Looking at my goals and my actual times for the Music City Tri, I think I was pretty optimistic. Still haven’t found out how I got a two minute penalty, but at least I still beat last years time! 🙂 Going off how I performed last weekend, here are my goals for the Iron Nugget (only 11 days away, yikes!):

Swim (1/2 mi): 24:00 (2:43 min / 100 yd)
T1: 3:30
Bike (17 mi): 1:06:00 (~16 mph)
T2: 1:30
Run (5K): 37:00 (11:55 min / mi)

Total: 2:12:00

I haven’t been able to find any previous results for this race, looks like it might be its inaugural year.

Had so much fun during this race, I signed up for 2 more tris last night!

After experiencing the leg cramps from hell at the 1/2 marathon, I decided to come up with an actual nutrition plan for the race. If all works well, I’ll be able to look this post up and use it for future events! 🙂

1-3 Hours before race – Light meal around 300 calories
~15 min before race – Triple Threat Energy Bar with water
Drink Gatorade on the bike leg ~24 fl oz
Energy gel (power chews) on the run, taken with water

This should keep my hydrated and give enough energy to finish strong, if not, guess I’ll have to revise! 😉

Alright so I’ve been meaning to do this for awhile, but I need to get a list of things I’ll be using during the triathlon. Here goes:

PowerBar Triple Threat Energy bar
Water

Yellow Tri Top
Black Tri Shorts (Yes I look like a bumble bee…)
Race belt
Race number(s)

Swim Cap (Provided by race)
Swim Goggles

PowerBar energy blasts (in a baggie?)
Small Towel

Bike
Bike wheels (oddly enough some people forget their front wheel)
Bike Shoes
Socks
Bike Helmet
Sunglasses
Bike Bottle filled with Gatorade
(Spare tube / bike pump?)

Running Shoes

Game face!

With less then 2 weeks to go until my first triathlon this year, I’ve started to get things ready for the big day. Training has been going ok, the last couple of days have been ridiculously hot (heat index ~112 deg F). I’m hoping its not gonna be that hot for the race. I’ve read a few comments on the course and am glad I’ve been doing my bike training on a hilly route… My goal is, as always, to finish but if I managed a total time around 1:30 I’ll be super excited.

Here are my goals for each part of the race:

Swim (400 yd): 8:00 (2 min / 100 yd)
T1: 2:30
Bike (20K): 46:00 (~16 mph)
T2: 1:30
Run (5K): 37:00 (11:55 min / mi)

Total: 1:35:00

I’m sure I’ll have more to say as we get closer, but I’m already getting excited!

Books & Tuition: $260.00
Mask & Snorkel: $80.00
Fins & Booties: $200.00
Seeing a school bus, yacht, row boat, ginormous bass, motorcycle, outhouse, and RV… underwater… priceless!

Yup, I am now open water certified, time to plan a luxurious vacation to the Caribbean… hah, I wish! I had a lot of fun on my last dive this past Saturday. I didn’t have any issues with my ears clearing like I did on my first set of dives. 🙂

All though this is pretty exciting news, probably more for me than you, we do have some sad news to report. The Jeske clan on Bradbury Rd. in Adams, TN is one less after Scout passed away last week. She was not doing well for quite awhile and didn’t get any better. We took her in to see the vet a few different times and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her… poor Scoutster…

We did it, we made it 5 years! This year we decided to celebrate by going to a Bed and Breakfast in Bardstown, KY. We got a later start then we wanted, someone thinks its because I spent 20 minutes figuring out how to add new points to the Sync navigation… well as it turns out it’s a good thing I did spend that 20 minutes figuring it out, because if we had relied on our phones for directions, we would have been lost (no 3G service where we were at/heading to)!

Our first stop was at Chaney’s Dairy Barn. The food was good, the ice cream was better! We made it into Bardstown a little before 6 pm (our check in time) and headed over to the Rosemark Haven Inn. We pulled into the driveway and weren’t really sure where to go. I spotted a Visa/MasterCard logo on a building and figured that was the check in area. The door was tough to open, but once I got it, I realized that we were in the wrong building… One of the owners came up behind us and asked us if we were Susan and John… we said we were and would like to check-in. She mentioned something about the door should have been locked and went to see if it was… apparently it was, but must have been broken seeing as how I opened the door… whoops!

After a very friendly check-in and covering just about every detail and smelling the scented soap, we got to relax a bit before getting ready for dinner. That building we broke into… er… mistook for a check in place, was the wine barn where dinner was served. We got really good service as being the only people in there (which I might add was a little awkward), and had a really nice dinner. The decor was nice, even though they had that infamous lamp from “A Christmas Story”… yes, we got pictures in front of it. 🙂

On Sunday, we got lunch in town and headed over to Maker’s Mark distillery. The tour was neat and we got to sample the two different kinds of bourbon they make there. We even signed up for the ambassador program, which gets your name on a barrel. Once the barrel has been commissioned for bottling, you get notified and can buy a couple bottles with a commemorative label (takes 4-7 years). After the distillery, we went down into the earth at Mammoth Caves. That was pretty neat, we are thinking about doing the intensive 3 hour tour next time that sounds pretty physically demanding. It was a quick weekend, but a lot of fun.

If you’ve been paying attention and are up to date, you should know I am pursuing an open water scuba certification (scroll down for post 😉 ). This past weekend I completed 3/4 required open water dives. There was a lot of stuff to see underwater at the rock quarry in Kentucky; lots of fish (at a $500 per pound fine), a helicopter, a yacht, a motorcycle, playground equipment, a school bus, and more! Not only did we get to site see underwater, but we did some skills and learned what it mean to be a PADI certified diver.

Sunday was suppose to be my fourth dive and a fun one after we got certified, but unfortunately I did not make any dives that day. Around 3 o’clock in the morning, I woke up with a slight pain in my abdomen on the right side. I went to the bathroom and tried to fall asleep, but the pain was getting progressively worse. I went upstairs to try and diagnose my problem on the internet… Not really finding anything and hearing the dog start to stir, I decided I would take him out for a walk. That didn’t really help my pain much, but at least Waldo was happy to get his legs stretched. Around 6 am, I woke Susan up and said I need to go see a doctor and that I was in a lot of pain.

She was pretty groggy and was trying to figure out what it could be. I had eaten some cereal bars and drank some water, but I was still hurting pretty good and finally convinced her we should go… On the way there, I could not get comfortable and we had to stop every so often so I could get out and walk around a bit (seemed to help with the pain). The last stop, I ended up vomiting and felt a little better after that.

We get to the ER and there is on older man talking to the ONLY receptionist about getting directions to some where else in the hospital. When we get to the window I tell her I’m in a lot of pain… she hands me a clipboard to fill out… While I’m filling out the clipboard (wasn’t much to it), another person had come up to the window. I’m not sure what they were talking about but I did here MBA mentioned… and I thought this was the ER, you know where people need to get looked at ASAP!

Seeing as how I was the only one that actually needed to be looked at, once they had my clipboard it wasn’t long before a nurse took my blood pressure and took some information. I finally get into a room and I can’t find a comfortable position, walking around was all I could do to keep my mind off the pain. After a CT scan it was determined… drum roll please… that I had a kidney stone… yup painful little bugger. After awhile later they gave me some drugs and I was actually feeling pretty good. I pretty much relaxed the rest of the day and my boss let me work from home on Monday. By Tuesday I was feeling much better and returned to work… little did I know news spreads fast there… I have a kit that I’m suppose to collect a urine sample for 24 hours and they’ll analyze it and tell me how I can prevent more kidney stones from forming… hope so cause they’re not much fun!

Washing Machine 2, John’s phone 0… lost another phone to the washing machine, either I need to find a phone that is waterproof or stop doing laundry… 😉 We did find out, after finally “guessing” the Verizon account password (least we didn’t get locked out this time), that Susan was eligible for an upgrade. I’m glad we got to the Verizon store when we did, because it seems they move really slow and there was a couple people waiting in line for a LONG time while Susan got her new phone set up and transferred her old one to my number. I guess I have a little more knowledge then most people who go to the store and I really wanted to argue with the sales rep, but I kept my mouth shut…

