The rest of the weekend

While volunteering at the IM and registering for next year were the main points of our trip to Lake Placid last weekend, Hannah and I also took the time to wander around.

On Saturday we went for a hike to the top of Mt. Hurricane. We hadn't planned that in advance -- a few weeks ago I picked up a map of the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks (one of four or five maps for the whole park -- it's big) -- we just looked at the map and decided that was as good a trail as any. There are so many trails up there that it would probably take years to get to them all... and then we'd have to get one of the other maps and start all over in a new section.

The hike was tough but not killer. Lots of scrambling over rocks and crossing some bogs (remember all that rain I mentioned last time?). Despite a mostly overcast day, we got some decent views at the top.
I used to think that I photograph terribly, but in looking over all the pictures, I think it's actually the fault of the photographer. There were probably 15 pictures of me from the hike and these two are the best of the bunch.

Obviously, this is me about to do my Tyrannosaurus Rex impression. Why she didn't wait to capture the moment in it's glory, I don't know.

I suppose this one isn't so bad, although right before, a hawk had landed on my shoulder and a bear was eating out of my hand. Again, bad timing on Hannah's part.

But contrast the shots of me with this one of Hannah (I only took three, all superbly excellent). Clearly, I'm a much more talented photographer.

I'm in

After volunteering in the pouring rain at Sunday's race and getting in line Monday morning at 5:45, I'm all signed up for the '09 Ironman in Lake Placid.

The volunteering was a lot more enjoyable than I expected it to be. Hannah and I handed out water bottles for over six hours to lots of soaked, frozen and exhausted -- but mostly appreciative -- athletes.

The weather was absolutely miserable. It started raining about ten minutes into the race and didn't let up all day. What was somewhat shocking was how many people either didn't prepare for the bad weather, or chose to forgo warmer clothing. High 60s/low 70s in the rain is not ideal weather for a sleeveless tri top and shorts. I wonder how many people blew up their races by not taking the time to dress warmer.

We did see a number of people wearing their special needs bags on lap two of the bike, which was probably a smart, last resort thing to do.

It's always neat to see this, even if I've never actually seen it live.

The Big Plan

On Thursday night, Hannah is flying up from Texas. On Friday morning, we're driving to Lake Placid to volunteer for this year's Ironman.

On Monday, I'll be in line bright and early to sign up for the 2009 race. That may not seem too exciting to you, but it is to me. I've been saying that I wouldn't return to IM until I knew I could achieve the fitness I need for a breakthrough race. All that happened this year -- much quicker than I thought.

I've been laying the groundwork. Next year will be a big year.

----
In case you're wondering, no I didn't post that entry in August of '07, although I did write it then.

----
Of course, there's always the possibility that despite volunteering and lining up super early, the race might fill before I can sign up. I've been trying to tell myself it's not a big deal if that happens. There are other races out there.

My buddy

Despite great weather, I spent most of the weekend indoors on my bike trainer.

On Saturday, after a night spent throwing up (it had nothing to do with the quality of my brother's play that I went to see on Friday; more likely, it was a result of the bar RDM and I went to before the show -- either the food, beer or Red Sox paraphernalia), I opted to ride my bike indoors on my trainer. If I was going to get sick again, I didn't want to be 20 miles away from my car.

I figured, "No worries. I'll get a decent ride outside tomorrow." But my trainer had another trick up it's sleeve. Twenty minutes into a ride that started at the Watchung Reservation (I stopped by on my way home from church in New Hope), my seat post started to slip. Normally, I'm used to my knee tapping my chest while I ride, but that's when I'm on my tribike and I'm leaning forward over my aerobars. It's not supposed to happen when I'm sitting up on my road bike. I think I might have been more comfortable on a BMX bike. Since my trainer had slyly removed my multitool from my seatbag, I had to stop when I came around past the car.

So, after an 8-mile run, it was back to the apartment for another afternoon with the trainer.

My trainer. Seen from three exciting angles, each conveying the thrill of riding your bike without actually going anywhere or seeing anything interesting.

I love the Olympics

Say what you want about commercialism and politics, but I still love the Olympics.

I've never seen any greater drama.

Or more genuine excitement.

And this is only the trials.

Also, I'd like to thank NBC for streaming everything live on the Internet. I'm actually looking forward to their coverage for the first time.

