Crunch Time is Upon Us!

So, its been a while.
Its crunch time now, less than 50 days before the big one!

Training has ramped up 14-16 hours per week, distances totaling over 150 miles, which only has room to grow in the coming weeks.  I am waking up at 5:00am quite a few days a week in order to fit it all in with life...I am going to bed by 10:00pm most nights and you know what...It is all worth it.  As much as I am bitching and moaning, I am in the best shape of my life (wasn't that hard) and I am really accomplishing something I feel is truly difficult.

So far this year I have done a 50 mile race (0.8/40.4/8.8), the NJ Devilman, and the Black Bear half iron distance 70.3.  The Devilman was on May 4 and I completed it in 3:59:41.  The breakdown is as follows, with rank in parathesis:
Swim, 0.8 miles: 20:23 (60)
Bike, 40.3 miles: 2:13:31 (113)
Run, 8.8 miles: 1:20:47 (90)

The swim was an uneventful double loop of the 0.4mile "sprint" loop.  I killed it, I felt great, thats the fastest swim I have ever done!  To put into perspective my swim time for this, 2 years ago I did the "sprint" and finished that distance (0.4miles) in 18:37.  That is correct...I did 2x the distance this year in less that 2 minutes longer...2 Minutes!

2012 Swim Time

2014 Swim Time

Moving onto the bike...well I rode, rode a bit more, got passed by a bunch of "older" racers and then passed like 1 person...haha.  It was a pancake flat ride with a nice tailwind going out and a headwind coming back on each loop. That headwind on the return trip of each lap kind of killed me on the bike...not sure what was going on but I finished with an average speed of ~18.2mph, which is about 1mph slower than what I was going for.  You can see my speeds on the return trips were a bit slower than the trips out on each loop...ohh well.

Off the bike and onto the run, time to make up some time!  I did the run at an average of ~9:00min/mile.  I felt good, literally 0ft of elevation gain, flattest course you will ever see...I will admit I started fading a bit around mile 6, though I had a "friend" start talking to me around there and that picked me up a bit and kept on going.  In the end we raced for the finish line and I edged her out by a few seconds (she had a faster time since she started after me) but it was all in good fun.

Me running down the finishing chute with my running "friend" not far behind

Overall there were 193 participants in the "Half lite," and I ranked 91.  I can't say I was mad with this performance.  I went in there hoping for sub 4 hours and I got it... I would have liked to be a bit faster on the bike, as I said, and I know I am  faster now but this was the last race I did on my road bike, my Cannondale Caad 10. Since then, my #1 workout partner and supporter has given me my dream bike.  Laurie got me a Cervelo P2 for my birthday. She says I deserve it, but I still think she spoiled me rotten (she did).  I got my fitting the day before the race, so it was so hard waking up the next morning and leaving for the race with this brand new incredible machine sitting in the basement, neglected...

2012 Cannondale Caad 10 105

2014 Cervelo P2 105
Moving up a month of training and bonding with my new P2...and we get to June.

The second race, Black Bear, I have less optimistic things to say about.  This race was nearly a month later on June 1 and was half iron distance, or 70.3 miles.  The breakdown for those races is 1.2/56/13.1.  I have never ever ever wanted to quit mid race more than I did during this one.  The run was torture for me, plain and simple.  Ever single step I took was more uncomfortable than I thought I wanted to bare.  There was an on going battle in my mind, which would hurt me more, another step or not finishing this race.  In the end, not finishing the race was going to be the more painful outcome and something I could not deal with, so I finished, begrudgingly. I admit now, though I would have been hard pressed to admit this during the race, that I finished because of Laurie's cheering and my Dad and Peggy came up too.  She ran nearly 2 miles (AFTER HER OWN RACE) to meet me at a junction point to cheer for me on a couple of the out and backs from that location. I was miserable...MISERABLE

I guess I can pick it up here with the swim, which for the most part was uneventful.  The lake was calm, much calmer than it was the day before when Laurie and I got out there for our practice swims.  The day before we swam a few hundred yards out and back in the lake, just to get used to it and see what the conditions were going to be...luckily for us, they calmed down before the next morning.  For me it was a fairly easy "out and back."  I say "out and back" because it was out for like 3/4 the distance then back a bit and turn into shore, we start and finish at different locations for the swim.  Anyway, we ended in transition...my time was about 1 minute faster than the swim I did in at the Pocono 70.3 in Sept. 2012, not bad, I'll take it, nothing like the Devilman swim though.

By the way, this is my first race on my new bike!!!

From there is where the real fun began.  I went into this race knowing, and expecting a hilly bike course. What I got was a VERY VERY hilly bike course. All the better to train for IMLP, my pretty.  According to my watch there was over 4.1k feet of elevation gain across those 56 miles, more gain per mile than I will see in IMLP...YAY!  Aside from the hills, which I was aware of and tolerated, there were a few things that annoyed me but overall...it went well and I finished in 3:28:50.  That time, while it may seem pretty slow (16.1mph) was actually faster than average in both my age group and in general, so I was happy!

The hills, Ohhh the hills!

Once I got off that long hilly ride, its now time to run a half marathon...a good ol' 13.1 miles.  I want to say I was ready for it, I want to say I was trained for what they "advertised," but what I got was not what I was ready for or advertised.  What I got was 13.1 miles of gravel, hills, and gravel hills. What I got was a nightmare to me.  The advertised course was paved and packed trails...that's it.  No mention of the lose, large stone gravel, lava field mountain climbs I did.  While climbing up this mountain, another runner and I decided we would both rather be doing a tough mudder course than this one, and we were only 4 miles in. At this point I had not seen Laurie yet (at that station 2 miles into the run), but was making my way back to where she was.  When I first saw Laurie I was quite excited...I would have someone to walk back to the start line with to tell them I was done. However, anyone that knows Laurie (and maybe me) knows that neither of us would let the other quit mid-race.  Guess I am going to be out here for a while...

In the end I finished that loop, did another loop, whined more (like I am doing here), then I finished!  I finished! I finished in 6:49:04...a good hour longer than I wanted to take...F-word.  Its fine, its done, I finished and I learned a lot.  I bonked bad on the run, I was dehydrated, hot, and undernourished.  My bottles came out of my rear-seat holder, need to work that out.  I did figure out where the noise on my aero bottle was coming from...had a long time to figure that out.

Statistics of the day for the Black Bear 70.3:

Coming to the finish...finally!

Bib # 2017
Overall Place 108 (of 188)
Age Group Place 7
Age Group Male 25 to 29
Final Time 6:49:04.2
Swim Rank 100
Swim Time 37:49.3
Swim Pace 31:31/M
T1 Rank 162
T1 Time 6:13.8
Bike Rank 81
Bike Time 3:28:50.6
Bike Pace 16.1MPH
T2 Rank 77
T2 Time 3:12.0
Run Rank 151  (UGHHHH)
Run Time 2:32:58.3
Run Pace 11:41/M



With ALL of that said...I am not just less than 5.5 weeks away from Ironman Lake Placid!!!

I am really starting to get nervous now, and on top of that...work is talking about sending me to France for week or 2, which I really can't afford to do right now!


NEXT UP, IMLP 2014!!!!!