Bone's Blog

Crewing and Pacing at Leaville 100

2010-08-26T10:09:00.000-06:00

Last year when my friend, Margaret, said she put her name on the napkin to run the Leadville 100 mile race I immediately asked her if I could crew or pace her. As an endurance junkie I have done some crazy things but never have I considered doing a 100 mile run, and a hard 100 mile run to boot. So, it sounded like it was going to be a lot of fun.
During the last year I’ve watched her preparing for the run, we’ve done several Ironman races together but her eye has always been on the prize, Leadville. Her runs have been totally outrageous; back to back long runs, runs up and down mountains, high mileage weeks and just plain hard runs, sometimes hitting 90 miles per week. I just can’t imagine doing some of the stuff she’s done, she’s totally hardcore.
During the course of the year I found out another friend, Brian, was also doing Leadville and I volunteered to help pace him. What the heck, I was going to be up there anyway! Brian is another one that has kept is eye on the prize and has done some outrageous amounts of running.

I arrived early at Leadville to help acclimate myself to the high altitude, the hotel is at over 10k feet and the race goes well above 12k feet. I decided to hike around Independence pass to speed up the acclimation process. It was gorgeous up there. I’ll be pacing “my runners” ( I love saying that) along the two highest passes, Hope and Sugarloaf passes, so hiking around Independence seemed like a really good idea. The first few miles were tough, the air is thin and the hills felt steep, but amazingly after a few miles I felt pretty normal.

Margaret threw a party at the Leadhouse (the Leadville version of the Ironhouse) she rented for her family and college friends. I got to meet a bunch of the Albuquerque runners that were running Leadville, some extremely experienced and some first timers. Lot’s of pasta and a lot of energy, two of my favorite things!

I had two 10ish mile legs to pace over plus what ever happened during the day. I was more nervous about pacing than I am about racing. Go figure. The night before the race I just couldn’t sleep and ended up taking an antihistamine around 12:30 to knock me out. I decided to sleep in and miss the start of the race because I wouldn’t be any good to anyone if I didn’t at least get some sleep. I’m still bummed that I missed the start of the race.
To be continued. ..

Ironman St George

2010-04-12T12:44:00.003-06:00

Ironman St George is coming up fast, only about 18 days left! Training for this IM has been pretty tough. The weather hasn’t cooperated and my mental state just hasn’t put in the right frame of mind to train hard. But now that the tough training is done I’m getting excited for the race, go figure.

This IM I tried something a little different; Dread Pirate talked me into taking the spin class from hell, taught by Satan himself, not some underling demon, nope, the big wig. Actually Roy, the instructor, isn’t that bad but the class is pure torture. It’s a 2 hour time trial class where you are at maximum sustainable effort for the entire time, that is, when you aren’t at interval pace or taking a “pull” at the front. Zero recovery time. I’m totally drained after the class. It’s going to be interesting to see how things turn out. Oh, and set a new HR max the second week of the class.

I’m a bit concerned about my training because I’ve only done one 100 mile bike but a bunch of 75-85 mile rides with a run after the bike. I’m really hoping the monster spin class will make up for my lack of real riding.

My running has been “okay” nothing great, I’m hoping that I can ride the ultra marathon run fitness level through to IM. I’ve been getting in some decent running but nothing outstanding. I have been doing a good 3-4k swim before each run so hopefully that’s also going to help come race day.

I’ve really had to start swimming again and it’s felt pretty good, that is, until I tried on the wet suit, wow has it always been that tight? Guess I’ll be swimming in the wet suit from now until the race so I can get my shoulders and lungs used to the constriction.

I’ve decided to use my Road bike and put some aerobars on it. At first I was really skeptical about the set up but now that I’ve been riding it for a month or so it’s pretty nice, very stable and I feel good on it. The other big change to the bike is the addition of a compact crank, it should make spinning up the hills much easier. For a normal “ride” I wouldn’t need a compact crank but let’s not forget about the hilly marathon after the hilly ride.

Overall I don’t have any time goals for the race, just finish healthy and have a good time.

The things we do for fashion

2010-03-15T11:04:00.005-06:00

Green dress run –the things we do for fashion:

Okay, I have to admit that I’ve been looking forward to the return of the Albuquerque Road runners Green dress run since the Outlaws were invited back in January, it sounded like a lot of fun.

It’s been a long time since I’ve run with the Roadrunners and I forgot how friendly and supportive they are, plus they put on a great handicap series. Many thanks for inviting us to run!

The course is a tough 4 miles in the foothills of Albuquerque, with a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream just a little after mile marker 2 – at the top of a one mile assent. The shot, the race and the good time’s were all for free. The catch is that you have to run in a Green dress, and the dresses are free.

I arrived a bit late for the run so the selection of dresses was a bit short. Luckily the Dread Pirate was there to help & found a nice “flirty” dress for me. It kinda looked like a large Girl Scout uniform and the GeekGirl started making girlscout cookie jokes. Funny.

When I tried on the dress, to say it was snug would be an understatement, I could barely breath. DP said don’t worry you’ll be fine it’s just a sacrifice you’ll have to make for fashion- great.

Ready to go and I get hooked up with two really fast looking girls, they were down from Colorado to run in the USA indoor track & field championships and decided to do the race for fun. I managed to keep up with one of the girls but other one just took off like a bat out of hell, she put about a quarter mile on me by the 1 mile marker. Wow is she fast – must be nice to be 20 and in great shape! The other girl that I was able to keep up with was having wardrobe problems. Okay, keeping up really means I was following her, and I might throw in that there is something strangely alluring about running after a girl in dress, very distracting.

Before hitting mile two some of the other Colorado runners came zipping by me like I was standing still – wow those guys were good!

The run was really hard, not just because I couldn’t breathe (because the dress was so tight), but racing in the foot hills with the ups and downs, the loose gravel and the big assents is just plain hard.

Misty striking a great pose

Beach to Battleship race report

2009-11-17T09:55:00.004-07:00

B2B race report:

About a year ago the NM Outlaws were casting about for an Ironman race to compete in for our club race. B2B won out over some very tough competition – it won mainly because of the location, time of year (weather ) and cost. North Carolina in early November is incredible!

We had a house on the beach, the weather was perfect, the cost of the race was about $200 cheaper than an M dot race, and they have a half-iron distance and relays. I think the half iron distance race really cemented B2B as our race of choice this way we could include club members that are either not ready for an iron distance race or had other plans that didn’t include a big race in November. B2B is definitely a race destination worth considering.

Packing, driving, flying and organizing 12 athletes and 3 sherpas is a really hard task, Thankfully everyone took on some responsibility and all of our plans worked out flawlessly! Special thanks to Debi, Margaret, Cory, Lorna, and Loraine, you guys had us organized, transported, and fully supported!

Sitting in the Albuquerque airport I suddenly realized that I had forgotten my bike shorts and my run shorts. Darn, that really put me into worry mode, I wasn’t sure if I could find a suitable replacement for bike shorts and I need compression shorts to run in. You all know how you have your favorite non-chafing, correctly padded shorts. Thankfully the expo had some bike shorts. Since I totally suck at shopping it took forever for me to find something, Well, I actually didn’t find anything, Jane and Lorna found the shorts. The local Tri-shop had some very expensive compression shorts so now I had my replacements, and for only $150 dollars. Well, I can always use more shorts.

The days leading up to the race were hectic and not very restful though tons of fun! It’s great hanging out with Anal-retentive, tapering, hyper athletes that eat nonstop. We had a great time walking on the beach, discussing our race tactics, clothing of choice and general logistics. Of course maybe we were all hyper from the sugar of 15 dozen cookies (Thanks Lorna and Cory!)

Race day came much too quickly, The morning started at 4:00am, the usual nutrition, and off to the races! After a quick trip to drop off some last minute items in the T1 bag and then out to the beach. The trolleys to the beach were nice, warm and frequent. After changing into our wet suits and dropping off our gear we headed out to the beach. . We had a bunch of outlaws at the swim start Margaret and Namoi (in their IM debut), Mark T and Jane were up for IM number 2, Miguel, Tim and myself. Margaret looked a little worried, or maybe it was the cold, Naaaa – she never gets cold! A few last minute hugs, good lucks and we were off! The sand was really cold and my feet were numb by the time we got to the starting line but the warm 69 degree water and brisk swim quickly warmed them up. The swim is amazingly fast! That’s one IM pr that I’ll never break! 53ish minutes and it was all over. After the swim I had THE BEST wetsuit stripper of ALL TIME! He unzipped me pulled down my suit over my shoulders, told me to sit, one yank and the suit was off. Wow! That took all of 5 seconds.

The run to the bike start wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, a 400 yard jog in 48 degree temperatures, wet and without shoes isn’t something I would normally do but it just wasn’t too bad, at least my feet were cold enough the asphalt and corresponding little rocks didn’t bother them.

The bike: I had purchased a disposable cotton tee shirt and gloves for the bike because I knew it would be a bit cold out. They worked perfectly and I shed them at the second aid station. The station that actually had nutrition! I’ll be sending the RD a recommendation that he actually have nutrition at the first aid station – like the booklet says. Not only didn’t the first aid station have nutrition it was 30 miles into the bike. I had already gone through my “emergency” gels and all my fluids by mile 25 thinking that the aid station was “just around the corner”. The fist aid station did have fluids and I picked some up, but that meant I needed to make it to the next aid station for nutrition. It turns out that the next aid station wasn’t until about mile 50! That’s 50 miles on Heed and two gels, not a good thing for an IM race. I was pissed, and loaded up on everything because I didn’t know if the other aid stations could be depended on for nutrition. I finally caught my friend Miguel at the special needs station (mile 65) and he wanted me to work on his bike because it was making noise. Huh? Right, I’ll get on that right away!  Anyway, the rest of the bike was uneventful except for the head wind for the last 30 or so miles. Wow, the air is thick at sea level and that 5-10 mph wind really took its toll, this wasn’t

Rolling in to T2 was a huge relief, staying aero for 6 hours isn’t much fun and I was definitely ready to get off the bike, my neck hurt, but sit bones hurt, my hip hurt and I was just plain tired of riding.

The run starts off well enough then you hit the mother of all bridges. This thing must be a mile long and goes up and up and up! Nope, didn’t run most of it, my legs just weren’t there yet. Miguel and I left T2 together so at least we had company on the initial walk! After the bridge and the first aid station what comes next? Yes, another bridge, but this time you get a metal grate with little metal things sticking out. Yeah, that was fun, Oh you mean I get to do this three more times? I must say that the first few miles of this marathon was about the ugliest scenery ever. After crossing into downtime Wilmington with the red bricks and cobblestones I changed my opinion of the run. This section was great, the we got to run through some old neighborhoods with cool houses, then to a very nice park area, and then back down to t2. Since this was a two loop course I got to see all my Outlaw buddies and facebook friends on the course. It was great seeing everyone out there having a good time! Everywhere we went people were shouting go Outlaws! By about mile 9, I had dropped Miguel somewhere, and I just started talking to random folks. Most people were happy to talk but a few were a bit cranky – undoubtedly caught up in the dark side of Iron distance racing, not a good place to be. By the second loop I hooked up with Gary, together we pushed and actually negative split the second half. Way to go Gary!

Coming into the finish line was a bit weird. They had the timer about 100 yards from the actual finish line, strange After finishing I found Mr T shaking uncontrollably, and walked him over to get some warm clothes. A few slices of pizza, water, and some nice salty chips I was feeling much better and went to go greet the rest of the outlaws.

Congratulations to everyone! Margaret ( See, under 14 hours!) and Naomi on your first Ironman races, Mr T – thank you for not going into shock from pushing too hard. Miguel, you are a great training partner, double congratulations on your 1st place. Jane, you rocked the course, even with the ITband issues. Tim, wow, you are fast! Congratulations to Orlando who finished his first HIM. Michi, First in her age group! MG – you are tough guy! Debi and Hartley, very nice long brick! Wish I could place in one of my “training races” haha!

Getting ready for B2B

2009-11-02T13:28:00.002-07:00

It’s been a fun few months getting ready for the Beach to Battleship iron distance race and I’m about as ready for it as I can be.

I feel like I’m in pretty good shape, but my low swim yardage makes me nervous. This is the first year I haven’t consistently been swimming masters, though I have been swimming a couple of times per week, It’s just not the same without someone on deck keeping you honest.

For the record, I’ve done 4 century rides, many 70-80 mile rides. One marathon, one Ultra marathon, the hard leg of the Colorado relay which totals 23 miles, and have been consistently running 20 mile runs. Oh, and don’t forget all those bricks! All that has to be worth something come Ironman time, right?

