That seems to be my theme for much of this year, eh? Well, my honey and I are leaving today for our honeymoon which means that this place will likely be barren for the next week and a half or so unless I can find an Internet cafe or unless access on the ship is affordable.

We’re taking off today on a Mediterranean cruise! We have a rather long flight with a long layover today, but will arrive in Barcelona sometime tomorrow afternoon. After spending a couple days there, we’ll board our ship which will take us to a bunch of different places along the Mediterranean coast. I’ve never been to Europe before, so it should be a great time! I’m definitely looking forward to some R&R with my first real vacation of the year!

So, happy training and racing to all of you while I’m gone. I’ll be back in a little over a week in a little worse shape than right now and most certainly with a few more pounds to lose. But when I return, I will be seriously ready to hit my diet hard and to get two more solid base blocks before Wisconsin. No more messing around on either of those fronts. It’s make it or break it time when I return!

Pre-Race:

While I was at the wedding reception of our friends Larry and Grace the night before (congratulations, BTW!), I was seriously considering ducking out of the race. Waconia is rather far from my house for a “local” tri - it’s probably just under an hour to get there by car. But more important than distance, it rained nearly all night the night before the race and I woke up race morning to find that it was still sprinkling lightly. I teetered and tottered about whether to go or not, but finally decided that I had already paid so I might as well just show up. I knew it wasn’t going to be a fast race as my legs felt/feel really dead from my workouts this past week. I suppose any time is better than a “did not start”, though.

The entire way down, the rain continued to get worse and I kept debating turning around and going home. Or possibly just getting there and not racing, but just volunteering/cheering instead. By the end of the long drive there, though, the rain and died down and by the start of the race the sky had opened up and the sun was shining down. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad day after all.

Swim:

The swim was a two turn swim with an out, a straight a way, and a back leg. I lined up near the front again and tried to clear out my goggles before the swim start. The countdown begins and the announcer yells, “GO!” I run and dive into the water, but as soon as my face hits the water water gets into my goggles when then starts swishing around my eyes. There wasn’t a ton, but enough splashing around in there to be annoying so I swam a little further to get a small gap between most of the competition and stopped momentarily to let the water out of each goggle socket. Ahhh! Much better!

The water was quite choppy heading away from the beach. It seemed like every time I looked forward to spot or to take a breath to the side I was being hit by some rogue wave, but it wasn’t too bad. I figure, the choppier the better since I’m fairly comfortable in the water.

I’d say I did the whole swim at a moderate pace. It felt much more controlled and relaxed than my previous race. But it was definitely faster than my Ironman pace. I think I caught most of the folks in the wave in front of me and even a few in the wave in front of them. I hit the beach and just decided to head to T1 and worry about taking my wetsuit off there to save a few seconds.

Time: 13:01 - 1:29/100 pace - 2/44 (!) in AG

T1:

The moment of truth. I reached back on my newly retrofitted wetsuit top and unzipped the zipper while running to my bike. Once there, I pulled on the top and it came off like butter! Success!!! Much better than a couple weeks prior.

Time: 1:44

Bike:

“This is going to be ugly.” I just knew it wasn’t going to be a good day based on how my legs were feeling when I woke up. They didn’t hurt so much from normal walking, but if I extended them straight and flexed my quads, they were brimming with lactic acid still. I can’t remember the time in the last couple of years when they’ve felt like this.

But oh well! I was already out there and couldn’t do anything about that now. I started on the bike course and began reeling folks in. How am I reeling folks in when my legs are dead? Well, when you’re the 10th of 12 waves, you’re bound to have quite a number of slower folks ahead of you.

This year the race was sporting a new bike route. I hadn’t previewed it before and all I knew is that the course was two miles shorter than last year. I remember the old course being relatively flat and very fast, but the new route was nothing like that. It was rather hilly (for me, anyway). Lots of up on the way out and with a nice little headwind to boot. I tried not to think about it too much and just get as aero as possible and grind.

It didn’t feel good, but it was OK I guess. I knew I wasn’t going very fast, but the constant passing of folks ahead of me made it seem a little better. I only remember getting passed three or four times, which I was quite surprised at. I thought for sure folks would be flying by me at the pace I was riding at.

More hills and finally a nice tailwind to carry me most of the way home and I was soon rolling into T2.

