Private HIM is in the books

 Well my private HIM is in the books.  It turns out only two of us did the "race".  SuperKate was crazy enough to give it a go as her first HIM.  She did great!  I'll let her post her pics.  We should have gotten post race pics with our race shirts on, but neither of us felt like spending any more energy.

The weather was absolutely perfect for the event.  Cool and sunny with the high reaching about 70.  We started off at 11 and ran to the Y for a 2100 yard swim.  I haven't been swimming much so I wasn't really looking forward to this part.  I felt amazingly good.  Maybe there is something to be said for being well rested and hydrated.  I changed before and after the swim do there were two extra transitions.

Coming in from the swim

Heading out on the bike

My friends Ryan and Annie came out to cheer and ring cow bells in my driveway.  It was awesome!  Kate's husband and son also came out for the run portion.  I set everyone up in the garage and had burgers and brats for them as well as football on TV.

Ryan and Annie ringing cow bells.

The bike was good once I got my hr under control.  For the first 15 minutes, my hr was in zone 4 which is unsustainable.  I slowed down until it was upper zone 2/lower zone 3 and did a pretty good job keeping it there.  I was able to drink some Infinite ride formula every 10 minutes with no trouble.  Once two bottles were gone, I switch to water and had half a GU.  Total calories in ~600 with about 32 ounces of water.

Coming in from the bike

I felt pretty good coming off the bike, but knew the run was going to be rough.  My jacket had salt stains all over it so I planned to take one salt capsule every loop and a half a GU every other loop along with some water.

Getting ready to run

On the first loop my stomach started feeling a little bloated and full.  Not as bad as it did at NOLA, but not good either.  My hr was in lower zone 3 for the first loop and I decided to slow down to get it into upper zone 2 to see if that would help my stomach.  Within 20 minutes I started farting.  What a great feeling :-).  I started to feel less full and more confident I would have a death march.  Lap 3 was a little slower than lap 2 but it was nice to know I only had 5 miles left.  Then I made a mistake between lap 3 and 4.

starting lap 3 or 4

For some reason an orange slice sounded good to me.  As soon as I ate it I almost threw up but held it together.  I walked over to the bike trail and started running and not more than 10 seconds later I was hurling in the grass on the side of the bike trail.  Thoughts of DNF came into my mind.  Luckily I brought a bottle of water with me on this loop so I rinsed out my mouth and started walking.  I felt much better after that and decided I would run/walk my way in.  No more salt or GU, just water.  The rest of the death march was uneventful.

The finish

Overall, I would say my fitness just isn't there yet to have a great race.  Maybe I skipped too many workouts.  Maybe I didn't go hard enough in some of the workouts.  Maybe it's time to follow a different plan.  Lots of maybes.  I did decide that I won't decide on the season next year for at least a week.  With all that said, I didn't have any bad aches or pains during the race and I felt well enough after the race to cook for a bunch of people.  The next day I wasn't overly tired or sore either.  I's say I was in good enough shape for a good race.  I just need to figure out what it will take for a great race.

I weighed myself before and after the race and I lost 9 pounds or about 5.6% of my body weight.  That seems a little high, but I'm not sure what I can do about it.


The numbers
Total = 7:03:58 - 156
10:21:08 - run 0.5 mile to Y, check in and change
10:13:18 - 500 yards
1:00:48 - rest (wimp)
11:02:66 - 500 yards
1:00:44 - rest
13:45:25 - 600 yards
11:42:37 - 500 yards
12:58:93 - change and run 0.5 miles home
3:12:37 - bike 55.7 - ave hr 157
2:04:32 - bike-run transition - ave hr 142
24:25:55 - 2.5 mile loop 1 - ave hr 168
1:33:47 - chat with spectators
28:25:86 - 2.5 mile loop 2 - ave hr 162
4:01:90 - chat and put bandaids on nipples - ave hr 149
29:20:65 - 2.5 mile loop 3 - ave 159
1:44:23 - chat - ave hr 148
34:15:61 - 2.5 mile loop 4 - puked at the start of this lap and walked/runned it - ave hr 147
1:31:13 - chatted - ave hr 150
31:54:14 - 2.5 mile loop 5 - ave hr 148

Overall it was great to have a goal to keep training for.  It was tougher to keep going without people lining the course than I thought it would be, but we got it done.

Additional Private HIM details

Well, it's getting close now.  The course maps remain the same and can be found here.  Ryan is still planning on cheering for us (drinking beer and watching football) and I told him transition opens at the same time as the bar, 10 am.  Race starts at 11.  If you need a Y day pass, let me know and I'll take care of it (my wife works there).

Transitions will be in my garage.  Remind me to give everyone the door code in the event Ryan isn't there yet and someone accidentally closes the door.  That would make for a funny DNF story, but wouldn't be too funny at the time :-).  BTW, my house is your house for the race.  With that said, I'm not cleaning or doing anything special :-).