The bikes are loaded and most of the gear is heading out to NC. As I write this Margaret and Cory are just outside of Amarillo heading towards Groom Texas. You just couldn’t ask to be associated with nicer people! Big thanks to you guys, you rock!!!

Now I just need to get my butt(preferentially healthy an rested) to the start line. .

Palo Duro Trail 50k

2009-10-19T19:12:00.006-06:00

Palo Duro 50k Trial run, The Beast

Brian first talked to me about the Palo Duro 50k right after the Socorro Chile Harvest Triathlon. I must have been high on the endorphins from having a good race and started actually thinking it was a good idea. After all, the race was several months away and I would be in “good shape” after running the Colorado Relay and all the training getting ready for the Beach to Battleship Ironman. Yeah, it sounded like fun….

After convincing Margaret and Jane it would be a good idea, after all good friends don’t let friends do stupid things – alone. We registered, made reservations and made training plans.

Great, now I had three things to get ready for, the Colorado relay – which I was lucky enough to get the hardest leg (had to arm wrestle Margaret for it), the Palo Duro 50K and the B2B ironman. My training plan for B2B just wasn’t going to cut it. Luckily Jane has a coach and Margaret has a really good training plan!

After a couple of months running the foothills, a couple handfuls of 20+ mile runs, several centuries on the bike, and hill repeats every Thursday I finally felt comfortable running the 50k. Well, I wasn’t so much comfortable with it as I was fit enough to run it. Truth be told, I was really nervous about the distance as it was an unknown.

I’m use to road marathons where the energy is high, people are anxious, the music is blaring, and the road is smooth. Trail runs seem to be diametrically opposed. The energy is low key, most folks are relaxed, there’s no music (well, there was a live piper –which was very cool) and the roads are anything but smooth.

At the pre-race pasta feed we checked in, got our swag, race numbers, ate our fill, and talked shop. What a great time. And, as a bonus, I got the coolest race number of all time, 666, yep the number of the beast! So as a group it was decided that I needed horns for my running hat, which Walgreens provided for $1.99 and Jane painstakingly attached to my prized IM St Louis hat.

The start was a bit difficult since it was in the dark and the route quickly turns to single track where it’s almost impossible to pass. It turns out it was probably a good way to start off, nice and easy with plenty of walking for the first 3 or so miles. The Dread Pirate and I ran the first three miles together, with me trying to shine a flash light far enough ahead of us that we could see the obstacles. After the 3 mile mark the trails started to open up, by mile 6 the runners had separated enough to get into a nice grove and the sun came up. Nice….

Mile 6 saw us back at the start and ready to run two big 13 mile loops. Margaret and I found each other and started to run, it’s great to find some your own speed to run with. We ran the whole race together, switching off taking the lead and taking pictures of interesting landscape items and each other.

One of the most fascinating things for me was the feed stations. I’m accustomed to powerbars, fruit, gels, the aid stations at trail events consist of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, potato chips, cookies, snickers bars, M&M’s, salted baked potatoes, coke, pretzels as well as bananas. At first I was nervous about the nutrition and took in a few gels but after about 15 miles I relaxed a bit and just started eating whatever sounded good. It appeared to have worked since I finished the race feeling well and never had an energy slump.

The run was designated as a easy training pace but with the hills, single track, and dirt, my heartrate seemed to climb right up into the serious racing zone, I spent about 4 hours in zone 4 and about 1.5 hours in zone 3. Not necessary an easy training run but it worked for me.

The course was gorgeous, wet lands followed by rolling hills out into the deep red canyons, running along red cliff walls, through dry river banks, climbing rough single track, Beautiful scenery all over the place. Oh, and don’t forget the wild life, There was one runner making crow calls and entertaining us with his English accented calls. We could hear him from miles away.

The race was fantastic, and I’m totally hooked on Trail runs. The weather was perfect, nice and cool in the morning and no wind with the temperature heating up to around 80 by noon. My total time was right at 6 hours for 31.5 miles, definitely not a road race! If you ever get a chance to do this run go for it! You won’t regret it.

A welcome recovery week!

2009-09-08T09:50:00.002-06:00

As most of you know I’m training for several things at once. Long term goal is the Ironman St Geroge in May of 2010, which I’m a little nervous about because of the bike profile, but that’s an entirely different post. Short term goals are the Colorado relay (Sept 11-12, Palo Duro 50k (October 17) and Beach to Battleship iron Distance race (November 17).

I’m less worried about Beach to Battleship than I am about the Palo Duro 50k, which is really strange. B2B will be my 4^th Ironman and I’ve never done a 50k run so I guess I’m nervous about the unknown as opposed to the bigger race. The Colorado Relay is hard but lots and lots of fun!

The training for both short term goals is going really well and I’m at the end of a four week build period that has been pretty intense. Each weekend has been a very tough workout and I haven’t missed a scheduled weekday workout, my fitness has steadily been improving and I’m gradually getting down to race weight..

This weekends run was a 20 mile hard trail run where I spent the majority of the time in zone 3 and zone 4, Not good, but running in the foothills east of Albuquerque makes it easy to push much harder than you would normally do your long run at.

After the run was supposed to be a 3500 yard swim but due to cramps in both lower legs I just couldn’t get past 2500 yards. Every time I would push off the wall one calf or the other would cramp. By the time I decided to call it quits both feet were also cramping. I’m not sure if the cramping was due to dehydration, stress from running the foothills or just an electrolyte issue.

The weekend’s bike rides were great, the main group did about 80 miles and two of us decided to get an extra climb in and did an extra 20 miles in the process. Nice even 100 miles for the first ride. The next days ride was a famous coffee ride. We ride out to Bernalillo (about 17 miles one way) get coffee, pastries or whatever and ride back home as a group. The coffee ride is a totally social and a welcome break to the intense training that we have been doing preparing for our various races.

This week is a very welcome recovery week, well, if you can call running a 170 mile relay race recovery!

The Ride Part III

2009-09-08T08:35:00.003-06:00

The Ride Part III

For me the ride is always the most interesting and most fun. We started from the paved road just below the cabin and headed down for a nice brisk 6 mile decent, the same one that I ran down the previous day. Its funny how altitude plays tricks on you, my legs and lungs were both hurting by the time we got to the bottom. What’s up with that? It’s supposed to be a decent! Hope this isn’t an omen for the rest of the ride!

We made our way into Chama proper to meet Steve and the kiddos. The kids were having a great time eating pancakes and Steve had this wonderful looking breakfast burrito with bacon and green chile hanging out the sides. I decided right then and there we were stopping for one of those on our way back through town.

The ascent to the top of the pass and the continental divide is an 8 mile, 2000(ish) foot climb. The scenery is spectacular! The road sports a smooth wide shoulder with plenty of room to weave side to side when the oxygen deprivation starts hitting. We left just a few minutes before the train started its trek up the pass and our loose goal was to beat it to the top. Right out of town the hills start but they are small and we stayed together as a group. When the hills started getting steep our nice little group fell apart as we started climbing at our pace. The “Leaving New Mexico” sign came up much faster that it did last year so maybe that’s a sign that I’m in better shape, or maybe it’s just the thin air playing tricks on me. Either way, it’s a great regroup point and we took full advantage of the rest stop. We had fun taking pictures of the train as it passed us and then it was time for the final assault on the summit. The train passes under the main road and I was determined to beat it to that passing, not really that hard but it’s a fine line between blowing up and making it to the pass gracefully. I could see the train on my left as it picked up speed, and luckily I had a nice downhill section where I could also pick up some speed. I pushed hard, determined to beat the train and felt like I was a cowboy trying to ride my horse ahead of the train to the safety of the other side. Yeah I was getting a little hypoxic. I beat the train to the pass and now I needed to beat it to the top! The final hill looks daunting, I saw it and wondered if I would even make it to the top much less beat the train. As it turns out its an optical illusion, while the it’s most certainty a good hill it’s nothing compared to what it looks like. Even after climbing the hill last year I was still fooled into thinking about how difficult the final ascent was. Having cleared the final big hill it was an easy ride into the train station. I handily beat the train, Nothing like racing 100+ year old equipment up a hill.

Next in was Jane and she also beat the train, Orlando, Hartley and Debi all made it to the top and we got to take a great picture.

The ride back to Chama was fantastic! Not TDF fast but it sure made up for the ascent. Back in Chama, Jane and I ordered our burrito (with double meat), it came just in time as I was starting to fade and seriously doubted I would make it back to the cabin. Orlando ordered a breakfast plate and Debi and Hartley rode back to the cabin.

Back on the road it was an easy ride to the cabin road but now we had that 6 mile hill up to the cabin plus an extra 2 miles to Corkins lodge to make an even 60 miles. Riding the hill wasn’t as bad as I feared and we made it without any problems. What a great ride with great friends.

Part II - the Swim

2009-09-01T09:34:00.002-06:00

The swim was supposed to consist of a 2500 yard open water swim in Heron lake. After refueling from the run we goofed off a bit and I played around with the kids, face booked and generally relaxed. We had a few hours to kill while Steve was off riding to the top of the continental divide (He volunteered to watch the kiddos while we swim). We made it to the lake, trying to ignore the storm clouds building in the horizon, and got ready to swim. The water was perfect, the lake was calm, clean and we found a great spot to start from, but those darn clouds were looking ominous. We made it about 500 yards out before the first squall hit us. The waves started getting bigger and started capping, I looked up and saw lightning in the horizon. Our pleasant swim turned into a make it back to the shore as fast as you can type race. We all made it back to shore with just a few panic attacks. Debi’s fancy new GPS unit said we swam 1.25 miles in a little over 16 minutes. Yeah! Those new fancy wet suits sure help! The ugly truth is, she forgot to reset her previous workout so we only ended up doing about 1000 yards, which still isn’t too bad.

Back on shore we quickly packed up our gear and headed off to the cabin. We had a barbeque planed for the evening and despite our attenuated workout we were all still starving.

The evening’s activities consisted of rolling on the foam roller and watching a great documentary about hiking the continental divide from the south end of the US all the way to Canada. The first part of the show was focused on New Mexico and they showed the Continental divide monument which would be our destination on tomorrows bike ride. Those hikers are seriously crazy, It takes anywhere from 4-5 months to do the hike – that’s 20 miles per day, rain or shine. Serious stuff.

High Altitude Workout Training - Part I

2009-08-31T14:39:00.006-06:00

High Altitude Workout Training (HAWT) as the ladies of the tri camp have designated it.

Debi and Hartely were incredibly kind enough to host a tri training camp at their cabin in northern New Mexico. Last year we had a “Race the Train” ride where we try to beat the Cumbers & Toltec train to the 10,022 foot continental divide. We had so much fun last year that we did it again this year except we threw in a run and an open water swim.

The weekend started early at with a half day of forced vacation. I was told early Thursday morning “either you use it or you lose it” so of course, I used it.

Fellow outlaw Orlando, my son and I drove the 2.5 hours to Chama and arrived at the cabin around 8:00pm, received a warm welcome and a table full of sandwich fixings, roast chicken and fruit. We promptly stuffed ourselves in preparation for the weekend’s activities and anticipated caloric deficit.

DP, hubby and twins arrived later that evening around 11:00 pm just in time to save me from impending doom in the jingo game that Debi and I were playing.

The next morning started off at a relaxed pace. No reason to get up early and run, the mountains are cool and it was late August so we got to sleep in. Everyone had different runs scheduled. Mine was about 18 miles but I figured I could cut it down a few miles because I was running hills and we were at 8000 feet. We all ran down to the paved road form the cabin, at the bottom everyone headed up the hill except me, I headed down. Now, down hill is not as easy as you would assume, especially at 8k feet! The first 6 miles of the run is a net loss and my legs and lungs were feeling it. It seems that I just couldn’t catch my breath and I chalked it up to the high altitude but by mile 5 I realized that not only was the altitude getting to me I was also having some asthma issues, funny how the altitude masked things. At the turn around point I used my inhaler and wow I could breathe! The run up the hill promised to be long and painful, and it was. By mile 11 I was spent and ended up taking a little walking break, which really helped. I pushed on past the road leading to the cabin and ran the rest of the way up the hill, another three(ish) miles to the end of the paved road to my turn around point. What a great feeling to start running down hill again!

My total run time was 2:39 for 16 miles at about 8k feet with an ascent of 2600 feet. I’m not sure my Garmin is lying to me or not about the 2600 feet, it just doesn’t seem right ( I think it's too much), but I don’t have a way to verify it. When I got back from the run Hartley was making breakfast and we had a great time talking about our individual runs.

