Got a little swim in for my cardio (just under 1.25 miles), ab-ripper may only be a few minutes long, but man it does a good job… ouch!
Completed… threw some mountain biking in as a warm-up. Glad I spent some time putting a new chain and adjusting the derailleur last night… no problems on the trail. Even managed to hit the technical loop, almost went off a 3 foot drop, til I decided I better get some suspension before I try that!
Subbed the cardio for a run at the gym, followed by ab-ripper at home, still pretty sore from yesterday…
Completed, measurements recorded and pictures taken… sore already!
Alright so a lot has happened since my last post, we’ve moved (again) and I got a new job (number 6). I’ve done a few races and am now a nationally ranked triathlete. This year I was looking forward to the Escape From Alcatraz Lottery as I was definitely planning to go next year. Unfortunately my name was not picked and I’ll have to figure out a different race I’d like to do. Enter Rev3 Cedar Point Half Rev?!
Alright, so I’ve been toying around with the idea about doing a 70.3 race (that’s a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and a 13.1 mile run, aka half-marathon). Am I crazy? No… really… last time I even attempted a half-marathon, my legs were cramping at mile 5 and I almost threw in the towel around mile 12. How would I even be able to attempt a half-mary AFTER a 1.2 mile swim and nearly 60 miles on the bike.
The first step is to pick a race and sign up (still working on hitting the commit button ;)). Cedar Point will be a good venue to do, we got platinum passes for next year so Susan will be able to hit the park while I’m out on the course.
Next a plan to follow is always a good idea… My training this year has left much to be desired with the deck building and house moving and all that. Although I did set 2 PR’s on different courses, I need to set a better commitment to my fitness. Since the race is late in the fall next year (09.08.2013) I’ll have plenty of time to prepare. I’m planning to start this week with a round of P90 and possibly follow that with some P90X. I have a 20 week detailed beginner 1/2 Ironman plan available from www.BeginnerTriathlete.com. That will be worth its weight in gold!
Finally… commitment will be the key. My plan is to keep up with this blog and track my journey all the way to the finish line. This site has fallen to the wayside many times before, but I think transforming it to a progress tracking website I’ll be able to keep it updated as I head towards my goals.
So I heard there was some pretty sweet mountain bike trails in the area and I wanted to check them out… only problem was I didn’t have a mountain bike. I managed to find a used one last week. I gave it a 10 minute test ride, talked the guy down 20 bucks, and tossed it in my car. Once I got it home, the first thing I did was get the seat post unstuck. With the seatpost removed I gave it a good dousing of WD-40, a little bit of grease and was able to slide it up and down with out a problem. I was glad I didn’t have to resort to extreme measures to get it out.
I’ve come to the realization that most bikes can do without a kick-stand, especially if the kickstand in question won’t stay up going over bumps. That was the first thing to go! The next thing were the metal pedals… they were in pretty rough shape and I swapped those out for some bigger plastic ones I had sitting on the shelf.
My next step was to take apart the headset and see what condition the steerer was in. Not sure how the previous user was using the bike, but there was sure a crap-ton of dirt that came out. The steerer had some rust (not as bad as the seatpost) and got a healthy douse of WD-40 as well.
Once the fork was re-installed, I needed to adjust the front brake. For some reason the quick release was difficult to use, after some tweeking I managed to get that working (important for wheel removal so I can load it into my car!) With the front end tuned, I started working on the drive train.
The cassette was in pretty rough shape, I set that aside to soak in some degreaser while I started looking at the crank. Luckily I had a crank puller and was able to get the crank arms off. I didn’t have a tool for the bottom bracket, but I plan to pick one up this week so I can take that out and get some grease down there.
After getting everything cleaned up, I started putting it back together. During my test ride I noticed the back brake wasn’t very effective. The pads were pretty wore down, but I figured I could tweek it to have a mostly functioning back brake instead of a kind of working back brake. Once I got the wheel mounted I gave it a quick spin and noticed it would start rubbing the pads… there was a major wobble, not sure exactly how a wheel gets quite that bad…
I’ve heard wheel truing is more of an art and decided to let the pros take a look at it. The bike shop down by the river took a little longer than I had hoped, but man they did a great job with that wheel. Yesterday I was able to get the brakes adjusted and derailleurs dialed in.
