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There is no you, there is only me. Things are not pretty on the inside.” -NIN Freakishly I did 5 halfs this season. Even more freakishly I felt best for #5. I didn’t realize it until I counted them all up. Jesus, five. This is a lot for me. I think I am different now, different then I thought I was. Athletes change and it is important to keep an open mind. If you had asked me if 5 halfs would have worked for me I would say no. Yet #5 was the best. Timberman is a kick ass event, and I am so stoked to do it. Its hard, its not fast, but its just plan awesome. I felt great saturday. No coffee and I was still bouncing. I went to the sprint because watching a tri is great motivation for doing one. I saw my friends from qt2systems.com crush the sprint. Afterwards tim snow and I were talking when he grabbed my belly fat. I think that’s the qt2systems handshake. That crew is defined in part by their serious nutrional planning and with ironman wins its hard to say its not working, which is why they are my nutrional peeps. Being surly bostonians they are not known for mincing words and since they didn’t say anything I assumed I passed. I had 2 goals top 10 among the pros, and be within 8 percent of the winning time so I could stop stressing my pro card requalification (I have all of 2009). The problem with the winning time goal was that it only takes one bad ass to ruin your day. Mr Potts who beat nearly everyone by 8 percent is such a bad ass. He is the world champ at this distance and his olympic rings tattoo is pretty cool. My coach Jim Ortel was working me over mentally on how to deal with some of the top guys. One really hard thing about being a mop (middle of the pack) pro is that there are days where you race awesome, for nothing. Instead of seeing this as demoralizing he reminds me that its pretty cool to toe the line between guys like potts, lavoto, lessing, et al. The swim had some bad luck. As some of you may recall I posted some pics on xtri of a volunteer kyacker who got mixed into the swim at the start of imlp. Well I kind of made a little fun of him in the caption. Karma came back at me when I ran into a kyack paddle that was floating unmanned causing me to loose my most excellent group. I noticed some of the markers that got loose and swam pretty straight for the most part. I was in a group of three until the final turn. I was second and decided to surge at the corner. I passed the leader and then did a little zig-zag and we shock the third place guy. I like when racing can be a bit cruel, I like being the hand of cruelity. No free rides buddy. The bike is very hilly and the climbs start right away. I hammered and was climbing well. I hit the 30 miles of flats and tried to keep up the effort. It wasn’t easy but I felt really good. Oddly looking back at the spits of everyone I lost the most time on the bike. I fear this means another winter of bike focus. I got on the run and was worried I might have bad legs since my ride was pretty good. Nope. Legs turned over good. I settled into a pace and passed someone early on. No one else blew up and I got passed by a fast flying guy and didn’t even try to go with him. After that it was just about running strong and within my self. The NIN nails quote is to remind me that I need to keep my mind on me and worry about what I am doing, sometimes it fun to “race” head to head but that might be the last half of the run. I came across to hear I was 9th male pro. Then the results got posted and I was 11th. Oh so close! Oh well. Rob Straz had me 20th! Someone needs a lesson in counting. Thankfully he had a Token Entry shirt on, which was the first band I ever truly connected with. I saw him at the start of the bike and for 3 hours was singing until I saw him on the run when I shouted “I spend my days in a vacum trying to scream, people say I am crazy come see what they mean. What’s to keep me from loosing my grip, and why do I keep feeling the kiss of the whip.” Great song for racing. I hope he was impressed with my powers of recall. I think with morgantown and ri not going well I needed a pick up and this was just the ticket. I feel really confident for ironman lou and wanna smash it. That’s what Jim Ortel is best at, I swear the guy has a blue print inside my head. He knows what I am thinking before I do and what I need even when its not convenstion-like doing a half 14 days before a full. Moster thanks to the CREW we rolled deep and had awesome races. Good work everyone.
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“And it changes, violently it changes.” Drowning pool Fine your cool. You don’t care. I was never cool. I never sat at the cool kids table at lunch. I don’t have cool. I got this. I got razors for a brain. I got that feeling. You are cool. I am this. This feeling. I suspect its better than cool. Its craziness. Are you too cool to envy that? I am too crazed to care. Race. Go. madness. Now. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Man, this was the coolest thing I ever saw EVER at a tri. There was also a women on the side line with a red tee that said “anger management.” AWESOME. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Kicking it up at timberman with CREW folks pj, david, wikiwki, and tom. Here is pj on the run doing the sprint before her final race sim in prep for immoo. I might be racing tomorrow. If it and louisville go well I will look like a genius, if not I will feel pretty damn stupid but I bounced the idea off two people and they said it wouldn’t be a bad idea (names withheld in case it goes bad) so here I am. The truth is with the morgantown meltdown I need another shot at the whole pro card thing, so don’t blame me blame usat and there screwing of iron-focus athletes. (Long boring story) Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Kicking it up at timberman with CREW folks pj, david, wikiwki, and tom. Here is pj on the run doing the sprint before her final race sim in prep for immoo. I might be racing tomorrow. If it and louisville go well I will look like a genius, if not I will feel pretty damn stupid but I bounced the idea off two people and they said it wouldn’t be a bad idea (names withheld in case it goes bad) so here I am. The truth is with the morgantown meltdown I need another shot at the whole pro card thing, so don’t blame me blame usat and there screwing of iron-focus athletes. (Long boring story) Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

