh. I think I’m going to head out and do the same ride this coming weekend by myself and see how I can do OR do a 50+ mile loop back in KY. Depends on where we are this weekend.

After the ride and run, I got cleaned up and headed to KY for my 10 year reunion. Yeah, I’m getting old. However, I don’t think I’m as “old” as some of the people that attended the reunion. I know this isn’t nice, but I almost didn’t recognize some of these people. Here’s a picture of Kiki and me… she cleans up nice huh? HAHA!

The past week’s workouts yielded some more reasonable training numbers: 3 swims totaling about 4 miles, only 2 bikes (both over 20mph though) totaling right at 90 miles, and 4 runs totaling only about 20 miles (actually not bad for my messed up Achilles). In all, I guess it was only about 12 hours of training but this week’s tempo/paces were kicked up a bit and left me feeling pretty tired by Saturday afternoon. Sunday was a much needed rest day.