One tubby, tubby, tubby!

I have never been a skinny person.  I am the oldest of 5 and the only one that is not a stick.  I'm also the fastest eater out of all of us.  I think I learned early on that if I was not the first one done eating, I didn't get seconds!  When I was little (like 5) my mom told me that I should play soccer because when I run around so much, I'm not as fat.  And then on my first day at a new school she told me I should suck my stomach in when I walked around so I didn't look so chubby and the kids wouldn't make fun of me.  I think I actually managed to hold my breath that entire day at school.

Well, with my frame size, genetics and eating capabilities, gaining weight has never been a problem for me.  I used to spend ALL of my spare time either on the baseball field or lifting weights, so I got pretty big while playing through college.  I was a catcher, and at 6' tall, I topped out at 225 and found my best playing weight to be 212-216.  When I graduated college and was no longer playing at an extremely competitive level, I switched to something else that I could excel at. Drinking.  I was damn good at it but found that my playing weight rose a little bit with this new sport...

It wasn't long before I had grown bored with this new challenge and moved on to triathlon.  I never raced as a clydesdale (200+) although, for my first few races, I definitely could have.  My first real year in triathlon, I took off training like a mad man and my weight plummeted.  I bottomed out at 168 and was lighter than my brother for the first time ever!  Over the offseason however my weight rose again and I have been struggling to get down to the 169-172 range, where I feel most comfortable racing.  But now, my stomach, which I have named Albert, must die.  If I am going to step my racing up, I need to not be carrying around all of this extra weight.  So I'm going to list my weight on the sidebar every day so that Matt and Marcia and anybody else that might happen to read this blog can give me grief.  Maybe this will be the last bit of motivation I need to get to the weight I should have been at in March.

How bad can you be??

Well, when it comes to blogging, the answer is pretty bad.  With the triathlon team that I am on, good ol' Gear and Training, I am supposed to be posting race reports after each race.  Yeah, that hasn't happened.  I think I'm three races behind.  We'll call that a no bueno!

So, I am going to get back on this thing and just pretend that somebody reads what I write here!  Also, I think I need to change up the design and add some stuff, but I'm not quite sure how to do all of that, so if anyone (actually reads this and) has any ideas or suggestions, than message me!

Also, I want to keep a running total of 2 or 3 different numbers on the side bar, any idea how to do that?

How about a contest?

Everybody likes free stuff, right?  Well, how about this:  the person that comes the closest to guessing my finishing time at Ironman Texas on Saturday, wins an Ironman Texas t-shirt!

Just post your guess at my finishing time as a comment along with your t-shirt size.  Closest guess wins!

Contest ends when I hit the water on Saturday.

Hint: read my previous post for goal times and check out other race results here: http://www.athlinks.com/myResultsAdv.aspx?rid=78667688

But, I will be an Ironman

It has been nearly 10 months since I signed up for the first ever Ironman Texas. I cannot say that I have stayed absolutely focused this entire time, but I can say that I have worked my butt off. For those of you that don’t know (assuming that more than one person reads this thing), an Ironman is a triathlon consisting of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike and a 26.2 mile run, all back to back to back. In training for my first Ironman, I have learned a lot of lessons. Here are just a couple:

1. Lose the weight before you get to the hard training! I have found that it is just about impossible to properly fuel your body for the next workout while trying to lose weight. So I had to make a choice, lose the rest of the weight I wanted to lose, or stay strong and get in all of my training. In the end, I went with the latter. As my old boss used to say "Fat is strong, my friend. Fat is strong."
2. Have a plan and stick to it! I had found a 20 week Ironman training plan and was determined to rip through it. But once I started the first week, I realized that I was WAY beyond where this plan was starting me in my training. So I started to add workouts, and change workouts, and leave certain workouts completely out. By week 2, the plan was about one third my own creation, and two thirds original plan. By week 3 the plan was about two thirds my own creation, and one third original plan (do you see where this is going?). And by week 4, the plan was completely thrown out. That went well for a few weeks until I started to second guess my planning and changing things up like crazy, then it just became "eh, I’ll do this today." Probably not the best way to train for a race of this distance. In the end, I would probably be stronger if I had stuck with the original plan even though it started so slow.

