Partial Ferrous Humanoid

Well, I am now a half-Ironman! My primary goal was (a) to finish, and the secondary goal was to (b) complete it in under 6 hours. I did finish and my time was 5 hours and 59 minutes. So, Mission Accomplished. :-)

I was so tired afterwards. After eating some snacks and cheering on other TNT participants, I took a 2+ hour nap and nearly overslept for the TNT “victory party”. Filled up on some fajitas, got the girls ready for bed and then crashed and slept from 9:30-6:30.

Feel pretty good today – no major pains or anything. A little bit of sunburn on my shoulders, but it’s not too bad – I had put on sunscreen, but I think it may have gotten scraped off when I taking off my wetsuit after the swim (in salt water – bleah). But, overall, all systems go – I’m looking forward to actually enjoying the resort after running around (figuratively and literally) the last few days.

Full race report tomorrow or the day after. I need to pack up and check out of the hotel and then I'm taking my family to the attractions of Moody Gardens today before drving back home tonight.

Houston-Bound

As planned, no workout today, driving to Houston enroute to Galveston.

Actually, my wife is driving and I am finishing up some work in the car. At times like this, I really appreciate my Verizon EV-DO Broadband Access. :-)

I think our hotel in Houston has a pool (and maybe a hot tub) - that would be nice.

Final Days

I'm following my plan for the most part. Had some solid workouts the last few days. Not quite at the normal intensity since I'm in taper mode, but still enough to keep all pistons firing.

• Tue, 25th - Brick: Bike (medium-hard intensity for 45 min), Run (2 miles at 5% incline for 20 minutes)
• Wed, 26th - Swim (1,500 yds in 31:42.5) - splits: 10:20, 10:42, 10:40.5, Easy Weights
• Thu, 27th - Reverse Tri: Run (3 mi at varying incline 0-5% in 26:30 min), Bike (medium-hard intensity for 45 min), Swim (1,000 yd in 19:07.5) - splits: 9:47, 9:20.5

Plan for the rest of the week:

• Fri, 28th - Rest/Travel to Galveston
• Sat, 29th - Open Water Swim (TNT practice at Palm Beach) + Easy Bike (probably ride the run course and part of the bike course) + Walk/Jog (probably walk around the Moody Garden grounds and check out the Expo :-)
• Sun, 30th - Lone Star HALF-IRON!

I'm getting very excited!

Lunch-time Swim & Revised Plan

The plan was to run about 75 minutes today, but my legs are still a little sore so I swam instead. 2,000 yards at lunch - splits: 10:17, 10:33, 0:18 (quick hello to Jonathan), 10:26.5, 10:23.5 ... total time: 41:59. A decent pace. Afterwards, I took Jonathan out (Happy Birthday!) for a quick lunch at Panda Express.

I think I have to update this week's training plan a little bit. Need more rest/tapering - especially for the legs. So I'm going to eliminate the cycling on Wednesday and I'll try to dial down the intensity for the reverse tris.

• Tue, 25th - Reverse Tri: Run (3 mi @ 30 min), Bike (medium @ 45 min), Swim (1,500 yd @ 30 min)
• Wed, 26th - Rest, Weights
• Thu, 27th - Reverse Tri: Run (3 mi @ 30 min), Bike (medium @ 45 min), Swim (1,000 yd)
• Fri, 28th - Rest/Travel to Galveston
• Sat, 29th - Open Water Swim (TNT practice) + Easy Bike + Walk/Jog
• Sun, 30th - Lone Star HALF-IRON!

Only a few more days to go ...

Happy Easter

Earlier in the week, Derek and I planned to ride this morning. Maybe start at 7:00 AM and get in 50 miles before we did our Easter activities. However, we cancelled our plans a few days ago when it looked like rain and cold(er) weather was in the forecast.

Well, the rain didn't materialize and the temps, while cooler, were still in the 40s-50s. But I'm still glad we cancelled the bike ride. I definitely felt little sore today (legs and shoulders) from yesterday's 16.5 miles of running. Additionally, despite sleeping about 10 hours last night (I normally average about 6 hours - so that's just crazy talk), I still feel tired. So instead of working out, I saved my energy to attack the Easter Brunch at the Marriott Solana. That buffet never stood a chance! :-)

In other news, I finally found some time to install the replacement armrests for my aerobars. I discovered that the other armrest was also cracked so I ended up replacing both of them.

I also installed new Look-compatible cleats on my bike shoes. That task actually a little longer than expected because the screws holding the cleats had been damaged from too much contact with the road and were slightly stripped. Now that the new cleats and screws are in place, I'll keep better track of their wear so that they can be replaced at a more appropriate (earlier) time.

Training Continues

Friday: 90 minutes on the spin bike at home. Wanted to do 2 hours but didn't have the time nor the motivation. Watched Lost and Leno (yay for TiVo) to keep from being bored out of my mind. :-)

Saturday: Last tough training day. A lot of running.

Almost 10 miles this morning in my neighborhood before taking the kids out for an Easter Egg hunt. Then after a TNT open water swim practice in (chilly - sub-60 degree water) Lake Grapevine (3 short trips: about 1000 yards and 20 minutes total), Derek and I ran 6.5 miles from Oak Grove Park. The second run was tough (and much slower). When we did the second half on the Oak Grove Park trails, we saw some in-line skaters and I was thinking "Hmmm, a pair of Rollerblades would definitely be the easier way to do this."

Morning Run: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5215854 (9.91 miles in 1:25:46 - 8:39/mi pace)

Afternoon Run: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5219352 (6.5 miles in 1:02:11 - 9:33/mi pace)

The TNT open water swim was pretty good but the distance was not as far as I would have liked. If I hadn't had done the third swim with the team captains, it probably would have just been 500 yards of swimming - not enough when I have to go more than 2,000 yards next Sunday. I did get to use my wetsuit, which is great. The new wetsuit definitely is not as tough to get on and off as the previous (too small) one. Spraying some Pam on my legs and shoulders ("Hmmm, do you smell fried chicken?") also helped a lot.

Training Plan

Here's my training plan for the last week and a half for the tri. It's pretty aggressive but should be doable.

• Thu, March 20th - Bike (60 min), Swim (1000 yd) - COMPLETE!
• Fri, 21th - Elliptical/Spin (2 hours)
• Sat, 22th - TNT Open Water Swim (2 laps? = 573 m x 4) + Run (90 min)
• Sun, 23th - Elliptical/Spin (2 hours) - originally was going to be a bike ride, but it looks like rain for Easter Sunday :-(
• Mon, 24th - Run (9 mi @ 75 min)
• Tue, 25th - Reverse Tri: Run (3 mi @ 30 min), Bike (hard @ 45 min), Swim (1,500 yd @ 30 min)
• Wed, 26th - Bike (medium @ 60 min), Weights
• Thu, 27th - Reverse Tri: Run (3 mi @ 30 min), Bike (medium @ 45 min), Swim (1,000 yd)
• Fri, 28th - Rest/Travel to Galveston
• Sat, 29th - Open Water Swim (TNT practice) + Easy Bike + Walk/Jog
• Sun, 30th - Lone Star HALF-IRON!

Today, I got to spin class early and did 15 mins by myself and then joined in for a high-end aerobic session on the stationary bike. Afterwards, I swam 1,000 yds with splits of 9:23.5 & 9:32 with a 28 second break in between.

In other news, I got my replacement aerobar arm rests today and Don gave me two tires that he had ordered for me (Don, Derek, Scott, and I put in a bulk order of eight Vredestein Fortezza TriComps so I'll have to do some bike repair/upgrade work tonight.