Every time you do a new workout you should build into and get to know how your body is going to react. Today I didn’t do that. We started a set of 22x 30†at 5k+ pace 30†tempo (coach said easy, but it was only relative). I tried to stay with Simon and Kyle, succeeded for a few of the intervals and dropped the rest of the group – then was dropped and passed by everyone else in the group. Oops. At least it was fun running in the cane fields and being with a group. Maybe tomorrow I’ll hold back a little more. I can tell the fatigue is going to catch up with me very quickly here on Maui.
A little bit of Canada in the Pacific
I arrived today to Maui. It was a short flight over, but still tiring. I arrived hungry and without food, then went grocery shopping at a health food market nearby. I spent a lot of money, filled a camping backpack with food, then rode back up the hill to the house I’m staying in with a few Canadian athletes.
Andrew Russell is probably the reason I’m able to join in on the camp, which is otherwise just Triathlon Canada National Team members. Andy and I have been working together hoping to start an international team with a focus on qualifying for the Olympics, and through this process we’ve become friends. I really like how easy it is to get along with most triathletes. It helps, of course, that we’re both engineers, and whiter than Casper. I’m looking forward to the rest of the month and getting to know the rest of the Canadian athletes. (Let me take a moment for the soft-rock montage to play out in your head.) After all, their national training center is much much closer to my home than Colorado Springs. It’ll be good to know my neighbors.
[I don’t have any picture from Maui yet, but take a look at the pic above. nice shoes, right? Check back or follow me on twitter and you might just win yourself a pair of those Brazil K-Swiss K’Ona running shoes. – photo courtesy of Courtenay]
Leaving Honolulu
I’m leaving Honolulu tomorrow for the island of Maui. The Canadian National Team is over there training until the end of the month and I’m going to go join them (thanks to Andrew Russell, who put in a good word for me.). I don’t know yet if I’m coming back to Oahu afterward or if I’ll go to San Diego like I originally intended.
The big downside of heading to San Diego is that Courtenay will be here on Oahu until March 2nd, which is a long time to be away from my special someone. Then again, in San Diego they have a Normatec MVP – not a bad trade. 🙂
[spoiler alert, follow me on twitter and check back here soon for how you can win a free pair of K-Swiss K’Ona’s]
Sick of the Cold? – A Plug for the Austin Endurance Ranch
After a month in Hawaii, I’m certain that everyone needs a little sunshine to start off training for the new year. Hawaii may be a long way away, but I bet you can find a cheap ticket to Austin. Check out the Austin Endurance Ranch put on by Chris Tremonte – a professional triathlete from Seattle. Chris has been making dinner for all his friends every Thursday for the past 3 months in preparation for this training camp, and I can say with certainty that the food alone – both healthy and delicious – will make this training camp worthwhile and memorable.
Aside from the food, Austin has some great training opportunities: roads with Texas size shoulders to ride your bike on, endless miles of soft surfaces to run on, and some really unique pools for swimming. It’s definitely one of the most fun places to do a winter training camp.
The first camp starts next week, and Chris is giving last minute deals on the camps. You may spend less for a week of training in Austin than you would staying home and keeping the heater on full blast.
Check out the website, contact Chris, and book a flight to Austin. You’ll be glad you did.
“Stuck” in Hawaii
“When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.†~Stanislaw Lec (Post WW2 Polish poet).
I was jumping for joy that I would get to go to Brazil with Chris Foster and Matt Chrabot to race the 11th annual Fast Triathlon, but I forgot to look down to see whether the ground was moving. Matt Chrabot backed out of the race at the last minute, leaving Chris and me with no teammate, and not enough time to get a visa for a replacement. Today we found out the race replaced our team with a team from Mexico, and will be cancelling our plane tickets. This leaves me in Hawaii without any certain plans, but, much worse, it leaves Chris Foster in Santiago without a return flight home! I have no way of helping Chris, but I feel really guilty for recruiting him to our team in the first place. I had no idea that there was any chance of us being in this situation, but after a week of phone calls to Brazil, to other American athletes, and again to Brazil, there is nothing more that I’m able to do. Perhaps there will be a silver lining to all of this, but, for now, Chris is up a creek without a paddle.
[above: last year’s Mexican and US teams at the Fast Triathlon in Guaruja, Brazil]
So… let the planning begin. I’m going to be here in Hawaii for longer than I anticipated, so perhaps it’s time to find a longer-term housing solution (currently I’m staying with Courtenay’s brother), or maybe I should head over to Maui and see if I can join the Canadian team during their camp, or maybe I’ll just get a flight home and drive to San Diego like I originally planned. I could conceivably just stay in Hawaii until the first races of the year, two months from now! I’d better start a pro/con list with all my options. Anyone have a good recommendation for how to spend the next few weeks? AAACCKKK!! This is like deciding what to eat from a Thai takeout menu: way too many good options!
