Peak Week and the start of my taper!!

Well, the time has come that I have finished the most difficult part of my training and my taper starts on Monday morning. Taper? No, not that (Tapir) as you see in the picture, although that probably what I look like after the long runs and rides, my training taper which means I start reducing my training mileage over the next three weeks until the week of the race where I will be swimming only a mile and bike 20-30 miles and that’s it!!!!

The purpose is to keep all the muscles firing while starting to build up and conserve the energy that I will need to perform at the Ironman race in Kona. It definitely works and the reduced training over the next 3 weeks will be a welcomed training period after the heat and distances of this summer.

As always, there has been drama associated with this race again this week. I have never had such a hard time trying to get to the start line of any race in my whole life, as I have had with this race.

This week American Airlines called me and notified me that the flights had been changed coming back from Kona. As I talked to them I thought, OK no big deal so we have to leave 5 hours later, I can live with it. After looking at my itinerary they e-mailed me, I noticed that the change was only for Jill and the boys and I was still on the original flight.

Great, American Airlines has now split our family up. How crappy is that! I called and had intermittent phone calls with then from 4pm to 10:30 pm that day. When I called them back, they told me that I didn’t have a seat either on the original flight and there were no other seats available on my family’s new flight. After exhaustive arguments, we pushed out return date out by one day just so we could have an acceptable departure time and we were all together. As much as I am against government intervention in anything I must say that the Airlines need to be torn apart and rebuilt in the model of Southwest Airlines. Nothing further to say about this dismal industry.

Training wise this week, and health wise, I have been dealing with my foot issue this week along with the reemergence of my plantar’s wart on my foot.

My ankle hurt a lot on my 12 mile run on Wednesday. It didn’t; feel good from the very beginning of the run but I was trying to work it out and it only got worse by the end of the run. I was on Advil for the next 2 days because of it. I spoke to one of my trainers, Mike Dannenberg about it, he worked on it some, and we went through everything once more to find the cause. I have new orthotics that I am wearing to help with this issue and he told me to quit wearing them because they may be irritating the injury. So I did.

I went on a 2 mile run after the bike on Saturday and it felt good. No sign of pain at all. Mike says he thinks it is a soft tissue injury so if that is the case I may just need to warm it up a lot more than I am doing right now in hopes of alleviating the pain. We’ll try it on Wednesday of this week.

Regarding the plantar wart, it came back after it was frozen off the first time and now, even though it irritates me on the run, I think it may be too late to get it frozen off without impacting the race because it does take a while to heal. I am going to look into it this week and see what I can do.

The bike has been great. Got in my 110 miles today which is the longest I have ever ridden and my swims are going great. Last Monday I got in 2.4 miles and tomorrow I have a 2 mile swim scheduled. I have gotten to the point now on the swim where I can really put out a good solid effort for the 1 hr and 15 minutes it takes me to swim 2.4 miles.

Lastly, I have started to make my lists. All types of lists! I have a packing list, a T1 list (T1 as in transition 1 from swim to bike), T2 List (from bike to run), and I have list for my special needs bags on the bike and the run. These special needs bags are for things you may need at the mid point of the race such as additional nutrition on the bike or moleskins for blisters on the run. I always use list for tri races no matter the distance. It a great feeling knowing you have forgotten nothing. The last thing you want to have happen is to forget something that can absolutely wreck your race day and with a race this big, I want nothing to go wrong!

That’s about all for now and I am looking forward to training this week and getting psyched up for the race in 3 weeks!!!!!

PEAK WEEK !!!!! Where it all comes together!

I really have very little to talk about this week because this week I am at the peak of my training and then I start to taper (FINALLY!!! I thought it would never get here) which means the next three weeks leading up to the race will require fewer miles swimming, biking and running.

I will admit, once I got the validation of my slot last week for some reason it hit me that I am actually going to get to race.

