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Nudge,nudge…wink,wink. June 23, 2007

Posted by anton in : Ironman , 1 comment so far

This is NOT original to me…it’s been floating around that web for awhile…I just found a copy and thought I should post it…for fun. (Thanks to www.trihawks.com.)
The Joke is…alot of this is absolutely true! I did add a few things…

Schedule for IMLP…nudge,nudge,wink,wink.

1. Arrive in town.
2. Find over-priced accommodations you are staying a minimum of four nights at
3. Unpack bicycle, spread gear around room randomly.
4. Attempt to reassemble bicycle, realize you forgot to mark your seat and handlebar position before disassembly. Guess position and tell yourself it won’t make a big difference.
5. Drive bike course at slow speeds while making wrong turns. Annoy locals.
6. Find swim venue. Put wetsuit on, stand around for 15 minutes. Swim 10 minutes, take wetsuit off. Look around to see if you impressed anyone.
7. Walk around expo looking for free stuff.
8. Go to registration tent, stand in line, get bag, check bag for goodies.
9. Go back to hotel, arrange energy products into different piles. Stare at piles.
10. Spend 2 hours preparing for bike ride with race wheels and drink systems. Go for 30 minute ride. Go back to hotel.
11. Decide that this would be a great opportunity to learn how to rebuild your rear hub to fix the play in it. Disassemble hub.
12. Drive to house where your club mate, the bicycle mechanic, is staying. Show him the pieces of your rear wheel. Beg for help.
13. Go to swim start Friday morning. Look for tell-tale wrist-bands on other competitors; look condescendingly at all those swimming who aren’t participating in the race. Secretly wish you wern’t either.
14. Go back to hotel, spend 4 hours attaching numbers to your bicycle, helmet, and race outfit. Panic that you don’t have 8 pieces of reflective tape for your run outfit, even though IMNA has never been known to enforce the rule.
15. Drive down to expo at the last minute, stand in line, pay $10 for a strip of reflective tape.
16. Drive back to hotel, place energy products into various bags.
17. Pack transition bags.
18. Unpack transition bags.
19. Repack transition bags.
20. Drive to Carbo-dinner. Stand in line, proceed through buffet with poor food selection, sit at crowded table, where everyone has done more IM’s than you and who appear to have a bottomless trust fund. Remember you paid an extra $20 each so your family could enjoy this food. Listen to IMNA personnel tell same jokes as last year. Realize that Dave Scott has apparently discovered the fountain of youth. Stand in line to leave.
21. Prep bike to drop off on Saturday, discover your tire has a slow leak. Drive to expo, stand in line, pay $80 for tubular tire. Get back to hotel, realize you don’t know how to glue on a tubular, drive back to expo and have them do it for you. For $30. (For the record,I can do this.)
22. Drop bike off, spend time covering bike with various plastic bags because everyone else is doing it.
23. Drop off your transition bags, realize you forgot your salt tablets, drive back to hotel to get them.
24. Drive back to hotel again, arrange race gear for tomorrow morning.
25. Pack special needs bags.
26. Unpack special needs bags.
27. Repack special needs bags.
28. Realize there is nothing more you can do to get ready. Sit down and relax.
29. Panic.
30. Eat early dinner
31. Go to bed, lie there in a cold sweat.
32. Wake up at 2:00 am for 1000 calorie bottle of nasty-tasting concoction, “because Gordo does it”.
33. Lie awake listening to horrible weather move into town.
34. Wake up at 4:00 am, listen to spouse complain.
35. Get in car, drive to start. Stand in line to enter the transition area.
36. Check transition bags.
37. Stand in line to get body marked.
38. Check bike, stand in line to get tires pumped up.
39. Stand in line for porta-john.
40. Realize you left your water bottles with special nutrition needs in the fridge at the hotel. Drive back madly to get them.
41. Get back to start, wait in line for parking spot.
42. Stand in line for porta-john.
43. Get wetsuit on, stand in line to enter swim area.
44. Realize it’s too late for a warm up. Stand in line to enter water.
45. Stand in water with 2000 other people while sun comes up and national anthem is sung by local high school girl. Realize that few moments of your life have been this beautiful.
46. Gun goes off, 2000 people attempt to swim on top of you, realize that you are in mortal danger or drowning and few moments of your life have been this dangerous.
47. Get kicked in face, goggles come off, panic and tread water trying to get them back on while people hit you. Remember you paid good money to do this.
48. Exit swim, stand in line to get into transition.
49. Stand in line to get out of change tent. Get bike, stand in line to get out of transition.
50. Start bike, realize that there is no way 1000 people can pack onto a course within 20 minutes without massive drafting problems. Hope that poor bike handlers don’t crash in front of you.