You know, every once and a while I delude myself into thinking that I could make a swimming trials qualifying time if I dropped everything in my life and focused on training. Then I look at the times of the slowest people racing. So maybe, if I dropped everything in my life and focused on training, I might be able to make the women's qualifying time... assuming, of course, that they made that cut slower by about 10%.

Ah well, a man can dream... ummm... of being a fast woman.

Just like riding a bike

On Sunday I rowed in a double with my friend Ian at a masters race in Princeton. I've done about five hours of rowing over the past three years, so I expected this to not be much fun (while still being fun, of course).

But my expectations changed dramatically when I learned we'd be in the same race as another friend from my Nereid rowing days who is now rowing for a different club in north Jersey. I had never lost to this other friend in anything rowing-related, and I wasn't about to let the fact that I don't row anymore stand in my way.

I'm happy to report that I continued to keep my unbeaten streak alive.

Witness the bruising we inflicted on my rival (while simultaneously ignoring the fact that I edited out the results for the two crews that beat us):

Mutual friends were asking if my rival knew about our rivalry, to which I replied, "Of course not."

If we had lost, I would have congratulated my opponent for a well-won race, and would have made sure to mention that my partner and I hadn't trained together and in fact, I don't even care about rowing, seeing as how I'm into triathlon now and all. I probably would also have pointed out how much I've been travelling and how that almost definitely had an effect on my performance. I'd also have mentioned that I had to borrow somebody else's oars, because, as we all know, oars are highly personalized -- my oars used to have blue grips; these had yellow.

We won though, so I gave my friend a wave, said, "Good race," and proceeded to row away, content in my smug superiority, however misplaced.

Super Mystery Race Revealed!

The big race for me for this season is the Wool Capital Olympic Distance Triathlon in San Angelo. That's not so much of a shocker, seeing has how it's one of only two triathlons in town (and the other was just announced the other day). It's not a huge race by any means, but I'm planning to go as fast as I can. I'd like to try to grab an age group top three, but based on my other races in San Angelo, that might be more a result of who does (or doesn't) show up on race day.

But wait, there's more! Super mystery race part II was such a mystery that I didn't know I was going to sign up for it. I'll be doing the Brigantine Sprint Tri in south Jersey the week before the Wool Capital. Technically, I guess that means it's super mystery race part zero or one-half. I'll be hard pressed to even walk near the podium at this race, let alone get on it -- it's that deep a field.

But wait, there's still more! Super mystery race part -1 was so much of a mystery that I forgot about it. Hannah and I ran in the Run in the Sun 8k in San Angelo this past week. It also served as the Texas 8k state championships. I figure the reason San Angelo received the honor for hosting the 8k championships is because no one else bothers -- could there be a more obscure distance than 8k? That said, I've raced more 8ks in my life than any other distance. That probably says something about my own obscurity.

Uh oh

I did a MAP test this morning. Despite the heat, it turned out pretty good.

MAP stands for Maximum Aerobic Pace. At least, that's the definition I use. There are some variations on the exact terms, but the meaning is the same. In my case, the test is three miles on the track with a heart rate cap (153 for me). The objective isn't to go fast, it's to understand your aerobic pace -- how "fast" you can go without generating lactate (as in lactic acid, not breast milk).

There are various formulas to get that HR cap, but most of them point to 152-154 for me. The important thing isn't to get the exact scientifically perfected HR formula, rather, it's to find something that works and test it repeatedly.

I'd probably be able to track the trend better if I tested every month, but with my limited training time, I prefer to get a regular run in instead of "losing" a session testing every four weeks.

Here are the results from the four tests I've done since I started up training after Lake Placid last fall.

So that's cool. I'm not exactly sure what this means for my race capability, but it's kind of exciting. Consistent training does make you fitter. Who knew?

The Heat Part II: It Gets Hotter

As a well-timed (or awful-timed, depending on your point of view) follow up to my last post, I found my breaking point: whatever today was at 4:00 p.m. in East Rutherford, NJ. (Edit: 94 degrees, 101 degrees with the heat index, 44% humidity).

Worst run in a long, long time. Heat rash, headache, churning stomach...

Blegghhh...

The Heat and the China Express

Last weekend, when I was in Texas, Hannah and I went for a ride. It wound up being about the same amount of time that we usually go for lately (somewhere around three hours), but we didn't get nearly as far, because we circled back and met up with Hannah's friend from work for the last hour.

Also, it was hot. Very, very hot. And very, very revealing, at least to me.

