I’m going back to San Francisco for another Tri-California race on Sunday. I will be racing the San Francisco Triathlon at Alcatraz. My entire family is flying in to see me, even 9 month old Carter and his mom (my sister) Susan. This course is amazing. Probably the most beautiful urban race in existence, so I’m hoping my family can get some great pictures of me. Better than this one from the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon in 2008, which I ran with an injured foot and no pink Rudy Project sunglasses - I still had the fastest time up the Sand Ladder!

I would write more, but I’m off to the airport with a book bag full of books! I started an MBA program at the University of Colorado this week, and suddenly I have no problem keeping myself occupied. My first three courses are “Leading and Managing in Changing Times”, “Intro to Accounting”, and “Marketing Strategy”. My Management prof seems really cool. Our first assignment is to write a self assessment, in which we point out our own flaws, our goals, our strengths, and how we plan to become better people through self-management and life balance. Step 1 to life balance: enjoy life. (check!)

I was really worried about getting a good start to the swim in London yesterday. It seemed to me that the first 300m of the swim had the potential to make or break my race, and I was probably right. Unfortunately, I broke my race before the gun went off.

When the race officially started I was flying though the air. I have no idea what was going through my head, I just remember being so focused on getting out fast that when they said “take your marks” it didn’t occur to me that I should wait for a horn before diving whole heartedly into the Serpentine and sprinting for the first buoy. I clearly remember pushing off the dock and seeing everyone else holding back, thinking, “oh crap, that’s going to be a penalty”, then hearing the start horn just before I hit the water. It was only a fraction of a second, but it felt like I was suspended in time.

A false start is rewarded with a 15s penalty. There are times when it seems worthwhile to get the 1s advantage on the way to the first turn buoy, but 15 seconds is quite a while when you realize it only takes two seconds for a break to form out of the first transition

Knowing that I would have 15 extra seconds in transition I decided to push the swim extra hard. I lead for 500 meters, then realized I probably wouldn’t be able to hold that same pace for another 1000 meters. I hopped onto some feet in a tight front pack and relaxed. Swimming with the leaders is never hard once you’re there, and since we were swimming three or more across it was was like riding an escalator, the water just carried me.

In transition the official didn’t seem to expect me there so soon. I stopped and he didn’t start the watch. He looked flustered. I said, “go, c’mon, start the watch, I’m here.” He fumbled around for a moment then started the stop watch around his neck. It was probably four or five seconds after I had arrived and stopped moving, and he made sure to count all the way down to zero. The concentration of adrenaline running through my veins was so high that each second took an eternity. Between each number I felt like I could have swum an entire extra lap of the course, but I obediently stood there gaping at him, wondering if he was taunting me with the slow pace of my 15 second penalty.

The first lap of the bike I rode like Andy Schleck. I closed the nearly 20 seconds (due to the late start of the 15s penalty) in about 3 km. I was riding with Stuart Hayes, who is an excellent cyclist, but when I told him to pull through, he tried and failed. Looking back at my Garmin 705 / SRM power data, I can see that I was riding really really fast. It was four minutes until I caught the leaders. Stuart, who ended up in 8th at the end of the day, thanked me after the race, and complimented my bike strength, which is a small consolation after what happened right after I bridged up to the leaders.

At the end of the first 5km lap Alister Brownlee was riding like a chucklehead. He swerved onto someone’s wheel, took out Peter Croes front wheel, and knocked him to the ground. Peter was laying to the right of his bike. To the left were a bunch of cones and people. I knew I had nowhere to go, and had yet another slow motion moment as I tried to break, knowing that it wasn’t about preventing the crash so much as make it less painful when I hit the ground.

As far as crashes go, it was not bad. I have a few scrapes and bruised hip, but my frequent crashing has helped me learn to crash lightly. I got back up, fixed the chain, started riding hard again, then realized that I didn’t have another monster bridge in my legs. I had also lost my water bottle and was left with only strongly mixed Powerbar Endurance and gels. I waited for the chase pack and helped them to close the 40 seconds they had between them and the leaders. At that point I was in a pack of about 55 men, and things got sketchy on the narrow, poorly coned course. I stayed out of trouble and conserved energy. Every time I saw a familiar face I asked for some water, but all I got were more sugary drink mixes.

