Only 90 degrees. Since when is a humid 90 only 90, as if I might as well open up all the windows in the house because it’s so comfortable? It’s better than 98 like it was this Sunday, but it’s still pretty darn hot!

I went for an hour and a half run this evening not taking any water with me and not bothering to really hydrate adequately before my run. I figured, “It’s just 90 minutes… I’ll wing it! How bad can it be?” Moving at a snails pace on the way back home after starting to develop tunnel vision, I soon realized how bad it could be. I even walked some sections there at the end I felt so terrible. I weighed myself when I got back home and was only 148 - that’s four pounds down from my already dehydrated weight this morning. I haven’t seen 148 since sometime in high school, I think?! I would have told anyone else going out in this weather to stay hydrated until I was blue in the face. But I don’t take my own medicine despite knowing better. Sometimes, I’m not all that bright. :P

I’m feeling much better now, though.

You’re riding through the park. It’s windy out, but your workout just calls for an easy to moderately paced ride. You pretty much could care less what your average speed ends up being. You’re out there minding your own business through the two-lane trail and hear some strange noises coming from your drive train. You look down and everything seems to be in order. You look behind you and see that someone is camped on your rear wheel. “Yup. I’m right behind you on your wheel,” he says politely. “Oh… OK.” you reply. What would you do next?

1. Keep riding at your current pace. Who cares what’s happening behind you? It’s not affecting your ride or you from going your own pace.
2. Slow down, hope that the pace is too slow for him and that he passes you. I hate people that come up behind you all stealth like and suck your wheel without even mentioning that they’re there and drafting.
3. Suck this! I hate people that come up behind you all stealth like and suck your wheel without even mentioning that they’re there and drafting. If they want to try and suck wheel, push the pace and see if they can keep up.

As you might imagine, this is what happened on my ride yesterday. And while I should have done the smart thing and chose option #1, I chose option #3. It wasn’t planned that way initially and I thought I had chosen option #1, but I soon looked down at my HRM and saw it climbing. First five beats and then ten. It’s like Ego took over the reigns even when I thought I was in full control. I kept on riding and I let up on my pedals for a second just to see if he was still there. He was. Now I’m just annoyed that Ego’s subconscious attempt failed and I retake control and push the pace. I turn the screw a little more and now, I’m riding through the park at basically my race pace from the day before, only the route is more hilly and it’s quite a technical ride through the trails. I push for another ten minutes or so at this pace without letting up or stopping to look back or anything. It works and Mr. Stealth Drafter got dropped somewhere back there. Except now, my legs are more tired than they should be and tired enough when I get home that I decide to skip my 3-4 mile run that I was otherwise going to do after my ride. :( Stupid Ego picking fights for me!

So… what would you have done?

Pre-Race:

Being in the middle of a base period for Wisconsin, my goal for this race was more less to not push too hard and cause any extended recovery for the days following the race. Tomorrow starts a new base week and I need to be able to go out and give it a solid, long course day. As fun as these sprint tris are, racing one can make me feel quite wiped for days after if I’m red lined the whole way. My goal was to leave my ego and pride at the door and go at around a 1/2 IM pace.

The race itself took place in Annandale, MN. It’s about an hour drive from the Twin Cities here. It was a fairly quick drive and quite uneventful. The days leading up to the race have been very hot and very humid. The forecast for today predicted temperatures into the upper 90s with the relative humidity probably not that far behind. But with a whole week of biking and running in that mess, I felt pretty comfortable racing in whatever conditions the day would throw me. We arrived at the race site about an hour before the race so there was plenty of time to pick up my packet and get marked and all that good stuff.

I got setup in transition without any incident. As this course would have it, the transition area was quite long and setup such that the entrance and exit to it were both the same. In other words, if you were assigned a rack close to the entrance/exit that would save you a significant distance of running each time in transition alone. It’s probably not a huge deal, and it seems that most local tris actually setup their transition areas this way. But it hardly seems fair. By virtue of where our heat was to rack our bikes alone, my T2 times were at least 30 seconds to a minute slower than those in the first heat. How hard is it to make everyone have to run through the transition area on one end and come out the other making it the same distance for everyone? Grrr…. I don’t know why more places don’t do it that way. It just doesn’t satisfy my OCD. :P OK, I’m done ranting about that. New rant! I was in heat 8 of 10 (or was it 12?). Another late heat and another crowded course in what is historically the most competitive age group category. More on that later.

I didn’t warm up at all. This was part of my plan to take it easy and trump the ego should it decide to make a guest appearance. I figured I had a good 15 minutes to warm up while I was swimming in the lake! I sat with Carol until about five minutes before I was scheduled to go.