51. Ride bike.
52. Panic that you’ve already fallen off your nutrition plan that your coach gave you.
53. Make up for lost calories and fluids in the next 15 minutes. Feel ill.
54. Ride bike.
55. Get saddle-sore.
56. Ride bike
57. Decide to piss while riding to save time.
58. Spend the next 30 minutes soft-pedaling, coasting, and practicing mental imagery trying to relax enough to let it go.
59. Give up, get off at aid station and spend 30 seconds in porta-john, get back on bike.
60. Ride bike, feel queasy and bloated, take 3 salt tablets at once to make sure you’re not low on electrolytes. Throw up.
61. Get off bike, sit in change tent wondering why you are doing this. Listen in disbelief to volunteer telling you you’re almost done. Proceed to marathon course.
62. Realize that you should have practiced the 1000 calorie drink at 2:00 am before race day.
63. Throw up, walk, jog, repeat for 26 miles.
64. Start gagging at the thought of another energy gel.
65. Sample the variety of food at aid stations. Discover Oreos, the food of the Gods.
66. Invent the form of locomotion called the ‘ironman shuffle’. Feel proud that your 12 minute mile is technically not walking.
67. Pass your spouse. Make them swear to never let you do another one of these.
68. See finishing chute. Sprint madly down the road high-fiving people and cheering while announcer screams your name. Realize it was all worth it.
69. Get to finishing chute, wait in line while a man takes his extended family over it with him.
70. Cross line, collapse into arms of patient voluneteers.
71. Spend next two hours in med tent realizing that you should have drunk more fluids when it got hot.
72. Go to massage tent, eat cold pizza and wander around in a daze while wearing an aluminum foil blanket.
73. Stick around finish line until midnight to share in “the ironman spirit”. Beat off 12-year-old to grab free socks thrown into crowd.
74. Look in disbelief at fresh and bouncy professional athletes dancing at the finish line.
75. Cheer last few athletes into the finish before midnight. Ask your spouse if you looked that bad. Be amazed that they spent 17 hours out there moving the whole time.
76. Go back to hotel, collapse in bed.
77. Wake up, go to bathroom, collapse back into bed. Repeat all night until the 6 IV’s the med tent gave you are through your system.
78. Wake up at 4:00 because your legs hurt so much. Wonder why you’re having hot flashes.
79. Eat first breakfast.
80. Sit around until spouse wakes up, eat second breakfast.
81. Shuffle around town Monday morning wearing finishers T-shirt and medal. Smile knowingly at other fellow shufflers. Graciously accept congratulations from locals thankful you came to their town to spend money.
82. Eat third breakfast at all you can eat buffet.
83. Go to Official Finishers merchandise tent. Stand in line. Pick out $200 worth of clothing with prominent logos on it. Stand in line, pay $600 for clothes. Contemplate getting a tattoo to immortalize your achievement.
84. Fall prey to peer-pressure and marketing techniques. Cough up $450 to sign up for the race next year - since it will sell out today, and this is your only chance to sign up!
85. Proceed to IM Hawaii role-down. Hold out hope that, even though you finished 80th in your age-group, this will be the year everyone leaves early and you get the last spot.
86. Eat first lunch.
87. Go back to hotel, stare at the disgusting, sticky, smelly mess that is your bicycle and race clothes. Start packing things up to fly home or realize you have to drive 8 hours with that stuff in the same car.
88. Eat second lunch.
89. Go to awards dinner, stand in line. Get poor food from buffet, remember you spent $20 a head so your family could enjoy this magical moment with you.
90. Watch hastily-produced race video. Closely examine each frame hoping they caught a glimpse of you on the course. Be disappointed.
91. Watch age-group athletes get their awards. Wonder how many of them actually work for a living, and where you can get some of the performance enhancing drugs they appear to be on.
92. Realize that you have to go all the way up to women’s 70+ age group before you find an age-group your time would have won.
93. Listen to long, excruciatingly boring thank-you speeches from various professional athletes.
94. Stand in line to get out of awards dinner.
95. Go to Airport, stand in line. Deliver $5000 bike to Neanderthal-like baggage handler. Pray. Reluctantly take finishers medal off to pass through metal detector. Proudly tell TSA personnel what you did on your weekend.
96. Get home, contemplate unpacking disgusting bicycle, decide to leave it until tomorrow.
97. Eat Bon-Bons and watch TV. Contemplate unpacking your bicycle and training again, decide to leave it until tomorrow.
98. Repeat above step for 2-10 weeks. Step on scale. Look at your fat, disgusting self in a mirror and remember you signed up for next year’s race. Unpack bike, chip mold off of seat tube. Show up at swim practice again.
99. Get ready to do it all again next year…

