Pain in the ASS!

OK, so today I was complaining about a pain I get in my right glute when doing any sort of riding that requires a power output of more than 220 watts, mainly in the aero position.  After I filed my complaint my friend said “is that the same problem you were having before Boise?”  Hmmm, yes, now when I think about it, it has been that long.  Five months I have had this problem, maybe it should be something of concern.

It is a deep pain/annoyance that starts in the upper glute and stretches down in to the upper hamstring.  I feel when climbing, doing intervals, or racing in the aero position.  It will bother me for a couple days, and then subsides, until I repaeat one of the above.  I stretch, I have had it worked on by my LMT, I religoulsy use my foam roller to try and work it out, but it keeps coming back.

It is a great annoyance, but has been tollerable so far, and it does not affect my running.  However, I am starting to get a bit worried as 112 miles at 230+ watts in the aero position may be a different story.

 

Aside from that, I enjoyed a  light week of training last week, and am picking it up again pretty good this week and even more next week.  Only 8 and ahalf weeks to go.

Black Diamond Half

I decided to race the Black Diamond Half Ironman this last weekend instead of Age Group Nationals next weekend, as I felt a half Ironman was more suitable to my training efforts for IMAZ than an Olympic distance race.  I had been battling a cold all week, so racing at all was not 100% certain until Friday.  This race is a pretty low key event at a state park up in Washington about 35 minutes east of Tacoma.  I had some work to do in SW Washington on Friday so I headed up to the park late Friday afternoon and checked my bike in and took a look at the bike course.  I stayed in a hotel in Enumclaw, and let me tell you that town does not have a lot going for it.

The race did draw in some pretty fast guys in from the Seattle area. Two getting a final prep in for Kona, and one who was 2nd overall AGer at Canada 3 weeks ago getting in his last race of the year as he passed on his Kona slot.

So I set the alarm for 6:00 am, this was nice as it was a 9:00 start time.  I was able to get in a really good night sleep, which I was worried about due to noise from a red neck bar across the street, and the fact that my cold had kept me from sleeping very soundly all week. I got up and grabbed my nutrition bottle from the mini-fridge and jumped in a very hot steamy shower to loosen up the crappy phlegm in my sinuses.  I was very lucky and was able to take care of the pre race GI rituals at the hotel.  I had everything packed already so all I had to do really was get in the car and head out.  I stopped at Starbucks and grabbed a coffee, and headed up.  I was warned that parking at the park was very limited, but they had a parking lot a mile or two away that had a shuttle going back and forth.  I was lucky, there were 3 spots left at the park when I got there.  It was 7:00 when I got there so I had 2 hours to kill.  I set up transition and walked around and talked a bit with the race director.   The lake had a huge fog cover that held up the race start about 15 minutes.  My good friend Erik came from Edmonds to watch me which was very cool!  I chatted with him for a bit and then went to put on my wetsuit.

Trevor Davies and I headed down to the water and did a light swim while waiting for the fog to burn off.  We lined up with a pretty good line on the buoys and waited for the countdown.  At fifteen seconds I looked at my watch and it said memory: 2:41, ah crap 5,4,3, oh well, 2, 1 were off.  I took off pretty hard and was really surprised to see such a large group with me and ahead of me.  I pushed a bit longer but could not separate so I held on at a guys feet and picked up a draft.  This was good, but after a bit it got frustrating because I kept sucking his wake so to speak.  I finally just moved over and swam by myself and ended up passing him a few minutes later.  My shoulders were really burning, but there was a group up ahead of me that I did not want to let go, finally I settled into a good pattern and the burning went away, but the guys in front kept getting further ahead.  I felt like I was swimming well, and was a little disappointed when the announcer said 28 something when I got out.  I guess I am a 28 something HIM swimmer.  I have this idea in my head that I am faster than that, and I think I can swim faster than that but that has been a pretty consistent time for me.  So out of the water in 28:35.  6th overall.

T2 went well, no problems, and I must have passed two guys in there.  In and out 1:43 3rd fastest.

On the bike I settled in nicely my HR was a bit high to start for where my power was. I passed a guy, but I was then passed by Lane Seeley and jumped in behind him, drafting legally.  This brought my hr down to where I wanted it in the low 160’s.  I hung on him for about 15 minutes, or until I had to take a drink, I briefly slowed up and allowed him to slip away and could not get back to him with out blowing my power cap.  He just kept on getting further up.  I kept him within in eye sight  for the entire first loop, but lost him on the second loop.  I was pleased to see that heading up to the aid station turn around on the second loop that two guys in front really had not gained that much on me since the first loop and they were still within 10-15 meters of each other, then about a minute or so later Lane came down the hill, this made me feel pretty good, because I knew these 3 guys were pretty fast dudes and although I had no shot of catching them, I was theoretically hanging in with them.  Then when I got to the turn around I stayed in my big ring in the front and shifted up to my 23 in the back and when I went to crank down my chain popped off.  Oh crap, luckily I got out of my pedal without tipping over, and I reached down put the chain on and stepped on my pedal and it popped off again.  On the second attempt I down shifted and it stayed on, so only about 30-60 seconds lost.  I continued to push my watts at about 250 and was feeling pretty good aside from some slight tightness in my right glute and upper hamstring while climbing in the aero position.  I rode hard into transition, and was happy to see the time on my watch was under 3 hours for the race so I know I was under 2:30 on the bike.  Actual bike time 2:25:12  Ave power 247, norm power 253.  This is my best bike effort ever.

T2 was even smoother than T1 and I was out in 1:02.  The fastest of the day.

I was feeling really good to start the run, I don’t know how to describe the feeling, but I knew that my nutrition was bang on, and that my legs while not fresh, were ready for a hard run.  Scott (coach) gave me a new run strategy that we had not tried before.  It was to start strong, and still negative split every mile, while I was excited to try this, it did not take me long to realize that this was not a feasible task on this course.  At about the start of the 2nd mile the road turned to gravel and it was the worst road I had ever ran on, rocks ranging in size from marbles to softballs, and pot holes ranging in size from softballs to landfills.  Then once off that road you turn left and head up a fairly steep steady hill, so nonetheless trying to stay consistent and negative split each mile would have been a near impossible task.  So I just ran.  The first 4 miles were easy and even the first 6 I felt really good.  I started to feel a little fatigued from the rolling hills at about mile 8, but I kept on pushing my pace.  I could still see the guy in 3rd place, and I really wanted to push the last 10k, but (here we go) that damn road that we ran on at mile 2 was back, and then the final 1.2 miles was on  a single track trail around the lake with rocks and roots and ups and downs, and I told myself it was not worth risking injury to push hard on this stuff, but in hind sight its probably because I am afraid of that darn pain cave!  So this is probably the hardest run course I have ran on, but I feel good about the run.  Run time 1:32:12 for a total time of 4:28:44.  4TH OVERALL.  The top 2 were in my age group, but they take out the overall winner so I was awarded with the 2nd place age group award.

So, I am very happy with this race for many reasons…

1) I put forth a solid/fast effort coming off of a cold.

2) I sustained my goal watts for the ride.

3) I consider this a PR, as it’s the toughest course I have raced on, and outside of Clearwater it’s my fasted HIM time.

4) This is where I thought I would be at hulaman had I not gone off course, now I know it’s true.

5) I think I am on good track for racing well at Ironman Arizona in November.

 

 

With every moronic move there is a lesson to be learned.

I won the Hulaman Half Ironman race yesterday, and that is cool, but what I really did was further learn a valuable lesson that will continue to help me in my preparation for racing the Ironman distance.  Anything can happen in a triathlon and you don’t know how things will play out until you cross that line.  Things will almost undoubtedly go wrong in an Ironman, its how you deal with them that will determine your outcome.

 For the 2nd time in 3 races I took a wrong turn on the bike, I could bash the vounteers in both instances, but bottom line is I am the one who has to deal with it.  When I finally realized my mistake I was 2 miles off course and had to back track 2 miles to get back on.  I was LIVID, I was having a great ride and now it was all for not as I just lost 10 minutes.  I wanted to quit right then, but had to ride back anyway so I decided to push hard back and see where I was at in T2. I got to T2 in 4th place 4 minutes down on 3rd, and made some circus like mistakes in t2  (sorry whoever has the size 12 zoot ultra running shoes)  and decided to go on a steady 13.1 mile run to just finish the race.  At the aid stations they would tell me how far off I was and I kept getting closer.  At mile 5.5 I was told that Boudreux dropped, and I was now only about a minute off the lead.  Holy crap, this is what they mean when they say never quit!  I picked up the pace a bit and kept surging.  I finally caught the leader with about 2 miles to go.  Josh is tough, and he made me work hard to catch him.  It was hot and very humid, and we were both hurting pretty bad, I managed to hobble in with a 41 second lead for the win.  My time was not that great, but I really beleive that this race gave me the best “game day ” experience I could have asked for.

Good luck to my Factor 9 and Ironhead teamates and   to my coach this Sunday at Ironman Canada! Bill, Christian, Ryan, Darren,  Kaytee and Scott you guys will Rock it I know!

Hells Canyon, A triathletes training dream land?

  

I just got back from 4 days in hells canyon, on the Snake River.   I used to make this trip annually with my family growing up, but I had not been down there in about 5 years.  The purpose of the trip has always been to fish and relax, which is always fun, but with my training in full bore I was hesitant to go because I really did not think I would get much training done.  However, with some heavy guilt and persuasion by my mother, and the assurance that I would not get any flack for being gone for hours training, I decided to pack up the bike, wetsuit and running shoes and see if I could make it work.

We stay at copperfield park in Oxbow, OR right on the Snake River just below the Oxbow Dam.  This is a really nice camp ground.  This place has it all for trathletes.  To swim, there are a couple options, right in front of our camp ground there is a place with a steady current that I swam in and got in a pretty good set of steady intervals, then about a mile or two up the road is a still reservoir that is glass  for miles of open water fun.  For biking this is a dream.  There is something for everything, flats for time trials, rolling hills, long steady climbs of 10+ miles, and of course some fast sweeping decents, all nicely paved roads with very little to zero traffic .  I had a 3 hour ride on Friday that may have been the best ride I have ever had. 

      

For running there is rolling hills, trails, and a perfect flat gravel road that follows the river for 8 miles out, giving a me an epic 16 mile steady run on Saturday. 

Aside from training the fishing is probably better than any other place other than Alaska.  Below the Hells Canyon damn you can fish/ fly fish for trout, steelhead and bass and are guaranteed to come back with your limits. Above the dam there is fantastic warm water fishing.  Just about every cast will bring you either a large or small mouth bass, crappie, blue gill, pearch or cat fish.

It is pretty hot there this time of year, but pretty dry too, so it really makes for a great training environment.  If you like to camp, this is an ideal place to have a big volume training week.  I am really considering going back sometime soon to do just that.

Mid Summer Repeat, but I am afraid of the “Pain Cave”!

For those of you that don’t know Gant Enderle and Grant Folske, they are two very tough Ironhead team mates of mine that recently completed a 7 day stage mountain bike race up in Canada.  This was an extremely grueling and physically demanding race that they needed to push as hard as they could every day.  According to Grant’s race report, in order to do this they had to enter the “pain cave” and dig as deep as they could and push as hard as they could through the pain.  We all know what this threshold is, and I am sure that we have all convinced ourselves at some point either in a race or in training to enter it.  I for one seem to be very afraid of the cave.  Yes I have gone into it, but only twice that I can think of, last year’s Mid Summer when I had to hold off Bill Thompson on the run to win my first race;  and at Clearwater, when my body just wanted to stop running.

I bring this up because with all my hard training leading up and a fairly light volume week this last week,  I was very excited to to see how fast I could race this race.  I told myself all week I was going to push this thing as hard as I possibly could, but for some reason when it came right down to it I chickened out.  Don’t get me wrong I raced hard, but I just could not convince myself to go beyond that pain threshold, the pain cave, no matter how bad I wanted to.   And of course after I went home and thought about it,  instead of enjoying my performance I became frustrated because I am certain I could have raced faster.  So I turned to Scott, my coach, for his thoughts and advice, and as always he put things in perspective.  He put into three simple terms:

1.  You need a very good reason to go into the Pain Cave.  Without that and a legitimate one, you will not get there.  Your mind and body need to be convinced it is worth it, you can’t fake that in my opinion.

2.  It is trainable.  Gradually in hard training sessions and races, you can learn to push yourself over the edge.  Like those hard swims I gave you last week.  Those should hurt!  This is actually one reason I like people to race shorter distances before an IM.  Usually in a race you can push yourself harder and get used to dealing with pain so that you are prepared to go there in an Ironman.

3.  HOWEVER, and quite importantly.  You really do not want to go into the Pain Cave a lot or for a very long time.  You need to gradually build it.  Build the motivation, get the rest and be fresh for your biggest races.  However, points 1 and 2 are needed to really get there when you really want to.  You just can’t do it, or it simply is not worth it to go there in every race.

So, I need to not worry about it here at this point and time, and enjoy the outcome of this race.  I will  learn to push beyond this threshold when the times are right.  Now onto to my report….

I was trying a new wetsuit for this race, as I have recently become concerned that my Orca 3.8 is a bit too constricting in the shoulders causing early fatigue in my shoulders.  Thanks to our friends and sponsor The Athletes Lounge, I was trying the 2XU elite from last year.  The swim was good, I got out quickly and led to the first turn, when Mickey Alberle made his move, which he usually does, I tried to draft on him, but could not dig hard enough to stay on him so I let him go.  I found a pretty nice rhythm and kind of just cruised home.  The wetsuit felt really good, no shoulder fatigue, however it might have been one size too big, as I was taking in a bit of water around the arm pits. Swim good.  11:15 good for 2nd.

T1 was fine other than I should have put my helmet on prior to the race to check things out.  The strap was tangled and I struggled with that a bit, but don’t think it really cost me too much time,  I passed Mickey in transition and was first out on the bike. 1:55.

My bike start was once again a struggle.  It seems no matter how much I practice and how smoothly I can mount and slip into my shoes while practicing, come race day I struggle with it.  Oh well more practice I guess.  I started strong on the bike, but quickly fell into that “comfortable” wattage, when really in a sprint it should be borderline or all together uncomfortable.  I just could not push myself on the bike no matter how hard I tried.  I would surge into proper wattage for about 10-30 seconds and then quickly fall back a zone.  Other than that the bike leg was great.  While maybe I could have pushed it harder, I did have the fastest split of the day with 29:52.

T2 was smooth in and out, no issues.  1:03

I think I started the run a bit hard, and then settled in too slow.  I tried to push the return home, and probably negative split.  I had a comfortable 3 minute plus lead at the turn, and just cruised home in 19:16, wish I was faster but thats good. 

I am very happy that I was able to defend my win from last year, and I took over 3 minutes off my time going 1:03:22.

Darrin Smith also raced the sprint setting a new PR for himself, congrats Darrin.

The Olympic distance race was also filled with Ironheads in the top 10.  Big PR for Bill Thompson who finished 4th overall, nice work!  Bill is heading to Canada in a few weeks and I think is going to have a HUGE day!

Also congrats to Ann Ciaverella 2nd overall at Troika, and Dave winning yet another Masters title and 7th overall. 

Big week & good fitness

So I just finished one of my biggest weeks, and  definately my biggest weekend of training,  and everything went well.  I am as fit as I ever have been, and feel that I have gained a good deal of speed with my short distance racing  as of late.  My body is recovering fast form workouts and racing and the outlook to the neer future as far as triathlon is looking great.  I am excited to see how this transpires into my sprint race this Sunday, and half Ironman race on the 17th.

Two week summary.

So its been a pretty busy, stressful and draining couple of weeks.  With training in full bore, I raced the Hagg Lake Sprint with tired legs  on July 12th and raced well.  I finished 2nd overall with a 1:05.02  Last week I had an emotional set back and a very busy week, and with the help of Scott, cut my training back to 10.5 hours.  I raced again this last weekend at the Deschutes Dash Olympic and finished 4th overall with a 2:02.30.  This event has the potential to be decent, but they have alot of work to do.  I can tell they were trying but they were in over their heads and it was poorly run which is too bad because its such a great venue.

So anyway, I am back to 20 hours training this week, and then race again on August 3rd and again on the 17th.

Stout, my baby girl, you will be missed!

 

Last night was a very rough night for me and my family.  Our Sweetest little angel, Stout, died at the young age of 8.  This was  totally unexpected,  and devistating to our family.  Stouty was the sweetest and most loving dog I have ever seen. 

Thank you stout for giving us 7 love filled fun years!  I will never be able to fill the void I feel in my heart right now.  I love you and miss you with all of my heart, for the rest of my life!!

 

All of these pictures were taken just on Saturday.  She had a great, fun day playing in the back yard.  She left us just a day later.

I love My Son!

I know that statement is obvious, but every day that I know him he does something more that really grabs my heart.  This week we started swim lessons, well water tots I guess its called.  Anyway this has been so much fun, its only a half an hour, but its just me and him, and he shares the same love of the water that I do.  In the first two days he is already kicking on his tummy and his back, blowing bubbles, and even jumping off from the side of the pool, into my arms of course.  He is also singing his ABC’s now, well he makes up his own lyrics, but he has the sweetest little voice.   Here are some recent pictures of the little man.  We start track workouts next week!

Yeah!

Solid 9 days!  The last 9 days of training have been big.  It feels good to get back into big volume, for a while anyway.  My body seems to be responding and recovering quickly form these big workouts which makes it a whole lot easier to get up and go another day.  My volume drops slightly the next couple weeks, only because I am racing each of the next two weekends.  The sprint triathlon at Hagg lake on the 12th and the Olympic distance at the Deschutes Dash in Bend on the 19th.  It will be interesting to see if I can race fast while training big, as well as how my body responds and recovers to back to back racing weekends. 

Numbers the last 9 days:

27 hours

13000 yards swimming  4 workouts

273 miles bike  5 workouts

55.5 miles run 6 workouts

Congrats to my friend and training partner Jake for crushing it at Lake Stevens.  Setting a new personal best in the half iron distance by over 30 minutes going 4:45.  Nice work man!  Another friend & training partner Jason Kurian also had a great race out there going 4:40 and change.  Strong work fellas!