My original time goal for this race was 10:59:59. We will now call that my best case scenario race. It is still possible, but it will take a perfect race. My B goal is 11:29:59 and my C goal is 11:59:59. Really, if I can finish the swim in 1:10 (this will be my first mass start, which means I will be starting at the same time as the other 2750 competitors… in what looks like a very small lake… This might slow me down), finish the bike with a 20mph average, and finish the marathon in under 5 hours, I will be happy. 

As a comparison, the winning pro at an Ironman will finish anywhere between 8:00 and 8:40 depending on the conditions and difficulty of the course. Some pros could still be finishing as far back as 10:20. A time of 9:30-10:15 could qualify me for the World Championships in Kona, HI. The median finisher at Ironman Florida last year finished in 12:41:21. And people will be finishing all the way up until the 17 hour cut off time. So even my C goal won’t be a horrible time.

No matter what happens with this race, I can say that I would never have been able to make it this far without the help of my family and friends and especially Anna (everything else aside, how many times has she brought me my spare key when I lost my truck key on a long run or ride??). So thank you everybody for your help and support.

Well, as they say, the hay is in the barn. Come Saturday, it is time to burn that sucker down!

EDIT TO ORIGINAL POST:

If anyone wants to follow my race on Saturday, you can go to http://ironmanlive.com/ then scroll down and click on "Ironman Texas" then click "Tracking" then enter in my bib number 861 to see what I have completed as the day progresses.  Gregg Johnson (my boss) is bib number 2421 and Gus Fontenot (another guy from Mobile) is 2120.

Also, I may not be able to finish my race, because some crazy guy is predicting that the world will end at 5:00 pm central time on Saturday.  That would be a 10 hour finish for me, I don't know if I can run that fast!

All or Nothing

Last year, a week after I bought my first tri bike, I competed in a local 21 mile bike race called the Tour de LADR.  This event isn't sanctioned by any governing bodies, so you can use a tri bike as long as you are willing to listen to the roadies tell you every 5 seconds to not use your aerobars. 

So last year, having just begun my cycling career, I started in the back so I wouldn't slow anybody down.  The next thing I know, I'm surrounded by moms on mountain bikes with their 6 year olds in training wheels.  The gun went off and I had no chance of catching up to the peloton.  I don't think I even knew what a peloton was at the time or how to draft in it without crashing if I had made it that far.  But I did alright, finishing in 56 or 58 minutes, I can't really remember.

Fast forward to this year, and now I am determined to win the race.  So Saturday I left my house and decided to ride to the race for a little 10 mile warm up ride.  I paid my money, stripped the commuter lights off of my bike and got ready to roll.  THIS year I lined up on the front line.  The course is described as "mostly flat" but the only part of it that is not completely flat is where the road banks just a slight bit going around a shallow turn.  Other than that it is flatter than a pancake, so I knew it would take a good pace to break up the group.  Unfortunately, my training partner, Trifossil, decided the day before that he wasn't going to do the race and I was left without anybody to team up with. 

The course is an out and back and on the way out I ended up pulling way more than I needed to.  I was trying to pull hard enough to break the pack apart and prevent a group sprint at the end, but only a couple of other people had the same idea.  Everyone else apparently wanted the group sprint.  So after I would pull, there would be another hard pull or two then the next person would sit back and let the group catch back up.  About mile 5 I had already had enough of this and tried to grab a couple of guys to break off.  I kicked it up to about 29 and was able to get close enough to the cop car to catch a draft, but the cop realized what i was doing and put a gap on me so I lost my draft, then I turned around and saw only one person had gone with me so I sat up and let the group suck us back in.  I continued taking my pulls like I had before, but I let off a little to save my legs for the back half. 