Dovetail. June 22, 2007

Posted by anton in : Training , add a comment

Now comes the tricky part. As many of ya’all know, IMLP is around the corner (28 days) and at this point training is going well…I’m un-injured, tired and hungry all the time…so it looks good. Last weekend was a distance hoot. Three hours running on Saturday. Cheered on Mary Lou at a 5K race in the morning (MY baby!). Ran from the house into Seneca Creek State Park leaving about noon and picked up the Green Way Trail to run south. Hour and one half out…same distance back…unsupported except fo a camelback and “snacks.” First part of the run was a little tougher since I was humping an extra 9 pounds of fluid…But it only gets lighter as you drink up. I just don’t see how people wear those things,camelbacks, at races? For snacks I carried Power Gel and some Clif Blocks…sweated like a fool but felt good at the end…didn’t see a single other person.
Sunday…well what can I say about Sunday…Took the Mountain bike down to the C&O Canal and pedaled up to Washington County and got in some hills on the roads there, then hammered back for a total of 116 miles in 7 hours and 5 minutes. Put a fork in me…I think I’m done! I was just trashed…was supposed to run a tad but just couldn’t…No loss as I run enough off the bike anyawy.
The rest of the workouts this week were a little rough as I was tired till Wednesday from the weekends shenannigans…Had a massage on Thursday and off today…ready for this weekend!
Tomorrow will be 1:30 on the bike followed by 1:30 running…not bad. Sunday is another LONG BIKE ride,but ONLY about 6 hours…Hills mostly this time. I’ll Taper some next week for my Half Ironman next weekend in Tupper Lake NY, but really I’m training through this race…Next weekend is the last weekend before I start my taper for Ironman…But, and this is where Dovetailing comes in,..it’s also the first weekend of training for the Double Ironman that I WILL DO the first weekend of October.
So here is the plan…
Thursday, Drive to NY and get in an easy evening swim of 1.2 miles.
Friday, pick up my packet for the Saturday race,relax, enjoy the outside. (I’m camping)
Saturday, Do Tinman (Swim 1.2,bike 56,run 13.1) No time expectations….just a cruise. Evening trail run.
Sunday, up early as possible,swim 1.2 miles and bike the whole Lake Placid course,112 miles, and get in a short run.
Monday, Swim 2.4 to 3.6 miles. short run and come home…
A (Hopefully) 200 mile weekend.
Yikes! I’m tired now!
After that it’s all down hill to IMLP…Then a steady climb to The Double.