Today, I headed up to Rotary Park for a true “break-in” of the bike. There are quite a few trails up there and I had a helluva good time exploring the different areas of the park. The bike performed pretty well considering the state it was in when I bought it. It didn’t give me much issue except for a certain gear ratio… I think this might have to do with the poor shape of the cables, but a quick barrel adjustment and it seemed to give me less of an issue. I’m pretty pumped to hit the trails again! Pictures of the bike can be found over here.
Only a few days until Rev3 Knoxville and I’m pretty excited to be racing my first olympic distance triathlon. In other fitness news, Susan completed ANOTHER 1/2 marathon over the past weekend! Learning from my experience last year, I opted to not try a 1/2 marathon, but instead signed up for the mini-marathon (a whopping 2.6 miles!)
We got to the race a little later than I would have liked and managed to catch the last bus to the start line. My race started at 6:45 and I managed to get to the start line a little after 7. I felt like a poser for starting in corral 11 for the marathon, but oh well, it was still neat. Doing the mini-marathon did have its perks, I got to the finish line and had first dibs on all the post-race refreshments, I even got in line for a finisher photo! 🙂
Once I finished my bag of pretzels and a water, I headed back to the car for a change of clothes… I now know how superman must feel changing in a phone booth… a porta-potty can’t be much different (well a little smellier I bet…) I tried to make it back to see Susan start the race, but it took longer to get to the start then I thought and I caught the last few corrals going…
I asked Susan before the race where she could use some extra encourgement, and she said around mile 12. I headed off in that direction and waited for her… I was sitting in the shade watching the runners attempt one of the last hills of the race. Not very many of them looked happy. I also saw two guys running and juggling and a group of people supporting a dragon. After quite some time, I started to get a little chilled and decided to walk along the race course.
I figured Susan had to be coming around soon, and found a nice spot in the sun and enjoyed a band that was playing just across the street. A few minutes later, Susan popped up and I gave an encouraging shout and started clapping… only to not be heard by Susan… 🙁 I walked alongside of her for awhile, wondering if she was going to notice me or not. Once we got up to the corner, she took a double take and realized it was me. We had a chat about how she was doing and I tried to give her some encouragement… she only had less then a mile to go.
So, it has been awhile since this site has received some updates in the form of a blog post, so here goes!
As can be seen in the top right corner of this site, my big race is coming up quickly! As part of my training plan, I decided to enter a smaller race as a “warm-up” for the year and had a lot of fun doing so!
It was the 4th Annual Pi Delta-thlon (a unique race experience) and experience it was! I managed to convince Susan to come with me for packet pick-up the day before the race, she wasn’t too impressed with the campus of MTSU. I wasn’t too impressed with the one ways and lack of signage for the pick-up. We finally managed to find the rec center and were trying to find a parking spot. I was behind a card and figured if I followed him I wouldn’t have a chance. Unknown to me, the way I turned was a one-way, but slipped into a spot just before the car that was in front of me rounded the car (hehe, sneaky, but it worked!)
On the way back home, Susan mentioned how long a drive it was to get to Murfreesboro, which I responded with, yeah I plan on leaving around 5 AM to get set up for the race. She rolled her eyes and I figured I was flying solo for this race. I tried getting to bed early, but was pretty excited for my first triathlon of the year, I couldn’t sleep and 5 o’clock couldn’t come soon enough.
As much as I wanted to use my new bike, I opted for my roadie. I had cleaned, de-greased, re-greased, lubed and put new handle bar tape the day before the race and that definitely made for a smooth ride.
I swear there is no time when I-24 is free of traffic, even early morning on a Sunday! Although I do wish my commutes to work had similar volumes of traffic… I got to the rec center and started unloading. I aired up my bike tires and took it for a quick spin around the parking lot, making sure I didn’t mess anything up the day before… I headed off to transition to get set up (not realizing I forgot to leave my bike shoes unbuckled… again!!) >:(
After I got my number written on my arms, I headed back to the car for a powerbar and some water. I always like looking at the attractive…er…fast looking bikes and seeing how everyone has theirs set-up. It was getting close to 7:30 and I figured I would check on my spot and make sure no one messed with my stuff.