As we neared the turnaround, another triathlete, Gus, told me to take off from the turnaround and 5 other guys were going to follow me, so at the turn around I took off! But again, only one guy caught my wheel so we sat up and let the group suck us in.

With 6 miles to go, the guy that was pulling at the time pulled off like normal.  There were 3 kids directly in line behind him that had not taken a pull yet and when all of a sudden the lead man pulled off, leaving them at the front, they panicked.  They swerved out of the pace line and almost caused a pile up.  This was all Gus and I needed to make a break.  We took off and before the group realized we had left, we had a 200 yard gap.  Gus and I worked pretty well together but the head wind started to wear on us and about 2.5 miles out they were starting to close in on us.  Then as Gus is pulling he looked back and said "they've caught us" and sat up.  Turns out the group hadn't caught us, it was just one man, A guy from Denmark that was so big, when Gus looked back he thought it was the whole peloton.  So now with Gus dropping off, instead of a now three man break, I am now in a two man break with the Great Dane.  However he only held on for about a mile and I was left solo. 

At this point, I didn't even want to look back to see how close the group was.  I knew I was close to the finish line and I was going for it!  At this point my lungs were burning and my legs were dead but I was going to win the ra- "oh *#%, they caught me!"

I almost made it, I had less than 3/4 of a mile to go before they got to me.  But then they wouldn't pass me, they sat on my wheel and let my legs burn.  Then when they jumped out to the sprint all I could do was spin in for 10th overall in 50:55.

I almost had it!  I held a 25.2 mph average for the race.  Not bad, but next year, I just need to be strong enough to time trial the whole thing for the win!

So you want a race report?

My last blog was somewhat of a half race report, but The Gear and Training Triathlon Team wants a full race report for each race, so that is what I'll give them!  Sorry, this one is a little long.

The Joe Cain 5k

For those of you outside of Mobile, Alabama, Joe Cain Day is a day full of craziness.  He is the man widely credited with bringing Mardi Gras to Mobile after the civil war.  And of course, everyone should know that Mardi Gras actually started in Mobile and not in New Orleans!  So every Sunday before Fat Tuesday, it's thrown down time, in honor of Sir Joe Cain!  Somewhere along the line, a few nuts decided that in their drunken/hungover stupor on Joe Cain Day, they should run an early morning race, and that is what had me out in the cold this past Sunday.

Prerace Thoughts

I used to live in Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky and the moutains of North Carolina.  It is not Minnesota cold in those places, but I can say that I have experience with cold weather.  However, I consider Jacksonville, Florida home and I do not do very well with cold weather.  I would rather have it be 95 degrees than 55 degrees.  So when I woke up Sunday morning, and it was cold enough that I had to consider wearing sleeves to race in, it was too cold for me!  But, my company is participating in something called the Corporate Cup.  It is city wide contest between various businesses that pits us against each other in weird divisions and scores us with rules that are only slightly less confusing than the Calvinball rules from the old Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.  Somehow I was nominated the Team Captain, and we are kicking butt, so we keep running.

However, it was cold, it was wet, and it was oh, so windy!

Let's Run... and spill beer and puke

Gregg Johnson is my training partner and my boss.  He is old, almost 50 now and fat... and hopefully doesn't read this... But the guy is fast.  I have not beat him in a running race yet.  I always try to hold on to his wheel as long as I can but it never works.  So on Sunday I decided I was just going to let him go and shoot for my sub 21 on my own terms.

I toed the line next to a guy with a camel back full of liquor and a beer in each hand and the gun went off!  The crowd quickly thinned out and I decided to push my ego away and let everybody pass me so that I wouldn't burn my legs at the beginning.  I knew that to run my 21 I needed to come in to the first mile marker at 7 minutes and when I hit, I was standing good at 6:56.  Ok, time to pick up the pace. 