Time: 42:07 - 20.7 MPH :( - 7/44 in AG

T2:

Also a new change from last year, this year’s course had us enter T2 from a different direction entirely. This was a great change from the past year where the bike course and run course all came down the same road. Meaning bikers were weaving around runners who were coming into the finish last year?! I remember that very vividly and it was quite horrifying.

But that was all well and fixed. I was dreading the run. Ugh. All the hills!

Time: 1:10

Run:

Spectators probably have no idea that there are any hills on the run. Right out of T2, you run down this road and then it kind of goes down a small hill and hurts to the left. It looks relative harmless standing on the beach. But the spectators don’t see the rather long hill that awaits right after that part. I hate that hill. Whenever I think about this race, I always think about that hill.

I paced myself up the hill telling myself again to keep my cadence up. Folks were actually already walking at this point, which was probably less than 0.5 miles from T2, so I actually got to pass people on the run! That’s a totally new concept for me! Haha!

I can’t say that I ran hard. I sort of half-assed the run knowing that I didn’t have the best of bike efforts, that I wasn’t going to place, and that there were more hills ahead. So I kind of throttled down to a mod/mod-hard effort and settled in. It was getting a little warm at this point, but I continued to pass folks which I found quite amusing. Honestly, I rarely get to pass anyone on the run so this was a novelty.

I hit the turn around and was pretty surprised to find out that I was just under eight minute pace for my effort. It didn’t feel like I had been running at a sub-8 effort which gave me a little more motivation to run harder on the way home. So I picked it up a tad. Back through a couple more hills and soon enough I was on the straight away back home. I took a quick peek over my shoulder and saw one guy, so kicked it in hard to the finish line. Turns out, he wasn’t in my age group anyway. :P

Time: 31:20 - 7:50 pace - 16/44 in AG.

Summary:

Total time: 1:29:19 - 7th of 44 in AG - 74 of 443 overall.

I was shocked to find myself that high in my AG. I thought for sure that I’d be somewhere in the middle of the pack given my effort. I’m thinking that maybe some folks didn’t show up that normally would have due to bad weather that morning? Although the bike racks were pretty full, so who knows?

The sixth place guy was just over three minutes in front of me which I was actually pleased with because even if I had pushed harder, I probably wouldn’t have made up those three minutes. :) Even more surprising, the eighth place guy was just under three minutes behind me so I was sort of in 7th place all by myself. A little odd to have a six minute spread like that in a sprint, no? Had I have known that eighth was so far back, I’d have slacked even further. ;)

My bike split was really disappointing. I’ve had pretty crappy bikes splits this year in comparison to previous years. Granted, I was exceptionally tired this race, but 20.7? I’ve done two half Ironmans, both of which I averaged 20.7 MPH on the bike. I certainly didn’t expect 20.7 for a 14 mile ride, but oh well.

The race was well run as it always is and the volunteers were great. I love how everyone has to run the same way through transition, meaning that you have to enter and exit transition at the same place regardless if it’s T1 or T2. It sort of eliminates the notion of getting there early for a “good” bike rack location. I really don’t like how this race puts the faster age groups in the later waves letting the slower waves go first. I guess it does allow more folks to finish closer to each other and probably allows them to close down the course earlier than they would otherwise. But it just doesn’t seem safe to encourage all that passing on the bike course that’s bound to happen, and I’m all about safety first. I suppose this debate is true for any race. Do you let the faster people go first and have a more open course, but have the slower (and probably older) people be left to finish alone and probably during a hotter part of the day? Or do you have the slower folks go first and be able to open up the roads back earlier at the expense of having many more folks having to use that open road to pass the slower folks in front of them? Arguments can be made for both cases, I guess.

I think this is my last year doing Waconia, though. I do like the race, but it’s a little farther than I’d like to drive for a sprint. And I really don’t like going off in the later waves which is how they always seed things there. I’ve actually thrown out the idea of not racing any sprints in the future and only doing 1/2 IMs or above. I’ve come to realize that it’s rather hard to train for an IM and have any kind of “sprint” speed at all. I remember thinking to myself at the end of the run today that I would place so much higher if we had to go do another loop. :) But I suppose this is all another post for another time.

This marks what is likely my last race until Wisconsin. I am still signed up for Heart of the Lakes, but that’s a draft-legal race that I’ll probably skip. I don’t have anything against draft-legal racing per se, but do have beef with how that particular race handled the change this year. I’ll sure I’ll post all my complaints for the world to read in place of my race report that day.

