BWG's Half-Ironman Training Blog : CBSSports.com Blogs

I can tell Longhorn is getting close

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:13:15 EDT

I just had my first Longhorn half-ironman nightmare this morning. I had a dream where I was out riding my bike around my hometown for a last minute workout and completely forgot to check in for the race. The event has the bike check-in/packet pick-up the day before the race, and if you don't pick those up the day before then you don't get to race. You can imagine why missing this would be a bad thing.

I'm sure I'm going to have more of these in the upcoming weeks.

August training totals, the end is near

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:18:44 EDT

My girlfriend completed her Ironman in Louisville this weekend, finishing in 15:45. I'm so proud of her and what she achieved, it's an impressive feat to finish an Ironman. She worked her ass off to achieve that goal and she deserves the kudos for what she accomplished. She's an inspiration to me.

It's less than a month until the Longhorn Half-Ironman, so I'm hitting the last ~2 weeks of heavy training before the tapering starts. I'm already starting to get nervous about the event; I mean I've been training and the plan I'm using has been pretty successful for many people so I should do alright. It's just that I haven't actually done this race distance before so I don't know that I can finish and finish well. It's mildly terrifying thinking about it. I'm probably just having a bad day, other days I feel good about my chances. I'm going to be a ball of nerves the days leading up to the event.

Tri the Rock Race Results

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:35:22 EDT

Tri the Rock

2008-08-24

Rockwall, Texas

United States

July training totals & nutrition worries

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:13:33 EDT

I didn't hit any new records on training volume for each discipline this month, but I had easily the most well-balanced month thus far. I was just under my personal best on the bike & swim, and I was about 13 miles off my PR for the run. I can tell the training plan is getting near its peak of the training schedule as the lengths of individual training sessions are growing. Nonetheless, I felt like I wasn't getting long enough bike rides in so I'm going to try to do 1-2 "overdistance" rides a month. In other words, I'm going to do 1-2 rides that are 56+ miles so that I know how I feel when I'm getting off the bike at the race. I did the first of these Saturday(it was the 1st so I didn't include it in the totals here) and it opened my eyes to a couple of things. The biggest is that my nutrition needs work. I need to put something in the bike that's a little more 'solid' than Gu or Clif Shot Bloks. After 3+ hours on the bike, my stomach isn't happy with them anymore. I'm definitely hungry near the end of the ride and the Gu doesn't cut it. It may be something as simple as bringing a Clif Bar or similar on the bike, I'll have to try it out in the coming weeks. But this is one of the things I wouldn't know from a 2-2.5 hour ride; as odd as it sounds, the extra 30-60 minutes makes a difference.

El Scorcho Race Results

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:32:13 EDT

Pre-race routine:

Karen & I packed up and drove out to Ft. Worth. The drive was pretty easy, just long.

Event warmup:

The usual stretching, etc.

Disco Triathlon Results

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:39:49 EDT

Goals:

1500m Swim: 35:00 (~2:20/100m)

24 MileBike: 87:00 (~17.0 mph)

6.2 Mile Run: 71:00 (~11:30 min/mile)

June training totals & visualizing my goals

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:56:05 EDT

OK I'll admit it, I've been seriously slacking in updating this thing. My mistake, I'll try to do better.

I'm getting dialed in for this race. It's still 14 weeks away, but the mindset is really starting to focus. I've started to submit to the will of the training plan - though I'll be the first to admit I'm not hitting all my targets - and I can feel the whole thing taking over my thoughts. I was out on a run Sunday and I really started to visualize how I'm going to attack the course. I can see family & friends there at the end for me as I push through to the end, I can see the look on my face as I cross the line; I can see finishing the race now. Am I ready? Hell no. I've got to get more time on the bike and ramp up my swim totals some, but I feel like I'm well on my way. The running I've never been that concerned with. I can cruise at a 12 min/mile pace and be OK with that, given what all I'm doing that day. Maybe my time will improve over the next 3 months, but really I just want to finish. I'm not setting time goals yet, finishing the race is enough.

CapTex triathlon results

Thu, 29 May 2008 7:24:05 EDT

I'm pasting this in from another site, hopefully the formatting comes out alright. One note: when I mention 'laps' in my stats, those are the laps I setup on my heart rate monitor. I have 7 laps on my run because it's set to lap every mile, but in reality it was a 2-loop course.

