I've had a week to reflect a bit more on my race at Cedar Point. It's funny, because I was thinking of it as a benchmark for Cozumel. As it turns out, a 70.3 race is a pretty big event in and of itself. Thus, it's not as if I can just continue training. Rather, I have to recover and then rebuild for the next big goal . . . which is only ten weeks away!

I took three days off this week--Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday--before I started training lightly again on Thursday. I ran that day, then swam on Friday, and then rode today. I'm riding again tomorrow since I have a hilly century--the Six Gap Century--next weekend. I'm looking forward to that.

Today was the first day that I felt a bit recovered. My ride felt about like it would have felt if I hadn't raced. That's good! Now, I can start looking ahead to what's next.

At our house, we cut off our race bracelets when we are done with one race and on to training for the next. I cut mine off on Thursday. I'm eager to move ahead, but I will probably continue to eat pizza, burritos, and candy for another couple of weeks before I commit totally (i.e. nutritionally) to Cozumel.

The fella who finished second in my age group posted his race report on Slowtwitch. I enjoyed the part where he called me a "freight train." :-)

I've also read other good race reports from some of my wife's teammates, like here and here, and best of all, my wife's race report here.

Not having spent a lot of time on the road or in the pool, I don't have anything deep to say. This week has been all about catching up on work and sleep. I'm excited to move on to the next block of training.

Cedar Point Half Rev Race Report

First, a little background. Since I last wrote in this blog a few months ago, I have begun competing in triathlons. My first tri was in early June, less than a week after my swim tutor and I completed my swim stroke. Thus, understandably, of the 303 competitors in that first sprint, I was the 298th athlete to exit water that day. I had the fourth-fastest bike and the second-fastest run, and as a result, I finished second in the beginner division. I was satisfied with that. In fact, not being the last swimmer and being one of the fastest cyclists and runners was exactly my goal. Check.

I then competed in an Olympic tri a month later, but it did not go well. I had a mechanical issue with my bike which cost me several minutes and destroyed me mentally. My coach and I then decided to enter a second Olympic tri in August, and it went significantly better. This time, I finished around the middle of the pack in the swim, and again near the top of the bike and run. That was good enough for sixth in my age group--an improvement.

The goal is Ironman Cozumel on November 27th, and to that end, I competed in my first half-iron distance triathlon this past weekend. My wife, my coach, and I selected the Cedar Point Half Rev in Sandusky, OH, and my wife and I went up there on Friday morning. We prepared for the race on Saturday, and we competed on Sunday. My wife did the full 140.6 distance.

My first goal was to go roughly the same pace as I plan to go in my full-distance triathlon this fall. That would mean finishing around five hours. I figured that I could probably run a bit faster, though, so I was thinking that 4:50 was a worthwhile goal. I figured that would put me in the top five of my age group and top thirty of the race, but I wasn't too bogged down in placings. Most importantly, I wanted to experience the longer race as a means of determining my readiness for Cozumel.

My wife started about 90 minutes before me, so I wished her a happy start and headed back to our hotel room for a little while. During that time, I basically sat and dreaded the swim. Even though I have spent a lot of time in the pool lately and I was confident about the distance, Lake Erie made me nervous. I did the practice swim the day before, and the water was so murky that I couldn't even see my hands and arms in front of me. No exaggeration. I was also wearing a wetsuit for the first time, which on the one hand gave me more confidence, but on the other, felt like something uncertain that could possibly go wrong.

My race began at about 8:40. After trudging through some sludge and into the water, I began swimming. The water was just as murky as it had been the day before. Whenever I put my head down, I might as well have had my eyes closed. As a result, I was constantly running into people and people were constantly running into me. It was a battle the entire time. We were still running into each other as late as the last couple hundred meters. I ended up about three or four minutes faster than I thought, though, between the wet suit and the unintended drafting. My swim split was about 41:35. I was the 221st person out of the water, and around 40th in my age group. I was middle of the pack, basically, which is perfectly fine for someone who learned to swim three months ago.

I was excited to hop on the bike and make up some time. I transitioned quickly (about 2:30), and hopped on. Having finished the swim where I did meant that I had a lot of traffic to navigate in the first half of the bike. That has been the case in every triathlon I've done so far, so I didn't mind. In fact, it's kinda fun passing folks who are going about five to eight miles per hour slower than me. It's a bit dangerous, perhaps, but I'm confident in my bike handling given my history with bike racing.