We came off the bike and I felt pretty good starting the run. I was sure this would be a good run for me, though with the quality of field I wasn’t sure what result that would provide. I ran right behind Matt Chrabot for the first mile, which is great for me since he normally goes out really fast, while I normally come back in the second 5 kilometers. After that I started feeling much worse. Over the second mile I slowed considerably and started dropping back. I was told by a spectator that I was in 48th place, just before two more people passed me. My stomach was cramping from all the sugar and the lack of fluids, and pretty soon I was struggling to breath. After a kilometer of shallow breathing and ascending pace I realized that my day was not going to get better. I saw Kevin Collington and one of the coaches at the turn around half way through the run and I stopped, explained that I couldn’t breath, then joined them on the other side of the fence.

The DNF never feels good. You have to question whether you could have continued, if it was worth finishing, what you could have done to avoid getting yourself to the point of dropping out. For me, it all goes back to my false start. Had I not done that I wouldn’t have been in a dangerous position when the crash happened (I don’t normally ride boxed in in the back of a pack), I wouldn’t have lost my bottle, I would have been helping the lead pack extend their lead, rather than the chase pack, and I probably would have had a decent run. That said, I didn’t have a lot of fight in me for this one. When my stomach and diaphragm tightened up and stopped me from breathing I felt happy to have an excuse. Perhaps it would have been different if I were running for 15th or 20th or even a 30th place finish, but making myself hurt that bad for a 50th place after everything else that had gone wrong… I just didn’t have the fight.

This is a series of interviews from before and after Saturday’s ITU Pan-America Cup Triathlon courtesy of TriCal TV.

This interview is reposted from the Zoom Performance website.

That’s part one.

And this is part two

The training camp has continued to involve something hard every day. Tuesday we did a run / swim in the morning at the 27.5 meter pool. We keep doing the same workouts we would in the 25 yard pool, but instead of 5,000 yards we’re actually getting in 5500 meters. It’s almost like free mileage because you don’t really notice it when the walls are just a little farther apart. (btw, my hormone level must be getting messed with from all this training because I was watching 24 on Hulu last night and one of the actors said, “just tell me how much further it is”, which annoyed the crap out of me because I couldn’t correct her. Why can’t people figure out the difference between fUrther and fArther? Maybe it’s just me, I’m sure I make my own grammatical errors. And I’ve also bean craving chocolate, so it has to be the training.) Anyway, the afternoon run was a hard one. 4×8 minutes with 1 minute rest holding the fastest possible average. It was not unlike a 10k for time, and I was definitely the slowest of the boys still. It was after the first interval that I stopped for a quick second to retie my shoe when Kathy Tremblay caught me and I realized that I had better get my act together if I didn’t want to be “chicked” (when a guy is beaten by a girl – quite the modest making moment when it happens at this level). I managed to outrun her on the last three intervals, but I was closer to her than I was to the next guy ahead of me.

Wednesday we did what basically amounted to a 5k TT on the bike. To clarify, that’s 5,000 vertical feet. We started on the side of Mt. Haleakala and rode 3×20 minutes with 5 minutes “easy” in between. The “easy” part, however, was still uphill and I never got my HR even close to a recovery rate. We actually finished the ride at about 4700 feet, but the total ascent for the ride was almost exactly 5,000 ft, according to my Edge 705. This ride marked the turning point for me. I started off conservatively on the first interval and found myself riding with Andrew Russell and Kathy (yeah, she’s crazy strong – and really nice too). The three of us rode together for for the second interval at a stronger pace, then on the last interval Kathy dropped back and after 11 minutes I was riding solo as Andrew’s legs started telling him about the past 17 days of training he’s put into them. It’s pretty unbelievable to think that an hour at my best effort didn’t even get me half way to the 10,000ft peak, but it was still a great training day.

Which brings me to today. Another double run with a swim in between. We repeated last weeks run workout of 24x 30 seconds fast, 30 seconds “easier”. This time I didn’t try to stay with the group leaders, Simon Whitfield and Kyle Jones. I started off with the main group and found myself running in fourth position with Kyle an Simon long gone and Jeff Phillips coming back to me ever so slowly. Eventually I passed Jeff, ran with him for 5 or 6 more intervals, then fell back as he found a second wind. It was definitely a successful workout, if only because I didn’t do anything dumb like last week. Hooray for small victories!

(A quick plug for my K-Swiss K’Ona trainers. I’ve been really pleased how they handle fast running through uneven surfaces like the cane fields and on grass. I haven’t twisted my ankle once, and normally I’m the type to roll an ankle easily when I pick up the pace on trails. I’m very impressed.)

Tomorrow we were planning to ride up to the peak of Haleakala, but since everyone seems fatigued we’re going to do another 4 hour “base ride” – which means a 4 hour hammer-fest on the Simon-Pain-Train. I’d much rather ride up the mountain at a constant effort, and get some cool pictures to replace the photo above, which I took from the peak in 2006 with my aluminum Felt (complete with the strap on bars and fold-up pads). Oh well. Looks like I’ll have to come back to  Maui again to get in my crater ride.

Click on these guys sites that I’m training with (and linking to). All but Jeff have particularly good blogs with lots of pictures, as do Kirsten Sweetland and Andrew McCartney.

Saturday night was one of the roughest night of sleep I can remember. My skin was itching, smoldering, goose bumped, and otherwise completely lacking in ability to control temperature. Meanwhile, my insides were churning, I had to get up to pee 6 times during the night, I discovered what it would feel like to have the roof of your mouth sun burnt (and some other parts that don’t normally see much sunlight). But by morning I felt 25% better, and went for my “long run” of just 90 minutes. It was the slowest long run of the past 2 years of training. I could not get my heart rate above about 140, my legs wouldn’t turn over faster than about 85 steps per minute (all this is measured on my Garmin 310XT), and every slight incline felt like trying to climb K2. Luckily, I did my run on my own so I could get it out of the way before the sun came up. Had I been with the rest of the group, I would have felt much worse about myself while watching Simon drop Kyle drop everyone else while running well under 6 minute miles (all of them) for nearly an hour. I might have cried.

After the long run I went for a 90 minute "base ride” which had similar physiological discoveries to my run: no power, no speed. I finished early and sat around waiting for my skin to heal for most of the day, and by the time the rest of the guys were ready for their second run I was actually feeling like it might help. We ran 30 minutes and when I came back my ankles, feet, and hands were noticeably less swollen than before. Hooray!

Today, however, was a whole new world. We swam in a public pool with 27.5m lanes (the other side of the bulkhead was measured to 25 yards, but was crowded). We did a 5k set, which was really a 5.5k set, during which I was reminded that I was never particularly good with a pull buoy (still confuses me that I can be a bad kicker, bad puller, and  somehow put them together alright). I stayed with most of the guys for the workout, but Andrew McCartney (AMac) is unquestionably part dolphin – he kicked my butt. 

The main workout of the day was this afternoon. We rode a little over 2 hours, with 60 minutes where we split into groups and were supposed to ride together at a hard tempo – breakaway simulation. I was put with the B group, which ended up being the most confused group of all. None of us had done the workout the previous week, so we didn’t know the loop. All of us have had health issues we’re getting over. And we were all at various stages of feeling good. I kept feeling better during the ride, AMac misheard the coach and thought he was only doing 20 minutes, and Jeff felt terrible from the start and was dropped back with the girls group. This meant that after 20 minutes I found myself doing a solo TT into a headwind – no fun at all! I saw the coach pulled over on the side and stopped to ask what I should do, and he said some heated words in French, then told me to wait for AMac, who was not supposed to stop after 20 minutes after all. I did and we ended up working together pretty well for the rest of the ride. All except the part where we were on a false flat downhill and I decided I felt good enough to do a 34mph pull for 4 minutes. That’s where I found myself alone the second time. Oops.

So all in all I’m feeling 80% better. Still a little puffy, but nearly back to Seattleite pasty skin again. My run tonight was still a bit slow, but I felt in control of that slowness, and not forced into it like yesterday.

After checking out of the vacation rental on the North Shore last week, Courtenay and I rode down to Honolulu while everyone else drove. It was raining, the roads were muddy, the drivers were in a bad mood, and the route sucked. The first ten miles took us part way up a portion of the highway called “pineapple hill” because at the summit is the Dole Pineapple Plantation. Right around there is when Courtenay decided to stop, eat, complain about something (Normally she can whine while riding, but this was a moaning session that went beyond either of our multitasking skills.), and wipe the dirt and water off her glasses so she could see again. It was me, however, who saw the big prize! As soon as we started riding again I saw a little green note plastered to the road with water – a FIFTY DOLLAR BILL!!!

[left: Courtenay during our B&M (bitch and moan) session on the side of the road]

Unfortunately, we still had two hours of awful, wet, dirty, dangerous riding left, and really all the $50 bill did was get me to start scanning all the litter on the side of the road (there was plenty), which was exhausting and likely unsafe.

The part of this event that is particularly funny (to me anyway) is that Courtenay’s brother and sister frequently comment on how captivating her story telling can be. They tell her that when she sees people falling asleep she should throw in, “and then I found $5” – just to reclaim attention. A few weeks ago, she did find a $5 bill laying in a parking lot (see the video below for our on-the-spot reenactment), but the story still left her siblings cloudy eyed.
“Maybe you need to find a bigger bill,” they told her. “Try $20, and if you still can’t make the story interesting, make it a $50 bill.”

So when we showed up at Courtenay’s brother’s apartment, we told the story of the $50 bill. Then we tried to tell them about the rest of the ride – like how we stopped at Jamba Juice because we ran out of the granola bars and PB&J we had packed – but once the money line had been revealed the story was no longer interesting. The punch line just came too early.

Courtenay and I went into a bike shop in Waialua last week (Sugar Mill Bikes)  to fix a sliced tire. The proprietor of the shop told us about a private road he likes to ride through the cane fields of Oahu’s North Shore. So the next day we rode to a locked gate with the intent of riding up a cane haul road – mostly dirt, rough roads – to get away from the dangerous holiday traffic.

My Garmin Edge 705 actually showed where the cane haul roads go, so it was easy to pick an entry point and plan a route. Just as we were hopping the gate (which we assumed was to keep motor vehicles out) a big van pulled up and a big Hawaiian guy started yelling at us, threatening us with a $500 fine if we didn’t leave right away. So we rode a few miles down and entered a cane haul road that didn’t have any locked gate across it. We rode for miles up past farmlands – some abandoned, some with coffee, some with pineapples. We did see about a dozen cars, and a couple farmers, but they just waved and smiled, so we were pretty sure we weren’t bothering anyone. The roads were certainly not ideal for a road bike, but focusing on bike handling was a welcome change from focusing on not getting killed on the narrow highway.

Eventually we did reach a big “no trespassing” sign, which is where we turned around, but my Edge 705 claimed that the road would continue up the hill, wind through a few valleys, and eventually come back down the hill and exit where we were yelled at earlier in the ride. We decided that we should find a way onto those roads, and the very next day we did. I took video of that experience, and Courtenay edited it (because she has the fancy MacBook Pro). It was an awesome ride, and we even found a newly paved road through the hills with zero cars on it. It was among the most adventurous rides I’ve had, but I’ll let the video do the talking:

We headed to the North Shore of Oahu just before Christmas. I was hoping for a week in the “country” with some nice cycling and running through the woods, but by December 26th I was nearly in tears with frustration over poor training opportunities. It seemed to me that, contrary to what one would expect, the kelly-green bumper stickers pleading “keep the country country” and the black and white ones claiming “HE>I” were sure signs of people who would gladly commit vehicular homicide just to chase cyclists off their precious, traffic-ridden, pothole-speckled, shoulder-less highway. The park and cane haul roads I used to run on when I was living at my uncle’s house are now cluttered with “no trespassing” signs and some jerk in a big van drives around threatening people with $500 fines if they pass the gates. And lastly, the pool was closed for lap swim for the entire four day weekend while the ocean was plagued with 40ft waves. For a guy who likes to train all day, life sucked.

[above: My K-Swiss Keahou’s started off sparkling clean before this run…]

In my last post, I mentioned a run… I spent Christmas Day with my cousin 11 miles down the road from Sunset Beach and decided to ignore a few “no trespassing” signs (which became increasingly threatening - “trespassers will be prosecuted” to “Explosives, stay away”, to “if you come in, we’ll shoot you.” – but who would kill me on Christmas?). Shortly after that last sign the road curved into thick Hawaiian jungle with flora so thick I could only see 10 meters max in any direction. All around me were the sounds of a living forest: birds, bugs, wild pigs, and all the delicate rustling of millions of plants dancing in the breeze.