I'll provide water, ice, (and any nutrition I happen to have), orange slices, and pretzels (and any thing in my pantry if you get desperate).  I meant to order some Ironman Perform drink, but never got around to it so if you want a sports drink, the race will be BYOSD.

For dinner, I'm still looking at bacon wrapped fillets, spicy red potatoes and probably stuffed peppers.  If you have any requests let me know.  I could use a dinner count (so I know whether to trim one or two beef tenderloins), so if you plan on making it, please let me know (that includes the non-racers I invited and racer families off course).

If you have any requests or questions, let me know.  If it goes well, maybe we can make it a little bigger event next year.  If not, maybe we'll turn it in to a barbecue instead.

One week until my private 70.3

Things are coming together for my private HIM, though I still need to clean the transition area.  The shirts arrived last week and look ok.  The line between the black ink and white shirt seems a little fuzzy, hopefully that is just loose material that will fall away after the first washing.  I'm ready to do this race and start the off season.

Starting the taper.  Today's brick was a little rough.  I had aches and pains on all three sports including two where I said, "that has never hurt before" which got me thinking that I've said that more in the last two years than I have my whole life.  I suspect many endurance athletes experience the same thing, specially when they reach middle age.

Good weekend of s/b/r/c (swim/bike/run/cook). My parents and MIL visited this weekend.  It's always nice to have them visit and gives me an extra excuse to cook.  It ended up being a triple cookout weekend including firing up the smoker.  I don't smoke meat often because it is an event between the prep, and the length of time it takes to smoke meat, but the outcome is usually fantastic.  Cheryl told me I was smoking chicken to have pulled chicken, so four chickens were the first batch of meat smoked.  Then I smoked six pounds of salmon (2/3's of that was for neighbor's).  As long as I have the smoker going, we might as well fill it up.

The smoker doing its thing

Makes me hungry just looking at it!

I put the foil down so the fish didn't pick up any chicken flavor

Have a great week everyone!

4 Weeks Until The Private HIM

Things are coming together for the private HIM October 2nd.  It looks like we'll have four racers.  Cheryl asked how many people were racing and I said four, me, Kate, and a couple guys I met on the Internet :-).

I have some work to do getting the transition area/aid station area together.  It's a bit of a mess right now.

needs a little work

Training has been going fairly well.  I had an 11 mile hot run Saturday and felt strong for most of it.  I did start running out of gas at the end and actually started to walk at at about mile 10.  The mental challenge began.  Funny things go through your mind after running an hour and 45 minutes in 95 degree heat.  Lots of mental games.  A million reasons why to stop, very few why to keep going.  When I get to this place, I sometimes think about a story I've shared before.  Sometime about 10 years ago a neighbor kid was walking by pushing a tractor and talking to himself.  I don't remember exactly what he was saying anymore except for the punch line.  He said, "c'mon Mr. Rabbit it's just me and you and you push".  Cracks me up every time :-).  BTW, that kid now runs an 18 minute 5k in high school.  Back to my run, I won.....

On to some cooking news.  I had a couple friends at work tell me about a couple simple recipes this week so I figured I would try them.  The first was grilled tomatoes.  Cut the tomatoes in half, brush on some olive oil, put on some cracked pepper then five minutes per side with the last couple covered in cheese.  I used an Italian blend of Mozzarella, Parmesan, Provolone and spices.  It was simple to make and tasted fantastic!

yum, tomatoes!

The second recipe was grilled peaches.  Cut the peaches in half and pit them.  Grill them open side down for a couple minutes then skin side down for a couple minutes.  Then drizzle some honey and coat with granola.  These turned out pretty good too.

Peaches!

5 Weeks Until The Private HIM

As I posted earlier this week, I'm getting a little burned out and looking forward to the end of the season.  My private HIM is in 5 weeks then Ill take a little break and re-evaluate the situation.  I've had two other people say they want to race with me and a friend say he wants to man the aid station (read - drink beer in my driveway and heckle us :-)).  If all goes well, SuperKate and Mike will be joining me.  I met Kate when I picked up a friend to take to a 1/2 marathon and he said "hey, mind if we give another friend a ride?".  I met Mike on BT then we met up with some other BTers at the Carlyle, Il Oly this year.

I'm not artistic at all but wanted to make some shirts for the race.  I need to order this week so if anyone wants to re-design it for me, have at it.  Before I show my non-artistic shirt, I have to show the ugliest shirt I've received at a tri.  It just so happens, it was also at Carlyle.

someone on twitter said this shirts looks like someone puked on it :-)

So mine is a simple long sleeve white tech tee from Voler.  Their website shows it as short sleeve, but I'll order long sleeves.

Front - except it will be long sleeve

rear - except it will be all white and long sleeve

Is it worth it?

After missing two days of training because life is busy (and I was feeling a little lazy), I started wondering if all this training is worth it.  I skipped one swim, one bike, and one run the last two days and as a result I had time to eat dinner with my family one night, sleep in an extra hour one day, and volunteer one evening.  It was a nice change of pace. Don't get me wrong, I would still need to do something to keep the weight in check and the heart healthy, but I wouldn't need to do quite as much.

My volume so far this year is good for me.  I've averaged 6.7 hours of training per week over the first 34 weeks for a total of:

Bike:129h 13m 33s  - 2037.91 Mi

Run:70h 42m 38s  - 409.18 Mi

Swim:28h 42m 22s  - 60380.84 Yd


6.7 hours doesn't sound like much but if you include getting workout stuff together, cool down time, putting workout stuff away, showering, etc, that probably adds 30-45 minutes to every workout which adds 2-3 hours per week for a total of 9-10 hours.

My volume chart varies all over the place due to race, recovery and vacation schedules.

Funny, while typing this I was also going to mention my house is a mess and so is my yard so I would have time for both of those things.  Truth be told, if I back off on the exercise, I will fill the time in with something I enjoy and neither house work nor yard work fall into that category :-).

This is something I will be pondering over the next couple of months as I decide whether or not to do a full Ironman next year,  stick with HIMs, go back to Sprints and or Olys, go just to running, or whatever.  I'm still doing my private HIM October 2nd, then taking a week off.

Private HIM

Before I get started, check out this cool cloud pic I took when leaving church tonight.

The details are coming together for the half distance tri from my house October 2nd.  Lap swim at the Y starts at 11 am, so that will be the race start time.  If you plan to race, let me know and I'll get you a free one day pass.

The first leg of the race will be running to the Y from my house.  The Y is 0.5 miles away.

run to the Y

The Y pool is 25 yards so we'll do 42 laps (84 lengths).  You can do another half a length if you want to hit 2112 yards instead of 2100.  After the swim we'll run the 1/2 mile back to my house and hop on our bikes for two 26.6 mile loops.  

bike loop

You can do the loop in either direction.  From experience, I suggest counter clockwise if the wind is from the South or West and clockwise if it is from the North or East.  I can take pictures at all the turns if anyone besides me is going to race.  Let me know.  Two loops only ends up being 53.2 miles so we'll take on one 2.5 mile run loop to get up to 55.7.

The run course will be a 5 loop course so the aid station can be in my garage or front yard.  There is one steep hill so I recommend running clockwise so you run downhill on the steep part.  There is a sweet 11.4 mile loop from my house I can set you up with if you want to carry your own nutrition.  

run loop

So the total distance is

0.5 mile run

1.2 mile swim

0.5 mile run

55.7 mile bike

12.5 mile run

for a total of 70.4.  Perfect!

Dinner will be around 7 pm.  I figure the race will take me about 6 hours, maybe a little longer because I probably won't push as much as a normal race.  Right now I'm thinking bacon wrapped fillets and spiced red potatoes but I'm open for suggestions.

On an semi-related note, I won a blog contest a while back by predicting Kurt @ Becoming an Ironman's HIM race time within 8 seconds!  I predicted each leg within 2 minutes as well.  Kurt sent me an assortment of nutrition to try and it arrived this week.  This was very cool because I'm still pretty new to endurance racing/training and like to try different nutrition.  I've been wanting to try Gu Roctane, GU Brew and Cliff Shot Gel so thanks Kurt!

What's next?

funny bike sign from today's ride

No races planned for August.  We have our yearly beach vacation in early August then back to school time plus no good local races I know of.  I wouldn't mind a sprint or oly at the end of the month if it works out.  Any ideas?  September 10th I have a 5k run with my daughter which will be her first race.  I'm really excited about it!

My original plan for the second half of the season was to do the Last Chance Tri half distance tri at Rend Lake, IL on October 2nd.  After looking into the race a bit more, it looks like a nice course and the 1863 folks put on good races.  Then I looked at the results from last year and less than 60 people did the race.  That sounds like a lonely bike and a really lonely run.  Couple that with the $170 entry fee and a night or two at a hotel plus food and it's a $500 lonely race.  To take the place of that race, I'm toying with the idea of a private HIM starting from my house instead.  Kind of crazy idea, but when you go on long bike rides without tunes, these kind of crazy ideas happen :-).  I live across the street for an extensive trail system for the bike and run and two blocks from a YMCA with a pool.   T1, T2 and the aid stations would be in my front yard (meaning a lot of run loops).  Post race food would be grilled by me, once I finish.  Corn won't be in season, but I'll come up with something else good.

Dinner tonight, also had salmon and Mahi Mahi

Here are couple pics from the tentative bike course.

If you are interested, let me know (I'll need to limit the entries due to the cost of dinner).  I might even have some shirts made, or a shirt if I'm the only taker :-).  Oh, and I've become a fair weather racer, so if the weather sucks, you can race and I'll start the cookout early.