What was I thinking?!

My (far from done) list of training thoughts.

A friend of mine from work, Brett, recently asked me what I think about during all my training time. It was a hard question to answer, not because I haven't considered that question even before he asked it, but because the range of things that go through my mind on a 6 hour bike ride, 3 hour run or 5 hour race is so broad.

My thoughts have a very stream of consciousness feel to them so I as I try to give you a sense of what I'm thinking, so I'm guessing it will come across that way. Well Brett, here's an attempt to capture what I think about while training and racing, even though it's a very small portion of all the thoughts that scroll across my mind.

• Why did I sign up for Ironman again?
  
• Am I going fast enough?
• Am I going slow enough?
  
• Is my heart rate too high?
• Is my heart rate too slow?
• I wonder what Amy and Connor are doing?
• Am I being a bad husband and father by spending all this time training?
• How could I be a better husband and father.
• How am I going to fit the next training into my schedule?
• What a beautiful sunrise.
• How cool is it that I saw a deer/moose/falcon/rabbit/snake/frog while out on my ride/run.
• Should I go this way or that way?
• I must be one of the luckiest people alive to be able to do this right now.
• What the hell am I doing out here in the rain/dark/heat/cold/snow?
• I bet that not many other triathletes are out here in the rain/dark/heat/cold/snow? I'll have a leg up on them when race season comes.
• Oh crap, I forgot to pay that bill.
• How am I going to pay that bill?
• When is this f'in hill going to end?
• Why did I sign up for Ironman again?
• It would really suck if I crashed going down this hill at 40 MPH.
• When am I going to have time to shave my legs before this weekend's long ride?
• I need to pick up the pace if I want to hit my goal time.
• I'm feeling really great, I should pick up the pace a bit.
• I'm feeling like s*!t, I better slow it down a bit.
• I could do a 7 minute per mile pace to if I weighed 150.
• I can't afford to get a bike tune up, get new race wheels, get new tires - which one can I do?
• How am I going to fit 23 hours of training in next week, go to Connor's track meet, go to Connor's track practice, do my share around the house, see my wife for more than 15 minutes?
• If I don't finish this workout until 7:15, what should I have for breakfast so that I can still get to work on time?
• What should I bring to work for food so that I get enough carbs and calories before tonight's workout?
• Why did I sign up for Ironman again?
• All I need is within me now
  
• Why did that idiot have to toss their cigarette out of the window?
• Why did that idiot have to pass me so close and almost run me off the road?
• What should I write about for my next blog post at work?
• I can't wait to go camping with Connor after the Ironman.
• I wish I wasn't training and took the family camping instead.
• What does Connor think of me spending all this time training? Does he see that I set a goal and taking steps to reach it or does he just know I'm not at home?
• Perfect circles (when I'm on the bike to help me focus on a good pedal stroke)
  
• What does Amy think of me spending all of this time training? Does she see that I set a goal and taking steps to reach it or does she just know I'm not at home?
• Why did I decide to do the Ironman, again?
• I think it would be cool to do a cross-country ride on my bike.
• I wonder if I could do a 100 mile run.
• Why did I sign up for Ironman again?
• If I can just make it to that mailbox I'll let myself walk for a minute.
• Don't think about having to do 10 miles, just keep running to the next telephone pole.
• Wow, I'm feeling pretty good for having been out here this long.
• This is not going to be a good workout. Get ready to suffer for a while.
• What is that pain in my knee/ankle/shoulder/chest/foot/calf/hamstring?
• I think I want to try bike racing.
• Lean forward, good arm swing (when I'm running to help focus on good form)
  
• I love this song!
• I hope that I can finish Ironman and not pass out.
• I hope that I can stay up until midnight on race day to watch the last of the racers finish.
• I hope that I'm not one of the racers that takes until midnight to finish.
• Is Twitter really going to last?
• Maybe I should have stuck it out in real estate.
• I'm so glad that I got out of real estate when I did.
• If someone with Lou Gehrig's disease can have the courage to ski down a mountain, then I shouldn't complain about finishing this workout/race.
• What can I do to raise more money for Bretton Woods Adaptive.
• Even though people know I'm training for a race, do they really know what it takes to be able to finish this race?
• I wish there wasn't so much litter.
  