Picture of me after the run. Yeah,I think it’s the gayest picture I’ve ever taken but hey, maybe the socks had something to do with it?

Swim workout Part II:

Yoga

2009-04-03T15:42:00.003-06:00

I’ve been doing the same yoga for a couple of years now and decided it was time for a change. Since I had extra time on Thursday night I decided to do a hot Vinyasa yoga class. Normally I do the Bikrams yoga once or twice per week and while it’s certainty hot and I get dehydrated it’s very doable. The Vinyasa class kicked my butt! The poses aren’t particularly hard but the combination of 105+degree heat the second workout of the day conspired against me. At one point I thought I was going to pass out, which would have been a little embarrassing, it was a tough class.

The 6:00 am yoga class that I’m used to going to is very low key, little talking, not many people, serious and most folks are over 40 years old and generally a 50/50 split between men and women. The 6:00 pm vinyasa class is the complete opposite. Everyone was talking, laughing socializing, and three quarters of the class was under 30, female and the studio was packed. It was a totally different experience, and I really enjoyed it (minus the whole passing out thing). I think what surprised me the most is seeing what some of the women were wearing, I realized it’s hot and all but is that really a reason to wear next to nothing? I normally wouldn’t complain about these things but it was pretty difficult to concentrate and I kept falling over. The women didn’t seem to have a problem with what I was wearing, go figure.

I think I'll try and make a few more of these classes, it was a lot of fun and well worth the hazards of falling over. If you are looking for a hard workout look up a hot yoga studio.

More on the POJ

2009-03-27T08:57:00.003-06:00

After a many requests to see my POJ, Okay, well, actually only one request. Here it is. I like to call vehicles like this a 50/50 vehicle. Now, I’ve been around cars all my life, grew up working on them, rebuilding engines, body work, paint, the whole nine yards. I know when a car has the potential to look good and I know some cars will never look good without a lot of body work or a paint job. This is one of those vehicles that look reasonably good as long as you don’t really look at it. Where was I, Oh yeah, the 50/50 truck. A 50/50 vehicle looks good from 50 feet away (when you can’t really see the details) or at 50 miles per hour (when you can only get a quick look at it). This is my 50/50 truck. Don’t look at the bent up fender/door the hood is bent and pounded back to a reasonable shape. The rust over the rear tires isn’t all that bad, all the scratches and little dents on the bed and front fender aren’t too noticeable. In the end, a good buffing, cleaning the rims and a little chrome polish go a long way toward making a POJ something that can be used as an everyday driver. At least everything works. Well almost everything, I still need to change three light bulbs, fix the drivers side seat so I don’t sink to the floorboard, and replace the broken bolt on the drivers side mirror so I can actually bolt the mirror on to prevent it from shaking sliding around. It’s getting there.

My POJ

2009-03-25T10:55:00.002-06:00

I recently picked up a truck from a friend, who has been having some financial difficulties, and I was trying to figure out what to do with it. My first thought was to fix it up and let my middle daughter drive it. That thought was quickly nixed because the truck doesn’t have air bags and I wanted something a little safer for her to drive during her first few years of vehicular mayhem. So, I thought, it would be great to have a second vehicle at work so when I ride to work I would still have a vehicle to do errands in at lunch time, or have the ability to pick up kids from school in an emergency, and it would be kind of nice to just have a second vehicle. The University has a nice safe underground parking lot that is patrolled by security 24x7 and I can just park the truck there and use it when I need it. Sounds like a great solution to my bike commuter woes, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. The plan is to drive it in on Monday (with the bike in the back) park it for the week and drive it home on Friday (with the bike in the back).

The truck is lovingly referred to as the POJ – that’s Piece of Junk, or as I less decorously refer to it as my POC – piece of crap. My son was around when it was named so it’s officially the POJ truck.

The truck itself is fairly solid now and is actually kind of fun to drive. It’s been getting about 23 mpg in the city, which is much better than my F150. Unfortunately, I have more money in it than I paid for it. Mind you, all the work has been done by me and my son, so the money is in new and used parts, no labor.

Here’s a list of things that I have done to it.
Replace the gas tank - The old tank leaked whenever it had more than a quarter of a tank.
Replace the fuel filler hose – It would leak more gas on to the ground that got into the tank
Major Tune up – It almost flunked emissions – the tune up really helped
Replace the turn signal switch ( brake lights, and turn signals wouldn’t work with the old switch)
Oil change - normal stuff
Transmission oil change – Wow, it was bad, surprised it even shifted
New Battery – it died, when I was driving it home, I had to push the darn truck into the Checkers parking lot, my son was not impressed.
Replace all 5 tires – bad rubber = bad stopping power and drivability.
Replaced about half the lug nuts so they would be the same size, just incase I did get a flat.
Replaced one of the windshield wiper arms – the old one was zip tied together!
Replaced all shock absorbers - only one was actually working – I was getting sea sick driving the truck because it was bouncing so much!
Put a working stereo in it, I need my jams.
Replaced the steering wheel - the old was totally trashed, how do you trash a steering wheel?
Had to find a spare tire carrier at the junk yard to replace the rusted contraption that was under the truck

Replaced the air filter box – I had to get one from someplace in Louisiana
Pounded out the door and fenders so the drivers side door would open
Put bolts in said fender so it wouldn’t fall off.
Aligned the hood so it would open and close
Replaced about 7 light bulbs, including both headlights (still have three to replace but they are non critical)
Buffed out the truck so I wouldn’t get oxidized paint on me whenever I brushed up against it
Cleaned up the trash form the inside of the Cab
Replaced the shifter knob, how do you shift without a shift knob?
Fixed the doors so they actually open from the inside – great design idea.
The minor fixes go on an on.

On the bright side though, it has good brakes!

There you have, it my solution to not having a vehicle at work when I commute by bike. Now I don’t have an excuse not to ride everyday this summer.

Slow Start

2009-03-24T09:04:00.001-06:00

This season, like many others has really been off to a slow start, if it’s not one thing it’s another! Every year I say I’m going to get a great start on the season and almost every year something comes up.

This year I had a Hernia operation, and while the operation and recovery aren’t necessary that bad the pre-operation slowdown was horrible. It’s been exactly two months since the discovery of “Ernie” (as he has been affectingly nick named) and I’m just now getting back into the swing of things. Next week I’ll start on my normal training load.

This weekends easy bricks were pretty tough on me and the scar formally known as Ernie. I’ve had this persistent muscle pain/spasm in my side since the surgery and on the bike ride it decided to start acting up. Wow, that was rough. Guess I did a little too much too soon. Oh well what’s a triathlete to do?

Funny thing: Before the surgery the Doc said he wouldn’t put any restrictions on me after two weeks of the surgery. He said it wouldn’t do any good anyway, “triathletes are always pushing their bodies to the limit”. Funny guy, he’s a runner…

My Much Neglected Blog

2009-02-03T15:52:00.006-07:00

Well, lets see, what has happened since I last posted something/anything.

Duke City Marathon. What can I say about the marathon? It was just training for IMAZ. I wasn’t even sure If I was capable of finishing the marathon but I actually felt pretty good. The goal was to go nice and easy so it ended up being around 4:10. This years race was actually pretty well run! I swore I would never do it again after they ran out of water several years in a row but they got their act together, Water at the aid stations and there were also people there to hand out water! So, I might do it again next year.

I finished IMAZ with a PR of over an hour!! That was really cool! It seems all the commuting on the bike over the summer really paid off. Oh, and I got my Asthma under control so that helped. Of course, maybe it was the new top-o-the-line wet suit that helped, Or maybe the cool weather. It might have been Stitch that pushed me on during the marathon. Hummm, maybe it was everything finally came together. Yep that’s it.

Pic of the prerace dinner an the Ironhouse bikeroom.

Several months of doing nothing but fun runs, coffee rides, yoga, and weight lifting. Okay, so maybe not doing “nothing”, but not really training either.

Egg Nog Jog, fun little 4 mile race on New Years Day and we had a Outlaw get together after the race

Sandia Snow Shoe Race. Wow that race is hard but a lot of fun! Oh and I got chicked big time by Mo.

I got my .35 nanoseconds of fame on house hunters, MG’s episode finally got aired and they had a couple of shots of the Outlaws riding.

I almost have Lornas bike built, it’s been a long process of collecting parts

The Bike

2008-11-03T09:59:00.007-07:00

The Bike:

Now that the brunt of the training has passed I thought I would post a little blurb on my bike and the configuration I’ve chosen for IMAZ.

I’ve spend the last few years getting this bike just the way I want it. The bike was originally purchased for IMFL in ’04 but that race just never happened. Life sometimes gets in the way of the best laid plans. This will be IM number three for the bike, that is assuming I finish! (knock on wood). Over the years the bike has been almost entirely rebuilt with the only original equipment being the headset, brakes/levers, and shifters.

The bike is a 2004 Quintana Roo Caliente, Tangerine with flames, I think it’s one of the best looking paint schemes to come out. The only other person I know in New Mexico that has the same bike is my friend and fellow Outlaw “the Pocket Assassin”.

So, I thought I would list the components on the bike and give some details about why I chose the particular component.

The bike frame:
49 cm Quintana Roo Caliente, 50 cm top tube length. You’ll notice on the picture that the set tube extends way past the top tube. This is a horrible design for adjustability, effectively this makes the frame a 52 cm frame, which isn’t a good thing I really liked this frame because it has a combination of carbon stays, carbon fork and carbon steerer tube. It has barrel adjusters for on the fly tuning, and it came in my size with 650 wheels. Finding a small bike is pretty challenging, especially 4 years ago, and I really lucked out finding a bike that I liked.

From the bottom up:

Tires: Michelin 650 Pro2 race Clinchers – Great tires, light, rolls well, lots of grip and pretty puncture resistant. I’m also running two ounces of Stans in each wheel to fend off those nasty goatheads. The Stans add weight but in the scheme of things I don’t really think it matters much.

Wheel set: 2006 Zip 404, 650 Clinchers. Light, stiff, aero, versatile, Overall great wheel set, Oh and I got them for $400, with only about 200 miles on them.

Chain: SRAM PC 9speed Hollow-pin – Light, easy to maintain, and shifts great.

Crank Set/Bottom Bracket: Dura-Ace 10 sp Double, Length 167.5 mm, 39x53 This is a strange size but my short legs seem to like the 167.5 crank arm length. The first time I used this crankset I felt awesome! The former crankset was heavy and had an odd gearing of 41x52, but combined with the 650 wheelset I had reasonable climbing power but would always spin out on the decent. The new gear ratio gives me a few more gears on the assent and a little bit more speed on the decent. Overall a great choice, but the Q-factor seems to be a bit smaller that the old crank set which limits my crossover gears, Oh well, life is tough when you ride a small bike.

Pedals: Speed Play X2, Light easy to get in and out of, lots of float.

Rear Derailleur: Dura-Ace, short cage, Smooth shifting, light.

Rear Cassette, Dura-Ace 11-23, I’m leaning toward this gear selection because IMAZ only has a few small hills (Other than the b-line) My other choice is the gear that I’ve been riding for the training rides it’s an SRAM, 12-26. The SRAM is a great Cassette and an overall good gearing, light and much cheaper than the DA.

Skewers: Zipp Titanium shafts – 85 grams for the pair, light, strong and they match the Zipp wheels!

Graphics: “Bones”, From Speedy sign, it cost’s all of 5 bucks, and, I think, is pretty cool.
Front Derailleur, Ultegra, Stock – Couldn’t justify upgrading this.

Waterbottle cage: Arundel Carbon, what can I say, carbon is cool.

Brakes: Ultegra, Stock. These are good brakes, why change them out?

Headset: Stock, I’ve never had and issue with it.

Seat Post: Easton EC90 Carbon. I needed a straight seat post because of the extended seat tube. The Easton is light, straight and was on sale! Yeah, thats right, there's only about half and inch of post showing!

Seat: Wow, This has been an ongoing quest but I think I’ve finally found the right seat! It’s a Blackwell Flow, It’s much narrower than I’m used to riding but things seem to be supported quite well, no numbing issues, no back pain and no chafing. If you notice the sides of the saddle come down past the rails which make the nose a bit wide, but that’s not a deal breaker. For me, this has been the best Tri saddle I have ever ridden.

Hydration: X-lab carbon wing. This back of the seat hydration pack is much lighter than it’s predecessor and it sits back off the tail end of the seat a bit more. With my old wing I was constantly breaking bottle cages. The new one is light strong and has many more ways to attach gear. On the bottle side of the wing I’m using a specialized rib cage, which keeps me from ejecting bottles.

