DO WORK

When's the cool weather going to stick around? I'll take hot and humid or just plain freezing over what this week been like any day of the week. I think we've hit all four season's down here this week. Oh well, take what you can when you can...right?

This morning I woke up with plans on a long bike today. Plan was a 6 hour bike with an easy 30 min transition run. I woke up late as usual and rolled over to find the clock reading 9 o'clock. "Sweet" was the thought rolling through my head as today was supposed to be another hot and humid day before Sunday's cool front rolls through. Not only was it supposed to be hot but the day's forecast called for scattered thunder storms.

I crawled out of bed pretty beat from this weeks training. Dave's got me hitting on all cylinders right now with our final push to Florida. 6 weeks out and were just getting into the meat of our focus. So here I am; tired, no desire to workout, not to mention its 9 o'clock and 90 degrees outside. Awesome, can't wait to get started.

So here I am procrastinating another day's worth of training...slowly eating my breakfast, surfing the internet and spending 40 minutes chatting it up with Rob at Javelin cycles, it's now 10:45. Dude, how'd it get to be nearly 11:00 since I woke up? "Whatever", that doesn't really matter since there's a monsoon outside and river running past my house. So what do I do now? I feel down and tired but now the Catapult's kicking in, and I might be ready to roll...but where am I going. My thought was this; get on the trainer, take it hour by hour and let it role.

6 hours on the trainer wasn't what I had in mind for today but maybe, just maybe, this might be the best thing right now. Ironman Florida's bike course is flat and time in the aerobars is inevitable. No climbing, no coasting, no time letting up what so ever. Trainer riding is the same way.

So I jumped in the saddle, turned on Wedding Crashers and just let the day roll on by. 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours went by and while I was seriously bored from sitting in one place all day...my legs were getting an amazing workout, completely different from outside riding...not to mention I was awake and feeling great. Julie was home which made things super nice. She was there to hand over a few water bottles, gu's and anything I might need nutritionally. I never had to leave the saddle once. After 5 hours I had just about enough but told myself to just hold on for another 30 minutes. If you can do that, then you can go run. Man that was a long 30 minutes.

Times up and after 5 hours and 30 minutes in the saddle I was ready to run. Needless to say, I felt amazing. I left the house and just let it go. Today's run was probably the best transition run of my life. From the time I started to the time I stopped I felt great and my heart rate never fluctuated once...which means I didn't go out to hard and was able to maintain complete control throughout the workout. My run today was only supposed to be 30 minutes but I extended it to 40 because I was just having too much fun.

At the end of the day I was so happy I did what was required and not what I wanted to. Doing what you want all the time doesn't always lead to success. This workout was a must, no two ways about it. Had I sandbagged today, I'd be one "Less" step closer to reaching my goals tomorrow. Had this been two years ago when I did my first Ironman, today would have no doubt been a zero!

Tomorrow's my longest "scheduled" run to date, so I better get to bed. Notice I put the word scheduled in there since the workout's yet to be complete. Anyway, it's 11:30 at night and if I hit the sack now I probably won't get up until 9 or 10 again. Not a biggy since tomorrow weather's calling for clear skies, 70 degree weather and 20-30mph winds......

Mg

This morning was a mess. With the weather changing at the last minute, our race was altered from an Olympic Distance Event to a modified Sprint. A pretty bad storm rolled in with lightening, heavy rain and little wind. The wind wasn't anything abnormal for this part of Texas but the rain and lightening I could have dealt without. So that means a 500m swim instead of a 1.5k, and an 18 mile bike instead of a 40k. All this, while maintaining the 10k run.

So with that in mind, things changed a bit. That was a tad disappointing as I've put a lot of time in the water and was looking forward to a strong and eventful 1500m swim. 500m isn't much of anything so I won't spend anytime talking about it. I cleared the distance faster than I've ever swam before and was pleased, enough said.

The bike was interesting to say the least. We were the first wave to go off and the roads were super slick, lots of stagnant water everywhere. I think the later groups got some reprieve as it dried up by my second lap. In my wave there weren't really any super strong cyclist to contend with, so I made my move early and jumped to the front of the bike to set the pace. The funny thing is, I'm probably the wrong guy right now to be setting pace in a sprint since all I've been doing is focused Ironman training. With my current training schedule, I think I forgot how to go balls out for 18 miles. No biggy, I rode strong, led the field around the course and had a good time doing it.