Goals:

1500m swim: 24 mile bike: 6.2 mile run: Transitions:

Goal time:

A look back at my training totals

Mon, 19 May 2008 16:36:10 EDT

On an unrelated site, I was talking with some friends about new running shoes(more importantly, trying to dissuade them from buying Nikes and ruining their knees in the process) and I brought up how much I've run using the Mizunos that I love so much. I decided to take a look back and see what my training totals were since I started doing triathlons in 2006. I didn't have the '06 numbers handy, but I pulled the stats since Jan '07 and it kinda surprised me.

2008 totals

Bike: 26h 28m 30s - 423.85 Miles

Run: 23h 59m 46s - 136.58 Miles

I love this ranking system

Thu, 08 May 2008 13:27:22 EDT

I haven't logged into Sportsline in nearly a month and my rank went UP 4 points. Meanwhile when I was posting regularly, I actually dropped in rank.

Anybody that wants to be a 'superstar', take my advice: don't post anything. Apparently it will happen with or without you.

p.s. I know I haven't kept up with the HIM blog. It hasn't been because I quit training; I'm training a fair amount and writing about it tends to reinforce just how mind-numbing some of it gets. I'll post a full update soon, I promise.

H-IM training notes for 04/05 wk; new swim record

Mon, 12 May 2008 11:13:16 EDT

I hit a new high mark on my monthly swim total! This was the first time I've cracked 10,000 yards in a month. I've been swimming for about 2 years now, sometimes with a break when I get burnt out. For whatever reason, I've never gotten over 10,000 yards in a month. It hasn't been a goal I've ever pushed for or anything mind you, it just never happened. I hit 9,000+ yards one month last year, that's as close as I came. I realized on the 31st that I was only about 350 yards from cracking 10k, so I decided to go swim and crack this total. Well, not only did I break 10k but I broke 11k. The best part is that I didn't feel like I was making some massive investment in time & energy. The work with the swim coach has really been paying off.

H-IM notes for the last 2 weeks

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:26:34 EDT

I skipped on the blog entry last week as I was attending a friend's funeral. I won't get into the details too seriously as funeral talk is a downer, but suffice it to say my friend dying from a heart attack at 40 reminds me why I work out. He was a great guy and a friend to everyone he ever met, and there are a lot of people in the world that are sadder because he's gone. If he had watched his weight better and worked out more, he might still be here. He was an athlete in college too; he was a lineman for OU in the 80s and was a wrestler in high school(maybe college too, not sure about that though). But even he fell ill to diabetes after his weight went to sh*t. Anyway, I won't go on a long diatribe, but I took a valuable lesson from his demise about the importance of staying fit. The last couple weeks were a wash from a workout perspective thanks to attending to all the events around his death(not to mention March Madness), but I'm working back into the workout routine now.

H-IM notes for 03/16 week

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:14:43 EDT

This last week was a pretty kick-ass week of training. I hit the bike 3 times, put in a long brick workout(30 mile bike + 6.2 mile run), and my swim instructor even called my new form 'pretty'. If I could knock out weeks like this regularly, I could be ready for a H-IM in about half the time it's going to take me now. It helps that there were no late-night maintenances this week and the weather cooperated, but nonetheless this was a good training week. To give you an idea of how much I trained this week, I basically duplicated my cycling mileage total from the entire month of February this week.

As a result, I think I'm ready to tell my girlfriend about signing up for this thing. I bought her this shirt and I'm going to put it in a box with my entry form. Hopefully she'll react well. I think she will...OK I hope she will. The shirt will be here this week, so there's no going back I guess.

H-IM notes; weather + voting = recovery week

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:27:03 EDT

My totals are terrible for this last week for a few reasons, most notably the weather in Texas. Monday it snowed, Wednesday was decent, and Thursday it snowed again. For those of you that don't live in Texas, let me set the stage for you: Dallas doesn't know how to handle snow. I mentioned some of it last week, but I forgot to mention that the city has like, 1 sand truck for the whole town despite the fact that it snows/ices over at least once a year. You would think at some point they'd get a handle on this issue, but no. So that's 2 days that were out. I'll admit that I could have worked out indoors, but I really hate running on a treadmill and spin classes just plain suck. So yea, I could have done more if I really felt like it...but I didn't. Tuesday was out because of the voting debacle, which also affected me because I postponed a session with the swim coach to go vote. I'm going to go ahead and paste my review of the caucus process from another site at the bottom of this blog(or just click here) for anyone that's interested(if you're not, ignore the part below the weekly total). It was chaos. Between those two issues my potential workout week got chopped in half. So yea, my totals suck. I did a big bike/run brick yesterday to make up for it.

