The Hurt Weekend

I've had some really solid training over Memorial Day weekend, including some heavy cycling and running. The pedal-pounding pain was delivered thanks to racermate's evil (and fantastic) training tool known as computrainer. Load a real course video on one of these puppies, and you will be pedaling every single foot of every single mile you log. I'd like to think my fitness is decent, but let me go ahead and admit just how much ouch this thing dished out on me. It hurt.

Aside from the hours spent on the computrainer in the hurt garage over days, I also had an awesome LONG run with one of the my best friends. For me, it was a nice & low perceived effort for the even pace we were blasting. I'm not about to go quoting numbers or making predictions, but let's see what happens at Coeur d'Alene when the dust settles.

Additonally, Donovan and I took Theresa swimming with us on and we got our hotcakes and waffles on (as always).

Peace

Training with the stars

This past weekend I got invited to tag alongside a couple of the top rock stars in the state. Fellow BLUE rider Michael "Pedal Pounder" Gordon and Kara Nielsen planned a long suffer fest, and I got sent an RSVP to get my butt kicked. Sure-why not? It's always nice to be humbled by riding with power houses.

Look at these two geeks...

The ride turned out to be actually really nice, though we did get hit with a heavy shower during the first hour, and the air temperatures made us wonder if Spring is ever going to come. We were able to hit some long stretches of open road, and made sure we got some good headwind beating on us. Last time I went out with Michael on this route, I was gasping for air- at least I was able to hang off the back this time.

Don't let the smile fool you- she bends crank arms just by looking at them.

I got a chance to practice my IM race-day nutrition and hydration, composed of First Endurance (Liquid Shot and EFS) and NUUN, while Michael and Kara shared a couple almonds, a fig and some cheetos. Maybe that's the secret to going fast... In any case, I got my fueling strategy down and feel confident with the 4th discipline come race day.

Small and Medium Triads. Can you tell which one is which? Mine is the more aero.

Another solid weekend of training in the books for me. Now a few days of down time, and then it's time for the final build block ending with Boise 70.3, all in preparation for IM Coeur d'Alene.

Thanks Michael and Kara for the long ride!

10 de Mayo

Día de la Madre. It's a chance for me to think back on the time I had with Mona. I remember many 10 de Mayos when a phone call was as close as we could be. I would play one certain mariachi song that celebrates mothers' love and remember her crying happily on the other end of the phone. Sigh... There's also the part of me that looks at my present life and is grateful for the family we have and what an awesome mother Theresa is to our little guy.

Speaking of parenting, we had a tough weekend in that department. Donovan underwent oral surgery at Seattle's Children's Hospital. The end result is he doesn't have his 2 front upper baby teeth anymore, a product of tooth decay from having really big teeth crowded into a tiny mouth. In the greater scheme of things, it is not so bad, and it helps to see he quickly accepted what happened, is adapting, and back to being his usual happy self. My point is this- we worried, we stressed, it was mentally draining. In any case, my thoughts go out to parents and their children who battle the really tough medical conditions. You guys are on whole different level of toughness.

training, training, training

Not much else to say... busy with life otherwise...

At this point, I've decided to skip Florida 70.3 on 05/16 and keep training hard, targeting Ironman Coeur d'Alene. I will race at Boise 70.3 two weeks out as final prep for IM Cd'A. Should be good....

Juggling the calendar, the $, and the little fish.

For the time-constrained triathlete and on limited funds, one of the more complex aspects of triathlon is figuring out what races make sense and fit to make the most out of a full racing season. Take yours truly as an example- I was having a slight niggle in one lower leg, and hence hesitated to finalize travel plans to Texas 70.3 , taking place 04/24. Even in tip-top shape, I don't think we could have afforded the plane ticket, looking ahead to the rest of the season expenses.

The Shawnigan Half IM I thought of doing on 05/01 is out of the question. Simply too pricey and too many logistics involved for me.

So now it's time to figure out which is better: Flying to Florida 70.3 (05/06) or driving to Boise 70.3 (06/12). They both involve roughly the same travel time, obviously driving to Boise is more affordable than flying to Orlando. But, Boise is also only 2 weeks before Ironman Coeur d'Alene. Which is not too bad.

In other news, Donovan has become a fish, and I'm having a hard time explaining to him why we can't go to the swimming pool all the time. If it was up to him, we'd likely be there 2-3times a day. Where did I put that ITU U23 application???

One more partner

As we head into the 2010 season, I'm totally excited to announce I'll be counting on the support from First Endurance.
From Pre-Race to EFS Drink to Liquid Shot, it is just an awesome line up of nutrition products that work. Period. I've been using their products for some time, so I'm super happy to be able to partner up with a company not only dedicated to sport, but totally interested in its athletes and their feedback. What do I currently use to train and race? Check my existing stash in our pantry:
Here's to having to not worry about nutrition when racing! Thanks First Endurance!!!

jc

Oceanside 70.3 - 25th MPro

The hug from the team makes it all worthwhile :o)

Man, what a tough race! I was talking afterwards with Michael Raelert, and while he won, he agreed with me: Between the hills, head & cross winds, and heat, this is one tough course. The bike was tougher than I expected. The run was not as easy as it looks on paper. Tim DeBoom ran less than 2 minutes faster than me. I feel pretty good about that. I gave it all I had on the day and learned a few things along the way:

*A half IM swim in 58-59F water is not as bad as I thought. Keep working the swim, not bad for a first wetsuit swim in 6months.
*Transition faster.
*Review the powerfile and see where you could have metered the watts better, I had a hard time holding good power in the last 15mi.
*Transition faster. C'mon, it's a race, what were you doing?
*Trust your run and keep it steady, let go of your ego. I should have stayed put at the comfortable 5:45pace I was running, instead of reacting to faster race action around me. It would have translated into a faster run split than the 6:13 average pace I posted. Race & learn.

Here are some other images:

This is the front end of the Triad, ready to roll. Photo by Aaron Hersh

Just get me home...

Thanks to my awesome family and my sponsors: Blue Seventy, NUUN, Blue Cycles, Oomph! and Corpore Sano.

More later, it's time for a beer.

cheers!

Goin' back to Cali...

We made it to Oceanside. Yeah. Donovan and I jumped in the pool of the condo we are staying at to officially declare the vacation is on. The condo complex is right on the beach, right next to the Strand, which is where the run course goes.

We are excited to go check out the beach tomorrow.

It took me 45minutes to put the Triad back together, which is pretty good, given how much I had to disassemble it to put in the box. Time to go to bed.