I can tell you one thing for sure, leading the race is a lot of fun. With 3 police escorts, I enjoyed the spotlight for quit a while. There was one guy who started in the wave behind, Ahmed Zaher. Man I wish he and I went off together. He would have gotten me out of the water but at least I could have tried chasing him down on the bike. I rode solid, hard, as best as I could have given wet and sloppy conditions.

One big mistake though. The calories I had in my water bottle were for an Olympic distance race and not this modified sprint. With about 2 miles to go on the bike I drank half the bottle of Endurathon without even thinking. Afterwards I knew I'd pay for it later in the race. Just way too many calories and way too much protein. I had no time to digest and it was waiting for me when I hit the run.

Coming out of T-2 I knew I needed to settle down into a comfortable zone. With all the training I've been doing lately, I wasn't quit sure what that zone was. Last weeks running volume was right at 50 miles and most all of that was in Zone 2 with a little 3 mixed in. That cracks me up now that I think about it because I'm running in Zone 4-5 right now! Remember all the calories I took 6 minutes ago? Man I can feel them now. Not Cool! Ran through mile 1 in 6:25, mile 2 in 6:20 and now I'm paying the price. Mile 3 got worse as I looked at my watch only to find it saying 7:30. I hit the turnaround in a modeste 21 minutes.

As I headed back home, things only got worse. By this time, my stitch or cramp, whatever you want to call it, hurt so bad I was literally hovered over trying to walk. I walked for about 2 minutes until I cleared mile 4 in 8:30. I tried to pick things up again as Ahmed came flying by. Dude was on a mission! I picked things back up pretty good; a little too good as I was back to running a solid 6:30 pace but once again, half a mile later.....the stitch came back. Mile 5 in 8:35. I was so pissed! I wasn't even tired! I just couldn't run hard. I even tried to make conversation with some dude who came up on me. He was racing the sprint and not too inclined to talk at this point, I understand. The final mile or so I gritted my teeth and tried to finish strong. 6:15 mile and Boy did that ever hurt. I ended up finishing 8th overall and 1st in my age-group.

At the end of the race I couldn't have been more disappointed. If you don't believe me, just ask Adam, Ahmed, Julie or anyone in the general vicinity how I reacted when Ahmed tried bustin-balls 10 seconds after I finished the race. I can't tell you how bad it sucks when you train your ass off only to have stupid stuff get in the way. The calorie thing was a rookie mistake and I should have known that before it was too late. In the end, it's my fault. Given the circumstances that arose, I raced the best race I could have. Don't get me wrong, to me.....racing is the ultimate high, the most amazing thing in the world. I love and enjoy every bit of it! But with enjoyment comes dissapoitment and 2 races back to back, both coming with hard luck.....doesn't sit to well with me. Ehh, there's always another race and this is just motivation for the next one. Sitting here thinking about it.....at least it wasn't an Ironman.

Congrats to Ahmed Zaher and Adam Wilk who both put up a huge fight to secure 2nd place victories in both there respective races. After I chilled out a bit, Ahmed spent some time with me post race to talk about my misfortune and ways to deal with future situations similar to the one that happened today. Honestly, if you can't learn from your mistakes, you'll never get better.

Stephen Cross also had an awesome day. Securing 3rd place today as well as his 5th place finish at CATS Half Ironman 4 weeks ago.....the guys on a tear for a solid day in Kona. I had a chance to sit down and speak with Cross for the first time and he's one solid dude. The guy has only been in the sport brief time and on his way back to Kona for the 2nd time in a row.

Anyway, back to Ironman training. I'll race one more time at Stonebridge. I won't make it a priority to go fast.....probably similar to today.....minus the run! I just don't have the time to train the speed anymore. That's an important week, kind of like next week and every week leading up to November 4th. Giving myself the best possible chance at racing strong come Florida is thing only thing on my mind. With 7 weeks left to go and lots of training, that doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else.

Just got an e-mail from Dave. His words exactly, "no reason to be down about the race ... was a ZERO priority race as far as the big picture. NONE / ZERO specific training for this event... I had no expectations". Those are goods words from a great coach. I'm lucky to have him around. Thanks Dave..........

Until Stonebridge...........