H-IM for 03/02 wk; 5 signs triathlon season is on

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:06:23 EST

It looks like winter's coming to a close in Tex-oh wait, nevermind, it's snowing outside. I think Texas weathermen are masochists by nature; only somebody who enjoys public scorn & verbal abuse would take on the job of trying to predict weather in this state. Yesterday it was 80 & sunny, today the high is 45...and that was at 7am. It's supposed to snow at least an inch in the DFW area. I know that doesn't sound like much to anyone north of the Mason/Dixon line, but you have never shared an icy road with a Texas driver. There are 2 types of drivers in Texas when it comes to icy roads: 10mph or 90mph, and they share the same roads. There's almost nobody who drives sensibly in Texas when the snow & ice hit. The entire city shuts down if the roads ice over at all. Can you blame them? Who wants to get stuck behind a Ford Fiesta doing 12mph on the Dallas North Iceway with an Excursion flying up your ass at 85? Anyway, this last week wasn't a bad week for getting in some outdoor training. The weather was decent, though I made sure to get a ride in on Saturday because Sunday sounded like it was going to be windy(and it was, my gf actually got blown off her bike on her ride). With things starting to warm up, you see some signs that the triathletes are ramping up for the summer:

H-IM notes for the week of 2/24

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:40:37 EST

I've been staring at this page off and on all morning, trying to come up with something interesting and new to talk about as it relates to triathlons. But really, when it all boils down to it, it's all about training time. You get as much training time in as you can and if it's enough, you'll do well. Sure, there are different training methods and everybody does their training a little differently, but in the end it's simply a matter of putting the feet on the pavement and getting it done. Sometimes it's a hard thing to do; almost everybody gets burned out at some point, others have injuries to deal with, and others don't have the motivation. One of those I have(burnout), another I try to avoid(injury), and the last(motivation) is often a function of the first. There's also a line between laziness & rest that only you can answer for yourself. Take Sunday for example: I had planned to go out and ride, but despite a good night's rest I woke up tired. Between that and the weather being colder than the weathermen had forecasted(a weatherman being wrong, you're shocked I know), I packed it in for the day. I could have toughed it out and gone on the ride, but I have no idea if it would have been a productive ride. Maybe I was being lazy or maybe I've been pushing the training up too quickly, the answer is probably a bit of both. But once in awhile an extra rest day isn't a bad idea.

H-IM notes for the week of 02/17 + injury notes

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 9:35:04 EST

Last weekend I bought new aero bars for the bike. If you're not familiar with aero bars, I explained them in a previous post. Here's a picture of some handlebars with clip-on aero bars as well:

images.marketworks.com/hi/56/55673/pd1016.111.jpg

Anyway, I got a set installed on the bike and had the bike re-fitted since my aero position changes with the new bars. They raised the seat up about 3/4 of an inch amongst some other changes. You wouldn't think 3/4" would make much difference, but after riding on Monday(the results will be in next week's totals) I can tell you without a doubt that it absolutely killed me. Specifically, it killed one part of me. The most sensitive part of me. You see, there's a condition called "cyclist's penis"(no I'm not making it up, read about it here) that any male cyclist who puts in decent miles will probably experience at some point. Basically your little guy downstairs will go numb if your bike fit is wrong, because you're sitting on important blood vessels and depriving Man's True Best Friend of oxygen & blood. The solution is usually either getting a better bike fit or trying out a new saddle. I know my saddle is fine, so I took the bike in to get the seat dropped back down. Hopefully I won't have to go through that again, because if you let the condition persist you can have any number of long-term issues(like impotence, for example...yikes). So fellas, if you're reading this and your junk falls asleep on rides, go get your bike fit & saddle checked ASAP.

Texas v. Kansas, what a game!

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:42:03 EST

This game absolutely typifies why I love college sports more than the pros. There was so much passion, so much heart, so much fire on display during this game. Both teams played their butts off and neither team can really feel bad about the ending.