I found a dirt bike trail that wound its way up the side of a mountain, and I figured it would be nice to get away from civilization and let myself relax for a bit. It was a Christmas present to myself. I ran up, and up, and up, and then up some more – stopping at every opening in the thick green jungle to admire the breathtaking views. My Garmin 310xt told me that I was around 1000 ft above sea level, climbing up a ridge into the Hauula Forest Reserve. At one point I was on a portion of the ridge with cliffs on both sides and no trees nearby when a helicopter came right towards me. “Oh man, if they sent a helicopter I must be in really deep trouble,” I thought. It went right over the top of me, then turned around and came right back to me before flying off into the distance. Figuring that if they were looking for me I was already screwed, I kept climbing, unsure of how far the ridge would take me. I was covered in mud from scrambling up dirt cliffs, and slipping down a few gnarly sections of “trail”, and my legs were scratched from pushing through some knee high shrubs, but for the most part it looked like someone had actually cleaned the trail quite recently. Just when I thought there was no possible way for a dirt bike to get through the technical section behind me I saw fresh motorcycle tracks cut into the red dirt. I kept running, and scrambling upwards until the trail suddenly disappeared. A few more strides and I found out why – there was a 200ft vertical drop directly in front of me and on both sides. The next ridge over had a path that kept going into the forest, but there was no way to get to the next ridge without going all the way back down. I was 3.5 miles in, and it had taken me 45 hard minutes to get there – this would have to be the end of my journey.

The helicopter must have been an island tour, because I never saw a single person during my run. Also, on the way out I was determined to find a route to the forest that didn’t involve disobeying so many signs. I took a few random turns, and used the GPS “bread-crumb” feature of my Garmin Forerunner 310xt to make sure I was headed in the right direction (a few times I got completely turned around – it’s really hard to find your way through thick rain-forest like that). Eventually I succeeded. I ended up coming out of a the trail right behind a Mormon church just a couple miles down from my cousin’s house. I immediately downloaded the route to Garmin Connect to show my cousin, then spent a while trying figure out how to embed the Google map into my blog. Apparently that feature will be in the February update of Garmin Connect, which is probably good because posting a map of where I was trespassing onto the internet is not necessarily a great idea.

With this little adventure under my belt, I headed back to the North Shore with a new determination to find my way off the beaten path – those adventures will be the subject of my next few posts.

It’s finally here: taper. My last taper of 2009. Plus, I’m at the most physically and mentally healthy state of being in my athletic career. Now you might ask, “How can anyone even know that?” To which I would respond, “By reading my blog.” Obviously, if it says it on here it must be true.

I took my bike to Speedy Reedy for a quick tune up. I’m back to using a Dura-Ace crank after wearing out my FSA Team cranks in just one year. I love my Quarq Cinqo powermeter, (and I love my FSA bars, stem, seat post, etc.) but I would recommend the SSRAM S900 or the Specialized FACT cranks to anyone buying a new powermeter.

Speaking of ant+ gear, I just got one of the Garmin Premium Heart Rate Monitor Straps (it’s soft, unlike any other ant+ compatible HRM) and an FR60. The strap is nicer than its plastic predecessor, but after a couple of uses, I really can’t say there’s a huge difference in feel during a workout. However, unlike the plastic strap, this one is guaranteed waterproof (oops, I’ve been wearing the old one in the water for years!). It does seem to slip down less, but then the elastic is much newer than on my old strap.

The Garmin FR60 watch is definitely cool. Instead of GPS, it relies on a foot-pod to measure pace and distance. When ordering I didn’t realize that the colored version lacked the foot pod accessory, so I have only used the older foot-pod, which is quite a bit larger and slightly less accurate. The reason I wanted a running watch without GPS is because the FR60 is waterproof, and slim enough to wear during a race where GPS is less important than light-weight and swimmability. I’m also hoping that with the foot-pod I can keep a better log of my miles when I’m running through thick forest, like Saint Edwards State Park near my house.

Tuesday I leave for Huatulco Mexico, where hopefully there will be somebody to pick me up and take me to the host hotel. Right now I feel like crossing my fingers is the most proactive way for me to ensure a safe and successful trip – I’ve already done everything else.