During the bike, I moved up about 200 spots, but I was also passing people from previous waves and folks from the 140.6. It wasn't until the last 15 miles or so that I had open road. I started out a bit harder since I had to surge a lot and pass people and stuff, but it didn't affect me too much in the long run. The course was mostly flat, but there were a couple of rolling hills, a bit of stiff wind, some rough pavement, cars, and two or three steep kickers. I finished the bike in 2:22 (23.6 mph), which was the eighth fastest bike split of the day. I came into T2 in nineteenth place overall and third in my age group.

I knew that I had the ability to catch a lot of people on the run given my history as a runner. After transitioning in about 1:30, I was thinking that the first mile would be between 6:40 and 7:00. It was 6:10. I was feeling very relaxed and well within myself, though, so I didn't worry about it. I also have a lot of faith in my "running instincts"--that I am very good at perceiving how hard a particular effort should be, so I was confident that I was putting in the right effort. I actually thought that the mile marker might be off, because I just didn't think that a 6:10 off the bike should feel that easy. When I did the second mile in 6:14, I began to think that averaging around 6:20 was possible. That's what I kept in my mind the entire run. Even though I lost my running splits--my battery died in my watch about two hours after the run--most of the miles through the downtown Sandusky neighborhoods were between 6:05 and 6:20, depending on the aid stations. (I was speed-walking through them.) My fastest mile was mile eight or nine, a 5:54. That was around the time that I started to push, and I didn't have any aid stations in that mile. From that point on, I was under 6:10 for each mile, but I quit paying as much attention to each mile split.

As I had expected, I was chasing down a lot of people on the run. The fact that there were some out-and-backs on the run course helped me to pick out folks in front of me that I could run down.

Just past mile eleven, I felt a little twinge of a cramp in one of my calves, and I almost panicked. Fortunately, it held off, and I was able to catch a couple of other people, including the leader of my age group. I had no idea who he was at the time, and no idea where I stood in the race or in my age group, but that's just as well. I was just intent on catching people. The leader of the age group still had about 100 yards on me with a quarter-mile to go, and he didn't see me coming. I went past him with about 200 feet left in the race, just before entering the final chute. My run was 1:21:03, and was actually the fastest run of the day by about 3:00. I finished 5th overall.

Overall, the race was a good confidence builder. Even my transitions and nutrition were good. If I have a race in Cozumel like I did this past weekend, I feel like I'll be able to swim about 1:20, bike 5:00, and run close to 3:05. That would be sweet--around 9:30. That would put me in the running for a Kona spot. I'm not going to start planning for it yet, though. I'm going to keep my goal around 10:00 (1:30, 5:00, and 3:20), which would be like 30th in my age group in Cozumel. We'll see.

One last word about Rev 3, since I know that folks are really into the whole Rev 3 vs. WTC thing. Rev 3 did a great job of organizing and pulling off the race. Rev 3 is not the spectacle that Ironman is, but by the same token, it feels much less rigid. When my wife finished the full 140.6--in a thirty-minute PR and third in her age group!!--we were able to run across the line together. That was fun and very special. In addition, I sensed that they are more thoughtful. When there was a bunch of muck on the shore near the swim start on Saturday, they brought out bulldozers and cleared a lot of it. They provided ART therapists for the athletes before the race. At the post-race meal, they let families eat, too. At midnight, pros and amateurs together danced and waved glow sticks for the final finishers. In general, I felt less like a nameless amateur who was finishing a race and more like a respected athlete who was seeking a quality experience.

I also thought that Rev 3 handled the fact that the race fell on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 well. They mentioned it, had a moment of silence, and offered athletes the option of finishing with a flag (which, given how close my race was, I did not do). Given how politicized 9/11 remembrances have become over the past decade, I appreciated the fact that the importance of 9/11 was recognized, but I wasn't forced to take part in some nationalistic exercise.

I'm going to try to stay on top of my blog a bit more in the coming weeks as I begin the build toward Cozumel. I'm open to any advice as I continue to quickly step it up!

