She said yes!

Ok, I admit to being a bad blogger but things have been pretty busy since the last post (as if they weren't before). This is because, in addition to hitting my biggest training weeks, I am also having to start wedding planning! Since by now this isn't news to anyone, I'll just give a few details about how it went down.

Sunday May 18th was a planned day off, which is nothing out of the ordinary. In the past we've done all sorts of things on these days, such as going to the zoo, snowshoeing, or just hanging around town and seeing a movie. In fact, one of the times we were snowshoeing Leigh thought I was going to propose when I reached to get something out of my backpack...but that was just a set up for this time (at least I can think that in hindsight).

We went to the Wild Basin trailhead where we'd done a hike the previous fall, and headed up to Copeland falls on a trail which followed the St. Vrain creek (the lower elevations of which I had biked alongside just the day before). It was windy and mostly overcast, although the sun would peek through from time to time. I hadn't planned the exact moment to do it, but when the sun came out right when we reached the falls I knew I had it do it then to get the sparkle sparkle effect. After sitting down and eating a bit, I pulled the gift box out of my backpack, gave it to her and watched unwrap it and then assumed the position on one knee and we were both very happy on the way back. Here is a picture of us just a few minutes after the happy moment, and a picture of the ring:



By now we actually have a lot of ideas for the wedding, and should have a date/location within a few weeks. We'll keep all family/friends informed as soon as we know the details!

One of the key ironman workouts, which I got from the CSUcoach Derrick last year who was training for Ironman Germany, is called "big day training". To give credit where credit is due I think this was formalized by Gordo but I suspect that guys were doing stuff like this back in the 80s when the sport was starting out.

Anyway, the idea is to do long (but easy paced) workouts in all 3 sports in the same day just to get the body used to working out and taking in food all day long. So for me this past Saturday, I went to masters swimming in the morning, and lucky for me, we have a former olympic backstroke swimmer in our group (not that I am in anywhere near the same lane...my swim still sucks compared to high school girls let alone olympians) that has some sort of relationship with Nike. Anyway, she ended up having a few dozen of their latest and greatest competition jammers to give away since there was a slight printing error. So I got my hands on one of those and I have to say it felt pretty good to do the workout, but I think I will save that for pool races/time trials since it only lasts for 5-10 uses!


After the swim I got home, made some french toast and took a short nap before heading out on the bike. The ride was loop headig south through Loveland, where the tailwind I had been enjoying abruptly did a 180 and was in my face for the next 15 miles south to Lyons. As luck would have I met up with a Rio Grande (local cycling team) rider. After passing him while he was warming up, he started a tempo ride and I did what I could to sit on his wheel for the next 5 miles or so. This wasn't too hard except where we hit hills and I had to work a little harder than I had wanted to at that point in the ride to keep up, but it was worth it to keep out of that headwind! Once we split up I made my way through Lyons and up the St. Vrain canyon. I had never done this ride before and I have to say that this is probably the most majestic of all the canyon climbs I have done out here. 12 miles and 2600 ft of elevation gain on a smooth paved road with a wide shoulder, nothing super steep, and the towers of rock at the beginning look like something out of Lord of the Rings. At the top there was a clear view of Mt. Meeker only a few miles away:



I wasn't done at the top though since I had to make my way back north to Estes Park, where I topped out a little above 9000 ft right in front of Long's peak. There was a little bit of headwind to make this section annoying, but nothing too bad considering how windy it can be up there. After descending through Estes and dodging a few elk in the process, I took the scenic route through Glen Haven home for the sole purpose of picking up one of their famous cinnamon rolls. Unfortunateley for me I got there too late and they were sold out for the day, so I had to make do with a rather tasteless blueberry muffin. The descent down the Big Thompson Canyon was pretty quick although I made another stop for a mountain dew, which, in addition to 2 waterbottles and a camelback was enough fluid to get me home without too much dehydration, despite a headwind that knocked me down to 14mph coming back from Loveland.

Once I got home it was almost 7 so I had a banana and some coke which is probably the perfect combination of calories, electrolytes, and simple sugars to have enough for a 7 mile run. My legs felt pretty beat from the bike ride, especially considering all the climbing, but felt pretty good after the first mile and I kept a good pace without too much effort, so that's a huge confidence boost heading into the race to know that I can keept going for 8 hours in a day.

Now, even though I ate quite a bit after the swim, during the bike, and before the run, I still had something like a 5000 calorie deficit to make up so I headed over the Cici's with Leigh and my friend Chris from the CSU team to attempt to replenish as much as possible. Being an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet for $5, Cici's may be the cheapest way to replace those calories too. Well I suppose I could cook 8 ramen packets for a little less but even pizza has better nutritional content than that.

don't read too much into your warmup

This post is more along the lines of advice for anyone else who trains for performance in some sort of race or competitive event. Since high school I've usually felt some degree of nervousness or anxiousness before a race or time trial, which can amplify any sensations about my readiness that I perceive based on how the warmup feels. Usually, if the legs feel heavy on the first step, or I'm doing some pickups to race pace and they feel much harder than anything I could maintain for the duration of the race, a certain level of self-doubt will set in. It's only been through repeated experiences that the warmup has very little to do with race performance that I've been able to ignore these feelings.

Case in point was yesterday. I did a 1.2mi swim (half ironman distance) for time in the pool. I also did this 2 weeks ago so I had a recent time to compare. My warmup for these time trials is always the same, 200 yard swim, 200 kick, 200 swim, 200 pull, 200 swim, then 4x50 build, and 2x25 sprint. Those 200s didn't feel great at all, and were slower than 2 weeks ago, but the actual time swim was faster! I think what happens during heavy training is that, while we are getting stronger, it takes a bit longer to warm up and those first few miles/1000 yards in the pool will seem a bit slower, but once warmed up everything feels fine.

