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.

August totals:
Swim: 10060.00 Yd - 3h 09m 02s
Bike: 217.11 Mi - 12h 37m 31s (new PR!)
Run: 40.2 Mi - 6h 50m 06s

2008 totals:
Swim: 76055.4 Yd - 26h 30m 55s
Bike: 1026.70 Mi - 62h 26m 18s
Run: 264.52 Mi - 47h 07m 03s

September events:
TX Tough Bike Rally - 56 Miles: September 14th

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.


July totals:
Swim: 11300.00 Yd - 3h 31m 05s
Bike: 188.09 Mi - 11h 28m 18s
Run: 45.08 Mi - 8h 36m 36s

2008 totals:
Swim: 65995.4 Yd - 23h 21m 53s
Bike: 873.09 Mi - 53h 32m 47s
Run: 224.32 Mi - 40h 16m 57s

August events:
Rockwall triathlon(sprint distance): August 24th

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.

June totals:
Swim: 11730.00 Yd (new high mark for a month!) - 3h 37m 49s
Bike: 115.82 Mi - 7h 04m 33s
Run: 36.45 Mi - 6h 31m 23s

July events:
Disco triathlon(olympic distance): July 13th
El Scorcho(25k run): July 20th

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
Swim: 14h 47m 09s - 38,625 Yards

2007 totals
Bike: 32h 13m 35s - 560.01 Miles
Run: 55h 46m 33s - 341.17 Miles
Swim: 13h 59m 41s - 42,200 Yards

Overall totals
Bike: 983.86 Miles
Run: 477.75 Miles
Swim: 80,825 Yards

Total time training since Jan 1, 2007: 167 Hours, 15 Minutes, 14 Seconds or about an hour short of 30 days.

That's a lot of freaking time. And you know what? I wouldn't take any of it back. OK maybe the time on a treadmill or a bike trainer because that's just miserable , but otherwise it's been mostly fun and very rewarding on a mental/physical/emotional level. I'm in arguably the best shape of my life and I'm doing something I enjoy. I could think of a lot worse ways to spend a month of my life.

I'll venture back over here more regularly to post some of the stories of my training the last couple months, like my never-ending saga with the CycleOps bike trainers or my encounters with wildlife while out running(mostly them attacking me...or as I call it, 'tempo work')

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.

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.

As for the other parts, I bought a new bike trainer. Well, I say "new". The reality is the online store sent me some completely used POS that was in worse shape than the one I gave to my girlfriend. They swear it was an accident and it was shipped straight from the warehouse, so they're trying to get a new one to me. We'll see how that sorts out. Riding on the trainer can be a real beating; you're not going anywhere and TV can only entertain so much when you're exercising. I don't see me getting much beyond an hour at a time on that thing.


03/30 - 04/06 Totals:
Swim: 1600.00 Yd - 28m 22s
Bike: 50.39 Mi - 3h 03m 48s
Run: 8.19 Mi - 1h 23m 45s

March Totals:
Swim: 11250.00 Yd - 3h 37m 26s
Bike: 136.40 Mi - 8h 35m 29s
Run: 25.56 Mi - 4h 35m 27s

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.

03/16-03/29 Totals:
Swim: 5150.00 Yd - 2h 04m 09s(includes 1 hour swim coach time)
Run: 10.24 Mi - 1h 49m 06s

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.
(OK now I'm nervous...sh*t)

One downside is that my neck is starting to act up on me again. I've always had a problem with neck pain when my cycling ramps up. It's probably due to my form, but I don't know how to change my form to alleviate/minimize it...or if that's even possible. Maybe I need to strengthen my back muscles or something. I'm going to bug a few people about this, because right now I can't do 3+ hours on the bike with this kind of pain.

03/09-03/15 Totals:
Swim: 2000.00 Yd - 18m 43s(1 hour swim coaching not included in time)
Bike : 75.91 Mi - 4h 48m 23s
Run: 6.20 Mi - 1h 10m 18s