When I racked my bike in, I was the first and only one there, now the rack was completely full and people were trying to cram bikes in all around me… My stuff seemed to be out of the way and I figured I’d take a look on how traffic flow was going to work during transitions. The mount and dismount lines for the bike were quite a ways away, I should really learn to leave my shoes on the bike and slip them on/off while riding, but I think I’d need tri shoes to do that safely! 😉 I did managed to run with my bike and not fall…
After getting the flow down, I figured I should probably do a few laps in the pool to warm-up. I was probably the only one to shower before hand, but at least I followed the rules. 🙂 The water was cooler than what I typically train in and it actually felt kind of nice. Shortly after my warm-up someone came over the megaphone and said something and the lifeguards were getting everyone out of the pool.
Counting is a tough part of the race. During sign up we all entered our estimated swim time, which seeded us accordingly. The lowest numbers have the fastest predicted times and the highest numbers the slowest. I’m pretty sure no one after the first few people were in correct order. I was 226, found 224 and stuck by him near the back of the line.
After we had been waiting for a very long time and the line not moving much, a lady came up and said they were already in the high 200’s. Well we decided to head to the front, which was good because I was ready to go! I knew I was going to overestimate how long it would take me to do the 300 meters, but I wasn’t sure how fast I was going to be compared to everyone else. Well, #224 started right in front of me and I had passed him before we got to the second length. I passed quite a lot of people during the swim, at one point I even managed to swim under someone!
The swim seemed to go by really fast and before I knew it, I was climbing up the ladder and jogging off to T1. When I got to T1 I had troubles getting my socks on (need to bring the white ones instead of the black ones…) and found out my bike shoes were still buckled. With all the trouble I had, I still had a pretty decent T1 time! I was on my bike and cruising.
I had not looked at the elevation profile for the course, but compared to what I train on, it was super flat. There were a couple of hills, but nothing compared to the monster hills around our house. I managed to pass a few people on the bike and the only guy that passed me, I was able to catch and pass him back. Near the end of the course, there was an intersection where police were guiding traffic.
I thought I saw someone turn left at the light, but seeing as how there was another cyclist in front of me, I decided to follow her. As we approached the intersection, she yells “Which way do I go?”. There was no response from the police, and I’m thinking, crap what do I do now? As we get to the other side we both turn towards the police and she asks again which way to go. The response was, “back to the rec center.” Oh wow… that’s helpful. Then another officer said he didn’t know. The cyclist spotted a couple sorority sisters in pink helmets and asked which way to go, and they got us on track, totally costing me like 2 minutes on the bike… 😉 As we were getting closer to the transition area, I really wanted to pass this cyclist. She seemed to be just out of reach until I really stepped it up on the straight-away back to transition. I managed to pass her, but she beat me out of T2. -.-
That little maneuver on the bike really got my heart racing and I wasn’t sure what that meant for the run. I managed to finish the run without taking a walk break and passed a couple people in the process! Although it wasn’t quite the advertised distance of 3.14 miles (due to construction) I still managed a good pace and as I crossed the finish line, I was thinking, dang I could have went faster!
Although that one intersection posed a problem and apparently the criss-cross of the transition paths caused some people problems, it was still a great race! I had a lot of fun and managed to finish faster than my goal time of 1 hour 15 minutes! 😀
Looking at my training log a couple weeks ago, I noticed my bike training has been suffering a little. I re-arranged my schedule to include 3 bike sessions instead of 2 and cut my 3 times running down to 2. So far this has helped me get a lot of time in the saddle (T.I.T.S) and get adjusted to my new bike. Training has really ramped up and I’m super pumped for the race coming up in May.
Two weekends ago I had taken my bike up the the Ashland City rail trail and stopped by Cheatham Lake on the way back. It’s a nice park with a swimming area and I figured what a great place to get some open water swimming (OWS) in. Last week-end I pulled out the wetsuit and we headed down that way.