Cycle computer: Catyeye Dual wireless. This really cleans up the bike while giving me everything I could ask for in a computer. Nice easy to read display, cadence and it works flawlessly.

Spacers: Carbon no-name – Yeah, Carbon is good.

Stem: F99, 80 mm, Very Light, stiff and reasonably inexpensive.

BaseBar: Syntace Stratos, Small 39cm. For some reason this bike came with a 41cm basebar – who knows why?

AeroBars: Profile carbon Stryke. These bars are about the most adjustable bar I have every come across. You can tweak them endlessly. Light good vibration dampening. I changed out the stock Profile arm pads with the Syntace pads which actually have padding.

Shifters: Dura Ace, Not many other options.

Brake levers: Provile Quick Stop 2 - Good solid levers – no reason to change out.

There you have it, 4 years of component evolution.

Soma

2008-10-27T09:25:00.004-06:00

Soma:

I feel like an athlete by association, is that the way it should be? Does that mean I haven’t been racing enough or does it mean that I’ve lost whatever drive it takes for me to consider myself an athlete? The ironic thing about this whole feeling is that I’m in the final big weeks of training for IMAZ. I think working Soma and the Elephant man and watching everyone compete has made me feel kind of like an outsider. Obviously I’m not but it’s really a strange feeling to shake.

But on to more fun things:

Helping official at the Soma Triathlon was great! Across the board everyone was thankful there were enough Refs on the course to break up any packs that might have formed and hopefully we succeeded. The folks I talked to at the airport didn’t report any large packs or any other problems and everyone seemed to have a good time.

This was my first large race that I was an official at and it was pretty interesting. You really do have the best seat in the house to watch the race. Unfortunately I only got to go out on the motorcycle towards the end of the Half Iron so I missed the burnt of the action. However, I did get to monitor the bike mount/dismount area. There were several athletes that tried getting on the bike without buckling their helmets and fortunately the volunteers did a great job of reminding folks about their helmet straps. Some of the athletes had an amazing dismount process, several came in way to hot and crashed at the dismount line, a couple lost shoes and one guy even unbuckled his helmet before starting to do his flying dismount, right in front of me. That’s focus, and I have to give him credit for an incredible act of agility, however it is against the rules. We will just leave it at that.

I moseyed over to the street next to the mount/dismount area to watch the race and make sure there weren’t any blatantly large packs. Now this is the interesting part. It took about 15 seconds for most riders to go from the top curve, down the hill and into the next curve. This is a long way when you are doing 18-30 mph and I don’t think most of the athletes realized that they could legally draft through that section. I made myself pretty obvious by standing in the middle median, it was pretty hard to miss that bright red shirt. Folks would have outstanding manners while I was around. They would complete passes “just like they intended on doing”, pull to the right and let people pass. Very courteous and rule following while I was there, as soon as I made myself less visible people became much more aggressive and more willing to draft. It was pretty funny because this was all in a little 15 second strip of the course, where I couldn’t really ding them anyway. It has really changed my perspective on how to get the most out of those little sections.

There was one athlete on the dismount zone that was a little ticked off at one of the volunteers trying to get him to slow down, he started to yell something until he spotted me, we made eye contact and he just bit his lip. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been there, and I wonder how that athlete was treating the other volunteers.

I kind of felt like that frustrated cop on the freeway, you know the one that is stuck in traffic doing exactly 65 mph, Cars in front, cars in back, cars to each side but strangely enough, no cars 200 yards beyond or behind him. Everyone “acts” good when they think they might get dinged. Which is fine, I was just hoping just to be visible enough to let some of the less scrupulous folks know that there were officials around.

And really, I just noticed the folks breaking or really pushing the rules everyone else, the vast majority, of the almost 1800 athletes were great and I hope they had a good safe, experience.

Congratulations to all the folks that raced! Special congratulations to DP, who finally raced and completed the race!!

Duke City Marathon

2008-10-20T09:34:00.003-06:00

Ahhh, Iron fitness,

It’s kind of funny how your perspective changes as you get more and more into endurance sports. Yesterday Miguel and I ran the Duke CityMarathon as a training run for Ironman Arizona, yes, a training run. We ran at a goal pace of 9:30 minute miles, which is, for me, a very aerobic hr of 130ish, that translated to about a 4:17 marathon.

I was a bit nervous about running marathon because I haven’t really been training for a standalone marathon with my longest run of the year being18 miles and that was last week! I was hoping my IM fitness would carry me through and it did with flying colors! I’m only a little sore today and expect a speedy recovery.

A few years ago the thought of doing a marathon on less than 45 running miles per week sounded absurd, this marathon was done on less than 25 miles per week. Granted I have been very consistent in my long runs of 14ish miles over the course of the spring and summer and I have been training for an Ironman, but I’m still amazed at how good I felt during the event. Maybe not doing a 100 mile bike ride the day before a long run helps, who would have thunk?

We did the marathon at a pretty slow pace, far off any personal records but the goal wasn’t to set a new PR, it was to get a good long run under out belts, get our legs and feet use to taking a pounding, working on our nutrition, and have a good time doing it. All of which we accomplished. One more check on the IM prep schedule.

It was great seeing all the fellow Outlaws and friends out on the course. It was an absolutely perfect day for a marathon, nice and brisk in the morning and warming up towards the end of the run, with a slight breeze on the way back to keep you cool.

When I look at the course profile it’s interesting how much of an elevation change the course actually has. According to Mr Garmin, there’s 2801 feet of change. Very interesting.

I have changed my opinion of the Duke City Marathon. The last time I did the marathon the aid stations were few and far between, they pretty much ran out of water/Gatorade/cups and they just didn’t have any porta-potties set up on the course. All that has changed! They had plenty of aid stations, lots of water/Gatorade, porta-potties setup at various places, lots of volunteers, they even had little four wheeler cruising between the aid stations. The timing was done via some sort of RFID tags with timing stations setup throughout the course and the staff was great to work with. Overall it was a great experience! My opinion of the DCM has really changed! Well worth the $65 entry fee.

Ironman dues

2008-10-13T08:31:00.002-06:00

Some days you wonder if you should even be riding.

Ironman Arizona is now less than 50 days away and the weekend long rides are at 100 miles, or at least they should be. This weekends 100 mile ride didn't go quite as scheduled.

For some reason I couldn't sleep in the morning of the ride, maybe I was a little apprehensive because I knew the ride was a big one and the next days run was also going to be pretty long. So while I was wondering around the house I decided to check the tires on my bike and air them up for the ride. Well wouldn't you know it I had a half inch slice in the rear tire and the Stans was oozing and bubbling out. Darn it. I took the tire off patched the TIRE, put a new tube in, filled it with Stans and called it good. Maybe this was an omen that I completely missed?

We finally meet up at Defined fitness and SWTRIGAL suggests changing our route because of the bad weather, She wants to head north for 20 miles then turn south for 40 miles, then turn back north to get the benefit of a tail wind on the way home. I really wanted to get some hill training in so we decided to play it by ear. As it turns out playing it by ear doesn't work so well

We head north to our traditional breaking point, or should I say our traditional porta-potty point. Most folks are fairly well hydrated and need one final relief before kicking the ride into high gear.

It's all going well until we leave the parking lot, I manage to get myself wedged between two riders at the parking lot exit, not good since the exit has a very solid wood post right in the middle of the exit. Darn, my left foot won't unclip and my track stand just wasn't going well, down I went. Okay, this is going to be a rough ride. At least I get a lot of sympathy from the lady outlaws, the guys were more concerned about the delay I was causing by trying to get back on my feet! Oh well, guess it's better to fall over and embarrass yourself in front of your friends, right?

The next 30ish miles of the ride out to San Ysidro was uneventful, except for the 25-29 mph that a really generous tail wind provided. We knew it was going to be rough going back, but boy, we didn't count on mother nature getting really pissed at us and throwing everything she had at us.

Brian and Paul agreed to pull the group back and most folks lined up behind them, at this point we had about a 20 mph head wind. I hung off the back, out of the draft zone so I could get a good workout in and maybe help pull any wayward riders back up to the pack.

Completely The winds were pretty outrageous and it felt like we were going to be blown over any number of times. About 65 miles into the ride the sand and gravel that was blowing into our faces was replaced by a light rain, not so bad, Then the hail started and that hurt, we made it to a gas station to regroup we discussed stopping at the local Flying star and having folks pick us up but decided to carry on, the weather looked like it was clearing up. I borrowed a jacket from Michi, who wisely decided she had had enough fun in the great outdoors for one day and called for MG to pick her up. On our way back the weather calmed down for a good few miles and the head wind picked back up. We all regrouped back at the Defined Fitness parking lot and looked at the storm front moving in. I decided to hightail it home before the storm hit. Well....While I was at the light crossing the only major street that separated my from a nice warm shower the rain hit. Now, I don't mind riding in the rain, after all I had a nice jacket that Michi lent me. No problem, Another quarter mile up the hill to my house and the hail started. Ouch, It was hailing so hard I couldn't see where I was going, The almost marble sized pellets really stung, luckily the storm was moving quickly and I was only in the hail for four or five minutes. By the time I got home I was completely soaked.

While I getting ready to take a shower I was summing up the bruises and scrapes from my little fall when I noticed all the little welts all over my back arms and legs. Those darn little hail pellets left their impression. It took several hours before they went away but at least most of them didn't bruise.

All in all, It was one of those rides that will live on in our memories. "Remember that ride we did getting ready for IMAZ back in the fall of '08?" . Yep, it was one rough ride, and I didn't even get in my 100 miles! Now, SWTriGal assures me that riding 80 miles on those conditions is equal to 100 miles of normal riding. I think we have all paid some of our Iron dues this weekend! Guess we will find out around November 23rd!

Offically an offical

2008-09-29T08:46:00.007-06:00

Do these kakis make my butt look big? I joked to my daughter. She just rolled her eyes in typical 13 year old girl fashion and walked away. It’s every Dads duty to try and embarrass his daughter in public and I do a fine job of it. My shopping spree was brought on by the eminent threat of being a first time USAT official at the local Elephant man Olympic distance triathlon, in Elephant butte NM. Or as it seems to have become know, the Elf butt. Thus my joke about my butt looking big, humor totally wasted on my daughter. Oh well, I found it amusing.

I needed some non-work kaki colored pants to wear as part of the USAT official dress code. Yes, I’m now a certified USAT Category 4 official. Which means I’m not the lowest of the low (as far as officials go) but pretty low on the ladder of officialdom. But still, I have the uniform, and you know how women love guys in uniform! Haha, yeah that was the big joke, I was going to use my new found power to lure the girls into my evil grasp!

It was a whole different perspective looking at the race as an official and it was lot of fun. The hardest part for me was not getting caught up in the competition, I wanted to talk about strategy, get ready for the race, layout my gear and talk smack. Oh well, there will be plenty of time for that at IMAZ. The coolest part is I got to look at/inspect everyone’s bike and nobody batted an eye. Oh, was I supposed to be looking for safety issues? Yeah that’s what I was supposed to be doing. But it was more like, wow that is an incredible looking bike how does it ride? Or, do you have any problems riding the 808’s in the wind. Yeah safety, that’s why I was looking at the bikes… All joking aside, I was actually pretty serious about looking for safety issues, but there was just so much bike porn!

From a personal perspective I really liked the whole venue. Kori is a fantastic race director, she kept people informed, organized, had plenty of volunteers, the course seemed well marked, and everyone had a super friendly attitude.

The race has just about everything you could want in an Olympic distance race, Medical tent, massage, food, lots of volunteers, A challenging course, open water swim, sand and the best Outlaw aid station money can buy.

Speaking about the aid station, Many thanks to Jane & her people, Misty, Steven, Courtney, Orlando and Connor (who, I think built rock piles?). You guys rocked!

The bike course seems especially challenging. While I haven’t ridden the course I did traverse it multiple times on the motorcycle and I have to say it looks like a lot of fun to ride. The rolling hills, turns, and that climb out of the canyon that looks like it will never end seems like a lot of fun. The run course looked like it had about 2 miles of sand (out and then the same section back) and loose pack which looks like it would really be tough to run.

If you are looking for a good local challenge this might be the race you are looking for. Between the multiple wave swim starts and hills there were virtually no packs of riders or congestion on the bike course. It seems like this race is one of the up and coming must do races for the series.