He first tried to tell us the Eris wouldn’t support Adobe Flash because it had out of date software… I told him the reason we didn’t have flash on our phones was due to the fact the processor is arm v6, not supported by a lot of stuff, including flash. He looked blankly and was like no it’s because you don’t have the latest Android version. I then wanted to say, oh yeah well before my Eris took a swim it was running Gingerbread and this phone is running Froyo… but I didn’t. After he got Susan’s phone set up, he went about resetting her Eris, once it booted it up he was like “whoa, I haven’t seen this version in awhile”… dude it’s what is running on YOUR phone… stock Android 2.2. We got home and first thing I did was flash Gingerbread on it, hah take that… my end-of-life Eris has Android 2.3 while that sales rep is still waiting for Verizon to release an update to his phone. Susan seems pretty excited about the phone… Angry Birds is actually playable on it! 😀

As far as work goes, things are in the hurry up and wait process. I have a ton of stuff to get done, but can’t do it until other programmer’s get their changes in. I had a surprise project dropped on me earlier this week that I had to code against what I thought the other programmer was going to do. His stuff doesn’t work 100%, but my stuff does, so things are looking good… for me! The commute isn’t AS bad as I thought it was going to be, it still kinda sucks getting home closer to 6, but it’s working out for the most part. Hopefully I’ll be doing my open water dives this weekend to get certified, should have an update on that next week!

Doing a 1/2 marathon is something I never really saw myself doing. Sure enough, we were on our way to the start line early (very early) last Saturday morning. Traffic was light and we managed to get to the Titan’s stadium with lots of time to spare. I was getting my number on and fueling up for the race, while someone was getting impatient. At this point I mentioned putting sunblock on, but apparently that was a dumb idea and they would be “OK”. After a quick pitstop at the porta-johns, we were ready to get to the start line. Since the race finished here and started at the Centennial Park, we needed to get on a shuttle and head over that way. Sounds pretty easy… in theory… No one was really sure what to do, and there was a lot of shuffling going around and not much instruction from the volunteers. After seeing two or three sets of shuttles leave, a volunteer finally said we were all standing in the wrong spot, the shuttles won’t stop here and we needed to move down the sidewalk. After seeing another set of shuttles go through, we finally got on one and we were off! Not too much longer I noticed we were in a different lane than all the other shuttles and started passing them. Apparently, we were taking the “long” way…

Once we finally got to the park, it was time to find the start line. There were a ton of people, like 31,000 not including the spectators. We found the mass start of racers and realized our start corral was way down from where we were. We finally got to our corral and got in line around 7:00 AM (the official start of the race). Each corral got its own start and there were a couple of guys on mics keeping the crowd entertained. Our start time was around 7:48 AM, so I guess we really did have a lot of time to spare.

The first couple of miles went pretty well, my ankle started hurting a little, but at this point not too bad (had a sprain during my training :(). Around the 5k mark, my ankle was definitely swelling and I was having a hard time keeping pace with Susan (although I did beat her for the 5k time ;)). My foot started numbing up and I tried walking it off without much success. Around mile 5 I felt the onset of calf cramps (something I’m pretty familiar with during racquetball and knew I needed to get some electrolytes/water soon). Each watering station I was sucking back the cytomax and water and that seemed to help… a little… Mile 10 I was full on walking, my ankle was hurting pretty good… at least my foot wasn’t numb any more. After an energy gel some more cytomax and water, I thought I’d give running a shot… bad idea… My calf cramps hit and I know I took a few awkward steps and managed to limp to the side of the road. A couple people asked if I was ok, I said I’ll be fine, reassuring them with a smile. I have had calf cramps before, but nothing like this… I started pulling my toes and tried to stand up and was almost able to walk… Sat back down and stretched a little more. Finally I was able to get moving, I saw a med tent (just before mile 12) and almost threw in the towel. I told myself no matter what I’m finishing what I started. My legs were sore, my ankle was throbbing, but I was pushing forward. Managed to get a semi-speed walking pace going, although I wanted to run, I knew if I did I was done.

I remember going down the hill before the finish line thinking, ok just a few more steps… just a few more steps… can’t sprint, just keep moving and I’ll finish… The finish line never looked so beautiful before, although I was in a lot of pain, I was happy it was over. I got corralled towards the post-race refreshments and on the look out for Susan (who kicked my butt and is a little crazy for wanting to do another one…) I ate a couple bananas grabbed a water and started heading back towards the porta-potties (where I thought we were meeting after the race). Susan was no where to be seen, so I thought maybe she would be at the car… finally I found her and we started talking about our race experiences. I wouldn’t say it was a fun experience, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I probably won’t be doing another one for awhile… I’ve got training to do, triathlon season is coming into full swing! 🙂