The Jimmy John’s sandwiches we got were pretty disappointing and it took me awhile before I was ready to hit the water. We were watching the kids “play” in the water… for about 2 minutes before they realized how cold it was and ran out. The water temp was around 63 degrees F. It didn’t seem too bad, until I was neck deep and water was getting into the wetsuit. A few times around the buoys though, and I was actually pretty comfortable. I almost ran into some people and darn near went head first into a buoy, but managed to avoid any collisions. I guess people were pointing at me, and I felt super “cool” making my way to the water in my wetsuit, but I got a pretty good work out in and found out its a lot easier to get out of a wet wetsuit then a dry one!
For Easter, we visited my folks in New Madrid. My mom is making progress and definitely had a lot of improvement since the last time I saw her. As always, I got to have a learning experience as we tried to get the dining room ceiling finished before dinner was done (we put some tiles up, but weren’t quite able to finish in time). Apparently tiles from the same dye lot can be different colors and my dad has about 150 tiles he won’t be able to use.
We took a box of tiles home to see how the color looks, and it’s pretty darn close to the fake tile linoleum we have now. We had been thinking about tiling our kitchen and now it seems like I got a new home improvement project that will be happening once I get the deck done…
I’ve been meaning to add a new post on here for awhile, just haven’t gotten around to it. 😉 November seemed to sneak up on us this year, maybe its because we’re used to lots of white stuff covering the ground and being very cold. I managed to finish my second ever five mile race the Saturday before Thanksgiving.
I developed an app to help keep me on track during my training for the race. Although I didn’t beat my previous time, I felt a lot better finishing this race then that one. It also didn’t help my time that the course was a lot tougher, a stiff wind that always seemed to be coming right at you (even after the turn-around point) and hilly! I took a quick lead ahead of Susan to put some time between us, and as we passed each other, her words “I’m catching up to you!” was all the motivation I needed to keep going strong!
Susan was on call for Thanksgiving so we watched the game and had a nice little meal for ourselves. Susan made the dessert and I somehow got to do everything else! Waldo has been doing good, he seems almost like another dog now that we let him out by himself. We should have gotten the invisible fence a lot sooner!
After finding a good deal on cyber Monday for a 32″ LED HDTV and hooking it up, I started looking into alternative means to Charter for cable and internet. To get the HD Channels on a 2nd tv we would need to rent another receiver from Charter and get charged five more bucks per month. Charter’s internet pricing was cheaper than AT&T’s for high speed, so I started looking for options for cable. DirectTV definitely had the best 2-year contract deal, but once the 2 years was up, it jumped to a ridiculous amount and I didn’t really want to enter into a contract. The other option, Dish network, was pretty closely priced to Charter and provided more channels, but we’d still have to get two receivers and charged extra per month for the second one (I think it was 7 bucks here).
Then I had a radical idea, what if we ditched cable altogether? I don’t typically watch a whole lot of tv anyway, so after convincing Susan we could save quite a bit of money, we decided to give it a shot.
The first step was to see what major networks were in range of our house. Using a couple tools on the internet, I found ABC to be the furthest one out at around 40 miles. This is important as someone is addicted to Once Upon a Time, no ABC meant no deal!
The next step was to test an antenna with at least a 40 mile range. There’s some pretty neat antennas out now-a days, including ones that are paper thin and can actually look like part of your decor. I saw Best Buy had an antenna with a 50 mile range and figured if I wasn’t able to get all the stations I needed *ahem* ABC *ahem*, I’d return it and for go this great idea. After getting the antenna home and hooking it up to the tv, I was able to get 18 channels (most in HD), including ABC!