Yesterdays’s ride was sponsored in part by:

	McDonalds! Ba bap bap ba baaaa! I’m lovin it! One sausage McMuffin with egg. Three hash browns. One medium diet coke. (870 calories)
	Taco Bell! Think outside the bun. One crunch wrap supreme. One chili cheese burrito. One hard shell taco. (1120 calories)
	Kellogg’s! (I have no idea what their catch phrase is) Frosted blueberry pop tarts. (410 calories)

Yeppers. 2400 calories before I even stepped out the door at noon. Oh well. At least I’d be well fueled, right? ;)

My ride went OK. The results are much better than how I felt. I felt really sluggish for my first 30ish miles. I swear, I contemplated calling Carol multiple times that first couple hours to come and get me because I felt like I was struggling so bad and just didn’t have it. But I stuck it out because the miles needed to get done and since I can’t really call Carol come race day. So, I just bore down and dealt with it. As usual, things eventually got better. I swear my legs don’t warm up until 50 miles into my ride. :P So… that’s two long rides in two weeks. So far so good! I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a third in before I leave for my honeymoon, but we’ll see.

As a side note, my legs are trashed. This week has included a 15 mile run, a 40 mile ride with the “hammer group” of the tri club, and a 80 mile ride. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m putting out negative watts on the bike if such a thing is possible. I get the feeling that my race tomorrow is going to go very badly. Bleh. Oh well. It’s not about the “D-” race. Keep your eyes on the prize!

Post race nutrition was sponsored by:

Just in case I thought about losing weight yesterday, well… dinner smashed that idea. An enormous appetizer sampler followed by a few slices of deep dish pizza. I don’t even want to guess as to how many calories all that was. Oh well. As Nancy said, “there’s always sumo wrestling… :)”

Have a great weekend everyone! :)

(PS. Carol wants me to let you all know that she did make a good, healthy dinner of vegetables, stir fried chicken, and some brown rice a couple days ago. Just so you all don’t think she’s an awful wife. I, of course, don’t blame her. She doesn’t force the food down my throat. :) )

I still haven’t made much progress with my weight loss over the past couple months. I can’t really say that I’ve tried all that hard, but I bet some folks wonder how one can workout so much and not lose weight. Well, here’s my workout and “nutrition” info from yesterday.

• Morning Workout:
  • Masters swimming - ~3k yards in just under an hour
• Breakfast:
  • Bruegger’s Classic Wrap (two eggs, two slices of cheese, and sausage wrapped in a tortilla shell)
• Lunch:
  • Chipotle carnitas burrito (no sour cream or cheese, but still…)
• Afternoon Snack:
  • 1/2 a can of Pringles Light
• Afternoon Workout:
  • Ride ~40 miles with the tri club
• Dinner:
  • Famous Dave’s where Carol and I “split” (meaning I eat about 2/3) a full slab of ribs, mashed potatoes, corn bread.
  • Also consumed a tall beer.
• “Dessert”:
  • I still wanted to eat when I got home, so had some ramen-like noodles before I went to bed.

So… three hours of working out where I burn say 1,500 calories. Yeah, I had eaten more than that before I was half way through my burrito at lunch. And the rest of the food that I consumed during the day I’m sure was more than my basal metabolic rate, so pretty much I gained weight yesterday. :P

I’m scared to think of what would happen if I stopped training for a couple of years. I’d be HUGE! :( Oh well… maybe I can give Kobayashi a run for his money one day.

Ironman great Peter Reid, from Canada, has decided to retire from triathlon, after a decade-long career that included 10 Ironman wins, with three Ironman world titles. After struggling with his motivation in training throughout the winter and spring, Reid made the decision to walk away…

Bummer. I always enjoyed the stalking of Peter Reid on the run course at Hawaii. He was a great champion. Best of luck, Peter, whatever you decide to do.

Full story can be found here.

… went pretty darn well. I’m very much relieved that I finally, less than three months out from the big day, have a long ride under my belt. And it felt pretty darn good. I managed the whole thing and didn’t really feel all that tired at any point during the ride. I felt like I could have gone on longer if need be which is always a good thing.

The weather conditions were in my favor in that I started out with a head wind that would continue to gain strength throughout the morning. So when I hit the turn around, I probably had a stronger tail wind that was pushing me home than I had to fight on the way out. As such, my average speed is probably higher than what it should be, but I’ll take it!

For the geeks out there that like data, here you go. :)

I hope everyone had a great weekend and Happy Fathers Day to all you dads out there!