Motivation, Part II (aka Same Day, Second Verse)

After I got out the door today, I spent a lot of my ride thinking about motivation. I also spent a lot of time thinking about getting to watch Paris-Nice on TV. Cycling on television! Can I get a Hell Yeah?? (Paris-Nice did not disappoint. After I'm done writing, I'll probably spend half an hour reading articles about the race I watched, as if the outcome will somehow be different.)

Motivation was on my mind for two reasons. First, a friend recently asked my wife the Ironman about what motivates her, and we discussed the blog she wrote about it. Second, I have noticed my will to train has flagged a bit lately, and I have been concerned.

I've always had a fairly stoic approach to motivation. I don't always enthusiastically bound out the door for a training session. While training is at times fun, for me, it has always been a means to an end--to be a fitter and fiercer competitor. Many people who know that I spend a lot of my life pounding out miles are surprised to learn that I don't enjoy every minute of it. I don't. But I love racing, and that enlivens every training session I undertake.

Strangely, this makes me look forward to the workouts that most people dread. I enjoy grinding out hill repeats or interval sessions more than I enjoy leisurely training rides or runs. The workouts I enjoy most are the ones that I sense have a direct effect on my ability to stomp my competitors when we race. When I was in high school, I would read articles in Runner's World about folks who would relish the opportunity to commune with nature during their weekly long runs. I am not one of those people. I believe that this is one big reason why I have yet to make the step up to ultra-endurance events.

Today, as I thought about what motivates me, I kept coming back to a quotation from Emil Zatopek, the Czech runner who inspired the title of this blog:

If one can stick to the training throughout the many long years, then will power is no longer a problem. It's raining? That doesn't matter. I am tired? That's besides the point.

It's simply that I must.

I'm stuck on the word "must." This "must" is the core of his motivation. For Zatopek, there was no motivated or unmotivated; there was only "must." Of course, Zatopek was a professional. Indeed, for him, training even when he didn't feel like it was a must, just as I must go to work tomorrow morning even though I'd rather . . . do . . . almost anything else. (It's a tough time of year for teachers.) But I sense something deeper in his words, and it's at that level that I feel I can relate.

Do I have to train? Do I have to race? Must I be an endurance athlete? After spending thousands of hours covering tens of thousands of miles, after enduring injuries and surgeries and painful therapies, after devoting more time and money than I have to spend on bikes and books and clothes and entry fees, I have concluded: Yes, I must. At this point in my life, being an athlete is such a deeply ingrained part of my self-concept that I really have no other choice. I have experimented with being someone else--an intellect, for example, during the two times in my life when I was burying myself in pursuit of advanced degrees--but i have always felt that my life was out of balance. It was; endurance athletics are a pillar on which I am built. I've spent two-thirds of my life in search of fast times--in search of the most pleasant exhaustion. It's who I am.

So for me, it's never going to be a matter of being motivated to train. I will have as many days when I don't want to train as days when I do. Rather, it's a matter of conscience; if I am to be true to myself, I can do no other.

I resolved to put a picture in my blog every time I write, so here's one of Emil dropping the hammer in Helsinki.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated today. There are two reasons. First, I have basically the same ride on my schedule that I did yesterday: a three-hour ride with a few surges thrown in. There's not a lot of excitement there. (And three hours is not a short period of time by any absolute standard. Cycling, unlike most sports, takes SO MUCH TIME.) This is magnified by the fact that I'm not doing what I wanted to be doing today: racing in Greenville. I realized this morning that there was a race today in sunny Albany, GA, and I could have gone to that. Doh!

Second, it's a bit cold. I've grown quickly accustomed to temperatures of over sixty degrees, even though it's only the beginning of March. Today, it's a windy 45. I realize that that is not really all that cold--I've lived in very cold climates, and I've had days on my bike where my bottles froze and I was unable to feel my fingertips for two days. 45 will give me no such issues. But at 45, I'm going to have to wear a jacket and thicker gloves. Yuck.

At times like these, I enjoy this video:

Of the 1.85 million hits this video has gotten, I probably account for a couple thousand. My favorite part is when he stands up at 4:12 into the video. Too bad I don't have any mountains to climb today.

Okay, time to suit up and head out.

Racing!

