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.
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.
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