Colorado Relay

2008-09-15T15:15:00.016-06:00

It was a dark and stormy night, and morning and afternoon. That just about describes the beginning of the 11th annual Colorado Relay. Arriving the night before the race in Georgetown CO, the start of the relay, we were greeted with rain, rain and more rain. And guess what, it was still raining the next morning, obviously we weren’t in New Mexico any longer. Ahhh, but we did get a reprieve from the rain, that is, after running up the side of the mountain to about 12000 feet, the rain turned to snow. Yep lots of snow. We had the pleasure of starting in the worst conditions in the history of the race, lucky us. Now that we are veterans of the race we will be able to reminisce about the fall of ’08 when the conditions were the worst in the history of the race! It’s funny how Jane and Dave’s absurdly long packing list didn’t seem quite so absurd when the realization of our situation finally settled in. Jane said to plan for the worst and sure enough, we got it!

I’ll let other folks describe the legs of their runs. I do want to say what an impressive bunch of athletes and genuinely great people were on the team. Everyone had a great attitude and we really got to know each other.

My leg started at the top of Guanella pass at 11,669 feet. When I started out running my heart rate immediately jumped to 160, when it should have been at a comfortable 120-130, guess the altitude makes the ticker work a bit harder. My leg was a decent of about 2,050 for a distance of 8 miles. After about 2 miles my calves and quads were really hurting and I decided to stop and look around. The view up the mountain was just as spectacular as the view down the mountain. wow what an incredible run, even though my feet were soaked and my sunglasses were covered in snow and totally useless it was a fantastic run. Quick exchange of the bracelet and Debi was on her way.

I really tried to run as fast as I thought I could but I still had two more legs ahead of me so I didn’t want to push that hard on the first leg. My time was right at one hour with an AVERAGE hr of 157. I’m not sure how the difficulty of the legs was figured but the overall rating of my legs at 7 out of 10, with the first run rated as very hard. I think the folks running uphill had a much harder legs but for a shorter distance.

After picking up Debi we had a few hours to kill so we found a recreation center at and just kind of hung out and ate lunch. We also did a little shopping for some gloves for Margaret and a rain jacket for DP.

My next leg was at night. I’ve kind of lost track of time but I think it was around 10:00 PM or so. The leg was downhill again and my legs were doing their share of protesting, luckily I got to run with one of the Rubber chicken team members and we had a great little chat as the frost was visibly falling through our headlight beams and our breath obscured our vision. The run was great but not the most scenic since it was at night along some type of frontage road. I can’t remember the time for the leg, I think sleep deprivation had starting setting in and it was way past my bed time!

We made our way to the next exchange point and met up with the other van. It was really interesting to learn what our fellow team mates were up to. Between doing laundry and eating at fancy Italian restaurants I’m surprised they even had time to race :)

Our down time was spend in a hotel lobby trying to get some sleep (3:00 AM) , it didn’t work for me but DP sure didn’t seem to mind crashing anywhere. Man I was jealous!

(Some outlaws just hanging out around - 12:00 the next day - don't they have someplace to run or something? From left to right, Brian, Mike, Jimmy, Jane, Margaret)

The third run was gorgeous (about 7:00 AM), It was along the bike path below the Pearl Harbor memorial highway. The river was on the right and it was in this beautiful valley, at times the roaring of the river over the rapids overpowered everything and at other times all you could hear were your footsteps and breathing. My time for this slight downhill leg was 32-33 minutes for a 4.7 mile run, not to bad for running on beat up legs.

Post race was a nice soak in the Glenwood hotsprings, yeah I know, it’s probably the worst thing you can do for recovery, but hey, it was there and it felt so great!! Then on to the condos, pizza, another hot tub and a whole bunch of catching up with the other Van.

Is it still an adventure race if you have all sorts of technology assisting you? In each van we had two way radios and a hand held radios for the times when you were out of the van. Yep just like the cops have! In our van alone we had no fewer than 5 GPS units, one mounted to the windshield, we used the “real” GPS extensively to plot a course to the next exchange point and to find places to hang out. Our clothes were no less high-tech with everyone sporting water resistant, wicking, thin and warm materials we didn’t suffer much from the elements. Oh, don’t forget the 25 thousand dollar van we rented and we had all the sugary snacks that make the dentist’s ears perk up. Yep we were roughing it, after all it was an adventure race.

The race was an incredible experience and I can’t believe that I waited so long to do something like this. If you get the chance, definitely go for it! Oh and don’t worry about the sleep deprivation, 30+ hours without sleep just makes things more interesting!

Special thanks to the Dread Pirate, who did all the leg work, organized all the meetings, kept us on track and planed the whole race.

Very special thanks to Damon, the driver of the “B” van and van mother. He brought the two way radios, GPS units, planned the routes, make sure folks were on time for their runs, not to mention volunteering 4 days of his time to drive a van full of crazy triathletes all over Colorado.

Yep, we are all finished for now. 29 hours and 26 minutes. Not bad for a team that just want's to have fun. Wonder what next year will bring?

Colorado Relay

2008-09-10T10:04:00.002-06:00

The Colorado relay is looming! Here’s the scoop: 11 of us are heading to Colorado tomorrow morning to run 170 miles across Colorado, in something like 24-28 hours, non-stop. Yep through rain or snow and dark of night we will be running, that’ll be us, yep, sounds like fun….I keep telling myself that.

The logistics of this race have been kind of a pain but fortunately our fearless leader the Dread Pirate has pulled it all together and it looks like everything is a go. Lots of kudos to her!

There are 10 runners, mostly Outlaws, and one driver and two vans. Even the most staunch of athletes succumbs to scheduling problems so our two backup runners are now full members of the team. And we are short a driver, it looks like we will be taking turns at the wheel. Hopefully the Dread Pirate won’t lash us if we make a wrong turn or something!

I get to run leg 4, 14 and 24 which translates to a run in the morning, a run in the late evening around 8:00 pm and another run in the early morning.

This should be an adventure!

Foothills

2008-09-08T10:10:00.004-06:00

The Colorado relay has been on my mind a lot lately since we have been training in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains every weekend. Here’s a Google Earth view of a good portion of the run as well as the elevation and my HR for the run. I have forgotten how beautiful the foot hills are at this time of year. The Google Earth view doesn’t really do justice of the foot hills. The terrain is rugged and very green considering its high desert and on the Dry west side of the mountains.

The idea is that we get some tough hill workouts plus a little altitude. Albuquerque is about 5500 feet and the top altitude on our trail run is about 6700 feet so we are at altitude plus we have almost 3000 feet of altitude change. We don’t really want to run the top of the mountain because you don’t get enough oxygen to your legs which makes for a poor quality workout.

It has been about 10 years since I’ve run in the foot hills and I have forgotten how tough the trails were and what how intense the hills and altitude make the workout it was a lot of fun, but definitely not a base building workout.

Dehydration

2008-08-29T10:03:00.002-06:00

One of my biggest fears in IM racing (racing is a relative term) is getting dehydrated. Lots of really bad things happen when you get dehydrated, kidney failure, coma, shock, GI issues. You get the idea. About 60 percent of your body is made up of water losing 5 percent of that water has a major impact on performance.

I sweat a lot! In spin class the sweat actually flows to the lowest spot on the floor and forms a puddle. Not a few little drops here and there but puddles. My clothes are completely soaked during a spin class or an early morning run, I can actually wring out my clothes.

One of the first signs of dehydration that I can monitor for is cardiac drift. Cardiac drift is when your heart rate rises due to dehydration. Since you have lower blood volume when you are dehydrated your heart beats faster trying to keep the blood pressure up. My first experience with this was at Buffalo Springs Half Ironman. A friend of mine, who happens to be a physician and a very good IM athlete, told me that you can only absorb about 28 ounces of fluid per hour and that I shouldn’t drink more than that because it will just sit in my gut. Well, It turns out I can and should drink more than the standard water bottle per hour. By the time I realized the folly of my ways it was way to late to re-hydrate. I ended up cramping on the bike and walking a good part of the run. At the medical (thanks to IronMaiden for walking me to the tent) the doc was shocked that I could still stand. My heart rate was around 140 (normally in the 50’s) and my BP was something like 80 over 40. So, after taking three bags of fluid in the medical tent, my HR was much lower and my BP was high enough so I could actually stand up without getting dizzy. I’m not sure where those three bags of fluid went because they sure didn’t come out over the course of a few days. Oh, and when you get that dehydrated you feel horrible.

At IMLou I consumed about 14 bottles of fluid on the bike – in SIX HOURS. I must have been a little closer to the mark because I only needed one bag of fluid at the medical tent!

Bottoms up :)

Cardiac drift

2008-08-27T13:00:00.003-06:00

Here's some interesting data from the Race The Train ride. It looks like I have a bit of cardiac drift happening. This is after about five bottles of fluid over the course of three hours. I wonder if the previous day's race contributed.

Weekend of Racing

2008-08-25T10:07:00.012-06:00

What can I say? Every once in a while you just have a great weekend doing what you really like to do; having fun and hanging out with great people. This weekend was one of those weekends.

We started out on Friday night to race the F1 in southern New Mexico. This is a great draft legal race, probably one of the most fun events in the entire state. You start off with a 400 yard swim, get out, run across the beach and do another 400 yard swim. Enter T1, get on your bike and head out for an 8 mile – draft legal – bike. If you are lucky enough you can get a group of folks that want to work hard and take turns pulling. Since there were a ton of outlaws at the race there wasn’t a problem hooking up with people. Then pulling into t2 you get to head out to the 4k flat run. Then just for good measure you get to do the bike and run one more time! That’s T3 and T4 for those that are a little transition challenged! The surprising thing about this race is the second bike always seems to be a bit faster than the first bike and the run is only a few seconds slower. This a great race and I would encourage everyone to give the format a try.

It seems I picked up some hardware at the race, first in the age group, third in the overall series (which still shocks me) and I received a city cup trophy. Three pieces of hardware from one race. That’s pretty cool. It must have been my lucky socks. Get it, Roswell, aliens… (you might have to blow up the picture a bit)

After the race and eating lunch with a bunch of Outlaws we headed up to Chama, where SWTriGal and her hubby H have cabin – In Northern New Mexico right next to the Colorado border. The next day we headed out to Race the Train into Colorado. Wow, it was a tough ride. We started out at an altitude of about 7500 feet and climbed the next 16ish miles to over 10,000 feet. This took a little over an hour (ride time) with a rest break and a Facebook update at the “Leaving New Mexico” sign. Oh it took about 23 minutes to come back down, yeah it was worth the climb J

Major thanks to Debi and Hartley for hosting us at their “cabin” for the weekend, Thanks!!!

A few Pic’s from the trip:

IronOutlaw showing his form at foosball – yeah he just scored a point – against DPR’s twins, BTW he lost the game!

At the “Leaving New Mexico Sign”

At the halfway point looking down the first climb

Here’s a little proof we beat the train!!

And a picture of my son, he was a super trouper, as we dragged him all over the state

2008-08-18T09:28:00.009-06:00

I seem to be a little slow on the draw this morning. While making my morning oatmeal I couldn’t find the oatmeal container. It’s not in its usual place on top the fridge. Where is that darn thing? Did the kids move it? Maybe it fell and broke? Did the kids drop it and throw it away? Humm, where is it? Oh there it is, right where I put it three minutes ago, next to the pot, just sitting there waiting for me to measure out my gruel for the day. Wow, I need a little more recovery time.

This weekends fun began on Saturday with a nice 50 mile ride. It was supposed to be 65 but we turned around early to ride with the rest of the group with the intention of added on the extra miles at the end of the run. Weeelll, when we stopped to drop off the other folks, I wasn’t exactly excited about getting back on the bike so we stopped for coffee! Much better than riding don’t you think?

Later that day I followed up the ride with a 2500 yard swim, wow did that feel good, it’s been a week or so since I’ve been swimming so I needed to make up some yardage.

Later that day we walked around the Salsa Fiesta for a couple of hours and had one of the best quesadilla of all time. Of course, maybe I was hungry from working out twice and walking around for a couple of hours, nah.

Saturday night, was dessert at Flying star, yum, Strawberry Rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream. And good company to boot, what more can you ask for?

Sunday’s Workout was the run from hell! That is if you have to run up a mountain to get to hell. It seems the Dread Pirate is a little challenged when it comes to guestimating mileage and grade. Her 5 mile hill run turned out to be 8 miles of soleus bashing, quad busting 14% incline fun. The plan was to do the “Hill” run and then run another hour or so, right….I didn’t want to take another step right then so the next best move was to do what triathletes do so well, eat! Yep, we all voted for breakfast every except the Iron Maiden who keep to her plan and finished her run, kudos to her!
This is a picture of the "hill" we ran up, no, it's not the little hill in front. It's the big hill above and behind the clouds. Okay we didn't really run up the entire mountain, but we were above the clouds!