It’s an exciting feeling that definitely needs to be tempered and controlled, especially on the starting line where it can wreck havoc on your swim if you’re too excited by zapping your energy, and it can slow you down if you’re not excited enough to kick it into high gear for the race. It’s a fine line that’s really hard to explain to someone who has not faced a triathlon, or anything, that challenges your limits.

Health wise I am continuing to have problems with my foot (stress fractures most likely cause) I am attempting to train through it, but as I sit here tonight it is hurting from my 12 mile run this morning. I am working with Mike Dannenberg (Performance Therapy) to hopefully make it across the finish line in Kona. My thoughts are my foot is fine in the swim and on the bike, all I have to do is drag it across the finish line on the run.

Here’s an article that was in the New York Times this past weekend that describes the race in Kona from a different perspective:

September 14, 2008
The Main Event

Thank You, Sir, May I Have an Ironman?
By ANDREW TILIN

How far will triathletes go to be miserable? Just to land a spot in the Ford Ironman World Championship in Hawaii on Oct. 11, they must qualify by competing in a race that is almost always the same brutal 140.6-mile distance (some ‘‘lucky’’ folks get in via lottery, and fewer still pony up for the handful of slots that are auctioned off on eBay and fetch as much as $50,000).
Then these lucky 1,800 athletes train 25 or more hours per week for months to survive the race’s torturous conditions and along the way burn up untold sums on gear, nutritional products, masseuses and plane tickets to Kona. But such are the aspirations of more and more people — in the last year triathlon participation grew by one-third — and if you’re actually good enough to win at the Big Hula you’re recognized as triathlon’s master of masochism, which earns you $110,000. If you’re 10th? A mere $5,000.
Buy some macadamia nuts and some faster shoes. A cruel divide, perhaps, but also a motivator, because nowadays the pain required to win one year seems insufficient for prevailing the next. ‘‘It is strange,’’ admits Faris al-Sultan, a contender from Germany who won once before, in 2005, ‘‘this urge we all have to suffer.’’
THE MELTDOWNS: BRIEF HISTORY OF IRONMAN MISERY
1978 John Collins, a Navy commander, hatches an idea to combine three established endurance events into one race. The handwritten race packet given out to the 15 competitors reads: “Swim 2.4 miles! Bike 112 miles! Run 26.2 miles! Brag for the rest of your life!” Collins finishes five hours behind the winner, a cab driver named Gordon Haller.
1982 The unheralded Julie Moss is in the lead when she stumbles less than a mile from victory (above). Picking herself up more times than Rocky Balboa, Moss approaches the finish line, falls and ultimately crawls, only to have Kathleen McCartney pass her less than 100 feet from the end. ABC films the finish, and millions are awed by Moss’s effort.
1987 The enigmatic six-time winner Dave Scott announces at the last minute that he’ll race and then wins. Mark Allen, who had been leading with only five miles to go, finishes second, ultimately reduced to a common late-race shuffle that one onlooker calls “the dance of the thousand headless monkeys.” (Allen would go on to win the race six times.)
1995 Suffering from dehydration, the eight-time winner Paula Newby-Fraser sits down 300 yards from the finish and babbles to herself for about 20 minutes. She ultimately comes in fourth.
1997 Vomiting up all of the fluids he ingests, Chris Legh is seriously disoriented as he approaches the finish. Various organs have shut down. He collapses and begins crawling — away from the line. Soon afterward, during emergency surgery, doctors remove a third of his large intestine.
2005 Robert McKeague, an 80-year-old grandfather of nine, becomes the oldest athlete ever to complete the Ironman. Soon after crossing the finish line (with a time of 16:21:55), McKeague announces that he won’t be back to defend his title.
THE FUEL
Ironman types call nutrition the event’s fourth sport. Competitors can generate up to 64 ounces of sweat hourly (about four pounds of fluid) , and they can burn 7,500 calories over the entire competition. “As much as anything, it’s an eating and drinking contest,” says Bob Babbitt, a race commentator and six-time finisher. “How many calories can you successfully get down?” Here, a few rules in the contest of consumption:
1. Avoid the salt water: There’s no opportunity to replace fluids during the swim, and swallowing too much of the Pacific can cause nausea and a swollen tongue. Dehydration is rampant.
2. Dine while you ride: The cycling leg offers the best opportunity to eat, and athletes can generally digest anywhere from 300 to 400 calories per hour while pedaling. Chris McCormack drinks 350-calorie helpings of Ensure Plus for the first few hours. But beware: intense exercise can shunt blood from the stomach, and those energy bars have a way of coming right back up.
3. Pack your bags carefully: Back in the primitive 1980s, Ironman “special needs bags” — prepacked by each competitor and set out on the course — were filled with things like cheeseburgers and loaves of Hawaiian sweet bread. Then energy goo was invented. Maltodextrin-based gels provide fuel over time; corn syrup versions deliver quick boosts. Their consistency? Much like mucus.
4. Remember the taurine: Seven hours into an Ironman, muscles cramp and minds wander. Time for a pick-me-up! Aid stations have de-fizzed cola. Race leaders like al-Sultan and McCormack think enough of zingy Red Bull that they rely on it late in the race. “With an hour to go,” McCormack says, “you don’t want to get sleepy.”