Swim (0.5 mi):

Because of the recent heat wave that we got, the water temperature was 83 degrees!! And some folks were still wearing their wetsuits?! AND, some folks were wearing full wrist to ankle wetsuits!! I get hot enough when the water temperature is in the mid-70s and I’m wearing my wetsuit. I don’t know how those guys did it. They must have felt like they were swimming in a hot tub.

I lined up at the front of the pack, but as the horn went off I had little motivation to sprint into the water. I was taking this easy after all? By the time the run into the water ended, I swam swimming in the middle of the pack - not the best place for me. I ended up having to swim over a few people and sprint out a few short spurts to get some clean water. From there I just got into a comfortable rhythm and started focusing on sighting and just swimming at a nice steady pace. I ended up catching folks in the wave or two in front of me (it was hard to tell because they gave everyone the same color caps) and made my way around the swim course in no time.

Time: 13:17 (1:31/100 yards, 5/50 AG, 30/473 OA)

T1:

Again, to make sure I was taking it easy I slowed down to make sure I spotted Carol coming out of the water. I smiled for the camera (although I had my eyes closed for the picture :P) talked to her just briefly and went on my way. I also stopped to put on socks which I normally wouldn’t do for a race this short. “If I don’t care about my time, I might as well be comfortable!” I grabbed all my gear and headed out onto the run course. Time: A blistering 2:25! ;)

Bike (21 mi):

“Let your heart rate settle and just pedal at a nice, steady pace…” Or so the plan was anyway. It didn’t really like I was pushing very hard at all, but looking down I was in a relatively hard gear. “Bah. It’s just that tail wind cooking. Just ride by RPE.” I could tell I was taking it somewhat easy when folks started passing me within the first few minutes of the bike.

Ego: “What are you doing? Didn’t you see that guy go by? He didn’t even have race wheels and he passed you.”
Me: “Ego?! I thought I left you at home?”
Ego: “Nope. I’m here, and I’m not letting go.”
Me: “Well, shut up and quit bothering me today. I’m riding easy.”

A little further up the road, it started to get more crowded as we caught up to the waves that left before us. It was either settle in behind someone to avoid drafting, or start riding on the left and passing people.

Ego: “YEAH! Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
Me: “… I’m only doing this so I don’t get caught drafting. I’m doing back to the right side after I made this pass.”
Ego: “But… there are people everywhere! Why bother getting back to the right and behind someone else?”
Me: “*sigh* Fine!”
Ego: “Weeeee!!”

And on and on it went. I didn’t feel like I was pushing that hard and my heart rate was in the high 140s and low 150s the whole way. But somehow, I ended up with what was probably my fastest bike pace for the year despite feeling like I was pushing harder in my other races. I don’t know how it happened… I really don’t. Time: 55:10 (22.8 MPH, 15/50 AG, 72/473 OA)

T2:

The transition took forever for reasons mentioned above. For as long as I had to run, they should have included that mileage in the run distance. It was at least 1/10 of a mile all together. Time: 2:00.

Run (5.3 mi):

It started to heat up a little bit by now, but nothing compared to what I had been running in earlier that week. We also had a nice breeze the whole while out on the course.

Me: “Nice and steady… Just settle in and make it a nice little training run.”
Ego: “Haha! You just got passed by a girl!”
Me: “Shut up. I get passed all the time on the run by girls.”
Ego: “Touché.”

The volunteers were great and they had hoses and sponges out there for us to help keep us cool. That’s the first time I’ve seen anything like that in a race less than a 1/2. I took full advantage. I saw the second mile marker and checked the watch. It read 15:00.

Ego: “7:30 pace! Rockin! Floor it!”
Me: “7:30… wha? That didn’t feel like 7:30. The course must have been marked wrong.”
Ego: “PR! PR! PR!”
Me: “I’m so not listening to you.”

So I slowed down a bit more. I let people pass me and told them that they looked good and to keep on going! I figured that was a good way to make sure that I wasn’t pushing too hard. If I were still able to talk and not needing every possible precious bit of oxygen to keep me alive, then that’s a good sign! Another couple miles down and I was getting closer to town. I was still feeling strong and my stride must have looked pretty good because I heard someone on the side cheering tell her friend, “Man, that guy looks great!” Or it may have been that I was generally smiling and giving thank yous to everyone that was on the side cheering. It was a nice, happy run.