“You got your eyes looking for something… good god I don’t need a reason.” Fugazi

I made a lot of upgrades this year, and as I get ready for my ironman I think its motivation to go over them. What’s amazing is how much I did before the season even began, before the first start, before I ever racked my bike for the first tri in april. You don’t race ironman on your last training bloc, but on the entire year. I have come to really feel that.

First, I took the shortest off season ever. I didn’t get silly with training right away but I kept the total time off to 3 weeks. I followed that up with 3 weeks of anti-tri that is anything put swimming biking or running. Surfing, hoops, soccer, hiking, strolling, silly machines at the gym that only moms use, whatever, but it wasn’t sbr. This also tied in with the first major upgrade, which was to change my body a bit. I am not, nor have I ever been fat. But for an elite I wasn’t on target. Your menu needs to be in keeping with your goals. Nothing wrong with eating what you want, if that is what you want, training to eat, as suppose to eating to train, it totally ok in my book. but I want something else right now and that is to race ironman near the pointy end of the race. So this fall I worked with www.qt2systems.com to get my body where I wanted it. The off season wasnt a cake-pie-ice cream season, but rather a reasonable diet that focused on making some changes to what I ate, both is reduction, and addition.

Then next upgrade was my first running focus in 5 years. I came into this game with a better run then swim or bike and its taken me 5 years to catch em up. But it happened so last year I got rewarded with my first run focus which I loved doing. It saw me build up to my first 100 mile week, a new high for volume. I was geeked, after years of not having a run focus to just run a lot was pretty awesome. Not riding as much through the winter was nice too.

The next ugrade was in doubling the spain trip. Having 20 days, not 10 to train was awesome. I don’t think I ever trained as well or was as fit that early.

The next upgrade was the following week when I didn’t train! Last year I spent March sick, and was toasted all spring getting back from that. The week after Spain Mandy and I kicked it around Madrid, went to museums, drank cafe’ con letches and chilled out. The train gods even prevented us from a day trip that Mandy’s manic vacation work ethic required, and instead I ate those lovely spainish omletes and chilled in a plaza under the spanish sun. This recover was huge in terms of not coming home and getting sick.

 Once home and recovered I got talked into moving up bike racin’ fields and found the wickedly hard johnny cake series. These 100k+ pro/1/2/3 races were the hardest things I have ever done. I had fallen into a big volume, slow miles mindset, and these got me to see 50kph as a reasonable way to spend a few hours. After that holding 22-24mph seemed slow. This lead to two awesome races, kenitic and st croix where I upgraded my results, taking 2nd and 13th again, one of the worlds best fields. I think this set a new standard for me mentally. The last upgrade came in my final prep weeks. I set training prs, and for the first time was strong all 21 days. We will see if it pays off.

One of the funnest parts about taper that I forgot, heat accilmation, nothing is more fun then rollers with two long sleeves and a winter hat. Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

