Go download this, NOW!

Someone posted a thread over at TNO for IM vets (kind of weird to think I’m included in that category now) asking questions about their training. I answered and figured I’d share my answers here:

1. DID YOU HAVE A COACH FOR ANY OF THE THREE SPORTS, IF SO, WAS IT WORTH WHATEVER YOU PAID.

I didn’t have a coach. I read, reread, and then read again Going Long and Friel’s TTB. There is lots of help here on the board if you have any questions as well.

2. WHAT WERE YOUR LONGEST SWIMS, RIDES, RUNS, IN PREPARATION FOR THE RACE?

My longest swim was about 90 minutes (although I swam in high school and college). My longest ride was 100 miles (probably did 3-4 of them and a ton of 80+s). My longest runs were 2:30 in duration - probably around 17-18 miles.

3. DURING YOUR HEAVIEST TRAINING WEEKS, HOW MANY HOURS DID YOU FEEL WAS ADEQUATE. (include weight training as well)

I pretty much capped out around 18. 18 feels like a big week to me. 15 was more “comfortable” and 12 felt like vacation. :)

4. DID YOU DO YOUR TRAINING ALONE, WITH A TEAM, FRIENDS, ETC.-WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

I did masters swimming so that was obviously with a group. Most of my rides and runs were done by myself which I’d recommend. There isn’t going to be anyone out there to pace you or help you on race day. You should get used to having to dig deep alone.

5. BIGGEST TIP

Hmmm toughy. There are so many. :) How about… be consistent and JFT. Don’t get too caught up in all the minor technical details. It’s best to be out there everyday and building up yourself in preparation for the race.

6. BIGGEST LESSON LEARNED FROM TRAINING

For most people, your mind is your biggest limiter. The body is very resilient. Chances are, it’ll take you as long and as far and as fast as you’re mind is willing to train it to go.

BEST OF LUCK IN 2005!!!

The temperature is a balmy 35 degrees right now and according to the meteorologists, it’s going to snow tomorrow. I’ve been living in this state now for six years. I’ve been dealing with winter now for the past 12 years. I would have thought I would have wised up and moved back to California by now. :neutral:

Ironman Florida has come and gone and has already sold out for 2005. The race filled in nine hours! Unbelievable. I’m leaning towards doing Ironman Canada next year (via a charity spot), but none of my local friends would be doing the race with me. I just don’t think it would be as fun without your friends there to do the race with you and to be training with them for the same event. Hmmm. I guess I still have some time to think about it.

For all the millions (or two) people that were affected by the construction, sorry for the inconvenience. I think everything is fixed now. At least it looks much better in Safari than it did before.

Thanks to Gemini for the base template that I had to go off of. I don’t work with CSS a lot normally, so that saved me a lot of time.

I’m reworking this site because I realized that it doesn’t render quite right in Safari. Please excuse the mess while I try and fix it.

In the past week or so, I’ve been getting a bunch of comment spam here on my site. Yes, the spammers have sunk to new lows and now not only spam my email accounts (which I filter out pretty sucessfully with RBLs and SpamAssassin) but also leave me comments here telling me where I should play video-poker and look at pr0n.

As such, I looked around for a tool that would help me get rid of this pesky problem. I came across this link that can be installed in Wordpress and uses a “captcha” test before you’re allowed to post a comment here. So, for the people that read this site you may notice that the comment form has now changed. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I didn’t see any other good alternatives. :???: