Getting back at it.

It is now more than a week since Ironman Canada and I have not done any exercise. I am going to try to go for a run after work today and then hit the pool on Wednesday morning. For the remainder of the fall, I am going to try to do more exercise for the fun of it and to get out with people who I have been meaning to see all summer. This will include some social bike rides, some kayaking and running in some roadrunners races. I always get a bit paranoid about gaining back the weight that I loose while training for ironman. I have a trip planned for thanksgiving weekend to Maine and I will take my road bike with me. I am also going to think about what my goals and plans will be for next year. As of right now, it will not be doing another ironman. I may do a couple of half ironman's which would not require that much training. (beyond what i normally do)

I am also looking forward to swimming in the pool and working a bit on different strokes. My spinning classes start this month and I will start doing some weights at the gym.

Still recovering

Yesterday, I thought I had recovered from Ironman Canada and went on some wine tastings. I had a bit of a relapse and was on the couch most of today. I am learning a bit about how you feel when you are seriously dehydrated. I have run some marathons where I got dehydrated but I have never felt like this. We wre travelling around the Penticton area where there are a ton of wineries. The funny thing is that I cycled the same roads that we are travelling in the race and nothing looks familiar. I felt so miserable during the bike ride that I really didn't look at any of the beautiful scenery. I have some pics from the race and the scenery here that I will post on here tomorrow. During the swim, when I was getting pushed, kicked, punched etc... I said to myself that I was not going to do this again. As of right now, that is how I feel. I have done 3 ironman races and that is enough. I am looking forward to having more time to do running races and getting a little faster over shorter distances.

That was a hard day

I had heard from several people that Ironman Canada was easier than Ironman Lake Placid. Its not. I am not sure if its the heat or the terrain or both. I don't know what the temperature was but it was at least mid nineties and probably hotter. I ran by the thermometer at one point late in the race when it had cooled off alot and it was 89 degrees. The swim was full body contact the whole way- punching, kicking and getting hit it the face. I felt ok in the swim and was happy with my time (1:10). On the bike I did not feel well from the start and had stomach problems; Gatorade was making me sick. I had been drinking it the day before to be hydrated and it was not sitting well in my stomach. When we got to the first hard part of the bike course (Richter Pass), I was feeling sick and didn't know if i was going to be able to finish. I stopped drinking gatorade and switched to water and things got a bit better. By the end of the bike ride, I was feeling better and things started to turn around. When I left the bike to run transition, I was figured I was 9 minutes ahead of my lake plaicd time and I felt good again. My legs felt good and I thought I would have a good run. It was fine for the first hour and I ran 7 miles in the first hour. If I had kept anything close to that pace, I would have had a great marathon and finish time. I should point out that there were a huge number of people walking. There were more walkers than runners by far. Somewhere in the second hour, I began to slow down. It took me 2 hours to get to the half way mark which was still not too bad. I started to have cramps in my legs and in my chest. I kept running and am pleased that I never walked other than to stop at aid stations but it took me 2.5 hours to run the second half of the marathon. I felt strong on the last 5 k which just shows how your mind kicks in when you know you are almost finished. My finish time was 12:03. Not to get too dramatic but I think I had a touch of heat stroke as I felt quite sick afterwards for the rest of the evening. I feel better now the day after.

In Penticton

I arrived in Vanouver late on thursday evening (2 hours late) compliments of air canada. I was meeting Greg and Corena who flew in earlier. Greg decided to book a room at the hotel at the airport. We got up early on Friday and drove to Penticon which took about 4 hours. It is beautiful here and we are staying at a really nice condo. It is also quite hot which is a bit of a concern for the race. We took our bikes to get checked over at the Bike Barn which proved to be a good move. I have a lot of difficulty getting my back wheel on and off and in doing so i bent the derailler a bit. Otherwise, my bike was fine. Corena's bike had a lot of problems which they fixed. Corena and I went to the athletes dinner Friday night. These are fun but pretty much the same at every event. I got a good nights sleep Friday night . Today (Saturday) we are going for a short bike ride and 15 minute run and then we will just try to relax and eat and drink lots. Penticon itself (although it has beautifuk scenery) does not seem to be a particularly interesting town.

Getting ready to head to Penticton

It is a busy week getting things done at work and getting packed to go away for a week. This past weekend i had one of my best results ever in a race coming third in the Sackville Sprint triathlon out of 90 people. I do feel pretty good in terms of my training and don't feel like there is anything else i could have done for this ironman. So, my performance however it goes will not suffer from lack of training. There may be other factors such as heat to contend with. I ran yesterday for a half hour and felt great and today I am going to cycle for an hour. Tomorrow is a short run of 30mins and that's about it.

My goal with every ironman is to try to get as much out of the weekend as possible interms of enjoying the experience- which includes travel, meeting new people, shopping and generally having fun. I want to enjoy the race as much as possible and do as well as I can. I will be happy if I get through the race safely and complete it without any major problems. That is my primary goal; my secondary goal is always to improve my times. Last year, my time was 11:39 with what I thought was a slow bike ride but a good swim and a very good run. I would like to improve the bike time by 10 minutes or so and keep the other times or improve on them slightly. My marathon time last year was slightly over 4 hours so I am sort of shooting for under 4 hours. We will see.

Tapering continues

Wednesday I did my last long run- about and hour and a half out around New Glasgow. I have a bit of a mental block about running in the morning but it was beautiful yesterday (around 7 am) and I was thinking I should have done it more often in the morning. My usual running time is always after work. Tuesday night I swam with the tri group in Rusticoville. We went around 7:30 and by 8:30 it was getting dark and a bit hard to see. Today I am going to swim at the outdoor pool at Simmons and then go for a bike ride with my friend, Tyler R. for about an hour and a half. On the weekend i am doing the sprint triathlon in Sackville. That will be a fun change from always doing Olympic distance races. It will also be a good little speed workout.

August 15th weekend.

I might be tapering a little too much in that i feel like i am taking it pretty easy. This past saturday I played tennis for fun and as a bit of a mental diversion. Sunday, I did do an Olympic triathlon in Parlee Beach. I finished 14th out of about 50 competitors and was reasonably happy with my performance. Both my running and biking are a little slower over shorter distances that they were a couple of years ago but I attribute that to all the ironman training over the past 3 years and not enough short races. I used to compete in a lot of 10 k and 5 k races when I had more time. I have learned that I cannot be good at everything at the same time. I took Monday off and I seem to have a busy schedule this week socially and it will be a matter of sqeezing in workouts here and there. My program calls for an hour and a half run this week which seems long for tapering but I think I will try to do it tomorrow morning. (which is not my favorite time for running but its the only time available) Tonight I am going to try to go for an openwater swim and do around 3000m. Thursday night I am doing a bike ride with a friend for a couple of hours and then my program calls for a short brick on the weekend and then it will be the countdown to heading to Penticton the following week. I think that getting rested and eating well etc... is as important as anything at this point. I know that my ironman strength is not my speed in any of the disciplines but it is being able to keep a constant moderate pace without suffering too much and in particular being able to run a decent marathon after biking for 6 hours. The only unknown variable would be doing it in extreme heat. Hopefully that won't happen. I think that anything up to 30 degrees would be fine.