• Why did I sign up for Ironman again?
• Should I have a shot of gel now or wait another 15 minutes?
• Man I have to pee, where on the route is private enough that I can jump into the woods?
• What junk food am I going to have once Ironman is over?
• Will I be able to get my weight down to my goal before race day?
• Should I sign up for Ironman again next year?
• Where am I going to go for my 100 mile ride this weekend?
• How can anyone watch NASCAR? And why would you pay money to go watch it live?
• What am I going to do with the 15 - 20 hours I'll have back after Ironman is over?
• Man, this Kings of Leon song is mesmerizing!
• I wonder if I'll start to cry again as I approach the finish line in Lake Placid.
• Should I really tell my co-workers on Monday when they ask what I did this weekend that I ran 15 miles and rode 110 miles? Does that come across as bragging?
• Maybe I should take up a musical instrument, I've always wanted to learn to play the piano.
• How many calories do I need to take in?
• How am I going to take in enough calories after this workout? Can I really eat 4,000 more before the end of the day?
  
• Why did I sign up for Ironman again?

Triathlon's hidden expenses

Triathlon is not a cheap sport. Even if you stick to shorter sprint distance races, and your starting from scratch, by the time you buy a bike, running shoes, training and racing gear and a pool pass you've likely eclipsed the $1,500 to $2,000 mark. Oh yeah, you still haven't registered for the race which will run another $50 - $100.

If you decide to jump up to the 1/2 Ironman or Ironman distance then you end up in a whole other league of expenses, many of which we never consider before signing up.

There are the direct fees like race entry.  Just for the privilege of suffering for 12 - 14 hours at Ironman it will cost you $525 to register. Though I'm telling myself this is a bargain because if I break it down by the hour it's only about $40/hour based on my finish time (if I go even slower the bargain gets even better!).  Compare that to a sprint race I did last year that cost $80 to register and I was done in a little over an hour - that's twice the cost per hour! That's how I justify racing Ironman anyway.

Here are a few examples of the hidden expenses that I've experienced:

• Food - Last week my training hours hit 12.5 which works out to about 10,000 calories. I'm not a small guy and my basal metabolic rate is about 1,900 calories per day, or another 13,300 for the week bringing the week's total to 23,300 calories I need to replenish. Thankfully for my wallet, I'm also trying to drop a few pounds before race day so maybe I only replenished 20,000 calories that week.  Just to make sure I stay healthy with the increased workload I also take supplements from Hammer Nutrition which are not cheap.

• Pool fees - At only $5 to $10 per visit it doesn't seem to be a big deal. Until you multiply that times 3 - 4 swim workouts a week.

• Laundry - Especially over the winter this one can really add up.  Today is a typical example of 1 day's laundry.  This morning I ran, and it was cold, really cold.  I wore 1 pair of socks, a bottom base layer, running pants, a long sleeve top base layer, wind vest, long sleeve top layer, balaclava, a hat, a pair of mittens and a pair of gloves. this was followed by a swim at the pool later in the day which only produced a swim suit and towel.  Two a day workouts are not unusual for most of the week so needless to say we do a whole lot of laundry throughout the week (thanks Amy!)
• Travel - Conveniently for the Ironman race in Lake Placid all of the hotels double their rates and require a four night minimum, so, you know that doesn't help any. They'll be one to two training trips this spring to Lake Placid.  Thankfully I know several people who are also racing and we'll be able to carpool and split a hotel room. I'm just praying that gas prices stay relatively low!

I'm afraid to go into any more examples for fear of talking myself out of doing triathlon any longer.

What expenses am I missing?

Photo credit: Jenn_jenn

Winter distractions

It's been a while...here's the story.

Trying to relive the glory days.
In an effort to re-live my glory days playing high school basketball, I participated in my high school alumni game over Thanksgiving weekend. As I was diving for the loose ball out of bounds I remember thinking to myself that I should have just let it go. But alas, I didn't and I could feel a sharp pain in my rib as I landed.