My wife keeps a blog, and she's got loads of followers. She writes in it regularly, and she includes all sorts of pictures and videos. It's great; in fact, it is one reason that she was recently added to Team Trakkers. We have already received at our house all sorts of great stuff, including compression boots, TriSwim products, Avia running shoes, First Endurance products, and a few other things. Most excitingly, there are currently two Kestrel bikes on their way to our house--one of each of us. They were by no means free, but we got them at a substantial discount as a result of her being sponsored. Sweet. Perhaps I should endeavor to make my blog more like hers.

I ran the Disney Half Marathon last month and did well. My "reach goal" was to break 1:18:00, and I wanted to finish in the top twenty. In fact, I ran 1:16:20, and I finished thirteenth. I was second in my age group in a race that had 21,000 starters. Pretty good. Here's a pic:

It was a fun race; I passed about fifty people along the way because I ran even splits. The highlight was walking into the gear tent at the end and having all of the volunteers break into applause. I also liked it when I ran past an elf about eleven miles into the race, and he said, "Hurry, human! The sun is coming up!" I made it to the finish right at first light.) Only at Disney.

Of course, also in the "Only at Disney" category: having to pay for water, massage therapy, and even a place to sit down at the finish line. To be honest, while I had fun in the race, and it came at the perfect time of year, I'm not keen to go down there again and be a party to all of their nickel-and-diming. I would like it if there was an alternative.

As it turns out, we were stuck at Disney for the next several days while snow and ice socked Atlanta. We stayed until Thursday (after having planned to leave on Monday), and racked up a bit more time in the parks. It was fun--Florida was the only state in the U.S. that week not to get snow--but it was also a bit stressful to go well beyond budget for the trip. When we got back to Atlanta, two days after the peak of the winter weather, it looked like things used to look when I lived in DC, Michigan, and New Hampshire. Crazy.

So then on to the cycling season. I did my first races last weekend in Greenville. Another pic:

(I'm the guy on second wheel on the right wearing my State Champion's jersey.)

While it was great to get the cycling season underway, the weekend didn't quite turn out as I had hoped. I had some good efforts, but I got no results. On the first day, I couldn't get away from the pack. (My efforts, though, helped to launch two other guys, and they ended up first and second in the race.) On the second day, I worked so hard to get a break formed that I couldn't stay on the wheels of my fellow escapees. And then one of them won.

Bike racing: so much boils down to how the race unfolds. I know that, but I still haven't really accepted it. In running, you prepare and you race, and unless you have a bad race, you'll do well. In cycling, you can have a really good day and still not finish where you want. Like I said, I know this, but it's nonetheless hard to take.

The upside is that last weekend's races also marked the start of the cycling season for me. I hardly go for more than a couple of weeks over the next few months without an event. This weekend--right now, in fact--I had planned to be in Greenville for a couple more races (one of which I won two years ago). Unfortunately, though, it's raining today, and it's against family rules for me to race in the rain ever since I had a serious crash during a race in the rain almost exactly two years ago. I have to look forward to my next race in two weeks, and I have to keep my fingers crossed that it won't rain that day.

So, I'm now racing in earnest. That's exciting! Rather than looking months down the road for a single event, I now have opportunities to compete and win quite regularly. This is the start of the time of year that I enjoy. 2010 was very successful; we'll have to see what 2011 holds.

It's ridiculous for me to begin every blog post by lamenting the fact that I don't write in this blog very much. The only thing MORE ridiculous would be to apologize, considering that no one actually reads it. Acknowledgment of tardiness, expression of regret, etc.

It's the day after Christmas, and I'm here in Cohutta, Georgia, at my parents-in-law's house. Yesterday, I celebrated my first-ever white Christmas, it having snowed about five to seven inches here early Christmas morning. It was very exciting for those of us who grew up and have spent most Christmases in the south; it was the first time in over a century that the Atlanta area had snow on Christmas day.