About 1.2 miles in I saw a familiar stride, it was Gregg.  This might be my day!  I stayed a little bit behind him  as we circled the course, then we turned North and the wind was terrible!  At the turn we began to see everybody in the back of the back and I swear, at least half of them had a beer in hand.  Crazy.  Well, I pulled up next to Gregg and we agreed to work together.  We drafted off of each other like we were hammering out a long Saturday ride.  He would draft me as I ran up somebody's back and passed them then I would draft him as he did the same.  And it worked.   We made it through the two mile mark at 7:07, not good.  That meant to hit 21 minutes I was going to have to haul butt in the last mile and the wind was not getting any easier. 

I turned west on the final stretch with a pack of about 6 people.  We were pushing harder and harder and picking up others along the way.  It was no longer about making my time, but about beating Gregg and the other people in this group.  Since I'm not a sprinter, I knew my only chance would be to break them mentally, so as soon as the starting line was visible, I took off as fast as I could.  I had a long way to go and it hurt.  I didn't want to look back and show I was worried about where they were so I just kept digging.  I didn't think any of them were anywhere close.  I came up on the line just as another guy crept past me!  I never even heard him coming!  And no one was yelling at the finish line! Not cool. But that guy immediately went to the curb to puke out his guts and all of last night's gin (guessing by his smell when we were running side by side) and I beat Gregg (even thought it was 2.5 minutes slower than his worst 5k of the year and he had done his long run the day before).  I came in at 21:54 officially.  Only good enough for 5th place in my age group, but hey, I'm getting faster and this is the first race this year where I did not completely burn out and fade at the end and was able to give a good sprint.

I went back to the finish line to wait for my girlfriend Anna, who was not far behind at 24:13 and 3rd in her age group! We then headed to the post race party which was well under way.  The line on the beer cart was packed out and the dj already had people dancing in the streets.  Yeah.... it's like 8:35 right now... going to be a long day for some people!  We got Anna's award and headed home for a long run!

It was a fun race and a good day.

Learning to Enjoy Running

For those of you that read my blog on a regular basis (I'm 100% confident that no one falls under this category, not even my mom), you know that up until a couple of years ago, my running experience was limited to short trips around the bases.  After switching to triathlon, my cycling took off almost immediately.  I guess my huge legs from 20 years of catching translated nicely to the bike.  My swim is following along nicely, I think that is just from growing up on the beach in Florida.  But running? Man, I hate running. 

Running, to me, has always been a punishment.  Late to practice, go run laps (I wasn't usually late).  Cutting up in practice, go run laps (this usually wasn't me either.  Practice is serious).  Getting in trouble in class and back-talking teachers, go run laps (yeah... probably where most of my laps came from).  Running was never something that we did for fun.  It was always because we had to.  Always torture.  Miserable. 

My brothers loved running, I thought it was the devil.

I know that running is my biggest weakness in triathlon.  In agusta I finished in the top 11% in the swim, the top 9% on the bike and the top 46% on the run! And not because I blew up on the bike... I held back on the bike to have a better run!

So I have been working hard to improve my run.  I set out yesterday to break my 5k PR in the Joe Cain run here in Mobile.  Conditions were ugly.  It was cold, wet and stupid windy.  But still, my goal was a sub 21 minute 5k.  I set out feeling strong and actually felt strong the whole way, but the wind was terrible.  With the head wind that we had on the second half of the race, I just couldn't hold the pace that I needed.  I ended up finishing at 21:54.  44 seconds short of my 21:10 PR and 55 seconds short of my goal, I managed to land in 5th in my age group. 

But, I enjoyed the run!

I actually had fun running.  One of the very few times in my life I have enjoyed running.  So later that day Anna and I went for a long run.  I ran another 10.2 miles, and instead of feeling like I was dying the entire way, I actually enjoyed it again! Who knows, their may be hope for my run after all.