I’ve found some pretty good deals on TechBargains in the past. I was recently on their website and found some coupon codes for Ofoto. It was advertised that I would get 40% off any $10 order or more and I had some pictures that I wanted to print out so what the heck. I uploaded my pictures to their site. I didn’t have that many, but I wanted to get up to $10 to be able to use the coupon. So I searched and searched for more pictures to print. I spent time uploading them, cropping them, fixing red eyes, adding borders, etc. After a few hours time, I finally get over the amount that I need to spend and try to checkout only to find that the damn coupon code doesn’t work! Grrr… and with no other good coupon codes and the shipping costs, it’s just not even worth it to order from them anymore. Total waste of a few hours of my life that I’ll never get back. :eek:

Heh. I had a moment of weakness today and had thoughts in my mind that it would be cool to sign up for Ironman USA Lake Placid. Luckily, when I checked after lunch I found out that the race is already closed out for next year so I can’t sign up. Phew! That just means I have to avoid signing up again for Wisconsin or signing up for Florida and I should have a normal and civilized training schedule for next year. Unless by some miracle I happen to qualify for Hawaii. Hah!

Our small group went on a boat cruise on Lake Minnetonka last night. It was great! I’m embarassed to say it was my first time on the lake despite living here for almost six years and it being only 30 minutes away. I’d definitely go again, though. The two hour cruise (which included pizza) was only $10!

The Spirit of Racine Triathlon (formerly known as “Dairyland”) is a 1/2 Irondistance triathlon located in Racine on the eastern border of Wisconsin. It’s a 1.2 mile swim in Lake Michgan, a 56 mile bike ride through the countryside, and a 13.1 mile run along the coast. I wanted to use this race as a long training day in preparation for Ironman Wisconsin. My goals: Finish the race and not leave myself shelled so that I could get right back on your training plan. My guesstimate at my finishing time was just under six hours.

Pre-Race:

I woke up around 5 am so I could get some breakfast down before the race. It consisted of a blueberry muffin, about 3/4 of a Snickers Marathon bar, and a bottle of Gatorade. I checked the weather which showed it was a chilly 58 degrees at that time. The day was supposed to end up at 72 degrees and sunny later in the day, so I was hoping it would heat up considerably from the morning. My friend and I made our way to the transition area around 6 am. We setup our areas and pumped up our tires and made our way to the swim start.

Swim:

Due to some changes in conditions (I’m not really sure what those changes were), they changed the swim course from being one loop to being a straight swim which started about a mile from transition. I expected the water to be pretty chilly. In the recent days, I had heard rumors of it being anywhere from 58 to 66 degrees - pretty cold regardless of where you pick from that scale. The walk down to the start took longer than I expected and it wasn’t fun trudging through the sand and mud and in a wetsuit, but what can you do? By the time we got to the start, we were the next wave to go. That was ok with me since I wasn’t about to get in that water any sooner than I had to. It was going to be a long day, so I figured the swim would be my warm up for the day (assuming I was able to get warm). I’m normally a FOP swimmer, but that day I decided to start in the back, still on the beach. I didn’t want to know what the water felt like until I had to.

Although I didn’t hear anything, I’m assuming some horn went off and I followed the mass into the water. It wasn’t as cold as I had expected it to be which I was happy about. It didn’t take long to make it through the pack of people. I managed to find some clear water before the first bouy and settled into a nice rhythm. I took the swim nice and easy and didn’t ever feel like I was pushing at all. The water was pretty wavy and I was wondering if anyone was going to freak out and just bail on the swim. I feel totally at home in the water, but I could definitely see how folks might start to freak out with how choppy things were. I approached what would be the final bouy indicating that we should turn towards the beach and thinking to myself is this right? I didn’t think I had been in the water for long enough to have swam 1.2 miles. I didn’t have my watch on so couldn’t verify the time, but I just followed the crowds figuring that not everyone could be wrong. I made my way to the shore, found my girlfriend and gave her a kiss before I headed into T1 and onto my bike. Time: 25:42. Definitely short or we had a strong current (perhaps that was the change of conditions?) or both.

T1:

SLOW. But mostly intentionally so. I didn’t really care about my overall time, so I didn’t feel any need to rush. I took the time to dry off my feet and put on socks. I chatted a little bit with another guy next to me and wished him luck. Time: 2:59.