Texas:

1) Connor Atchley - or as I nicknamed him last season, "Judge Reinhold" - was amazing tonight. This is the kid we saw at the beginning of the season, the one we really thought was going to be great all year. He's struggled as of late, but tonight was a great all-around effort on his part. 16 points off 6-6 FG and 4-4 FT, you really can't ask for much more from him.

2) Damion James. What a beast. If he had stayed out of foul trouble in the first half, who knows what kind of numbers he would have put up. 14 points & 13 boards in a half. James is single-handedly the reason why Texas won the battle of the boards in the 2nd half.

H-IM notes for the week of 02/10

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:43:33 EST

I started working with a swim coach on Tuesday. She coaches a local masters swim class as well as a local tri group, and she cut me a decent deal on pre-paying for several training sessions. We're mainly working on my form more than anything, and it's surprising how certain little things can really affect your swimming. The most notable issue she picked up on is that I'm doing a scissor kick when I'm swimming which kills my forward momentum. She illustrated it by having me push off the wall and just float until I'm stopped, then had me do the same thing but kick my legs out like I do in a scissor kick. The result was that I stopped about 3 feet shorter with my legs out. That's 3 feet in about a 4-5 yard space, which is a significant amount(obviously). So now I'm learning how to do a smaller kick and keeping my feet together. There were other tweaks she put into play, such as bringing my arm around the side(think of it as being swung around low enough my thumb could graze the water) instead of coming over the top. This adjustment takes the load off my shoulders and puts it on the biceps, which will help my endurance as the distance increases. She said if I practice this twice a week, I could take 20 seconds off my 100yd time in less than a month. In a HIM, that's a savings of 7 minutes just in the swim. She says I'll be faster than my girlfriend when she's done with me, which would be a serious improvement(she was offered a couple college swimming scholarships) over where I am now. I'm looking forward to our next workout which will be a week from tomorrow(we're meeting 2x/month).

H-IM notes for the week of 02/03 + new definition

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 10:44:06 EST

So far things have gone pretty well, though in the 6 months since I stopped riding I had forgotten about having to build up the calluses on your butt. Oh lord, did my sit bones hurt on Saturday. It's never the first ride back that hurts, it's the second. And the third. And sometimes the fourth. I guess what I'm saying is that it takes awhile. Anyway, here's the workout data for the last week:

Swim: 1000.00 Yd - 20m 39s

Bike: 40.83 Mi - 2h 37m 37s

Run: 12.00 Mi - 2h 04m 17s

Triathlon race distances 101

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:22:58 EST

I figure as good a place to start as any is to give you an idea of typical race distances for triathlons. There are 4 varieties of triathlon you see more than any other: Sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman, & Ironman.

1) Sprint. Typical distance: 300m(~330 yd) swim, 20k(~12.4 mile) bike, 5k(~3.1 mile) run. You'll see some variations on this level depending on the course the RD(race director) puts together, so you can see anything from 300-500m swim & 12-15 mile bike. Usually the run stays right at 5k, though I've run a couple that were a little shorter. Most sprint triathlons are a pool swim, but it can be open water too. Most likely you'll see it open water if they're running a sprint at the same time as a longer distance tri.

The introduction

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:36:44 EST

I think there's three questions that are relevant to the introduction of this blog: "who am I", "why am I doing this", and "when am I doing this".

1) Who am I? I'm a 30 year old computer nerd that likes to stay in shape. I'm not extreme about it; I work out 3-4 times a week(usually 3) but I'm not someone who counts calories or takes a lot of supplements. I haven't been in a GNC in years, I'm not a health nut. I have crap for strength(I'm 6' 165lb, I'll spin that as 'wiry') but I'm in solid cardio shape. I've done triathlons before, but they've all been sprints(I'll explain distance differences in another post). I've sorta done an olympic distance, but it wasn't a triathlon because the swim was replaced by a running leg(weather-related issues) so I don't really count that. I have done a half-marathon recently, clocking in at a blazing 11:15 min/mile. To put that in perspective, the guy who won the full marathon finished 6 minutes faster than I did the half. In other words, you could probably beat me on a Rascal. So I've done shorter events and stay in pretty decent shape, but nothing remotely on the level of a half-Ironman(which I'll call a 'HIM' because I'm a lazy typer).