Being the type A personality I am meant that I was really feeling guilty about not putting in the extra miles. Soooo, I conned my son into going for a 6 mile ride in the bosque to keep me company on, yes, my second run of the day. Wow, did the legs feel heavy, what fun!

It turns out that I have good reason to be a little slow on the draw today. Yep, It was a tough weekend.

Running at night

2008-08-15T14:13:00.004-06:00

We went on our first group run last night in preparation for the Colorado Relay. Some folks think it’s a good idea to actually train and prep for the races you are signed up for and with this race it’s probably a good idea to do some proper training. So off we went to run in the dark. I’m not sure running in the dark was much fun but it was sure nice to run with a group of folks. The trail sure looks a lot different at night, and it even sounds different, guess it’s all the night critters coming out. Even the coyotes sound mare eerie in the darkness.

This Sunday we get to run the foot hills and that should be a lot of fun! Oh wait, I think there was a reason I avoid ‘em. If I remember correctly they HURT, guess my memory will be refreshed on Sunday.

Darn, my legs are still tired from last weekend!

Dodging Millipedes

2008-08-11T10:22:00.004-06:00

This weekend was the Chile Harvest Sprint Triathlon in Socorro. This is one of my favorite races of the Southwest Challenge series. The race is close to Albuquerque, only about 80 miles south and is a seeded time trial pool start. The great thing about this format is the field is spread pretty far apart by the time people hit the bike. And as far as I can tell there aren’t any packs or drafting. Normally a sprint race with 400 athletes would get pretty darn crowded on the bike.

The other thing I like about the seeded time trial start is you don’t know where your competition is. You can sort of keep an eye on them at the swim start but as soon as you get to the bike it’s very hard to judge where they are at, as a result you really have to hammer the whole course.

Biking through the desert this time of year, in the morning, brings out the millipedes. These critters are about 4-6 inches long and were all over the road on the bike course. I was weaving around trying not to run over them but there were a few already smashed. I’m sure when the brunt of the bikers came through the rest of the bugs didn’t stand much of a chance.

This is my first race using the new Outlaw time trial helmet. In fact it was the first time I really even buckled the helmet on. Note to self – adjust the straps before racing! The helmet is pretty cool and actually seemed to make a difference, at least I felt geekier so it must have made a difference.

The run was pretty miserable because I had all the little rocks in my shoes from T1. My bike was racked next to the curb and when I got out of the pool I went over to the bike and my feet were full of those darn little rocks. I wasted lots of time in T1 trying to get my feet clean but failed miserably. Oh well. My feet will heal, eventually.

Overall, The race was great, and I took some time off of my previous races. So I get a new course PR! Yeah! The swim was a bit slower as well as T1 and T2, but the bike and run were both faster. I placed 2nd in the Age group, with the first place guy just crushing me, 20th overall male.

Oh, did I mention this race was the State Club Championship? Which the Outlaws won! We have been the defending champions for the last two years! Guess its one more year with the target on our backs. Congratulations Outlaws! Keep up the hard work!

I'll see your 14 miles and raise you to black toe nails

2008-08-05T09:53:00.005-06:00

The training for the Palo Duo ultra has officially started. I know this because I now have two black toe nails. It’s an amazing thing, every time I run my first 14 mile run I get two black toenails. Then it’s re-grow them for the next six months. Rinse and repeat.

The cool thing is that I get to gross out my kids when I finally peel off the dead nails. My son was watching me peel off the dead toe nails and he had the whole morbid curiosity thing going on. Like father like son.

Oh, and those aren't my feet pictured, just a picture I found on the web. But amazingly enough, I have the same two toes with black nails.

Yep the training has started!

Getting chicked

2008-07-31T08:42:00.003-06:00

I was chicked again yesterday morning. This girl wasn’t really Michellie Jones (who can pass me in her sleep) but wow, did she have some quads. This is the second time she has passed me on my commute to work and she just blows by me like I’m standing still. She’s all smug on her pink bike with the aero bars, okay maybe I couldn’t see her smirk but I can imagine it. Granted I had just done a 6 mile run plus a leg workout and was about 8 miles into my commute, not to mention that I had the flu and knee surgery. Just kidding about the last two things but I have to do something for my crushed ego. :) It doesn’t bother me that I got chicked, it bothers me that I got passed! Darn it! It’s a commute not a race, maybe Wingman is rubbing off on me.

Anyway, I wonder who she is. Maybe one day I’ll be able to catch her and ask.

Tired Triathlete

2008-07-30T15:10:00.003-06:00

Lots o’ stuff in the works!

This is what the schedule looks like for the next few months! I’m going to be busy!

Officially start training for IMAZ Start Training Aug 1st Race Date November 23rd
Socorro Chile Harvest Tri ; Club Championship August 9th
F1 Triathlon August 23rd
Colorado Relay 170 mile run September 12-13
Elephant Man Tri September 28th – First gig as a USAT official – If I pass the test!
Palo Duro Trail Run 50k October 18th
IMAZ November 23rd
Possibly the Las Vegas December 07 Depending on peer pressure!

So it looks like I’m making up for the lack of racing at the beginning of the year and have a very full schedule until the end of the year. The good thing is that I’ve maintained a pretty good level of fitness going into the IMAZ training so the initial work load shouldn’t be too bad. But, I have to admit, that I’m pretty nervous about the all the upcoming events and getting through them injury free. I’m mostly worried about my foot, when I started training for the Bataan Memorial Marathon it started acting up and I had to pull out of the run. I’m hoping that I’ve built up enough base miles so the increased work load won’t break anything. Time will tell.

2008-07-14T12:06:00.007-06:00

Back in the saddle,

Between work and life there just hasn’t been much time for racing. I’ve been training from 12-18 hours per week so my fitness level feels pretty good. Hopefully I’ve had very few junk miles thrown in the mix. Lots of zone 2, low zone 3 training, a few interval sessions on the bike and run and weights once per week. I’ve dropped about 12 pounds since January, plus, I think I might finally have the asthma under control.

I was pretty nervous going into the race. I’ve been racing for the last 10 years or so and have been competing in various things for the last 20 years, and I’m still nervous about a little sprint tri. Go figure. Maybe it’s just because this was my first race in the last 7 months?

I donned my wet suit only to decide 5 minutes before the race to swim in just my skin suit. I’m still not sure of the wisdom of this move but T1 was blazing fast – very cool. The swim felt a little awkward because all of my open water swimming has been in a wet suit. Right at the turn around for the buoy I remember that, in fact, if I’m not wearing a wet suit I sink. Note for next time; don’t stop swimming when turning around a buoy.

The bike was great! I finally figured why my QR doesn’t climb very well. I always thought it was me but as it turns out my front chain rings are a 42-52, not the standard 39-53. Wow, what a difference, the hill coming out of t1 was actually not that bad to climb, and I had some extra speed coming down the hill, should have figured this out a long time ago!

I saw fellow Outlaw Wingman bobbing and weaving his way up the hill and decided that I really needed to pass him right away to set up a fun game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately he didn’t respond and I had to find other’s to play with. As it turns out I was catching the back half of the previous wave (Oh, did I mention that I’m now in the OLD man wave?) and couldn’t find any suitable targets so I decided to try and track down my arch nemesis and see if he would play. I put the pedal down and started passing lots and lots of folks but never my nemesis, Hummm, maybe I’m in front of him, naaa, he just did an IM and he looks like he’s in great shape, but still….I passed fellow outlaw Brian on the way into T2 (he was heading out of T2), since he’s not in the old geezer age group he got to leave 5 minutes before me. Ah, a new target.

Coming in to t2 I felt great, I’ve been pushing the bike, breathing hard but no tightness like normal, my legs felt great and I wanted to see what I could do on the run. After a bonk on my recovery run a few days before the race I was a little nervous about the run. Yeah, paranoid but true. I looked around and there was MuffinMan, right in T2 with me. Pretty cool, it looks like we are going to have a show down!

Heading out of t2 I decided I didn’t have much time to get my legs under me, Muffinman was right behind me and did I hear my arch nemesis coming into t2? Darn, he’s a lot faster runner than me. The pancake flat run is always hot and it’s tempting to stop at the aid station and take a nice drink of water but I could feel eyes on my back and Brian was still out front some place. I saw what I thought was an Outlaw uniform in the distance so I decided that I needed to catch him, who was it? I pushed hard until I met Brian around half way into the run and decided that the uniform wasn’t an Outlaw. At the turn around point I saw that MuffinMan was right behind me so there was no way I could relax, a little while later there was Paul, darn they are going to catch me! I pushed pretty hard on the way back and finally managed to shake them.

That was a hard race. The distance always lends itself to an all out effort and I was wasted but it sure felt good to be back in the saddle. Seven months is just too long to go without racing!

As it turns out I think I did PR for that course, 50 minutes flat, the previous two years I was at about 52.40ish. The official results won’t be out for a little while yet but still, the race felt great and even if I didn’t do a PR I had a great time.

Placed second in my age group, with the first place winner also the overall winner, darn those old fast men! I think I was in the top 10, maybe even the top 5, with a bunch of other Outlaws finishing in the top 10 and almost every outlaw taking home some metal.

Great race, now I can’t wait for the F1, maybe we can get another Outlaw pace line – Le Train Black? (sorry, I have a Le Train Blue, poster of the Postal time trial in my office)

2008-07-09T08:43:00.002-06:00

Bottle tops:

Am I the only one with this problem? I have about 10 cycling bottles that I use over the course of the week. All but two of the bottles have black lids so every time I want to use a water bottle I have to try and match up the bottles with the lids. Why can’t the manufacturers use the same bottle top diameter and thread pattern? At this point I’m not even sure if I have the correct number of bottles for the number of lids.

I think I’ve been training to much….

More bike commuting

2008-06-17T08:55:00.002-06:00

Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve posted! Training, working, kids and life sure take up a lot of time.

Now that the kids are out of school I’ve been commuting on my bike about 4 days per week and just driving in on Monday. Generally Mondays my legs are burnt toast and I just don’t feel like getting on the bike so I enjoy the drive in and wish I was on my bike – pretty strange huh?

Thought I would throw out a couple more interesting things I’ve noticed while bike commuting.

A few weeks ago I was waiting at a light behind a lady in a semi beat up ford truck, she was puffing away at a cigarette, tossed the butt out the window, hung up her cell phone and started vigorously picking her nose. The only thing I could think of was a bug or something flew up her nose and she was trying to get it out. The light turns green and she guns it trying to make it past the next light. She didn’t make it, but that really didn’t bother her because she just ran the light, fully red. Wow, these are the people that scare me.

I’ve been cut off a few more times by people trying to get around me to make a right hand turn. These folks speed way up to get around you and then hit the brakes in front of you while making the turn way to fast, tires screeching, and me yelling at them. And to boot, I’m generally in a bike lane. Yep, more scary people, they saved maybe 4 seconds or so.

There are some crazy folks commuting on bikes, people without a helmets, with sandals on, and riding in traffic, sometimes all at the same time. Wow, talk about pushing the odds.

On one of my Monday drive days I was repeatedly cut off by a cyclist. I pretty much know the ride down Lead goes and I was giving the cyclist lots of room. This guy refused to play nicely, was inconsiderate of other folks on the road as was just generally a pain. Sure hope I’m not like that when I ride!

When you drive in a car you don’t really get to see how fast or slow people accelerate from a stop sign or light, when you are on a bike you can really get a feel for how people drive. It’s amazing how fast some people accelerate, they must make a lot of money to pay for all the gas they are wasting. Wha'ts $4.00 a gallon to these folks?

We now have seven steady bike commuters in the office! Seven out of thirty, not too shabby! I really have to hand it to the bike commuters. Most of them are recreational riders and for them, a twenty mile round trip is a whole lot of work. Sometimes it takes them more than an hour to make it ten miles home or to work, that takes a lot of dedication. Kudos to them.

My new love...

2008-04-07T09:14:00.003-06:00

Okay, is this weird or what? My dish washer has been freaking out, grinding, gurgling and not cleaning well for about a year. It works fine if I pre-wash all the dishes and turn it on after everyone goes to bed.

Well, Saturday morning I decided to go to Appliance liquidators just to check out their dishwashers. One of the owners helped me choose a model and quoted me a really good price, so I decided to take the plunge and buy it. The new dishwasher has a disposal, time delay, heater, low water use and it’s really big inside.