One of these days I’m going to actually figure out WTF is up with our coaxial cable wiring. We have a dish in our backyard with three lines attached to it. Our cable box has a 2-way splitter and a 4-way splitter (the 2-way feeds into the 4-way). Inside our house, we have a wall jack in each of the upstairs bedrooms, the upstairs tv area, a wall jack and a line in the living room, a wall jack and TWO lines in the master bedroom. Hauling my old school CRT around I determined neither upstairs jack worked nor the wall jack in the master. Outside there are two sets of three wires cut. One set comes from the satellite and one set obviously goes to the wall jacks. I still don’t know why 2 working lines were needed for the living room and bedroom, but that’s what I got…
Before venturing off into the attic I wanted to make sure I got my wiring figured right. The plans were to keep the one tv upstairs and the other for the master. I disconnected the 4-way splitter from the 2-way and wanted to get one of the lines that went to the master. I must have been lucky as the first cable I tried happened to be the right one. After marking each end of the cable, I saw the upstairs jack was already marked (isn’t that convenient?). I moved the incoming line to the 4-way splitter that way I could hook up the modem to whatever line I wanted and both of the tv lines to the 2-way splitter.
Once the wiring was figured out I was off to get a 50′ line to run from the attic to the cable box. We don’t have a full attic and a tall person doesn’t belong in ours. It wasn’t easy and the A/C unit didn’t make it pleasant going in and out of the attic. Once I started the mounting process I found out there was enough slop that I couldn’t use my ratchet wrench for the lag bolts, no it wasn’t metric because I tried that to and didn’t have much luck. I also thought to myself, gee I better not drop one of these bolts in the 6 inches of blown insulation, but happened to do that at least 5 or 6 times, almost gave up looking for the last one I dropped… 🙁 After a dozen trips in and out of the attic I finally had the antenna mounted. Using an app on my phone, I pointed in the direction I thought would be good and went to program the tv’s. Lo and behold I managed to pick up 22 channels including all of the major broadcasting networks, success! I was really happy to not have to play the adjust, scan, adjust, scan, adjust, scan game!
Along with the antenna, I also got a set top box. I went with Roku XS. It lets you stream HD content to your tv from a few different sources, including NetFlix (which we had) and HuluPlus (which I signed up for, $7.99 / month). So, after taxes and fees and all that fun stuff, we were paying close to $85 / month for cable television, add $5 for HD channels on the second tv and figuring the $8 for HuluPlus let’s say that’s a savings of $80 per month. That’s almost 1000 dollars a year we’ll be saving by dropping cable, I know there’s a better way to spend that money… such as say a new triathlon bike! 😉
Speaking of which, my triathlon training has officially started a couple weeks ago. Watching the Kona coverage (the Super Bowl of triathlons) last Saturday has got me pumped up and I can’t wait to get to the starting line to see how my training pays off!
In the past month I’ve spent a couple quality weekends helping my dad and his renovation project… Things ramped up quite a bit when my mom suffered some health issues and we needed to get things done… quickly! I’m slowly becoming an expert at insulation, drywall, tiling, painting, and various other home improvement projects. Something must have rubbed off, because I’ve gone ahead and started a couple of projects around our house as well.
From what I’ve seen/heard the average cost of an Invisible brand dog fence installation is ~$2000. Looking to save some green, we decided to do it ourselves. After a bit of research, I had found a site that sold a very similar kit (made by the same people as the Invisible brand dog fences) for under $300. Wanting to make the installation easier, I had wanted to rent a trench digger that automatically buried the wire. Somehow I was talked out of doing it this way, and needed to come up with another plan.
After buying a riding lawn mower not too long ago (which is very, very sweet) and being a member of the Sears shopper rewards program, I had about 25 bucks I could use at Sears. I thought I would use this money towards an electric edger/trencher. Edging with a weedwacker works, but I had wanted an edger anyway and this seemed like a good opportunity… or so I thought.
When I went to pick out the lawn mower, the employees at Sears were super helpful and friendly. That was not the case when I went to pick up the edger. Wanting to get an early start on Saturday, I stopped into Sears after Susan’s award dinner (5 years at Dow Corning!) I got there about 15 minutes before the store closed, but knew exactly what I wanted. The person who was “helping” me wasn’t very friendly and didn’t seem to be very cooperative. Long story short, I went to checkout and when I told him I wanted to use my shopper reward points he said I needed my PIN number… which I had no clue of, but I could reset it on-line… I wasn’t exactly happy about this, because that was the only reason I was buying this thing, particularly at Sears…
After a quick skim through the manual, I had the edger trenching in no time. I soon found out the directions for “locking” the extension cord weren’t very good and the cord kept unplugging itself from the unit. After messing around with it, I finally got it to stay in as I was trenching around our yard… this process took 4 or 5 hours to finish. I mounted the wall unit and started dragging wire around the yard, when I realized we weren’t going to have enough.