Letting things go… June 15, 2007

Posted by anton in : Training , add a comment

You try to be diligent and hit all your workouts…get the speeds right. The distances, the nutrition, the gear all has to be tried out. All tried out again, again, again…you try to eliminate the worry, the suprises…so that race day feels like a well broken in running shoe.
Most of the time this Ironman training cycle…I’ve been spot on. Sometimes though…not even close.
The last two weeks have been a tad crazy…the end of the school year does that…add in a changing pool schedule, some nasty weather and a stomach bug… it can put the kibosh on a training schedule regardless of how awesome you think you are.
Last weekend was a BIG weekend… I’d planned on splitting the long bike and long run by a day as I’ve done a few times in this schedule…Last Saturday evening..I developed a disagreeable stomach thing that left me…”indisposed?” An uncomfortable night and feeling drained the next morning…a Long bike was simply out of the question. SEVEN hours of training…gone. My schedule during the week didn’t help either…so I had to let it go. I’m hoping for a much better weekend this one coming…
Today I biked 20 miles and ran for half an hour afterwards…felt ok…
Tomorrow, Mary Lou has a race in the morning where I’ll go cheer her on (MY Baby!) I’ll slot in my long run in the afternoon…3 hours. I’m hoping for 18 miles. Maybe a short spin in the evening.
Sunday will be 7 hours on the bike…shooting for 120 miles. Short run afterwards.

Letting things go… there really is a lot to let go of in training for Ironman…more than you realize when you undertake this journey….especially If you’ve done one before.
I’ve had to let go of how I felt and how things worked when I did my first IM in 2003. I was 48 at the time and was a mess emotionally (see “Why I have an IM Tat” Blog below. Physically…I was spot on and as much as I don’t want to admit it…my body is not working the same way it was almost five years ago. I’m older…it shows. Let it go.
Since everything is as it is…everything is what it was. I’d like to have a better IM time this go around but I’ll go to the race as I always do without expectation and without a focus on time. Let it go.
In 2004 I injured my left knee and missed three weeks of training at a critical time…could swim, but no biking or running…at the time it was a huge lesson or rather a reminder…Let it go.
Things happen in training…punctures, closed pools, illness, time conflicts with more important things (My baby, my sisters, relationships with friends, work.) Bad days, bad weather..Let it go.
This is all getting you ready for race day… Bad weather. An elbow to the face. Lost goggles. Broken zipper. Flat tire. Pouring Gatorade over your head instead of water. Crashing. Blown out quads. Cramps. Blisters….A metaphor for life…

Let it go…keep moving ahead.

Yelling for Stella June 3, 2007

Posted by anton in : Race Report , add a comment

Went with Mary Lou and some friends…Janet, Sara and Mike to Pocomoke City, Maryland for the Sprint distance tri this past Saturday…It’s a small, well run and fun tri…sort of how they used to be…low key, inexpensive and just…fun! Mike had never done a tri before…it was Sara’s first open water swim..the first tri for Janet in years and the first sprint I’ve done since 2001 (Too short a distance for me!) Mary Lou cheered and rang the cow bell and was just all around awesome support. All had a good time, I think…and seemed pleased to have made the trip. May have to make it again… (Secretly, I want to say the race is awful and don’t go…so it stays small and fun…but they raised $16,000 dollars for the local YMCA. Always a good cause.)

It doesn’t come along often that you have the chance to give someone…a complete stranger, a gift they will never forget.
Mary Lou and I were waiting for the awards to be handed out after the race when the race director told us all that the last finisher was coming in…and that here name was Stella and it would be nice to cheer her in.
A few people started to trickle to the finish area and then more, and then more..until almost everyone had walked over to the finish area….You could see her coming several hundred yards off as the the finish is in a big open field…a fit but not thin woman, head down, it was obvious the day had been rough for her.
“Stella!” I yelled and others did too..and clapping and cheering..it became infectious…then a chant….”Stella,Stella,Stella…”
Hand to her mouth as if in tears, then arms raised in triumph, crossing the line.
The gift: A moment she will NEVER forget all the rest of her years….it doesn’t happen that often, but it could…all you have to do is step outside of yourself and do for another athlete.