The installation was very easy and it was up and running in about 1.5 hours. I decided to run a load of dishes through it and Wow! This thing is quiet, so quite that I had to check on it several time just to be sure it was on and working. How exciting is that? Okay, so is it weird to want to have dirty dishes so I can run them through the dish washer and marvel at how quiet and efficient it is? I love this thing!

Oh, if you are looking for new appliances, checkout appliance liquidators. The dishwasher was about $200 cheaper that it was at Lowes.

Okay, so maybe I need to get a life.

2008-04-04T16:34:00.002-06:00

Adventures of my bike commute

I’ve been steadily commuting on my bike for about a month now. For me, that means anywhere from 2 to 4 times per week, and only during the nice seasons. Winter commuting on a bike just isn’t fun, and it’s a bit dangerous. I’m not sure how some of the folks in the colder/snowier states commute all year long.

So I thought I would recap my month a bit and let you know what’s happened.

- I Almost got hit by a lady turning right in front of me, while I was in the bike lane. She actually sped up to pass me and then cut me off, this was all within about 20 feet. What’s up with that?

- I found a very nice cell phone and thought about keeping it, but of course, I called the guy and returned it.

- I get to go through the construction site on my normal route home, instead of taking the detour. It’s kind of fun watching the day to day progress.

- I’m down to filling my truck up every other week now. This means I’m saving about $60 over the course of two weeks. Nice lunch money

- Since I’m “trapped” at work I bring my lunch, which is better for me than eating out. Hummm, what to do with that $120 per month…

- The days I bike commute I get to leave early, so I can miss the traffic, you understand…

- The wind is my friend. With several opportunities to fight 30mph head winds on the way home. My legs should be stronger. Of course my lungs are now full of sand so it’s an even wash.

- I have come across several ladies on their bikes, with no helmet on, chatting on their cell phones. Folks can't drive a car much less a bike while talking on a phone.

- Ah, extra protein! The gnats and bugs are starting to come out and I’ve already eaten my share.

- It’s amazing that I’m still seeing the same folks that have been commuting that last several years. I wonder if they recognize me?

- Ran into the cement retaining wall while I was trying to figure out what was swimming in the irrigation channel next to the trail. Never did figure it out but I did leave a good part of my knuckle on the wall.

- We actually had a bit of a traffic jam on the trail! At the Montano turn off a bunch of us actually had to stop so we wouldn’t run into each other. How cool is that. Lots of folks riding their bikes to work these days.

Getting back into something

2008-03-06T16:11:00.000-07:00

Isn’t it funny how we are always getting back into things? A few years ago when that virus took me out for three months I had to get back to being a triathlete. Last year, after my foot surgery, I was getting back into shape. This year, after my cold I was getting back into running again. Oh, I haven’t been to yoga for 2 weeks now, guess I’ll need to get back into that. Bike? What’s a bike? Guess I’ll need to really start riding again sometime. Weights? Haven’t lifted one in 2 months. I know it’s good for me and will help me be a better athlete, but I just don’t have the time.

It doesn’t end with our active lives. We are diverted in our everyday lives as well. Kids, significant others (or lack thereof), projects, jobs, this list goes on and on. You all know what I’m talking about.

At what point do all these things make us who we are? Are we still defined as triathletes if we have been focusing on landscaping our yards and have only been working out 5 hours per week? When do we lose the vaulted title of lifestyle athlete? After a month, two months, a year, of not competing? How many diversions will it finally take to give up being a triathlete? Are we afraid that our most recent diversion will be the one that breaks the camels back and we will be transformed into some couch potato with dusty carbon bikes hanging in the garage? Maybe we will turn into one of those people who can remember when they used to race and be in good shape but just can’t remember why we stopped being an athlete.

Maybe discipline is the 5th discipline of triathlon? Without it, the first thing that came along would derail us and we would forever be held captive by that soft sofa and big screen TV.

Okay then, enough rambling, it must have been a really boring afternoon run if it made me think of stuff like this!

Can’t wait to get my new Garmin 305. Then I can get back to timing my runs….

Cool program run by the City of ABQ

2008-03-05T12:31:00.002-07:00

This is an interesting free program sponsored by the City of Abq. I’ve never used it but I did come close during last year’s monsoon season. It’s nice to know there’s a free way to get home just incase of an emergency. You need to register and give someone else’s name to verify that you use alternative transportation at least three days per week. After that, if you get stuck, just call the number and a cab will pick you up and drop you off at your abode. Sounds like a great deal to me, and it’s free, did I mention that?

http://www.cabq.gov/transit/grh1.html

How cool is this?

2008-03-03T09:51:00.004-07:00

Thursday it was just beautiful out and a few folks started commuting into work on their bikes, which made me extremely jealous!

It’s taken me a few months to figure out how to get to work without being killed by the insane downtown drivers but I think I’ve finally figured it out (hope I didn’t just seal my fate, knock on wood)!

So, being jealous, having figured out my route, and with a projected weather of beautiful I decided to commute in on my bike.

Thursday night I decided to configure my new commuter with lights and make sure every thing was working correctly. Well…. The front headlight won’t fit because the new commuter sports an oversized front bar – Darn it, and the light didn’t come with different sized mounting brackets. Looks like the kiddo will have a new light on his shinny new mini mesa. Okay, I can live without the front light for now. it will still be light when I come home. Now to mount the tail light, humm….Where are those darn mounting brackets? After an hour of searching I decided to just Velcro the light on, okay that will work. Wonder if the fenders will fit? I know I’m going to get rained on, maybe not tomorrow but it will rain. Darn it, the fenders won’t fit the new bike, dang.

Okay, tires are all aired up, water in the water bottle, saddle pack has a spare and air canisters,. backpack is packed with a few extra things, toe warmers are on the shoes, helmet is dusted off, and clothes are ready to go.

The morning commute went really well, very little traffic and life is good.

I put my bike in the designated parking area, located inside the rear door and get changed, in the locker room.

Did I mention that one of the reasons I took the new job is because it’s a very bike friendly work environment? Around 9 out of a possible 30 people commute on their bikes during the summer! Wow, can you imagine if every company could boast that almost 30% of their employees commute by bike?

After talking to folks about the bike and commute I settle in to my normal work day. Pretty soon the big boss shows up in my office bearing a nice spa towel and a company logo water bottle.

He tells me he’s heard it was my first day commuting and I get a new towel to use in the shower (yes we have a shower at work!) and a water bottle. He goes on to ask me what he and the company can do to help encourage people to commute on their bikes and he’s always open for suggestions. This isn’t just lip service either. He commutes regularly, including most of the winter, on his bike.

How cool is that?

The Spinning Lady

2008-02-13T14:51:00.006-07:00

This has been going around the net for a while but it seems I’ve just found out about it. A friend sent it to me the other day and we have been going back and forth about its accuracy.

Check it out and let me know which way she spins. Sorry, I was too lazy to figure out how to get the animation working in the post, so you'll just have to click on the link below!

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22492511-5005375,00.html?from=mostpop

For me, she switches back and forth, probably 60 percent of the time she is spinning clockwise, if I’m actually working she spins counterclockwise. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Does that mean that I’m not working in my default state and I’m forcing myself to do things that don’t come naturally? Or does it mean that I’m stretching my rightbrain/leftbrain patterns? Or maybe just that I can switch between left and right brain easily? Or does it mean that this whole thing is just kind of fun to look at and doesn’t really mean anything? I’m going with the later.

The test’s I’ve taken put me firmly in the middle ground of leftbrain/rightbrain thinking which is kind of interesting.

Don’t know if this has any meaning or not but I’m also an INTJ. It seems every company has to give me the test, even though I can tell them what the outcome will be. Oh well, it’s their dime. So does the INTJ thing contradict or validate the spinning lady? Don’t know, but she’s fun to look at.

A Little Vacation

2008-02-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

I seem to have taken a little vacation from Blogging. Life has been pretty busy and thankfully nobody in the house is sick. Oh no, did I just doom the entire house to suffer the flu? It seems everyone at work is sick, which is kind of nice since there are fewer people to bug me for stuff!

Last weekend I was supposed to do the WSMR duathlon, which is actually a 5k run and a 30 k bike sans the extra run on the end. While a friend was checking on base housing he found out my name wasn’t on the registration. Darn it, I sent my registration in weeks ago and since there is no race day registration I’m was out of luck. I was really planning on getting in a good early season of racing so I can concentrate on IMAZ in November. Well, It’s just one race but I already feel like I’m behind schedule for my 8 races in for the SWCS.

Since the race day was canceled and I had already shipped the kids off to their mothers house I had all morning to workout. I headed out for a long run, 17 miles worth of long run. Normally 17 miles isn’t that big of a deal but I haven’t run more than 10 miles in at least 3 months. By the time I was done I was really tired, legs were rubber, feet hurt, toe hurt, toe nails hurt. Yeah, it was fun, right… But it was also the first long run getting ready for the Bataan memorial marathon.

Sandia Snowshoe Challenge

2008-01-29T21:11:00.000-07:00

It’s been pretty hectic around the office these days and I haven’t hand a chance to make any blog entries. We have finally reconfigured our server room, replete with new servers, UPSs, a new Rack and new furniture. This has been my main work focus for the last two months and the first phase is nearing completion. Yeah!! Now, those of you non-computer geeks might be falling asleep (or maybe it’s my writing) but for those computer geeks out there, you know how cool it is to have all new equipment.

On to the race report: I’m a little behind the times, the race was last Saturday (the Sandia Snowshoe Challenge), and I had a great time.

The Outlaws made a strong showing, with the Dread Pirate, Myles, Geek Girl, Flaming Mo, Iron Outlaw and Michi. It seems the gun (or yell) went off and I was still trying to figure out how to walk in those darn snow shoes, much less run. As you may recall my only experience with the snowshoes was two weeks ago for about 20 minutes. During that twenty minutes I had major problems and ended up walking back to the car in my hiking boots sans snowshoes.

Right from the get go I knew I was in trouble, I ran up right behind someone (not a good idea with snowshoes) and got stepped on. I wobbled and flailed my arms wildly but didn’t fall down, it’s amazing how stable snow shoes are. This had me a little gun shy and I fell into a nice easy “run” with a pack of runners. All the other Outlaws were way ahead of me and were disappearing fast. Oh well, I was here for fun. For about the first mile my hip flexors were killing me and I thought there was no way I could finish the race. I think exhaustion made me relax a bit and I when I finally relaxed my hip flexors relaxed too, life was good once more. Now where were those other Outlaws….

After relaxing a bit I got a little confidence and started to pick up speed and even passed a few folks, but got stuck behind Mr. “there is no way I’m going to let you pass no matter how many times you politely ask, and if you do try I’ll stick my ski poles out so you trip”. This guy was frustrating, Run a little, walk some, run a little, walk more. I finally got past him and started making up some time. I saw the Dread Pirate in front of me so I had to catch her and say Hi. Saying anything is more work that you would think. It might have something to do with two snow shoes strapped to my feet and trying to run up a hill at 10600 feet. It took forever to catch her, her easy gait was surprisingly fast. I finally caught her and shuffled past, but just to have the last word she informed me that I had snow on my @ss. So now I’m laughing, trying to run up hill with snowshoes at 10600 feet. Yeah, I got a little out of breath. Luckily the finish was just around the corner and I could relax a bit.

The Iron Outlaw finally beat me at a race. It was one of his goals to beat me this year and he’s finally done it. Congratulations to him! (even though I wasn’t racing!) :)

The race is definitely on for next year and I’m thinking about going up and doing the 10k trail. Anyone else up for some high altitude training?

2008-01-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

Not much going on right now, just work, kids, girlfriend, dog and housekeeping. Pretty much in that order. Before everyone gets on me about priorities. Right now work needs to come first, without it the other things become non issues. Well, everything but the dog, she’ll probably still hang around if I’m unemployed, after all dog is mans best friend, right?

I’m finally at my pre-sick weight! Now I just need to take off the rest of my winter weight. At the rate I’m going it should be off sometime around March, just in time for the Bataan Memorial Death March Marathon. I really should start training for the marathon, hopefully this weekend I’ll get in a reasonably long run, a nice 12 miler would be a great way to start the training.

Last year I volunteered at the race. Well I didn’t so much volunteer as go down with my girlfriend who officially volunteered. I just got put to work helping out the people that were officially volunteering. Does that mean I volunteered? I’m thinking it does, and I have a volunteer pin to prove it.