The box says the kit was good for 25 acres, but I failed to see the small print that said additional wire/flags would be required. Luckily they had the same type of wire at Lowe’s and we were able to continue with installation. Once everything was wired, we tested the system, made a few tweaks and started burying the wire. Our grass on the one side was pretty viney and I was having a lot of trouble getting the wire to the bottom of the trench.
I pulled out my new fangled trenching device and was able to bury the wire coming from the wall unit to the outside loop (the cross wire). By this time it was getting dark and I left the rest of wire burying for the next day. It took another 4 or 5 hours to bury the wire, using lawn staples and caulk to go across the driveway… I was happy to see a green light on the wall unit when all was said and done.
We wanted to take training really slowly with Waldo, I figured once he gets running, he would probably being going fast enough to run right through it. The first couple days we had him on his leash and went towards the boundary flags until the collar beeped. We used “retreat” to turn and run towards the inside. This went really well and I was ready for an off-leash trial… not sure if Waldo was though… He was doing good, fetching the ball and following me around the yard. He started doing his circles, then figure 8’s and started going faster. Sure enough he hit the boundary… he let out a cry and just stood on the other side… I was happy he didn’t run off into the neighbors yard, like he usually does. I managed to get his collar off and decided that was good for today and brought him inside.
The next day we went out and did the same thing, this time however when we were walking around the house, he slowly made his way to the boundary… he heard that beep and turned around and jogged towards the inside… he got a lot of praise for that… success was at hand!
The other project I’m working on is getting our basement/garage into a more organized area. I’m putting together a workbench (hopefully pictures to come soon). I searched the internet and found some plans I liked and modified them using Google’s SketchUp software. Not having a truck, I knew lumber would be a pain to get home, but figured I could rent the Home Depot truck to get everything I needed.
So Monday I headed over there to find out the truck was being used by someone else… did I put off getting the lumber? pffsssh of course not, I did the next best thing… rented a U-Haul truck just down the road. Once I got the truck loaded up and heading home, I got the great idea of dropping a couple things off at Goodwill on the return trip.
I don’t recommend backing down our driveway in a 14′ U-Haul truck with no spotter, I managed to scrape a little paint off the truck on our mailbox… whoops! The other night I spent a bit of time cutting the 2×4’s to size. When I had about 3 cuts left (using my circular saw… yeah I need some real tools :P), our neighbor came over and offered me to use his stand which would have definitely helped to cut the boards. I really appreciated the offer, but like I said, I only had a few more cuts to do… I felt bad he hauled that thing over and didn’t use it, but he should have came over sooner! 😉
We did have a nice talk about what I was doing (I think its an unwritten rule to see what the neighbor is up to when they have their power tools out) and he wanted to know how the invisible fence was working. I did want to get my plywood cut to size, but figured I’ll wait until another day to do that as I told him I was just about done cutting…
I’ve also put together a makeshift bike stand… I still need to put a base on it (that will come from the 4’x8′ piece of plywood I need to cut) and hopefully I’ll get some pictures of that up on here as well. I really like my new bike and was sad to see the bike computer wasn’t working properly.
During one of my last rides I noticed the cadence sensor wasn’t picking up any information, but the speedometer was still working. I stopped and tried to fix it on the side of the road and quickly learned it’s not easy to clip in going uphill (totally biffed it on the road… nothing but my pride was damaged). Then the last time I took it out, I saw the speedometer wasn’t working nor the cadence sensor… I picked up a new battery and I think that solved one issue. I then realized the magnet for the speed sensor had moved and wasn’t crossing over the sensor, hopefully that fixes everything.