The ER Visit
Seven hours later at about 3am I was leaving the ER having been through an x-ray and CT scan to make sure there was no internal damage or broken ribs. While it was just diagnosed as a contusion, it still meant 3 - 4 weeks of recovery time before really being able to do any running or swimming.

For the first 10 days or so, even riding a spin bike or being on the trainer was painful. And sneezing or coughing, forget about it!  After about 15 or 16 days things started to get back to normal.  No running or swimming yet but I've been able to ride the trainer regularly again and do some lower body strength work.

The distractions

Life has still been crazy with the reduced training workload.  In the past 3 weeks we've had an ice storm, snow storm, layoffs at work (thankfully not my position, but I'm busier as a result), and the general hysteria generated by the holiday season.

The snow and holiday distractions have been good. I just got back in from playing in the snow with Connor and looking forward to celebrating Christmas with friends and family. The ice storm and work layoffs have not been so good but we plug along....

Ready to train

While the forced training has left time for other things, I'm really looking forward to beginning formal Ironman training.  The plan is to begin on January 1st.  As of today there are 217 days to go!

Running at warp speed

This morning I went for my first run since the marathon, which was almost three weeks ago.  I was a little nervous about how the tendonitis in my left foot would feel, but it turned out to be back to normal. Thank goodness.

I was up early, about 4:30, so after checking my e-mail, the weather and my twitter account, I headed out for my run by 5, armed with my reflective vest and headlamp.  It's an unusually warm morning in NH for this time of year, 57 degrees, and while it isn't raining there is a fine mist in the air.

Well, the effect that had while I was running was a little like seeing the warp speed effect on the Star Trek (my guilty pleasure in college with my roommates was watching Picard on the Next Generation episodes).

The headlamp shines a pretty focused beam of light straight in front my eyes. With the water droplets seemingly hanging in mid-air as I ran throuh them, the effect it gave was like going at warp speed - even though I was far from it. After all, It was my first run in a while.

Another way to describe, if you've ever driven through a snow storm at night (something we get to do plenty here in NH). It's like the snow flying toward toward your headlights with the snow being so heavy that you can't see much further than a few feet in front of the car because the snowflakes are catching all the light from the headlights in a successful effort to blind your driving efforts.

Running on the Sun

I watched a great movie last night called Running on the Sun about the Badwater 135. A 135-mile running race from Badwater in the middle of the California desert up to Mount Whitney (Amy has already told me there is absolutely no way I'm doing this race!).

There are plenty of inspirational stories, sad stories and stories that make you say WTF! But I laughed outloud at the quote below. It was said by Ephraim Romesberg, 68, at the 65 mile mark of the race.

"When I start these events with very loft goals, like I think I'm going to do something special and after a point of body deterioration the goals get evaluated down. I always get to a point, which is basically where I am now, where the best I can hope for is to avoid throwing up on my shoes"

This is a great documentary that I would recommend to any endurance athlete.

I thought Ironman was a big deal

I thought doing an Ironman was a big event to prepare for. Check out this guy who is going for the record to complete the Appalachian Trail which means an average of 46 miles per day!

News story is here

And the racer's website is here. This link has his current location - and he is in my home state of NH!

Flat tire

I haven't had a flat tire since last Spring but I got one on the Wednesday night GSTC ride. I'm comfortable changing tires, however, it's not the fastest process in the world for me. The one I had last spring was a front tire flat and it was less than 5 minutes from flat to rolling out again (using CO2 cartridges). I don't have much to compare that to but I thought was pretty good.

The flat on Wednesday night was on my rear wheel and I was on by older road bike. The rear wheel never seems to be as easy to remove as my tri-bike. My change time was closer to 20 minutes with tire irons that didn't seem to want to get under the tire. After getting the tire back on the CO2 didn't inflate the tire as much as I was comfortable with so I cut the ride short and it eneded up being a 40 minute ride instead of the planned 75 minutes.

Cross training hike

This weekend I broke from the scheduled trainings to go hiking and camping at Mt. Moosilauke with my brother for his bachelor party.