The race has intrigued me since I first heard about it and since I couldn’t run (my toe was in full revolt) I thought it would be fun to check it out from the sidelines, I really had a blast, it was a lot of fun to help out and the opening ceremony was spectacular! Talk about a lot of energy in the air!

So this year I’m either going to do the full marathon or the 15 mile “half mary”, it’s going to be a lot of fun! I love to trail run.

Oh, the best part about volunteering with a massage therapist is that you get to park right next to the medical tent, which is about 50 feet from the starting line.

Eating like a normal person

2008-01-15T15:07:00.000-07:00

Eating like a normal person sucks. If you read my blog last week you know that I’m in the process of taking off my winter/sick weight and decided to keep track of what and how much I eat.

The Life Form program is brutally honest, it doesn’t care why you cheat, if you don’t workout or even if you enter bad data. It just reports the facts. The facts are that I’ve been running a pretty good caloric debt, that is, as soon as I figured out how many calories are in a good size handful of almonds. I’ve been steadily losing weight, which good thing. I've had to analyze the content of what I eat, which is also a good thing. But yes, I’ve been hungry, which is a bad thing. Another bad part about this whole process is that I’ve really had to pay attention to what I eat, as opposed to eating pretty much anything I feel like (within reason).

My caloric intake has been about 2100 calories per day. Which is within range of a “normal” person but it’s a lot less than I’m used to eating, which is around 3300 calories per day. So, like I said at the beginning, eating like a normal person really sucks, I enjoy eating and eating a lot. Ahhh the good old days of IM training….

My first time

2008-01-13T20:51:00.000-07:00

My first time…

Well, as the Sandia peak snow shoe race draws closer it sounded like a great idea to actually get some snowshoeing in. The Dread Pirate invited a few of us up to the peak for some pre-race practice so we could get a feel for what we were in for. Good thing...

I really don’t do winter sports so this whole fall down get wet, cold, and freeze parts of your body thing is new to me. I think I actually obsessed over what to wear for the training session! I must have learned something over the past x number of years cycling during the winter because I actually got the right layers of clothing on! Yeah for me, I didn’t even freeze or lose any parts of the ‘ol body.

IronOutlaw and I went to REI to pick up some snow shoes the day before our training sessions. And not knowing anything about snowshoes picked a brand shoes that I thought had a good reputation, and the sales guy said were reasonable shoes. Plus, they were on sale, all the better!

We picked up some Redfeather Rainier shoes. These things were the biggest pieces of junk on the market. IronOutlaw’s strap clamp broke in the parking lot. Both of my clamps broke about 10 minutes into our trek. Then, at the turn around point the entire plastic attachment for my shoe broke off and I had to hike back to the car sans snowshoes.

For the brief ten minutes that the shoes worked I had a great time! Although everyone else looked comfortable, I felt like I was struggling just trying to keep up. I'm not sure if was equipment, fitness or altitude but I was definitely having a hard time staying with everyone! Overall it was a wonderful experience, I might even start to like this snow thing!

Pirate, thanks for showing us the ropes!

2008-01-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, so now that I’m doing better I need to lose all the weight that I put on while sick. An amazing 6 pounds! Yeah, I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but that’s in addition to my normal and accepted winter weight gain. I tend to eat about the same amount of food regardless of whether I’m training or not, of course the holidays haven’t helped much either.

I’ve been thinking about my diet a lot lately and have decided to start recording what I eat and get rid of the things that are really bad. The last few times I’ve checked my caloric intake it has been eye opening. I’ve been at 3400+ calories per day and more while training long course. This summer, while training for Ironman Louisville, I tried to cut back my calories to take off a few pounds and ended up bonking several times on my daily bike commute. It really sucks to be stuck on the side of the trail only a mile or two from home but too freaked out to make it home. Gu to the rescue! So this year I’m going to keep track of my diet a little closer than usual. I’ve decided to use a program called Life Form. The program seems pretty intuitive and it has a 30 day free trial, just enough for me to get a handle on things. The interface is pretty outdated, old school Visual Basic, but it works so who am I to complain?

Yesterdays totals were about what I expected, 3,000ish calories and I burned about 3300, guess I shouldn’t have had that slice of pizza before dinner! Anyway, I’m not sure how accurate the calories burned calculation is but it’s on par with my tanita scale.

Did you know 30 almonds have about 885 calories? Wow! Guess what was the first thing I cut down on?

2008-01-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

What a great weekend!

I’m on the mend from my cold turned sinus infection, it’s been a long threeish weeks and it’s great to be back to a normal workout schedule. It’s amazing what rest and a round of antibiotics will do!

Yesterday’s long run, a whole 6 miles, was uneventful except for meeting up with my clone. This guy and I were dressed almost identically; white long sleeve shirt, black tights, white hat, ultimate direction bottle carrier, sunglasses. There was one distinction though, I was wearing my ultra cool King Kong running socks. Geek Girl, they aren't sexy toe socks but still very cool

We saw the new National Treasure movie, and it was great. Yeah I know, there are probably 100 different historical facts that were wrong or just plain made up but I don’t care, it was just a movie and a darn good one. Nobody got shot, no guns were fired and there was even a decent car chase scene. However, the plot was somewhat predictable but the dialogue was funny and interesting. Two thumbs up for a good movie with a nice ending.

The Christmas tree got taken down and I finally rebuilt the operating system on my Laptop computer! The poor laptop could hardly open internet explorer without churning away at the hard drive for a good 5 minutes. I’ve needed to rebuild the computer for at least a year, and it was getting to the point where the darn thing was unusable. Why do computer people always have the computer that don’t work?

Bones, The red nosed triathlete

2008-01-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

Can’t shake this darn cold!

It’s been more than a week and I’m still feeling under the weather, this darn cold just won’t go away! Maybe it’s all the parties I’ve gone to, or all the working out I’ve been doing, maybe it’s the extra hours I’ve been putting in getting ready for the big server migration, or maybe the extra stress of a new job? NOT!
My schedule for the week: go to bed at 9:30pm, Sleep until 6:00am, go to work, sit all day in front of the computer, go home, eat leftovers, make sure the kids have their chores done. Oh yeah, I did a “long” 8.6 mile run last Sunday, and a fairly fast paced run on the 1st but that’s it, nothing else. I’m talking drugs, emergen-c (raspberry is really good!), eating right (mostly), and I’m still feeing bad. Guess I’m just getting antsy about losing fitness & getting tired of not working out.

What a year

2007-12-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

It’s almost a new year and looking back on ’07 I’ve come to realize that I had quite a year.

The first of the year I got together with Lorna and its been great ever since!

I took first place in my age group for the second year in a row for the Club Championship. Hopefully I made a little contribution to the overall success of our club’s winning season.

April: Foot surgery for Hallux Limitus

The Doc said “you’ll be able to walk out of the hospital after the surgery” What she really meant was that I could hop out on one foot. The “back on my feet” after the stitches are removed was really you can tenderly put some weight on your foot. The “You will be able to walk normally after a month” was really- you’ll need to wear very wide shoes for two months and you will be a total gimp for the whole time. Oh and she forgot to mention the "Don't forget, you'll need to throw away the $500 dollars in bike shoes because your foot won't fit into them anymore" sentence.

Anyway, enough whining, I did an Ironman four months after the surgery so I consider the surgery a complete success. From what I understand the recovery was actually pretty quick, just not quick enough for me!

August: the first annual Ironman Louisville. MG said to me “how often do you get to do an inaugural Ironman? “ I was sold, I signed up as soon as the race opened. Who thought August in Louisville would be 90+ degrees and 70+ percent humidity? Not I. However, as soon as I got out of the medical tent ,for dehydration, I came to realize that hot + humid was a bad combination for me and I should stick to cooler races. So I'm signed up for IMAZ in November - it should be fairly cool and the humidity level should be prettly low.

September: New Job! I left my old position as the Manager of Information Systems to become a Network manager. Technically a step down, but much more technical, more money better hours, it's more suited to my interestes, and the environment suites me better.

September: Got to see my relatives from Hawaii for the first time in almost ten years! Oh, and I’m the tallest one in the family! :)

September: Son Breaks his arm, Daughter totals car .

Yep, September has been a busy month!

That’s about it, not much happened the rest of the year and I’m just hanging on to see what next year brings.

This little piggy

2007-12-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

This little piggy went to market,

This little piggy stayed at home,

This little piggy had roast beef,turkey, crown roast pork,

pasta shells,three different types of potatoes,

assorted green type veggies, pecan pie, pumpkin pie,

chocolate cake, baked apples,

and a whole bunch of stuff that’s just not good for you.

So this little piggy went

“Wee wee wee” all the way home because he ate way too much….

2007-12-21T14:44:00.000-07:00

An Easy Run

I’ve been running Thursday nights with another outlaw nicknamed Wingman. Now Wingman is anything but lazy and he’s always up for a good workout. Here’s how the conversation went to set up our latest run. Me: Hey wingman, you up for a run tonight? Wingman: What time? Me: 6:00. Wingman: See you there. Me: It’s an easy 45 minute run, right? Wingman: Right, hard run for an hour. Me: No, Easy run for about half an hour. Wingman: Right, only an hour…

So we meet at 6:00 (he’s even early!) Now mind you; it’s totally dark, we are running on the drainage ditch trail along the Bosque, and it’s about 35 degrees out.

Me: Why are we running at a 7:00 minute pace? Wingman: You’re the one pushing the pace. Me: I thought we were going for an easy run. Wingman: Hey, I’m just trying to keep up with you. Me: Then why are you ahead of me? Wingman: You look like you are ahead of me. <*Silence except for our heavy breathing and foot falls*> Me: Why are we running faster now than we were? Wingman: You’re the one pushing the pace…

We hit the turnaround a full three minutes ahead of our normal pace and run“easy” on the way back. Well, easy for about a mile then we start picking it up again. Oh, our run time was a little over 45 minutes.

2007-12-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

Tagged, Tagged again, and again?? I think I’ve been framed! It’s a conspiracy to get me sucked into blog land, as if I don’t have enough to do!

While I was on my evening run I was trying to think about 5 more interesting things, it took me an hour to come up with these. You know what? I’m a pretty boring guy! There’s no way I can come up with 5 more

When I was in Karate I could do the front and straddle splits, this would always freak out my non karate friends. Now I can barely sit up straight with my legs out at a 45 degree angle. Guess age and Triathlon tend to tighten up the old muscles.

I was picked on quite a bit in elementary school because I was oriental. That is until I started beating up everyone that was picking on me. The interesting thing was, I never ever went to the principles office for fighting. Oh, you have to remember, this was in the mid sixties after the Vietnam war, and I was the only “oriental” kid in school. Another interesting thing is one of the kids that would pick on me became one of my best friends.

I was an honor roll student and took all AP classes in high school but beginning Spanish class almost did me in! Sheila Thompson is the only reason I passed the class. A good solid D and I was pretty darn happy. So, of course, I took a job where 90 percent of the employees speak Spanish, what was I thinking?

At one point in my career I was in charge of development and installation of an electrical utility outage tracking system. I had to do a demo for about 200 customers and potential customers at a dog and pony show. The outage system tracking would track sections of power that would go down and also track customer calls. I set up this grand scenario of Godzilla and King Kong having a battle in the rural United States (it was actually just west of Denver). As consumers would call in I would key in their reports and track the outages. Anyway, it was really funny and I got a best of show award.

Did I mention I have a tool fetish?

I've been tagged

2007-12-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, I’ve had this blog skeleton sitting out on the web for a while now and I guess I’ll post something. Problem is I really don’t have much to say, problem solved,
My friend Myles tagged me to say 5 interesting things about myself so it sounds like a good time to kick things off.

Let’s see, 5 interesting things?

I can’t dance. Okay it’s not really that interesting but I really don’t have the ability to move my limbs to any sort of rhythm. I watch folks dance and I wonder how the heck they move that way.

I studied Shotokan Karate for 16 years and earned the rank of third degree black belt (the highest degree in Shotokan is 5th degree). After my first black belt test I could hardly move for three days. It was a 6 hour test where we weren’t allowed to eat or drink.

I once had a job painting polka dots on cement trucks.

When my brother was in college he was taking a computer class, I would go to UNM and play Trek on the old line printer (LS120 for those computer geeks), I’ve been addicted to computers ever since.

It seems I have a tool fetish. I work on projects just so I can purchase new tools
What’s up with that? I have two roller cabinets full of stuff and an additional 3
tool boxes full of more tools.

That’s about it for me, I’m not going to tag anyone else because I think everyone I know has been tagged!