I had always believed I handle heat pretty well, but never really understood how well (actually, I still don't understand exactly how well, but I know more than I used to). With Hannah in San Angelo, where the air temperature regularly reaches boiling point at 4:00 in the morning, I figured she would be at an advantage to me when we go out for runs or rides. I may be fitter, but I wouldn't be able to ride or run as fast, so we'd stick together more than when we were both up north.

An eye-opener was that I've suffered almost no ill effects when I bounce from NJ to TX -- with a few small exceptions I've been able to keep my training rolling. While I'm sure she has adapted significantly, she's had a much tougher go of it. Although hot, I never felt overwhelming stress during our ride. Hannah, on the other hand, was on the verge of losing her breakfast (the protein in our drinks probably didn't help at all either).

I don't have a complete picture of what this means, but it makes me more confident in my chances for my (not quite so) super secret race in August.

Here's Hannah looking all aero before her insides started to catch fire.


As for the China Express: that's what I've been calling Hannah's friend's bike (in my own internal dialogue anyway). Now, a lot of today's bikes are made in China. But this one came from Walmart -- and it's cobbled together with assorted generic parts that I'm expecting to fail sometime in the next six months. All this is fine for a bike that costs less than $200. I wouldn't buy it, but there's a lot of things I wouldn't buy (we did however find a far superior bike at Authority Sports for $150 more -- Chinese made, but competently assembled and speced -- what does that tell you about Walmart?).



Again, all this shouldn't really invite any ridicule. But there are just two things that tip it into the realm of farcical:
1) It has a kickstand.
2) Hannah's friend, seemingly believing that the reason she's faster than him is because of her clipless pedals (the kind you can click your bike shoes into), went to the local bike shop and bought what was probably a $200+ shoe/pedal combination. That's a more expensive method for attaching to your bike than the bike actually cost. And he complains about the seat incessantly -- but won't wear padded bike shorts or buy a new saddle.

So there you go, the China Express -- it might not go fast, or even look fast, but it has expensive pedals.

The clothes make the hombre

On Memorial Day, I went up to Harriman State Park and rode my bike around. The whole time I was out there, I was constantly getting honked and yelled at. This was a little surprising because at Harriman there's a 40 mph speed limit, rarely much traffic and cyclists everywhere.

I began to notice I was the only cyclist getting honked or yelled at.

I also realized that everyone honking and yelling was Hispanic, which seemed odd (not odd that there were Hispanic people in the park, but that, of all the people that could be honking at me, only that ethnicity was riled up).

About three-quarters of the way through my ride, one of the cars slowed down enough that I could hear exactly what the passenger was yelling: "Viva los Mexico!"

WTF?

Then I remembered what jersey I was wearing:

Now I've done it...

For a while now (at least for the last 10 months), I've been operating on the belief that I haven't been fit enough to actually do any damage to myself in training. Sure, I could always be negligent in stretching and let myself get too tight or I could always get a freak injury. But I was confident that in a race or tougher workout, if I was pushing too hard, my body would just shut itself down before I could do anything really bad to myself.

Well, those days are behind me now. I'm officially fit enough to hurt myself. I ran entirely too hard on the track last week for entirely too long and left myself sore for days. That was new.

A further injustice that resulted from my new level of fitness is that all my usual running routes are too short now.

These are both foreign concepts to me. While I suppose they could be considered pretty cool and mean I'm actually getting faster, they result in a terrible inconvenience.

Incidentally, I'm still slow, just not as slow as before. And now it's likely I'll get lost or blow myself up.

A Terrible Idea

One of the better tri shops in the NYC area is currently running this ad. It baffles me in many ways.

Are they saying that the flag graphic is an obscure chart representing the U.S. population? If so, it implies that more people are obese than know how to spell "triathlon." I'd wager there's a lot more people with terrible spelling than those who are overweight. Taking it a step further, while I'm sure there are lots of obese people, I'm also sure that some of them know how to spell triathlon. And what about non-obese people that can spell triathlon? Where are they represented?

I'm also not sure what people who "don't know where Iraq is" has to do with obesity and spelling. And again, I'm willing to bet some of those people who can't spell also can't read a map. There's a lot of potential overlap here.

Lastly, if that flag represents the entire U.S. population, there should be a lot fewer stars.

I really wonder if this is scientifically valid. Where's the margin of error? Who conducted this study? Probably a bunch of triathletes.

Even beyond the graphic, I'm more than a little horrified. Can you imagine more triathletes? Aren't there enough egotistical, selfish jerks running around? We need more people focused on "A" races, lycra, and purchasing things like this?