In an effort to reduce comment spam into my blog, I installed the Bad Behavior anti-spam plug-in yesterday. It did do a decent job initially, but looking through the logs I found two false negatives out of about 100 requests or so. A 2% false negative rate doesn’t sound like much, but it is too high for me so I disabled it. I’d much rather deal with having to manually sort through a few false positives than have any false negatives.

My apologies to Kewl Nitrox and to “Stephan” (I think a first time visitor) who tried posting comments and weren’t able. I found the content of your attempted post and manually put it back in so all is well.

EDIT: After receiving a comment from the author himself, I’ve decided to give Bad Behavior (this time, 2.0 beta 1 instead of 1.2.4) another try. If any of you have any problems posting comments, please do let me know so can report back! Thanks!

Pre-Race:

The Manitou Sprint Triathlon is a 1/2 mile swim, a 13.5 mile bike, and a 3.1 mile run. I was looking forward to the race because of the relatively longer swim in comparison to the bike and run legs. But with my wedding just a week before, I hadn’t really trained as much as I’d have liked to leading up to the race so I wasn’t sure what to expect. As I would come to realize later, the race was also a 2006 USAT Age Group Nationals Qualifier so there was a plethora of talent out there on the course. At least I’m assuming more than normal.

The day before the race, one of my friends was having his bachelor party which was fairly tame and consisted of basketball with the guys and a dinner of meat, meat, and more meat. So I was fat and protein loaded, but that’s pretty typical of my diet as of late. :P

I arrived to the race about 80 minutes ahead of the start time and got setup in the transition area. It was pretty chilly out, but I didn’t want to waste time in T1 with arm warmers or long sleeves or anything like that. I talked with some friends and met up with their families. I kissed my wife (!) goodbye, and proceeded into the lake.

The Swim:

(That’s me in the left most yellow cap in that picture, BTW :) )

I was in wave 4 with the elite wave, men over 50, and men 25-29 in the waves front of me. The swim is always the part I know that I’ll do the best in, but I always know that the first open water swim of the year hurts more than I expect it to. The water was a brisk 62 degrees, so I was happy to get going. Before I knew it, “BANG!” The gun went off and we were on our way.

I started up near the front of the group this time. I usually start in the back because I’m lazy and I usually end up getting to the start line late. :P But I figured I’d go right up front so I didn’t have to fight through the crowd too much. After just a couple minutes into the swim, the pack thinned out and I found myself around folks who were mostly swimming the same pace. Soon after, I started seeing some folks with green swim caps on… and red swim caps on. The good news is I was passing folks in the waves in front of me. The bad news is that I felt pretty flat during the swim. That and I was worried my wedding ring was going to go flying off into the murk of the lake never to be found again. Every few strokes, I had to hesitate and use my thumb to try and push my ring back towards my palm when it got too close to my knuckle. I probably could get it re-sized 1/4 a size smaller, but I anticipate being a little heavier during the winter months and don’t want my finger turning purple. :)

As usual, the swim seemed longer than I thought it was going to be - the turn around seemed to take forever to get to. On the way back, I couldn’t see where we were heading towards on the beach and people were swimming back in all directions. I just kind of stuck to the middle of the mass of people and kept swimming. Once I hit the shallow water near the shore, I tried taking my wetsuit top off but it just wouldn’t come off. Normally, the top just pops right off but for whatever reason (probably that I’m still fat for the season :( ), I couldn’t get it off. I probably spent a good 10-15 seconds messing around with it in the lake until I just said screw it and ran with it on into T1.

Time: 12:56 - 1:29/100m pace - 6/48 in AG.

T1:

I fought some more… and a bit more with my wetsuit top in T1. I was getting really frustrated and annoyed, wondering what would happen if I couldn’t get it off because I don’t think you can get assistance from anyone? I probably wasted a good 30-40 seconds just trying to get my top off.

(My top is current en route back to DeSoto to get a zipper retrofitted onto it so I never have this problem again. :P)

Time: 2:01

The Bike:

I remember the course from a couple years ago and thinking that the whole first half was up hill and the whole way back was downhill. I guess my memory was right because it seemed that way again. Someone said that we had a slight headwind on the way out, so I guess that probably contributed to that feeling some.

For pretty much the entire ride, I was riding all by myself which was a really strange feeling. The folks that were in front of me were way in front of me and the folks that were behind me were way behind it seemed.

Sadly, throughout the entire ride I felt flat. I was working, but I knew I wasn’t going very fast. I just haven’t ridden enough this year to post any kind of decent bike splits. :( The headwind out made for a nice tailwind back home and before I knew it, I was making my way back into T2.

