Nope, nothing really new to report.  Just checking in to make sure this hasn’t gotten too rusty and to post more pictures of the lil’ one.  She’s really not so little anymore and getting to be mighty quick, attempting to grab anything and everything that’s within arm’s reach.  I must say that she gives a might good slobber kiss, though!

As you can see, Caitlin isn’t the only one that’s getting bigger.  Her daddy is pictured above a good 30 pounds (still) over race weight.  I’d post a better body shot, but I don’t have a wide angle lens quite that strong - sorry! :)  There is still nothing on the calendar so there is still little motivation to get on it.  I’m still thinking doing “something” in 2009, but haven’t decided what something will be.  St. Croix is still on the contenders list, along with New Orleans and California.  Whether I’ll return to IMWI or not in 2009, I have no idea.  I can’t fathom a Sprint distance right now let alone something that far. I suppose I should take one step at a time.

All for now…

So, the turning over a new leaf hasn’t been so much a turning over as it has been a peeking under. Progress is slow going at best, but I will say that I’m at least conscious about being a little more active and watching what I eat a teeny bit. What can I say? It’s just hard getting going when I don’t really have anything on the horizon to scare the crap out of me enough to push the pedal to the metal.

In previous years, it was those hills in Verona that scared me enough to keep the fork down. I remember coming back from my honeymoon around 15 pounds over weight and needing to drop that in six weeks. I managed to get it off (with time to spare, surprisingly) because there was no way that I wanted to carry that extra 15 pounds around the back half of the bike course, let alone the marathon to follow (in hindsight, the weather being what it was in 2006, maybe an extra 15 pounds of insulation might not have been a bad thing :P).

But, I’m moving forward which I guess is the important thing. I’m looking at maybe some races in 2009? Perhaps the St. Croix 70.3? And possibly an Ironman later that fall? I don’t know. I can’t even fathom 140.2 miles right now. Heck, I can’t fathom a sprint tri at this point. But in a year… anything can happen.

So for now, I focus my little bundle of joy that’s been my life for the last few months. She sure is growing like a weed!

Actually, it’ll be more a hairpin turn of sorts. It’s becoming clearly obvious to me that I’ve slothed for entirely too long and that something needs to give before the sludge in my veins gets any thicker. Even my “fat, off-season” clothes are getting much too tight for my own liking. I haven’t stepped on a scale in ages, but if I had to guess I bet I’m 30 pounds over race weight (which I’ll admit is about 10 pounds less than what I should “normally” weigh… but that still makes me 20 pounds over). Not to mention that these days, doing simple tasks like bouncing Caity around seems to an threshold workout for me. I don’t foresee a triathlon comeback this year and there certainly won’t be an Ironman in my near future (i.e. 2008), but I should probably start doing something. ANYTHING!

The weather here hasn’t been entirely cooperative. It’s mid-April and it’s 31 degrees and snowing here today?! That and I’m trying to manage the purchase of a new house, a move (to another suburb in MN, for those that don’t already know), and sale of my existing house. But my goal is to start May 1st. That gives me a couple weeks still to wrap things up and to mentally prepare for the suckage that is will to occur when I attempt to set in motion that which has been still for over a year and a half. I’m totally not looking forward to it, but something has to give. Preferably, not the waistband of my pants.

Pulling into Madison last night, I couldn’t help feel the Ironman excitement. It’s just in the air, plain and simple except this time with a totally different feeling. Gone was the anticipation and nervousness of the race. It was rather more of a joyous feeling that my comrades were going to be sharing an awesome experience on Sunday.

Seeing all these fit athletes around was slightly depressing. “I used to be one of those guys,” I thought to myself several times last night. That and the predicted weather forecast of 73 and dry?! Why after three years of 90+, 90+, and 55 with rain would this be the year I’d sit out? But alas, while I’ll definitely miss the race on Sunday, I still didn’t miss those long runs and long rides that I’d have otherwise been doing this summer. It takes a lot of work and dedication to be one of you folks.

So… I may or may not see you guys out on the course, but I wish you all the very best! Enjoy the race and soak in the experience that is Ironman. You folks all deserve it!

So, I’ve taken a long break from posting. Longer than usual, even for my standards! I’ve lurked and kept in touch with a few of you via email, but alas a post for the masses is in order.

If it’s not clear already, my 2007 season is non-existent. Minimal training and zero races on the calendar for the year. I’m suffering from a bit of burnout, I think. The past three years was fun and I took myself places that I thought I’d never see. But looking down the road of 2007 earlier this Spring, the places I’d go seemed a bit too familiar and try as I might the motivation to get down that road just wasn’t there. The training for me would have been more going through the motions than it would have been enjoying the journey.

But the real nail in the coffin in deciding what to do with this season was the news that Carol and I are expecting our first baby this coming winter! We’re both excited and nervous at the same time. She’s a little over 1/2 way through the pregancy and doing really well - no real morning sickness or anything during her first trimester. Other than not being able to sleep on her stomach, it’s been going very smoothly for her!

So instead of opting for endless cycles of training and recovery, I’m opting for recovery, vacations, and more recovery. I’m sure come December, I’ll wonder where those nights of 8-10 hours of sleep and my free time have gone. But I’m looking forward to it! I have yet to meet a parent that says it’s not all worth it in the end.