I will be back in touch after next weekend and tell everyone how my 110 mile bike rides are going or my 2.5 mile swims are coming along or if my foot blows out during training.

I'M IN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FINALLY! MY SLOT IN KONA IS VALIDATED!!!! After 4 months of waiting and going through some tense moments at the end (begging) there is nothing (administratively) standing in my way to the race on October 11th! Jennette (at Ironman) and others finally decided they had put me through enough after my qualifying race was cancelled due to Tropical Storm Hanna. They made a decision based on my race resume and now I can focus 100% on training.

Where do I start!!!!!????????

A lot has happened in the last week and especially in the last 2 days. If you have been keeping up with my blog you know that my Entry Slot into Kona relies on just completing a half ironman race prior to the end of August. Ironman USA gave me a 6 day waiver since all the other races were filled and the only one I could get into was Patriots Half which was to be raced on Sept 6th.

Today they cancelled the race due to Tropical Storm Hanna hitting the race site about time the race starts. I have been tracking the storm all week and suspected that it may have an impact.

Suspecting this may be an issue, I contacted Ironman USA and talked to Jennette who has been my main contact there since the beginning. She was the one nice enough to let me have a 6-day waiver for this qualifying race and I explained to her that if the race was cancelled or changed to something less than a half ironman distance I was out of options.

After much discussion she wanted to have a wait and see attitude on the race. Her main concern was knowing that I had the fitness and endurance for a half ironman race. I explained to her my background and she requested that I put together a race resume on my longer distance races to include adventure races. She said she would use this in the event the race was cancelled to evaluate and see if this would suffice and validate my Kona race slot but that she would no guarantee anything.

So right now, I am still hanging out here for the weekend seeing what Monday will bring.

The training side has been all about tapering this past week. Easy runs, rides and swims. The run was very short on Tuesday only 2 miles. Remember I have a suspected stress fracture/ankle injury so I am nursing it a bit. After a couple of weeks off it feels better and the two-mile run felt ok. I will have an 11 mile run this weekend (after a 55-mile bike) which will tell me where I am on this injury. Cross your fingers!!!!

One point of interest you will get a kick out of (or maybe not). I was riding my bike last weekend and going about 20 miles an hour, I had my head down a bit not looking very far up the road. At the last minute, I saw what I thought at first was a stick in the road but I couldn’t avoid it because I was moving on pretty well.

The stick turned out to be a 3-foot long copper head snake! I saw what it was about 5 feet before I ran over it. Now on a bike, when you run over sticks and things like that they have a tenancy to kick up and hit your legs and this was the first thing I thought about. So I went to jerk my legs up to avoid having the snake land on my legs and, yep, you guessed it, my feet were locked into my pedals and they didn’t come loose. So I ran over the snake and fortunately it didn’t kick up on my legs, but you can imagine I am being very careful now that these snakes are starting to move in the Fall.