Ugh. I guess people might be thinner. But we'd sure be a lot less productive as a society.

Theoreticizing

I have a theory. Granted, I'm likely not the first person to come up with this (and I'm sure I cobbled it together from various other sources).

The conventional wisdom in triathlon these days suggests a basic week of three workouts in each sport at a minimum. Also, granted, any of you who actually read this probably don't care. Taking all that into consideration, my theory is that for the average, time-constrained triathlete (that would be me), it's better to do more running. In a nutshell: rather than an even balance, run lots, bike long on weekends and swim a couple times a week.

That's my plan anyway and it seems to be working so far this year. I haven't even been in the pool in nine months. That will change in the coming weeks, but my point remains: if you don't have the time, you're better off running.

Since I know the very few of you who actually read this blog don't come here for my obscure thoughts about training, I'll share a quote from Bike Snob NYC that had me laughing out loud this morning:

There are certain corny, contradictory maxims designed to make you do the right thing that simply aren’t true. A good example is the one about how abstinence is the best form of birth control. That’s complete crap. One has nothing to do with the other. It’s like saying building a garden shed is the best way to avoid hang gliding mishaps.

Striders Duathlon

The Striders Duathlon this past Sunday marked the official end of my unofficial pre-season. I was debating doing a 5k at the Meadowlands this coming weekend, but between narrowly avoiding killing myself at the North Face race and then running my fastest 5k ever at the du, I figure I've got a good sense of my current fitness. Now it's time to plow ahead with the build to my super secret summer race (to be revealed soon for anyone that actually cares).

Anyway, Striders was the first duathlon I've ever done and it turned out to go even better than I had expected, especially in light of my knee still not 100% going into the weekend. Hannah and I raced the short course -- 5k run/30k bike/5k run. I finished 18th overall and first in my age group (of three starters, but whatever, a win is a win). What I'm most pleased about is I ran my second 5k faster than the first, and, as I mentioned, it was my fastest 5k to date.

More interesting (from a race perspective), is that I had the 9th fastest second run (compared to a 28th fastest first run). That tells me that a lot of people went out way too hard. Since most of the same people will probably be racing my super secret race (not so secret now -- you can figure out it's in San Angelo), that bodes well for my overall chances.

On a much more interesting note, I was passed before I finished the first 5k by a guy doing his first 8k leg of the long course race (8k/74k/8k). He ran a 26-something 8k. That's amazingly fast. It turns out it was Michael Lovato -- pro-extraordinaire -- stopping by on his way from Austin to Boulder or New Mexico or something. This is a guy that's twice placed in the top 10 at Kona (in '07 and '03), amongst dozens of other top results.

Between Dean Karnazes two weeks ago and Lovato this weekend, I've had a pretty good run of randomly seeing fast people on the same course as me. I didn't check Lovato into a bush though -- he was moving too fast.

Road trip!

Due to a slow-moving storm that stretched from Mexico to Kansas last Thursday night, I was potentially stranded in Houston (on my way to San Angelo). Generally, that wouldn't have been so big a problem, except Continental didn't cancel the flight until midnight (it was supposed to take off at 9:25 p.m.) and I had such a debacle with American two weeks before that I didn't want to deal with another extended delay/layover.

I wound up in an SUV with five strangers -- one of whom, the car's owner, needed to be in San Angelo at 7 a.m. We left on our 400 mile trip a little before 12:30.

It was definately surreal. Initially, everyone who wasn't sleeping was hesitant to talk much, but as the trip rolled on, and we realized that we likely would never see each other gain, conversation started flowing more freely. I learned to never get involved in a land war (in Asia or elsewhere), the Japanese love Blue Bell ice cream, we're training Iraqis who can't read (English or Iraqi) how to maintain airplanes, many pawnshops are actually managed as chains by a larger company, and lots of other strange facts I'd probably never have known.

We got to San Angelo around 6:30. I got home around 6:45. I said good morning/have a nice day at work to Hannah around 6:50. And I was sitting at our desk working on my laptop by 7:00. I then slept 10 hours that night and went to bed at 8:30 on Saturday.

The trip back wasn't nearly as dramatic. Although I did watch Walk the Line, so there was drama involved.

The North Face Endurance Challenge

Saturday was surprisingly warm and unsurprisingly wet and gross at the North Face Endurance Challenge at Bear Mountain, NY. Thank God I only signed up for the half marathon. It was possibly the hardest and unquestionably the stupidest race I've ever done.