(Belated) Christmas Biathlon!
Sunday I raced in a local “biathlon†put on by the Waikiki Swim Club which consisted of a 5k run followed by a 1k swim. This “Christmas Biathlon†was supposed to be held last month, but lucky for me they had to postpone it until I was here on the island and ready to race. These local community events are really fun, and a great way to reconnect with other athletes in the area. Equal in enjoyment for me, however, is the ability to bring humor to a race where the primary goal is to have fun.
[Above: Can you guess which one’s me?]
So, I wore a pink Splish suit with big bubbly eyes on the front and my K-Swiss K’Ruuz. I figured nobody wanted to lose to a guy in a little pink suit, 
and with my K’Ruuz it would be pretty hard to beat me. One guy, Brandon Laan (6th at the Honolulu Marathon this year!), did outrun me, however, and the swimmer of his relay was Bill Goding (we used to duke it out at swim practice a few nights a week). They beat me, but nobody else did!
[From left: Todd Iacovelli, Stefan Reinke, Ben Collins, Bill Goding Brandon Laan]
From the gun I followed the lead of Todd Iacovelli and Brandon, both very good local runners. I did my best to stay on their heels, and when Brandon put in a surge at mile 1 my legs shouted at me for not having done any speed training since early November. Brandon gained a few meters on us and I pulled ahead of Todd to try to close the gap. I didn’t see Todd again, and about the time I got back in Brandon’s draft he surged again, creating a 20 second gap over the next few minutes, which remained for the rest of the run race.
I crossed the timing mat at the start of the swim in 15 minutes 50 seconds – 23 seconds after Brandon tagged Bill to start the swim. Jumping into the water, I felt like an old rubber tire trying to swim. Running and swimming are different muscle groups, so I didn’t realize how much of an affect one would have on the other. Somehow in triathlon there’s not so obvious a connection between swimming fast and running fast. It took me a long time to start swimming smoothly, my tummy felt like it was dragging on the bottom, my arms couldn’t seem pull any water, and every wave knocked me around like a turd in a toilet bowl (sorry, for some reason that was the first image that came to mind).
Coming back into the finish I finally started feeling a bit stronger. Bill was LONG gone, but my legs were able to kick again, and my arms were able to pull again, so I kicked and pulled as hard as I could and when the bottom came up to meet me I stood up to hear my fans shouting and telling me to go away. Apparently, in the pre-race briefing when they said, “keep all the buoys on your right†they meant “keep the two turn buoys on your right, and the final buoy on your leftâ€. So I went back out and swam around the buoy, I lost very little time and it didn’t make a difference at all in the outcome of the race. After a few 
more people went to the wrong side, however, they sent some volunteers out to direct the swimmers to the other side. All was well.
[Left: Bob Havrilak drove me to the race and took pictures. As you can see, I’m more worried about what’s going on in the pre-race briefing than looking at the shutter. Pictured is Me, Courtenay, Sarah, and Than (Courtenay’s sister and brother)]
Courtenay raced as well, and we were both the first individuals of our respective genders. Go us, right?
On January 17th is a the second race in this 3-race series. Same course, so it would be an excellent way to judge improvement, or get in on the fun if you missed it the first time around. Check out the WSC website (linked above) for entry info.
The Punch Line Came Too Early
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.â€
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.
Ben Collins and Courtenay Brown find money on the ground – story still bores.
My Garmin says There’s a Road Here!
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:
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, 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 awayâ€, 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 “trailâ€, 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.
Christmas Karma
For Christmas this year I agreed (with myself) not to do gifts (the video below shows my one exception). I may have muttered this to a few people around me, but was secretly hoping that someone wouldn’t get the memo and would send me something awesome. Karma, however, was quick to bite me for that strategy because on Wednesday the 23rd I found out that I need a root canal and I have no dental insurance. Calling my mom to beg for a rather unusual Christmas present made me feel particularly bad about not having a “real jobâ€.
When Friday rolled around I headed to my cousin’s house to watch his 6 year old open her gifts. It was really interesting. She took longer to open the gifts than any child anywhere. She would open a present, then read about it, open it, show it to everyone, inspect it from every angle, maybe play with it for a few minutes, then ask if someone else wanted to open a gift next. I found myself questioning if she was really six, or if there’s an older soul trapped in her body.
I was given a snail shell and a gift certificate to the restaurant and Turtle Bay Resort, which I intend to spend in full on Monday when Courtenay and I go to dinner with my cousin and his wife. So in a way I got my wish of the unreciprocated presents.
After the tree was empty, my cousin played his new Wii game and I went for a run . It was truly epic – to where I feel obligated to devote a full blog entry to that particular run.