Time: 37:04 - 21.9 ( :( ) MPH - 11/48 in AG

T2:

No wetsuit battle = yay! But without socks and with wet feet, my insoles were bunching up making it a bit difficult to get my shoes on quickly. I should probably put speedlaces back on my running shoes too. Getting my running shoes on right took a couple of attempts.

Time: 1:13

The Run:

After a weak showing at the GearWest Duathlon, I told myself I was going to run hard this time. There was this very minor uphill coming out of T2 that nobody would even normally call a “hill”, but boy did it feel like one just coming off the bike. I felt sluggish and tired, but kept telling myself to just keep my cadence up and just to keep moving my feet as quickly as possible.

I approached the mile 1 marker and realized that I hadn’t taken any splits on my own watch since the race started. Oops! So I hit the lap button for the first time at mile 1. The run course was nice and flat and ran right by the lake. It would have made for a really pretty run, but I was too busy gasping for air to really notice too much. I kept waiting to be passed by my friend who was in the wave behind me. Finally, at the turn around I saw that he was 10 feet behind me. He gave me his usual, “Already?” taunt and I told him that I saw someone in his age group pass me about 30 seconds ahead of where we were at and to go chase him down.

I clipped off my second mile in 7:0X and my third in 6:5X according to my watch. It seemed too fast to be true, and the official splits would confirm that something was, indeed, messed up. But although it wasn’t a sub-7 effort, it was still a good run for me.

Time: 22:27 - 7:15 pace - 23/48 in AG.

Summary:

Total time: 1:15:38 - 12/48 in AG - 94/542 overall.

Looking back, I expected my swimming to be considerably better, but I didn’t expect to be doing one arm drills during the swim, so I guess there was probably some time lost there. And my wetsuit top… that damn top. That’s only the second time that I’ve ever had a problem taking it off and the other was during a relay so it didn’t really matter. I definitely lost time and several places as a result of that.

My fitness is OK considering my lack of training in comparison to years past. At this point for the past couple of years, I bet I was already close to putting in 200 miles a week on the bike. I think my biggest week of the year thus far has been 150 miles and I bet my average week is probably closer to 60-70. As disappointed as I am with a 21.9 MPH average, I can’t expect to ride fast if I don’t ride my bike. :( That has to change soon. Hopefully, I’ll get a handful of 4-5 hour rides in before I leave for my honeymoon.

I’m happy with my run split. I was really hoping that I’d have run sub-7s, but even at 7:15 that’s the fastest pace I’ve ever posted in any kind of race, so how can you complain about a PR? My running still needs a boatload of work seeing that I’m at around the top 10% of my age group on the swim, the top 20% on the bike, but can barely manage top 50% on the run. Ugh… the run. That damn run. Slowly but surely, it’s getting better. I just wish progress happened a little more quickly!

Overall, it was a great day. The course was great and the volunteers were plentiful and helpful. We got a pair of shorts instead of a t-shirt which was a nice change of pace from other races. Mantiou is always a great season opener!

Sorry I missed you out there, Heather. Maybe next time. :)

I’m still alive, but it’s still sort of crazy busy around here. But I wanted to do a quick update:

• The wedding was excellent! There are some pictures that friends and family have shared with us in my photo album, but the photographer’s pictures won’t be done until sometime in July. I’ll be sure to post some more once we get those.
• My training the past couple of weeks has really suffered. My IM specific training still really hasn’t started yet. My longest ride thus far is 60 miles. That’s not good. I’ve accepted that this probably won’t be a PR year, but I don’t want to suffer more than necessary out there. Bleh.
• I don’t think my life will really settle down until sometime in July. We’re moving the rest of Carol’s stuff to our new place next weekend. The weekend after that, I have another race. And the two weekends after that, we’ll be gone on our honeymoon.
• Work is getting to be a real drag again.
• I had my first tri of the season yesterday. It wasn’t great, but I’m happy with the results considering my training volume thus far. More on that in another post.

That’s about it, I guess. I’m horribly behind on your guys/gals blogs. I think I have something like 400+ posts to catch up on. Ack! I’ve been thinking about actually putting the whole blog world on hold for a few weeks until life settles back down again. There’s just entirely too much going on it seems. Something’s gotta give. :(

Hope everything is well with you all! Have a great start of the work week!

It was a great weekend! More pictures to come! :)