Bike:

The ride out of transition was kind of annoying. There was a nice hill to greet us right out of the gates and the first few miles had us turning every few blocks which was kind of a pain. A few miles in, I was able to settle into my aero position and just ride. I planned doing my entire ride at IM pace, so I wasn’t surprised when folks started passing me left and right. That was ok though. I wasn’t going to let them throw me off my game, so I just let the hammer heads go. The roads weren’t the greatest and I sat up a lot on my bullhorns a lot to let my arms absorb a lot of the bumps. I found myself pushing a little too hard towards the middle of my ride - probably from about mile 30 to mile 40. I made myself throttle back again and got my HR back down to training levels. I approached the end of my ride feeling great and not tired at all. Those long slow 80+ mile rides really do something for your biking endurance! Results - Time: 2:42:54 - Pace: 20.6 MPH. That’s still faster than I’m planning on averaging at Wisconsin, but I’m happy with that performance since I felt like I could have pushed considerably harder if I wanted to race the course.

T2:

I made it a point to get through this transition more quickly. Not because I wanted to race, but I had to pee like a race horse! Time: 2:09.

Run:

I wasn’t the only one that had to go because there was a line right out of T2 to use the Biffys. After a quick pit stop, I found my girlfriend again about 100 yards up the road and gave her another kiss and went on my way (I’d find out later that the women around her were jealous that their SOs didn’t stop to give them the same treatment, so I’m glad I was able to make her feel special. :) ). I hit the first mile marker at about 9:30, which was fast for me considering that included the time I spent stopping to hit the head. I kept my HR in check and I was keeping a fairly consistent pace which was verified by my watch and the mile markers. I did slow down a little bit over the course of the run - maybe 10 seconds per mile - but I was extremely happy with the pace at which I was running. The first lap felt great and I’ll admit that I did push a little harder than I had planned on the second lap. I thought it would be awesome if I could break 2 hours for a 1/2 marathon (this was only the second time I had run 13.1 miles for time) and I had a good chance at it that day! Results - Time: 1:51:12 - Pace: 8:29/mile. That was a great run for me!

My total time was 5:04:59. 58/155 in my AG and 252 out of approximately 1100. I also smashed my other 1/2 IM time by 20 minutes and did so in the middle of a base training week with really no taper or rest. Needless to say, I was very, VERY happy with my results! Hopefully, this is a sign of good things to come for IMMoo!

It’s bright and early here in Racine, WI. After somewhat of a hectic day yesterday, we finally made it into town last night around 7 pm or so. My original plan was to leave around 11 am and to try and miss any out of town rush hour traffic. My girlfriend had a last minute meeting that lasted until 11:30, so that changed to leaving at noon. Ok… no big deal, but as the morning went on she had another issue with some water in her basement that she wanted to look at quick. We stopped by there and didn’t get on the road until just before 2 pm. Ugh. Three hours later than I wanted to be on the road, but better late than never.

The drive here was long! Well, long for me anyway. I don’t really sit very well in a far for more than three hours and it took us over five to get here. We hauled ass across Wisconsin and arrived in Racine to have the front desk at the hotel tell me that I didn’t have reservations for two nights, but just for one night. Of course, it was the night before the race that I didn’t have a reservation for. I was absolutely livid! I did change my reservations late last week from a Saturday to Monday stay to a Friday to Sunday stay, but I received confirmation back that everything was ok. Now, they were telling me that they didn’t have any availability, that the waiting list was 5-6 people deep, and that the closest hotel away was a good 15 minutes by car. Unacceptable. I was so mad I was almost speechless, but luckily my girlfriend is pretty well versed in the art of bitching so she started the bombardment of the poor front desk people. “No no no… this is RADISSON’S fault. RADISSON is going to fix this problem.” And I did feel kind of sorry for the two girls behind the desk. It wasn’t their fault, but it was their company’s fault. But none the less, I proceeded to give them an earful from beside my bitching girlfriend (I never knew all that bitching could come in so handy ;) ). After some squirming, it was decided that they were going to give us a room for two nights and they’d work out how they were going to fix their overbooking later. Near disaster avoided.

Not much else to report. Today will just be spent checking into the race and checking out the race expo and what not. We’ll probably go see a movie or something today. There’s a small possibility that some of my girlfriend’s family might come into town for a visit, but I kind of doubt that since they didn’t call us back yesterday. Not that I blame them - Racine doesn’t seem to be the most exciting place on the planet. Whatever we end up doing, it’s nice to not be on the road and to get away for the weekend without anything to do (today) but relax.