Ego: “You have less than a mile to go. And you still have all this energy. You’d better not get passed or else!”
Me: “Hmmm… Yeah, that would be bad.”
Ego: “I think I hear footsteps coming behind you.”
Me: “Wha? *checks over his shoulder* That guy is like way behind.”
Ego: “But closing in… goooo!”
Me: “OK. Going!”

I took the last half mile or so to the finish line in pretty hard. I kept checking over my shoulder to make sure that guy wasn’t going to pass me heading down the finishers chute and was happy to see that he wasn’t gaining on me anymore. I crossed the finish line happy that I was done and happy to still have plenty left in the tank. I felt like I could have gone around for a second loop if I needed to. Time: 41:32 (7:51/mi, 25/50 AG, 144/473 OA).

Summary:

Total time: 1:54:22 - 16/50 AG, 85/473 OA. That’s about 5 minutes faster than I anticipated going, but I didn’t really feel like I had pushed that hard so I was pretty happy as that was the primary goal here. The fact that I’m not really sore or tired this morning confirms my pacing yesterday.

Also, my age group is brutal! That time in the age group below me would have had me on the podium in second place and only out of first by 2 seconds! And I would have been in 8th instead of 16th in the age group above me. Six of the top nine overall male finishers were from my AG! Crazy.

But it was a great day none the less. Thanks to the folks in Annandale that came out and cheered - it was the 20th anniversary of this particular tri! And thanks to all the volunteers out there to donated their time to make the race a success! These things just wouldn’t happen without you folks.

That’s what I need to keep telling myself anyway. I have a “race” this morning, but I’m not really going there to race. I don’t want to be too tired or too sore or otherwise have any extended recovery from this. The big event isn’t for a couple months yet and there is still a lot of work to be done. So, I’m going to take this one nice and easy… or so I’m trying telling myself. Hopefully, I’ll be able to check my pride and ego at the door.

It’s going to be another scorcher out there today. We’ve had a good week or two of extremely hot weather here and I think today is going to be the hottest of the hot. Tomorrow, the mercury is supposed to drop 20 degrees!

A sign of a good day’s work! I obviously did end up riding today, despite not making a firm decision on Wisconsin yet (my friend had a dentist appointment this morning so we couldn’t chat after masters). So… until I know for sure, I’ve gotta keep on pedaling.

It was a scorcher out there today! Temperatures only in the lower 90s, but the humidity today topped out at 96% and the dew point was up in the mid 70s as well. I was just shy of a century by six miles, but I decided that was close enough. No transition run either. I had enough of feeling like my skin was going to melt off for one day!

We actually picked it up last night, but this afternoon was the inaugural ride on her new bike!

It’s a Trek 1500 WSD. Trek must have run out of rear 105 derailleurs because hers has an Ultegra one on there. I also got her setup with Speedplay pedals and swapped her tires out with Continental Ultra Gatorskins, which have proven themselves to be quite flat resistant. She hasn’t ridden in a while and I think she was a little nervous out there today, but she sure looks the part! Ever time I looked back to make sure she was still with me, I swore a rider from the T-Mobile squad was chasing me down. ;)

In other news, my friend emailed me tonight. He’s now thinking about rolling his Ironman entry to Florida this coming November. I really don’t have much interested in doing Florida, mostly due to the fact that I fear what it would be like to do long rides here in Minnesota at the end of October (think 40 degrees and wet). So, if it happens, that would be another one for the “pros” list for pushing my own entry to Canada next year. We’re going to talk about it tomorrow after our morning swimming workout. It could all be hammered out just that quickly… and could save me from having to ride 100 miles tomorrow through the blistering heat!

I’ve been putting this off for a while because I just have way too many songs that I like! I pretty much listen to anything - all different types of songs from all different genres. But to appease the masses and finally be able to cross this off my list of things to do, here’s a few songs that I have very highly rated in my iTunes library. In no particular order:

Take You Back - Jeremy Camp
In Da Club - 50 Cent
Anthem - Good Charlotte
Somebody - Depeche Mode
1985 - Bowling For Soup
Son of a Preacher Man - Dusty Springfield
Without Me - Eminem
Your Body Is A Wonderland - John Mayer
My Own Worst Enemy - Lit
Hold Up - Murphy Lee
Glory of Love - Peter Cetera
Banditos - The Refreshments
With or Without You - U2
Bawitdaba - Kid Rock
Bulls on Parade - Rage Against the Machine
Blessed Be Your Name - Tree63
Concerto no. 10 in B minor RV 580 (1) - Vivaldi
Cry - Faith Hill
Turn Me On - Norah Jones
Summer of 69 - Bryan Adams
I Think I’m In Love With You - Jessica Simpson

And a thanks to Commodore for posting about his experience with All Of MP3. That “service” is great!!