With the dog fence installation this weekend, I wasn’t able to get my Sunday ride in to see if everything’s fixed, but I’m hoping it is. With the weather to surely get cold/rainy/snowy out I had wanted to get a bike trainer I could use on the really nasty days. Bike Nashbar was having a sale and offered free shipping on all trainers and rollers. I opted for the rollers and they FINALLY came yesterday. Not sure why, but two days in a row FedEx had a “delivery exception” and didn’t even make an attempt to deliver to the house.
Once I got home, I took the dog out (who was really good) and decided I needed to give the rollers a try. Well, it’s like learning how to ride a bike all over again. With a trainer your bike is usually locked on the back axle, while on the rollers you are essentially balancing yourself on 3 drums. After a quick trial run I noticed the drum furthest back looked kind of funny. Sure enough there was a good size dent in the aluminum drum (heavy sigh…) It wasn’t long before I was packing the rollers back up and heading to the local FedEx office, hopefully my next set comes in on time and undamaged! 😀
This triathlon bug has really gotten a hold over me. For some unknown reason I decided to throw my name in the Escape From Alcatraz lottery at the end of September. Names were drawn the first week of October and somehow I managed to get picked. After planning the trip out and looking at the cost (entry fee is $405) I finally made the decision I wasn’t going to do it next year… This would have been the longest tri I would have attempted and I was feeling pretty bummed about getting picked and not going (although I want to do this race someday!)
I really wanted to attempt a tri around this distance and started looking around at different races around the same time (June). I stumbled upon the Rev3 page and remember reading about their race in Knoxville on www.BeginnerTriathlete.com. It didn’t take long for me to decide I wanted to do this race and Susan seemed pretty excited to spend a long weekend in the Knoxville area the first week of May. Today I made it official, I’m signed up and getting super excited!
After my last triathlon (in the rain) I figured it would be a good idea to get my bike cleaned up and ready for my next race. After pulling the bike down I noticed the back tire looked flat. After pulling the wheel off and running my hand around the outside (next time I should use gloves), I got a small cut from a piece of wire sticking out. After mastering tire removal on my hybrid, I tried to get this tire off without any tools… didn’t go quite as planned…
After grabbing my bike tool I used the one tire lever and had everything off the rim in a couple minutes. I pulled the wire out, grabbed my spare tube and began making my bike all shiny (hoping this wasn’t a bad omen). After getting everything degreased and re-lubed, I went through all the gears in the driveway… barefooted and doing circles, the neighbors were out and I’m sure they were thinking “what the heck is he doing?”
Susan wanted to use her new camera at the race, but apparently we “needed” a bag for the camera so after packing all my gear we ran over to Best Buy to pick up the camera bag we ordered online (in-store pickup). On the way I decided I should get another spare tube in case I flat on the bike. A quick stop at the local bike shop and we were on our way to Best Buy thinking the bag would be ready when we got there.
Before getting to Best Buy I had realized I forgot sunblock and decided we’d grab it from the house on the way to Kentucky. The ride there was pretty boring, although we did stop into Chaney’s Dairy Barn for ice cream. We got to the hotel (Holiday Inn) a little after 4 o’clock and hung out in the room until packet pickup opened at 6.
I got in line and got my number and bucket (yes a sweet orange bucket) and a large shirt… which I later exchanged for a medium. Feeling pretty hungry we went to TGI Fridays and the food was good, but the service was so-so. We got back to the hotel, watched some tv and had a good night’s rest.
The rooster alarm (yes… very annoying) went off at 5:30, after I hit snooze a couple times, I was out of bed and getting excited. We would be checking out before breakfast was served, so I ate a couple cereal bars and washed them down with propel. On the way out to the car, it was overcast and lightly sprinkling. I pulled my phone out and it looked like a thunderstorm had blown through not too long ago… great another race in the rain… or so I thought.
We got to the aquatic center and I was trying to see what the weather was going to do, when I realized I should go get my chip and body marking done. I headed up to the pavilion only to find out we needed our bib to get the chip… back to the car, back to the pavilion and I had my chip in hand and number on body. It was still sprinkling, but looking like it would clear up, so I waited as long as I could (we had a mandatory pre-race meeting at 7:30 am) before getting transition set up.