Simply incredible! First in the stage and just over a minute ahead of his nearest competitor. I can’t wait to see the coverage at home on my TiVo. It was still an exciting stage to listen to over the online broadcast.

Ugh. It’s almost 6 pm here and the mercury is still reading 89 degrees. The dew point is 69 and the humidity is 52%, so for those that know their weather conditions, you can tell it’s pretty miserable here.

I’ve been procrastinating working out thinking it would get cooler if I could just wait a little longer. If I wait too much longer though, I’ll be working out in the dark. :neutral: Guess I’d better just suck it up and deal with the heat (or the boredom of my trainer).

I haven’t been feeling very posty lastly. I’ll be going through my day saying that I should post on a number of different subjects, but ultimately I’ll forget or procrastinate and post them days later.

Lets see. Last Sunday, a friend of mine came in from Madison Wisconsin to swim in a local masters meet here. His goal was to break the age group state records that exists here in Minnesota. I had to leave a little early, but I do think he was successful, breaking four for four records or something like that. He’s doing probably a quarter the training that we were in college and he came close to setting PRs in all his individual times. Pretty insane. To balance it all out though, there was some crazy fast 50 year old guy who ended up beating him in a couple of races that he did too. So while he may be the age group state record holder, he still got beat by someone almost twice his age. :) Anyway, it was great seeing him while he was here. I hope to be able to meet up with him when I’m in Madison in September.

Sunday night, I cowed out. My girlfriend treated me to Outback for dinner. I had a half order of cheese fries, french onion soup, a loaf of their bread, mashed potatoes, and a nice juicy 20 oz porterhouse. Nothing like a 4000+ calorie meal to finish off the weekend. My weight is doing ok. This morning, I’m weighed in at 153.5. My realistic goal weight for IMMoo is 150, so I’m in perfect striking range for that.

Training resumed again yesterday after taking Sunday off. I had a swim, bike, and run session yesterday each an hour in duration. I think I will be doing the Spirit of Racine Triathlon this coming weekend. The goal is to just complete the race at Ironman pace and not shell myself afterwards. I need to be able to get right back into my program after finishing the 1/2. I’ll probably keep things nice and light until then.

That’s about all. There hasn’t been much to my life recently. Lots of training, eating, sleeping, and watching the Tour de France. Looks like Armstrong is well on pace to getting his sixth win. GO LANCE! :)

Today (or yesterday I suppose since it’s after midnight), I completed my first ever century ride. I’ve done a good number of 80+ mile rides prior to this and have ridden a couple of 90+ mile rides, but today is the first time to reach that magical three digit mark. While I normally ride for time, today I decided that I would ride until my odometer read “50.0″ miles before I’d turn around.

The ride itself went pretty well. I started out my ride today fairly strong and steady. Usually, I start out very conservatively and keep it that way at least for the first hour. But today I was fueled by a little anger from yesterday where I mistreated my body out of boredom, which is no excuse and I know better and should have exhibited better self-control. Add to that not being able to do just one thing that I wanted to do while I was in Chicago - go to Steak N’ Shake - and it was adding fuel to the fire. We don’t have Steak N’ Shakes in Minnesota; the food isn’t even really that good, but I was starving at the time and it sounded really good. But my girlfriend was feeling tired and a little sick after the wedding yesterday and just wanted to go home, so I oblidged. It was more selflessness for an event that I didn’t really feel like attending in the first place. Probably more like adding gasoline to a fire, but I digress. :P I needed to have “hermit time” after yesterday and it seemed suitable that I ride long and hard today.

I went through a new series of feelings while riding today. I’ve already had the patches of feeling bad during a ride and riding through them to where I feel good again, but today was different. I felt really strong from the get go and started out at a brisk pace, although in the back of my mind I was wondering if this was the best thing to do starting out the longest ride I had ever attempted before.

The first 40 miles would take me along a route that I’ve done a bunch of times before and was pretty uneventful. The last 10 miles to 50 was unchartered ground for me both physically and mentally. My mind was playing mental games with me for that whole stretch of road. It kept telling me to turn around before 50 and that I really didn’t need to ride all the way to 50. “4-5 hours was good enough, why go beyond that…? For every additional mile to you in this direction, you’re going to have to do that same mile in the other direction…” But I didn’t act on this and just proceeded onwards.