There you have it. Now, (maybe) back to my deep hibernation. :)

PS. I’m still planning on being out to Madison for IMWI 2007! Hope to see you folks there!

So… I’m watching TV and The Karate Kid comes on. I remember what an awesome movie this was when I was younger. What the heck was I thinking? :P

Still, the end comes on and Daniel is all ready to kick ass and take names and this starts playing. How come they never play this at races? I think it’s all motivational and everything… in that totally 80s kind of way. :)

All things can be fixed with duct tape…

(Our friends’ baby after Dad ripped the strap off…)

So… with race season that’s going to be here before I know it, I’ve decided that it’s about time that I start doing the whole weight loss thang. And as I’ve been in contact with Wil and some others about this, I wonder if starting some kind of virtual “fat camp” wouldn’t be fun. You know… we all sort of keep each other accountable and maybe have a weekly weigh in or something? And a place to bitch about how bad dropping weight sucks. Misery loves company after all, right? :)

Anyway, I’m planning on keeping track of my progress here. I started out this week tipping the scales at 171 and change - about 20 pounds heavier than I really should be. My (drastic) plan is going to be the same as last year. My own personal guidelines are as follows:

• By being a living member of the planet Earth, I am entitled to eating 1,000 calories a day.
• For every hour I workout, I get to eat an extra 500 calories (yeah, I know that’s not exact, but it’s easy math).
• When I reach 1,500 calories in exercise, I’m done - regardless of what I did that day. Meaning my hard cap for caloric intake for a day is 2,500 calories. So a 60 mile ride warrants me the same amount of calories as doing a century.
• The calories that I eat should come primarily from good sources - fruits, vegetables, and lean cuts of meat. I can’t get all my calories from chocolate, for example.
• Training calories (i.e. gels, sports drinks, etc.) count towards the overall daily tally so take them wisely and only as necessary.
• Optional: Special occasions (i.e. birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) are granted some relief from this diet, so long as the occasion is truly special and I’m not gorging myself because it’s Friday or something silly like that.
• Optional: Every five pound milestone, I’ll give myself the option to take one “free” meal as a reward for hitting that next level.

I did this last year and I seem to be able to drop 2+ pounds a week while training. Sometimes the training days are rough and I need to just gut through them on pure will alone. That’s the price I pay for living the good life for eight months - suck it up. :) Caloricly sure, it’s probably on the low side and I’m sure some nutritionist out there will tell me that it’s way too little and that I need to eat more. Starving my body, eating away at muscle mass, slowing down my metabolism and all that stuff. But it’s pretty much the way I’ve done things every time I’ve needed to cut weight and it always works. And the more I read what the diets of elite athletes look like, the more I think that they’re closer to the above than not. Besides, if I were really starving my body that badly, I don’t think it’d allow me to train or anything on top of just existing. So I think it’s enough? Perhaps a topic for discussion, though?

In any case, I’m in. If anyone else wants to join in the fun, the more the merrier. You don’t have to abide by my rules above. I only posted mine so others could see how I would be working towards my goal. Any takers? :)

Inspired by Flatman’s recent Engineering problem, I dug up this image of my own that I meant to posted ages ago.

With 2006 all wrapped up and the results posted, I figured I’d do another run of IMNA statistics for the current year like I did for 2005. Again, this snapshot is just the raw numbers of how things played out this year. Like last year, I left out the swim splits:

“You will notice that I didn’t do swim splits. I chose not to since the swim times should vary the least of the three in all the venues, but mostly because IMNA’s display of swim data sucks. A sub-hour swim time is represented as 59:59:00 while an hour swim time is represented as 1:00:00, which messes up my auto-tabulations and I’m too lazy to go fix the sub-hour entries. :P”

So without further ado:

My observations:

• Arizona folks went 6 minutes slower on average than last year. Folks got around 10 minutes faster on the bike, but 15 minutes slower on the run.
• It looks like Ironman Coeur d’Alene had the biggest change in time from 2005, with its competitors going 37 minutes slower this year than last. Bike times were 11 minutes slower and the run was 23 minutes slower on average! The finisher percentage also decreased by 7%. Seemingly, the conditions were harder for athletes this year than last.
• Placid again surprises me with a very high 92.74% finisher rate. I hear that the course is supposed to be one of the harder ones, but folks that do the course seem to have a good chance of finishing. Does LP just attract a more fit crowd of athletes who prepare better during the season? Overall times this year were about 12 minutes faster than last.
• Canada gets the consistency award by having the average finisher time differ from last year by only 18 seconds. :)
• Wisconsin… the only one that I’m personally familiar with. It looks like 95 degrees or 55 degrees, folks seem to bike the same on that course with bike splits differing by less than 1 minute. Run splits were substantially faster though with an average decrease in time of 36 minutes over last year. Times were only 24 minutes faster overall, though which leads me to believe that either people swam WAY slower this year. Or more likely, people were spending a lot more time in the transition area changing clothes and trying to get warm between events.
• Florida gets the speed crown again this year. While it did once again post the fastest bike splits of any other IMNA event, it wasn’t by much - only 4 minutes faster than Canada. And the average run splits in Florida were actually 3 minutes slower in Placid. Again making me wonder what’s up with these Placid athletes and why are they all on the juice? :)