The weekend started on Saturday morning with a 2 hour drive to northern NH. There was some talk of doing a bike ride but the weather forecast didn't look great so I scrapped that plan. On the drive up I found myself trying to figure out the difficulty of a bike ride. The Ravine Lodge at Mt. Moosilauke sits at 2,500 feet so the drive up was a good climb. I wish I could have biked up it while at the same time glad we decided not too ride!

I had never been to Mt. Moosilauke so I didn't know what to expect. I soon figure out that our cabin was not close to the parking area - I would come to find out it was around 1/2 mile, almost all uphill. This wouldn't be that big a deal except that I hadn't packed expecting this. So, I had to make two trips to get all my gear to the cabin.

Overall the uphill hike was worthwhile. It was a large one room log cabin with a deck around 2 sides with the longer side looking up onto the mountains. Inside there was a small kitchen area, large rustic dining table, bunk beds and an old cast iron cooking stove that was also the heating source.

There was no electricity and while there was a sink and faucet, the water didn't seem to work. The "facilities" were about 50 yards away down an embankment and across two seasonal runoff streams. Thankfully I didn't have to make many trips there. The one cool thing about it was the view. While you were sitting doing your business and if you left the door open there was a nice view of the mountains!

The climb up Mt. Moosilauke was good but challenging. The trail we took up was 3.6 mils to an elevation of 4,800 feet which is about 2,300 feet from the cabin which by my calculation is about an 8.2% grade, pretty steep! We a lot of Moose droppings on the way up which surprised me because the area we saw them was very densely wooded with a good amount of snow still on the ground. It seemed like it would be difficult for an animal the size of a moose to maneuver.

It took us about 2 hours to get to the summit and since we didn't leave until around 2:30, that only left about 2 hours to get down to the base for the 6:30 dinner at the lodge.

We took a different route down which was also 3.6 miles. However, this route was on the northern side of the mountain so there was a significant amount of snow for about half of the trail down. It had been packed down over the winter but softened by the warmer days so it formed kind of a ridge along the trail making it difficult to maneuver.

We did make it to dinner on time and had a great meal. Despite the sore legs that we all had the next day, the rest of the weekend was good and dragging all of our gear down the hill was obviously much easier than the trip up the day before.

I had originally intended on riding that afternoon after getting home from my son's lacrosse game, but my sore legs were telling me otherwise. I'll get back on track this week with my more "traditional" training program.

Time for a shave

I was so pumped up for the upcoming triathlon season after having such a great ride outside on Saturday. So, I decided to shave the legs for the season. For whatever reason, every spring when I do the first shave of the season it boosts up my motivation level.

I just did the legs for now. I'll do the arms before the first race of the year, Mooseman, in June.

On another positive note, I've dropped a few pounds and am down to 198. I'd like to get down another 8 before Mooseman. That will be just a couple of pounds over where I was at for Ironman Lake Placid.

Who do you love?

I had to share this article from Bicycling Magazine titled Who Do You Love? An uncomfortable quiz for all of us who have ever heard : "I sweart you love that bike more than me!"

I'm not sure if the graphic will show up OK so I've re-typed it below:



To find out something troubling about yourself, answer these 20 questions as honestly as you can. For each question, simply fill in the oval next to Bike or Spouse. If both apply, mark both. If neither applies, move on to the next question. If you're not married, for Spouse substitute Girlfriend or Boyfriend or Etc. At the end, calculate which entity receives more of your affection, then hide these pages from everyone in your life - except your biking buddies.

1. I'll never forget the first time I saw you.
2. I wanted you instantly
3. I often find myself daydreaming about you
4. There's more than one photo of us together on my desk
5. I love showing you off to my friends
6. My friends often remark how attractive you are
7. In a typical week, we spend five or more hours of quality time together
8. When you're around, I often look at you with admiration and longing
9. In the last three month, I've spent more than $250 on you
10. I desperately want to take you to Italy
11. Our last ride lasted more than an hour
12. It's thrilling how you respond beneath me
13. I would never let anyone else ride you
14. You make my heart beat faster
15. You make me feel young
16. You have taken me places and shown me things I never thought I would see
17. When I'm along with you, I'm at peace with the world
18 You were made for me
19. I can't live without you
20. I will never upgrade to a newer model