From all my comments on my previous post (and a big thank you to all of you readers out there… I appreciate you all!), I thought I should clarify my position on Ironman Wisconsin. I forgot to mention that this year, I’m registered this year via a Community Fund entry. Basically, it’s a charity entry where part of your entry fees goes towards the local community that is hosting the event. This year, Community Fund athletes have the option of rolling over their entry to another IM event within the calendar year without any penalty. So if I were to do this, I wouldn’t be out any money and just be postponing my race until next year. It makes me feel less like I’m skipping out and more like I’m just changing my schedule around.

If I do the race this year, I’d really like to improve on last year’s performance. I’d like to be able to run a good portion of the marathon to vindicate last year’s gimpy hobble that I did. I think I have a good 20-30 minutes that I should easily be able to cut off my run time barring any kind of injury. Last year, my ITB gave out well before my heart and lungs did. I have no doubt that I can finish the race this year. My swimming is on track and my biking is probably ahead of where it was last year, but my running endurance could potentially be short. Last year I was doing runs of 2:30 and this year I’ve only managed half of that so far.

My running list of pros and cons for Wisconsin this year are:

Pros for rolling over:

• Ramp up my training slowly with no pressure allowing greater chances of staying injury free.
• Most likely I’d roll my entry into Ironman Canada 2006 which is very difficult to get into otherwise.
• Our company’s union employees may be going on strike about a month before Wisconsin. This will mean that I’d have to fill in and work 12 hour days 7 days a week until the end of the strike. It’ll be hard to get any quality training in should this happen.
• Have a more relaxing summer. I’d still train, but I’m already pretty happy with my weight and fitness level. And the idea of not having to ride any more centuries would be a great burden lifted off my shoulders.
• I’d rather have Subaru sponsor my race than have Ford sponsor it. :) It’s silly, but it’s true (I’ve owned vehicles by both manufacturers in the past)!

Cons of rolling over:

• I’d most certainly go watch the race, but may have regrets come race day that I’m not out on the course racing instead.
• My best friend is also doing the race - it’s his 5th IM and possibly his last. There is something nice about training and racing in the same event and knowing that you shared the same experiences.
• Wisconsin is cheaper. With the Community Fund already costing me money above and beyond the entry fee, I can save money doing this race since I don’t need to buy plane tickets to get there.

I’m sure there are others, but those are probably the big ones that goes through my head everyday. Oh well… I’ll be making a decision one way or the other in the next two weeks. And by the way… if anyone is doing or knows someone that is doing Ironman Canada this year that isn’t already on the hook to sign someone up for next year, please get in touch with me. I’d like to sign up and it could sway my decision on what to do with Wisconsin this year. I promise I will try and make it worth your while. :)

I had a “long” run planned today. Just 1:15, but I suppose I have to start someplace. I’m trying to be patient and ramp up slowly. Another injury in the next two months will mean that I’ll most definitely have to pull out of Ironman Wisconsin and pick another race next year. Honestly, that idea is starting to sound appealing anyway. I’m already pretty far behind the curve in terms of where my running should be right now. I know that I’ll be able to finish the run portion of Wisconsin, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to run most of it like I’d like to. I’d also be able to do a couple of later season 1/2’s that I’d otherwise miss. And I can more less be assured that I’d be going into the winter healthy so I don’t have to have such an extended off season like last year, which should save me regaining that 20 pounds and allow me to continue building my base into next year instead of starting from scratch next Spring. But I know if I don’t do Wisconsin, I’ll be wishing I was out there instead of cheering from the sidelines. Aaarrrggh… Decisions, decisions!

Anyhoo, my run went pretty well. God clearly loves me as while I was out there tonight, a big thunderstorm and I were on head on collision course. Right before impact, there happened to be a covered picnic area that I ducked into which saved me from getting too wet. This is like the third time in a row that when it has rained, there has conveniently been a place to duck under to keep me dry from the torrential down pour. Oddly coincidental considering most of my runs are out in wide open areas. He also was kind enough to provide me with one of the most beautiful rainbows that I’ve seen in quite some time. I wish I had my camera so I could have taken a picture of it. Huge, bright rainbow and I could clearly see both ends! That was nice and made for a happy run home.

Not too much else to report. I was back to my pre-epic eating weekend weight this morning so I guess not all that much damage was done. I’d still like to lose another five or so in the next couple of months…

I awoke to swim 3,000 meters in the pool this morning.

I came home and rode 30 miles on the bike this evening.

And followed up with an easy 3 mile transition run.

All in about 3 hours time.