Happily, I did not attempt to ride my bike in yesterday's snow. Likewise, today, as it continues to snow and the ice thickens in the colder temperatures, I will not be riding my bike either. This seems strange given that I have some big cycling goals ahead and that I was riding A LOT this time last year. (In fact, this week last year was the highest-mileage week I have ever had on the bike: just short of 400 miles in five rides.) This year, I'm experimenting with a different approach to the off-season which includes, among other things, some running. Running has been fun, albeit at times frustrating. I was once a runner, so it's nice to get back to my athletic "roots." I have found that I very much enjoy the purity of running, and I can see why I was into it in the first place. At the same time,of course, I can see why I hung up my running shoes--because my hips don't really like the pounding, and it's hard to run without some amount of pain and discomfort. Few are the runs where I feel fast and strong . . . but those runs are really nice.

Because goals are so important to me, I'm aiming to do the Disney World Half-Marathon on January 9th. I hope to finish in the top 20 or so, but I have only a faint idea of how fast I might be able to run (based mostly on how fast I want to run and the single race that I did--and won!--a couple of months ago. Is a hilly 15k on trails in November a good indicator of what I can run for a flat half-marathon on the road in January? We will see). After that, I will focus almost entirely on cycling until April 17. During that period, I'll do an event nearly every weekend, and I hope to get enough points to upgrade to Cat 2. After that, I'll start training for my first triathlons, in which I'll compete over the summer and into the fall. My goal remains to do a half-Iron in late September or early October, and a full Iron in May of 2012.

I've tweaked my plans a bit since my last entry just because our lives have changed a bit. Most significantly, my wife has applied to compete in the Ultraman Canada competition, and if she gets in--we find out in February!--we will likely spend a few weeks this summer training at altitude in Boulder. (This idea is so alluring, actually, that we may do it whether she gets in or not!) Given that, I plan to do Triple Bypass this summer, assuming that I can get in via lottery. This year, for the first time, they are offering an event called the "Double Triple," in which you ride the course the traditional direction on Saturday and then the opposite direction on Sunday. I'm putting that down as my first choice in the lottery.

On that note, my wife gave me "Bicycle Dreams" for Christmas. We watched it this morning, and it was just great. As I knew it would, the movie got me me thinking about ultra events to put on the calendar after the Ironman in 2012. There are several ultra events that are appealing, but I know that there is a lot to consider. Among other things, having trained through last winter for Sebring, I want to make sure that the bulk of the training comes at a time of year when I would enjoy the training (and could likely mix in some other events). That is, I have resolved NOT to spend another cold winter--this winter or really any other--putting in ten-plus-hour rides in sub-freezing temperatures. For that reason, a summer ultra (like Race Across Oregon, RAW , or if I could somehow find a team, Team RAAM) that would enable me to train during the spring is desirable. By the same token, a fall ultra (like the Furnace Creek 508) that would enable me to train through the summer and into the fall--incorporating the fall centuries that I love (and that I had to miss this year because of my shoulder surgery)--would be fantastic. A fall ultra would take me out of school, though, and it therefore requires a more significant commitment.

Of course, I have a good while to figure this out, and I have plenty of really difficult things that require my attention in the meantime. It's not like I have to map it out today. It's just on my mind since we watched the movie. In fact, I should probably go back and consider why doing an ultra--any ultra--is appealing in the first place. Watching the movie, my wife--an Ironman who has applied for Ultraman and got her first ever win at an ultra-marathon two weeks ago--could not quite see the appeal. While she appreciated the drama and intrigue of the race and the racers' stories, there was no part of her that said, "I want to do that." For me, there was. Even as we watched them suffer, I was thinking to myself how I might be able to build up to this event over the next several years. That suffering appeals to me; I like the idea of completing the ultra-endurance test. (Solo RAAM is, I believe, equal to any of the world's great endurance tests.) Would I enjoy the training? Could I endure the event? Or am I only intrigued by the idea? I'm not sure, but perhaps that that's precisely why it's on my mind.

In some ways, I feel like I'm circling back around to where I was last year. This week last year, before it became my longest week ever, I had my first real athletic meltdown on the bike. In sub-thirty degree weather, I cut a prescribed twelve-hour ride short. Nine hours short. And I began to wonder what I was really doing by training for an ultra and why I was doing it. As I look out the window at the snow, and as I consider how much I've enjoyed not riding and eating lots of cookies and Skittles,yet as I ponder taking on more significant endurance challenges, I realize that I must continue to consider my search for the most pleasant exhaustion.