Shortly after the turn around, I’ve had a feeling that I’ve never had on a ride before - fear. I don’t really know why, but I had this sudden feeling of fear and uncertainty and I no longer wanted to be riding my bike. I think I was scared about how hard I had pushed myself to that point and that I was only half way through my ride. That and I started out late and would be battling the sun setting and riding a bike with no reflectors (hey, I never said I was smart), so I knew I had grounds to be concerned, but not fearful? I haven’t felt “fear” in quite a while so this was a total surprise to me. But I pressed on and very slowly, my feelings of fear subsided and were just replaced with fatigue when I hit my normal landmark indicating that I had 40 miles left.

My now, I normally would have ridden long enough in duration where I would have had me maybe 20-30 miles from home by now, but I was still 40 miles out - a distance that just seemed too far given how I was feeling. But sulking wasn’t going to get me home anytime faster so I put my head down and kept riding. During miles 60-75, more new feelings arose. I’m not even really sure how to describe what I felt, but it was somewhere between dizzy and almost drunk. My upper body coordination seemed to be failing me and doing a simple task like taking a drink while riding seemed incredibly difficult. I felt like my reaction times were slower and honestly hoped that I didn’t just fall over and blackout in a ditch someplace. But oddly enough, legs were feeling pretty good despite this. It was like my lower body wasn’t attached to my upper body and my brain just put my legs on autopilot while it sorted out the rest of the fatigue with the rest of me. Very strange indeed.

At 75 miles, I knew the end was near. I had just another hour or so before I would be someplace where I felt I was close to home and I knew that would be a big mental boost. I just needed to concentrate for one more hour and get there. I just dug deep and gave it everything that I had left and 25 miles later, it was all done. I had ridden 100 miles in a faster pace than I had ever gone before for a long ride and had experienced a bunch of new feelings on the way. Hopefully, these feelings will be nice treasures for me come race day.

I think Lance Armstrong described suffering pretty well in his book Every Second Counts:

The experience of suffering is like the experience of exploring, of finding someting unexpected and revelatory. When you find the outermost threshold of pain, or fear, what you experience afterward is an expansive feeling, a widening of your capabilities. Pain is good because it teaches your body and your soul to improve. It’s almost as though your unconscious says, “I’m going to remember this, remember how much it hurt, and I’ll increase my capacities so that the next time, it doesn’t hurt as much. The body literally builds on your experiences…”

It’s a good feeling to know that I’ve widened by capabilities just that much. I’m improving.

Since yesterday’s post, I’ve had time to reflect on the whole weekend travel situation. My girlfriend came over last night and we discussed the matter at length. I think my whole bitterness stems from the fact that my wants and desires weren’t really taken into consideration in the matter. I know how much I’d like to stay and watch the LTF triathlon this weekend, but I chose to spend my time with my girlfriend instead because I know how much the wedding means to her. A while that’s selfless in itself, there’s still some selfish part of me that wants acknowledgement of what was actually sacrificed here and I think that was missing from the whole thing. The more I thought about what I was giving up to go and the more nobody else seemed to know or care, the more bitter I got. Certainly, the money, the vacation day, the missed day of training, and missing a once a year event is at least worth a “I know how much this weekend meant to you and how much you wanted to stay, but I want to thank you for choosing to come with me. It really means a lot to me.” Had it probably gone down that way, that would have been the end of it.

Looking back on things now, I’m starting to wonder how selfless and selfish I really am at the core. I tend to do things to the extreme which is to say that I’m usually at one end of the spectrum or the other - there is little grey for me. So when I’m being selfless, I’m generally totally selfless and don’t care about my own wants or needs. And while I enjoy doing this, I think I can only sustain this for short periods of time (even shorter when I’m already shelled from training). Once that limit is hit, I usually need periods of time away from everything to recharge myself. It’s been labelled by friends and others as “hermit time” and creeps up every now and then (like here). It generally doesn’t last for very long - a day or two tops. But if I don’t get it, it just downward spirals and I grow more and more irritable until I can get this rest.

For what it’s worth, my girlfriend is really good to me. I am a pretty difficult person to deal with when I’m tired, which training for IMMoo is pretty much all the time. She puts up with more crap than I’d ever take from someone. I guess that really should speak for itself.