A Tribute to Robert Havrilak

This has been among the hardest weeks of my life. I’m facing my first injury of the season, but that’s not my source of stress. A week ago I learned that Bob Havrilak passed away. He had been fighting an aggressive form of myeloma and died from complications. Bob and I became very close friends after his son, Adam, passed away in a motorcycle accident two years ago. I wrote the following as a tribute to Bob and what he meant to me. I’m not sure I could have done all of this without him.

And Then Everything Was Better

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 […]

Back on My Feet Again, and Again, and Again, and…

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 […]

Do You Prefer Sunburn or Rash?

The state of my skin the past 48 hours has gone from “don’t want to whine and make excuses” to “wow this really hurts, I can’t believe I let myself get this burned” to “twitterable, but I’ll try not to sound too complainy” to “full on bloggable.” I’ve been taking antibiotics the past 9 days. […]

Searching for Tolerable Training

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, […]