Where I was and where I'm going

In my cycling career, I've had some good luck and some bad luck. As it happens, getting hit by a car in July was a mix of both. On the one hand, I was hit by a car and I cracked two bones in my arm. My season ended early, and I missed out on the fall centuries that I really enjoy. Bad luck. On the other hand, in diagnosing the cracked bones, the doctors found an aneurysmal bone cyst on the proximal end of my humerus. Had they not found it, it would have continued to grow and spread, and my right arm would have ultimately become very brittle. Rather, they were able to treat it now, and I was able to avoid major injury later. Good luck.

So, on August 23, I underwent what the surgeon promised would be a very simple surgery. My shoulder was opened, the cyst was scraped out, and bone tissue from a cadaver (COOL!) was put into my arm to stimulate new bone growth. I am happy to report that it was indeed a very simple surgery. I went home that afternoon, and I was able to stop taking pain medication--prescription or otherwise--after less than 72 hours. Three days after surgery, I had very little trouble traveling six hours to Louisville and cheering for my wife in her first Ironman (which she KILLED!). I was back at work without a sling two days after that. Three weeks following the surgery, I started physical therapy, and now, five weeks later, I'm able to ride my bike with little trouble. My shoulder is still stiff, and the work that I do on the roads and at the PT gym make it very sore, but I am hardly limited. I am eager to go back to the doctor in a couple of weeks and get the go-ahead to start lifting heavier weights to re-gain lost strength in my core and upper body.

It has been a difficult time for me. First, to go from being as fit as I was when I got injured to being as out of shape as I am right now is frustrating. I cannot help but think that all of the mental and physical effort I put into getting stronger and faster has gone to waste. It hasn't, of course, but I will only be convinced of that once I actually begin posting good numbers in my workouts again. Second, and more interestingly, I have been emotionally wrecked. In the last three decades, I have had only a few times when I was not exercising regularly. Only once during any of those stretches did I ever really notice any change in my mood. This time around, though, I was profoundly affected by my inability to exercise. I began the school year in a grumpy malaise, and I limped through the first several weeks feeling angry and tired. Some of that is professional, but even so, my inability to manage my emotions was, I believe, entirely due to my inability to exercise.

I tried to run a couple of times, but I overdid it and quickly sustained a low-level injury. I couldn't lift weights, and being on the cycling trainer day after day is mind-deadening. I was left with almost nothing physical to do for nearly two months, and I nearly fell apart as a result. I had no idea that I had gotten this hooked on exercise.

The forced break did have one silver lining: it gave the opportunity to think a lot about the goals ahead. With colder weather looming, it's important for me to have a clear picture of where I'm going and how this winter's training fits. I knew that I wanted to do another twelve hour race, but I also knew that I wasn't going to spend this winter doing cold eight- to twelve-hour rides like I did last winter. I knew that I wanted to upgrade to Cat 2, but I wasn't sure which races would potentially get me enough points to do that. And thanks to my wife's big day on August 29, I knew that I wanted to do an Ironman, even though I know that spending time swimming and running could potentially compromise my cycling goals.

Given two months to do nothing but figure things out, though, I believe that I've done it. First, while I'm getting my form on the bike back, I'm going to learn to swim. My first lesson is on October 10. As the winter wears on, I'm going to ride my bike four days a week (with a heavy focus on quality), and I'm going to swim, run, and lift weights three days a week. When late January comes, I'm going to go to five days of cycling and only two days of lifting, running, and swimming. That way, I'll be fit early so that I can perhaps score some points in the February and March races and move up to Cat 2. After that, I'll lengthen my rides in preparation for a twelve-hour race in Portland in May, but I'll also start running and swimming a bit more in preparation for summer triathlons. Following the twelve-hour race, I'll cut down on my cycling and start running and swimming more. I'll do my first half-Ironman in September, and I would like to do my first full Ironman in May of 2012. It's a good plan, even though it may require a few revisions.

I'm happy that my forced convalescence is in the rear view mirror. I am eager--bordering on impatient, in fact--to regain a full range of motion in my shoulder and re-establish the strength and fitness that was so hard to come by. Nonetheless, I can't help but be glad that I spent some time getting out of shape. It has given me a better understanding of myself as an athlete, and it has focused my training on a set of mid-range and long-range goals. I look forward to what's next.