Seeing as how it was overcast I told Susan I wouldn’t need any sun block (yes even though we drove back for it and yes even though the skies were clearing up)… I headed over to transition and decided that sweet bucket would come in pretty handy… After leaving my stuff in transition I went back to the car (I seem to have made a half dozen or so trips back to the car before the race actually started…) Bucket in hand, I laid everything in the bucket to try and keep it from getting wetter than it already was… running in sloshy shoes is not very much fun.
I headed up to the pavilion to find out the pre-race meeting would be delayed and held in transition (back to the car) I got Susan and told her the rain was letting up (…and at this point she should have told me I needed sun block :P). I wanted to do a couple lengths in the pool to get warmed up and Susan got to practice taking a couple pictures while I was in the water.
After the pre-race meeting we went up to the pool to get in line ordered by number (a hard concept for some people…) After dunking my goggles a couple times while waiting in line, I was finally in the water. Swim starts were based on estimated swim finish time and I was a little nervous about hitting my time of 9:30. We did a snake-style swim, going down a lane, coming back up the next one, until we hit the last lane and got out. I tried to not go out too fast… but I still managed to pass a few people on the swim. I got into the last lane and noticed quite a bit of turbulence ahead… as I was taking my breaths, water was flying every where. I knew the guy ahead of me was thrashing about, so instead of trying to pass and possibly ending up with a foot/arm to the face, I just drafted behind him! 🙂
I felt really good coming out of the pool, really, really good… I started off towards transition in a full out sprint! I heard a spectator yell out, “look at the energy of that guy!” That was a pretty good feeling. In transition, I tried to get as much grass off my feet as I could and had a little trouble getting my socks on (little did I know until I got to the run, my sock was on sideways). Had a good setup, got all my bike gear on relatively quickly… had some troubles getting my race belt on so the number was in the back. Looking back, I should have put it on normally and then rotated once it was on. I ran with my bike to the mount line got on pretty quickly and was off.
I’ll have to remember next time to put the bike into granny gear, but I was still able to take off at a good pace. After the first corner, there was a small hill… wanting my heart rate to come down, I took this one easier than I typically would. I got passed by a couple people at this point, but once I hit the top and felt I had caught my breath, it was on! I kept my cadence high and cruised passed quite a few people on the downhill. Around mile 5, I saw the first person in the water coming back on the bike (holy crap he was fast!)
There were a couple of challenging hills on the course, but I managed to pass at least one person on each hill! 8) Around the half way point I took a sip from my bottle and learned the reason why I typically look down when I put it back in the cage. After I let go of the bottle, I knew something was wrong and sure enough, it skidded off the road into the grass. I thought about turning back for it, but decided I’d make do with out. There was a really big downhill the race director wanted us to use caution on… it was a lot of fun and even though I held myself back, I still managed to max out just under 36 MPH.
Coming back into transition, I used that first hill to my advantage and coasted quite a bit. Got to the dismount area, jumped off and ran towards my run gear… had a brief moment of, oh crap where’s my gear and darn it I forgot to count how many bike racks I just passed. The helmet and shoes came off and my running shoes on, I really like the elastic laces I put on them, saves time by not having to tie the shoes.
I was off at a leisurely jogging pace out of transition and to the first water station up the hill. I walked more than I wanted, but I was still able to pass two people during the run (something I haven’t ever done before! :)) Just after the half-way point I started to pick my pace up again, we also had to snake around on a path near the finish line… I knew Susan would be waiting and wouldn’t be impressed if I wasn’t at least attempting to run the rest of the race. I managed to hold onto a jog up to the last corner and could see the finish line. At this point, I let out an audible “Come on legs!” and started to sprint to the finish. I’m sure the spectators must have found that amusing.
I grabbed a water and headed for some shade, noticing I had some pretty red shoulders (and later found out permanent marker makes sweet tan lines… I’ll have the number “144” outlined on me for awhile ;)). All and all it was a good race for me and I would definitely do it again next year! (…and yes I got in the car and went back for my water bottle… it was from my last tri and I like it more than my other one :)).