The first few days of the taper are a godsend. Smashed and shelled you wash up on the shores of your taper begging for the pain of training to stop. But once you get yourself together you quickly realize that sacrifice, suffering and misery may have only begun. As a disclaimer tapering doesn’t have to be like this. For some the taper can be a celebration of all the hard work, and a well earned rest before the 140 mile party that they deserve. But for me, I use these three weeks to turn the screws, to tighten everything up and to keep every bit of speed I earned. The first and most evil (btw anyone watch that show “Most Evil”? Its awesome) of the taper pains is the coffee detox. I read somewhere that Peter Reid would detox from coffee in his taper. I tried it and it really worked. You go off coffee for the taper and reintroduce it the morning of the ironman and its awesome. I like to keep the caffine train rolling all ironman and it works so much better if I am caffine free for a few weeks prior. The problem with this is that it makes me unfocused, unproductive and generally depressed. That said, all of those things contribute to sleep. I have sleeped 11 and 1O.5 hours the first two nights of my taper. Without the amazing brown liquid love I can’t keep my eyes open. Of course being depressed sucks, but lucky there is what I call the coffee safegaurd: you can’t kill yourself because you are to tired and unmotivated. The paradox: to kill myself for lack of coffee I would first need a cup of coffee. So taper is this hellish world of wishing for death but not doing anything about it. Like the song One by metallica, or the film Johhny Got His Gun. The second taper suckage is food. If you taper and cut out a lot of training, you need to cut down your food intake. My body really really really wants to be 175 lbs. At 152 its pretty pissed at me. So for 3 weeks its watching what I eat and really focusing on eating exactly the right amount of food, the right combo of food and eating it at the right time. I could without even noticing it put on 3-5 lbs during my taper and that would suck and undo a lot of work. A little trick I got from the book Running With the Buffulos, don’t eat to many calories to early. If its 5 pm and you are out of calories your gonna be bummed. The last thing that sucks is life stress. During my big training periods I really focus on training. But all those millions of little and big life and real job projects are right there, waiting for me. Trying to do them without coffee sucks and is an evil sinergy of bad. Worse, there is pre-race stress. I am a pretty good at dealing with it, and generally hype helps me. It pumps me up. I feed off pro meetings (stress fests) giant inflateables, signs, and whatever. The bigger the race the more focused I tend to be. But even I have moments of stress. Will my bike get there, will it be in one piece? What if I get sick? There are a 100 things you can worry about prior to a race and most people pick something. Its a big deal, you train all year for it, you want it to go well–thats what you think about during your taper and it sucks. That said I can’t wait for the pay off on race day.
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M: swim 4k, run 15k, bike 30k
T: swim 5k, run 10k, ride 100k with crit ave mph 26.3 mph for 60 min race
W: run 20 miles. 11 mile @ 2:30+, 8 miles @ 7:10, 1 mile c/d. 2k swim. 90 minutes yoga- core. Second run 40 minutes.
T: swim 3k speed work. Run 10k (oddly legs felt good). Ride 2 hours ez.
F: swim 2k, ride 200k (missed run when it got dark and stopped ride for an hour bc of t-storms)
S: run 15 with rox race. Swim 2k
S: 2k swim, 4 hour ride, 2 hour run.
Totals: 20k, bike 500k-ish, run 115k Hours: 34
Comments: I was really happy that I hung on. In years past I have faded badly in the final days and I was really pleased to be able to make the final week the hardest and biggest. I added some harder work in terms of a speed workout in the water, and also had the crit and a running event in there to add some faster work. I also backed off my long runs making them less insanely hard and more steedy-pacing, which I think is a good exchange for not feeling completely shelled after the workout (thanks KP for that advice).
I woke up sunday totally shelled but did the final hard workout and did it well considering how aweful I felt starting it. That was kind of magic or the result of 3 red bulls. But the good news is also that I feel confident that I really did all I could to get ready for ironman lou in this final push.
First day of my taper saw me sleep 11 hours, I think that too is also some kind of pr
The work is in the barn now.
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“I took my glasses off so as not to see you see me react. But I put them on so I could see you, see me, sincerly yelling back…we went on wholehearted, it ended bad but I love where we started ” F. Apple
Ironman training is harsh. I go through wheels, tires tubes. Wearing down metal with a million small efforts. my skin is chaffed, split and dry. I cracked a tooth, at some point, I don’t remember where or when, spitting out white sand like pebbles. Keep going. I ate boxes and boxes of bars, cereal, pasta, and powder drink mix. I wore holes in my shoes, shorts, and skin.
Its all just a matter of time. Give a river long enough and you get the grand cannon. Give yourself enough time and have the will of gravity and you can wear a path through your body. Its amazing but I don’t think anything stresses ones resources, both phyical and emotional like ironman. That’s the draw, its not just the race, but can you survive the training? If you do, you sit here, starting your taper, with a tiny tooth cracked smile, to tired to smile more but happier then anyone else.
(Pic: back in the city)
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