Once I start tapering, I notice that the warmups start feeling really easy and I actually have to be careful to keep it easy early on, because it is easy to go out too hard based on previous impressions of how the first part of the race "should" feel.

A guiness beer mile? Brilliant!

On Friday I took a break from my longer runs and rides to do some speed work. This served no real purpose in preparing for the ironman (other than being my 50th mile of the week thus reaching my goal), but was a competition just as challenging, despite being only 1 mile instead of 140.6. The beer mile has a long and distinguished history, The full rules can be found on www.beermile.com but briefly, the race is drink a beer, run a lap, repeat (4 total beers/laps). I did this last year at the annual Fort Collins Beer Mile and won with a time of 7:30, so I went in hoping to defend my title. This time though, I wanted to try something different - use Guinness as the beer. When I shared this idea with some friends, most of them thought it wouldn't be possible to keep down due to the heavy nature of the beer. However, a few observed that the smaller nitro bubbles might actually make it easier, since not as much burping would be required.

It turns out that the latter idea was most correct, as there was virtually no 'full' feeling during the laps which most comes from the carbonation, not the beer itself. However, the 15 oz cans of Guinness Draught (as opposed to standard 12 oz cans) put me at a disadvantage during the drinking portions, so I wound up third despite a PR of 7:14. I may have lost a few seconds running in costume also but you can decide for yourself based on the picture:















Come to think of it, there is some relevance to the ironman training in this, since part of the race is running a marathon while taking in plenty of food (mostly energy gels) and fluid. So if the beer mile is any indication, this shouldn't be a problem :-)

Getting to the rest of the weekend, Saturday was my off day, so Leigh and I watched the road race portion of collegiate cycling nationals which was hosted by CSU this year, and then met up with my dad who was in for the weekend to see the Iron Man (not triathlon related) movie, which I thought was excellent if you like the superhero genre.

Then this morning I watched a bit fothe criterium part of cycling nationals, which was pretty awesome because Phil Mann from CSU won, then went on my first 100+ mile ride myself. It went pretty well and I felt really strong towards the end, much more than in my previous long rides so the training appears to be working. Also I saw that my donations have now exceeded my goal so it might be time to increase that goal. Thanks everyone!

short is what long used to be

Back when I was beginning to train for collegiate nationals over the winter I would usually do a long run over the weekend. Since we are fortunate to have a ton of open space trails in Fort Collins, but these are mostly 10-15 miles away, I would bike to the trailhead, get in a run, and bike back. Usually this ended up being a 2.5-3 hour workout, which would be the longest of the week.

Today I went to Coyote Ridge, which has an elevation profile that looks like this:
Basically it's either up or down, with a couple of stairs thrown in just to keep you from getting lazy. Oftentimes I'll pass (going up hill) or get passed by (going downhill) mountain bikers on the first couple of ridges, but I rarely if ever see anyone on the middle ridge which is a little further off the main path. As tough as it is going up and down those ridges, it was beautiful to see the hillsides finally turning green, which will last for about a month before the grass turns yellow/brown again. There was also plenty of wildlife out and about such as prairie dogs, which were friendlier than most I've encountered, and a couple species of birds. I even think I heard some rattlesnakes in the grass but they stayed off the trail which is fine by me.

Anyway, I realized that while this workout used to be my long run, it seems short now that I'm doing 4-5 hour bike rides on weekend and 15+ mile long runs during the week. So far I seem to be handling it well, but one thing I have noticed is that I have to be very careful about when to go hard, because I will feel it the next day. That means swimming tomorrow!

Getting started

Since I set up the donation page, I thought some people besides myself might be interested in how I am preparing for the ironman. I might also post other random things here from time to time, and probably keep things up after the race too. Or this could end up abandoned like 99% of other blogs. We'll see where it goes.

Anyway, I got started doing triathlons just a little over 4 years ago with the Penn State club. Since then I've done about 20, most recently collegiate nationals, where I came in 41st with a time of 2:04, which probably means nothing to most of you right now...to put that in context its about 15 minutes slower than the guy who won the olympic trials later that day goes on that type of course.

I signed up for the ironman almost a year ago but I only began really specific training in the last couple of weeks, so I'm counting on whatever shape I was in for collegiate nationals to carry over. Although the races are very different distances, and will be run at very different paces, most of the training is actually the same. The only difference is adding some longer bike rides to get to the point where 112 miles doesn't take so much out of me that I can't run 26 miles. Also, adding some longer runs, like regular marathon training, will help in the second half of the run immensely.

Here's a more detailed breakdown of ironman vs. olympic distance (collegiate nationals)
swim
Olympic: 0.9 miles, swim as hard as you can to stay on the feet of the fast swimmers
Ironman: 2.4 miles, still try to draft but that's mostly to save energy, there's a long day ahead!

bike
Olympic 24.8 mi - bike as hard as you can without completely trashing your legs
Ironman 112 mi - easy to steady pace - probably 70% of the effort of an olympic distance but because wind resistance is the cube of the speed, this will only be about 2 mph slower.

run
Olympic 6.2 mi - run as hard as you can, this usually is only about 1-2 min slower than I could do for a standalone 10K
Ironman 26.2 mi - run at an easy pace because by mile 20, easy pace will be as hard as I can go

So, there is a huge difference between the paces and effort levels in a 2 hour race vs. a 10 hour race, as you might expect. There is also the 4th component - eating. Doing an ironman will burn about 7500-8000 calories and I will need to take in about 2000 on the bike and 1000 on the run to avoid the "bonk". The rest will be made up in the post race buffet.