The elevation changes were tough enough, but wet leaves on top of wet rocks on top of mud makes for a dangerous day. It took me over three hours -- I was expecting two, maybe 2:30. I didn't anticipate how rugged it was either: big rocks, little rocks, sharp rocks, fraggle rocks -- it was an ankle turning mess.

The uphills weren't even the hardest part -- it was the screaming descents.

All day long, you'd hear competitor yells of, "Are you kidding me?!?" and "This is retarded!" I suppose I could have gone faster, but my completely rational fear of death took hold. As it was, I fell anyway. Luckily, it was on an uphill and only resulted in a bashed knee.

I saw Dean Karnazes twice. The first time, he said, "Right on" to me. Of course, he said, "right on" to everyone he passed by, but it was still cool. The second time, I checked him into a bush. The group I was running with by the end had gotten into a groove, so we (or I anyway) didn't expect anyone to come cruising through. In the last mile, I cut to the left of the trail to dodge a huge mud puddle. Dean was blasting past at that exact second, so I knocked right into him. I apologized, he said no worries, and then he proceeded to race ahead. I gotta say, that dude has the most impressive calves I've ever seen. It was also cool that he was out there mixing it up with us non-ultra folk.

Overall, it was a fun -- and terrifying -- way to spend the morning. I think this also put the final nail in the coffin of my ambition to run an ultra marathon in the north east.

Update: It turns out I did better than expected. I finished 54th (out of 208 finishers; ~219 started) and 18th (out of 36) in my age group. Finish time was 3:05:31. The overall winner finished in 2:15:40 -- that's darn fast (but actually, not that fast at all).

Only 19 (of 65 starters) finished the 50 mile -- most missed the cutoff and got pulled off the course.

Legs of lead, patience of a llama

No, those aren't my superpowers.

I had a longish run in Texas on Sunday afternoon. It wasn't anything more than I've done over the last few weeks, and in fact, I ran it deliberately slower than usual because of the heat -- 86 degrees. Since that run, my legs have felt like garbage. I don't think I've ever thought about how significant the heat can affect your (my) body. I've run in high temps before, but it's always been after a summer of getting used to the weather. My last run before Sunday was 40 degrees in NJ. There's a lesson in here somewhere, although I suspect it's not: "Don't run in Texas."

I'm sure the flight back to NJ that I took almost immediately after didn't help.

As for the patience of a llama (I don't actually know if llamas are patient, but work with me here) -- I arrived in San Angelo 36 hours after I was originally supposed to. And Hannah had to drive to Austin to pick me up. All this was before the recent wave of American cancellations. Basically, AA blew it, but I'm optimistic they can reaffirm my faith in their airline. I have another four flights booked with them; we'll see if I have a fifth.

I've got The North Face Endurance Challenge this weekend. Looks to be rainy and hard. Here's the elevation profile. At least my lead legs will help me get downhill faster.

Thawing out

On Saturday I went for a trail run at Ringwood State Park (where I went for a hike earlier this year). It's amazing how different things look given some time to thaw out.


Or how similar they look, regardless of the season.


This time, since I was running, I covered a lot of the same ground in a lot less time. Feeling bold, I decided to run down to 287. For what it's worth, standing under the highway is a lot more impressive than this picture shows.


Naturally, I didn't really think about how quickly I came down the hill on my way to the highway. It wasn't until I headed back that I realized my planned run was going to be a bit longer.


Ah well. It was fun anyway.

Walkin' in Texas

Last weekend I flew down to Austin and met Hannah for a short visit. I got in Friday night around 11:00, we went for a hike on Saturday at one of the state parks about 70 miles outside Austin, then I flew out early Sunday morning.

The hike was the mental refresher we both needed. It was strenuous enough that we got a little workout in, but mostly it was good because we had an uninterrupted day (~19 miles) with no real agenda other than walking.

Despite being on a route that follows a lake shore, we only saw the lake for a tiny bit -- mostly just trees and brush. We were a little uninspired by the scenery, so we didn't take many pictures.

Those pictures that we did take... ummm... I'll leave it up to you to judge their quality.

Derrr... What's that up in the sky? A bird? A plane? A plane-shaped bird?

No! It's Hannah doing her best superhero pose!

Seriously, those are the best of the bunch. I blame our new camera.

Well, at least one of them came out okay: