Let’s start back in  elementary school real quick to give some perspective.

Just like most kids, my mom tossed me in the local soccer, baseball and basketball leagues. Unfortunately, I was about half the size of all the other kids and SUCKED at soccer, baseball and basketball. The whole hand-ball coordination thing was just not my thing. I stuck with little league for a while because all my friends were on the team, but it was more of a test of my mental endurance than my baseball skills.

I was the tiny kid stuck in right field picking daisies and not even paying attention to the score because I hated being there. The one time I made solid contact with the ball, it was a laser of a line drive. But it went foul. And almost took out my coach standing on the first base line. That was my one “hit.” At the end of the season I won the award for most walks. I was a joke.

Basketball was no better. Having awful hand-eye coordination and always being at least six inches shorter than all your classmates makes it pretty hard to become the next Lebron. I almost scored a basket once. Almost.

The one thing I was good at was running.

Running the mile fitness test in middle school

When I got to high school, my mom refused to let me become one of those kids that came home from school at 3pm and played video games all night. She forced me to pick a sport for every season. She didn’t care what it was, she just wanted me out of the house, being active and making new friends after school.

Freshman year cross country

Since ball sports clearly weren’t my thing and the one thing I really loved about middle school gym was the annual mile run test, I went with Cross Country. I knew a few guys in the team from Boy Scouts and jumped right in. They introduced me to people that would change my whole high school experience and I never turned back. Over the next four years, I  went from the skinny, shy and nerdy kid who could barely run two miles to the guy that was the captain of the winningest (is that a word) athletic team in the school and bringing home bad ass conference championship trophies. Sure, I still was skinny as hell and looked like an albino Ethiopian, but that was fine.

I was running. Running was me. All was right in the world.

Cross country in the fall, indoor track in the winter and outdoor track in the spring.

I went from the quiet awkward kid to the captain of the team. I wasn’t breaking any state records, but the team we built went deeper than any other in our conference and we started to build a little running dynasty at my High School. It was all about being a part of something bigger, and more awesome, than yourself. Our team rocked.

My senior year was a major turning point. I switched from “that tiny quiet kid” to the captain of the team and leading us to another championship. While living four years of pure running was great, I was burnt out. I was a six foot tall, 140 pound stack of ashes. It wasn’t the end of my athletic career, but there was some twinkling of more endurance sports to come. I just needed to get off my feet for a while.

I broke away from my pack of running friends and dove in to the pool, literally. From seeing a flier at the grocery store that I worked at for a local triathlon and watching Kona on TV, I started to think “hmm, maybe I’ll do one of those some day.” To get there, I figured out that I  needed to learn to swim freestyle. Joining the winter swim team quickly became the next step in my athletic career. Plus, it meant hanging out with cute athletic chicks in bathing suits six days a week. In High School, 90% of the decisions I made revolved around girls, so this was a pretty easy call. It was well worth having to rock the speedo.

I swam. It was fun. I almost drown at first, but slowly got faster and faster.

College came, and I was still burnt out on running. I had no desire to pick up my racing flats and go back at it. Instead, I focused on school, pizza and cheap beer. On top of that, I realized that college chicks, unlike High School girls, didn’t like 140 pound toothpicks. I started hitting the weigh room hard. Over the next four years, I ended up gaining more than 50 pounds, losing 100% of my running fitness and picking up myself a pretty cute girlfriend. Things were changing fast, but it was all in the right direction.

Still with that twinkling of triathlon in  my eye, I asked for a road bike for my  21st birthday and I got just a little closer to being a multisport athlete. Cycling kicked my butt at first, but I didn’t give up and took my bike to class whenever I could to get faster and faster.

Once I had my undergrad and grad degrees under my belt, I decided to finally take the step to complete what had become a race six years in the making: my first sprint triathlon.

I floundered my way through the swim only to battle back and forth with a 300 pound, 60-year old man and a 15 year old girl in cheerleader booty shorts on the bike. Humiliating. The run? It was clear that I was nowhere near the hard core single sport athlete that I once was, but I made my way to the finish.

Holding back vomit, I remember Sam meeting me at the finish line and asking “How do you feel?!”

All I remember saying is “SO HARD! Let’s do it again!”

And that is how I became a triathlete.

Following Sonja‘s orders, I headed down to the Blue Hills Reservation just south of Boston for a long day of hiking. I packed up  my Camelback full of goodies to keep me going for the whole day.

Side note: I LOVE my camelback for trail running. Maybe it is just because I have no hips and my fuel belt is just too big and won’t stay in place, but this thing is the best. It has little pockets for my wallet, FlipCam, Clif bars and my iPhone and is the most comfortable way with 2 liters of water strapped to my hump. Definitely one of the best gear purchases I’ve made lately.

But let’s continue…

Heading out into the woods and seeing rays of sunshine peek through the fog and tree leaves makes getting up early completely worth it.

Gorgeous.

Despite the name, I was a little unsure about just how hilly the “Blue Hills Reservation” actually was. I didn’t want to go out to attempt some epic hike only to be let down by some ill-named walking path. Thankfully, the blue hills did not disappoint. Within the first quarter mile I was walking up a steep rocky hill and was well into Z2. Happy boy. An epic day was had.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There were awesome views of the Boston skyline, tons of bounding between tree roots, sprinting down rocky descents and a helluva lotta sweat.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Four hours later and slightly embarrassed that I got a legitimate workout from hiking (which is just another name for a walk in the woods) I was done. My toes were pretty beat up from banging them into rocks. I may need to invest in some legit trail shoes instead of just my regular Saucony Hurricanes, but they did hold up pretty well. There was also a little beach and pond right at the end of the trail. Perfect for a little post-run soak. SCORE!

I managed to average 120 bpm for the whole day. Not too bad for endurance training? Right?! I’ll have to do this a few more times and bump up the time/distance each time.

Saturday night involved two games of bowling, an arm full of beers, a BBQ cheeseburger at midnight and a 1:30 am bedtime. Not ideal for an early morning Sunday ride, but definitely fun. Gotta have that triathlon-life balance!

5:30 am rolled around pretty fast and I felt like death. Thankfully I knew Kim was joining me, or I may not have made it out. Planning my weekend workouts early and sending some peer-pressure filled emails was definitely a good idea.

Fifty miles, lots groaning about my sore quads from yesterday’s hiking, staring at Kim and Mike’s butt’s, and plenty of poop and vagina jokes later, we rolled back into Concord High School and tossed back a few beers before calling it a morning and going our separate ways. Drinking at 11:30 on a Sunday morning in a high school parking lot? Gotta love it. Mike supplied the beer. It was the first time I’ve ever met or ridden with him, but he is definitely a keeper.

So I know what you are thinking. Epic hike is checked off the list. What is next?

Next weekend: one day. +120 miles. Boston to Provincetown.

Time to lube up the road bike!

Over the last three years I’ve managed to learn enough about racing and training to know what it takes to get myself to the finish line of a half ironman and that is what I did last week at Rev3 Quassy. Moving past that and keeping my momentum going towards a full 140.6 mile race is an entirely new animal. That is why I had this week marked in my calendar as my “re-evaluation” week. A time to sit back, look at the training plan I’ve been using, how well I’ve followed it, how my individual swim/bike/run strength is progressing and retooling my plan as needed so that I can nail the next three months and get myself to that finish line at Cedar Point.

Here is where it all stands:

• The “out of the box” training plan has been effective at getting me to a new course PR at Quassy, but is very bike heavy. My bike is definitely stronger than my run right now, so that focus needs to change.
• I’ve been doing regular track workouts and hill repeats, but am hugely lacking in long run workouts that go past that 13.1 mile mark at any pace.
• I have 100% NO CLUE (other than blindly following the generic plan that I’ve been using) how to address my running issues other than gently increasing my run volume and frequency up until the few weeks before race day.

I’m AMAZINGLY fortunate enough to have more super speedy athlete/coach friends than I’m able to count To help give some direction, I went to two of the speediest ladies that I raced with last weekend to get some tips on adjusting my training plan: Sonja and Meg. They have both been within reach of Kona spots at one point or another and have some sick run splits so I trust their advice. Plus, I know they read my training updates here more often than not so I trust that they won’t just be regurgitating what works for them, but will help to figure out what works best for slow ‘ol me.

Based on the non-existent ironman training experience that I’ve got, my original plan was to weed out one run and one swim workout on alternating weeks and add in another LSD or long-ish tempo run, with a good portion of them on trails to build strength and help keep a quick turnover. I wanted to avoid empty mileage at all costs and give each workout a specific focus since I think that was a major fault of the training plan that I followed last year.

At least that was my plan until Sonja smacked me around and set me straight. Hearing how few tempo/hill workouts she did was a big shocker.

While tempo and hill workouts are really common in high school cross country (the last time I could actually call myself a fast runner), Ironman is a different beast and I should take more of a “time on the feet” approach. Ultimately my goal is to do as little walking as possible on the marathon. In order to get to that point, I need MILEAGE. Instead of 10 hill repeats at the end of a 5 mile run around my ‘hood, I’d be much better served by a 5-6 hour hike with major hills. Even walking uphill for hours is apparently great IM training.

While focusing on long slow runs too much will just make me into a long slow runner, that won’t be bad. I’ve never actually ran 26.2 before, so running that distance at any speed after 112 on the bike would be a MAJOR accomplishment.

So here is the NEW plan based on a mix of Sonja and Meg’s tips:

• Focus on long SLOW (9-10 min/mile pace) at proper HR to build overall Ironman fitness
• Focus on outlasting, not speed
• Plan for some EPIC run adventures and start working towards them
• Adjust the runs of my training plan to look more like I was training just for a marathon
• Bump up run frequency to at 4-5 times per week with some two-a-days
• Keep track workouts really minimal – use speed work at the end of longer run workouts just to help break things up and keep it interesting
• Active recovery after big runs or hikes – short swim/bike/run

Now it is time to go plan for some epic run adventures. I’ve already got some exciting stuff in the works.

Can. Not. WAIT!

I’ve got 300 free special gifts to give out (well, currently only 297 since three already got snatched up).

If you want to stay smooth and speedy this race season without razor bumps, this should help get you there. Plus, getting new toys that aren’t available in stores yet is always fun, right? I’m purposefully not mentioning the name in this post so that my regular readers get first crack at it and all the google lurkers don’t snatch them all up, but click on the widget in the sidebar and you’ll figure it out.

I’ll be posting a review later on, but when you get yours in the mail, let me know what you think.

Enjoy!

For most people, the triathlon racing season is just kicking off, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. For this guy whose main focus is on that big 140.6 mile race in September, the base training season is OVER.

Time to ratchet up the training volume and intensity to see exactly what my body can handle.

Besides just cranking out more hours and more hard intervals, I’ve got a bunch of other training goals that I’m trying to hit along the way.

Focus on recovery just as much as training.

Going hard one day isn’t worth much if you are so wasted that you can’t hit your workout targets for the next three days. I’ve been addicted to Ultragen after all of my hard workouts and I’ve been liking it a lot. I was big into chocolate milk as a recovery drink last year. Ultragen is obviously a little pricier than a glass of chocolate milk, but there is no sense doing all this training if I’m not fueling with some top quality stuff, so I think it is worth it so far. Plus, the cappuccino flavor is so freaking delicious it is something great to look forward to as a reward after beating up my body for a few hours on the weekend.

I’ve also been pretty awful about stretching, except when something starts to bother me. No excuses here. I just gotta make it a more regular part of my post-workout routine to keep me healthy and loose.

Anticipate raging food cravings so I can make responsible choices

The hunger is already coming. I feel like I have only seen the beginning of the ironman food cravings. The one major thing that I learned from my #i8this challenge is that the easiest way to eat healthy is to simply stock your fridge and pantry with healthy godies. If you have crap in the house, it will get eaten. Or even if you don’t have anything good in the house and need food fast, you are probably going to make some bad choices.

Start my experimentation with OptygenHP.

So far I’ve loved everything that I’ve tried from my new nutrition sponsor, First Endurance. Beyond killer race nutrition and recovery stuff, I really wanted to test out their OptygenHP supplement. All their stuff is based on tons of research, so I trust ‘em. They haven’t let me down yet. You can check out their site for details on it, but it has some special goodies in it that Tibetian sherpas use for climbing Everest and helps increase oxygen utilization, reduce lactic acid buildup and helps adapt to high levels of physical stress.

For the first two days, it did give me this strange tingling all over my body, especially on my face and ears. The site says that this is caused by one of the ingredients (Beta-Alanine)  activating some neurons or something like that. All this time they were just hitching a ride and not carrying their own weight?! Shenanigans! Their whole explanation is over here.

I’ve only been taking it for six days so far, so it is too early to tell how effective it is, but I’ll definitely report back if I feel that it helps me get through hard training days (and ultimately race day) any easier.

Get my legs smooth n’ race ready.

Nuff said. Soon it will be time to lather up and get these doggies race-day smooth!

Balance both my training and social calendars

Except for a few hiccups, I think I’ve been doing pretty good about keeping a relatively normal social life during my base training. Keeping Sam posted on when my long workouts will be, having a shared Google calendar and doing lots of pre-dawn workouts has helped to keep things pretty sane. It isn’t going to get any easier now that the weekly training hours will be jumping up, but definitely something I need to keep my attention on.

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I’m not going to lie. I was thinking about this blog post while doing hill repeats the other morning and was singing this song to myself (in my head).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Happy training kiddos. More training stories from the road to come.

We immediately amended this with a 50 mile ride on Saturday morning. Besides just catching up on all the “life” that happens between each other’s blog posts, I did some major brain picking about tips for ironman training. She rocked a major PR at ironman at Cozumel last year and I absolutely respect her training dedication. I tried to act like a sponge as much as I could during the whole ride.

This is what we decided.

• I admitted that I NEVER pee on the bike during races, even half ironmans. Nver. This is apparently a problem. I know that I need to get better about my pre-race hydration, and if I’m not peeing on the bike, I still probably haven’t fixed it. The goal is to have to pee somewhere around mile 35-45. This needs some testing, but should give me a good idea of how hydrated I actually am so that I can adjust my intake on the fly and I can rock the run.
• Don’t spend the day before bumming around the expo without a bottle of fuel in my hand (and probably another in my back pack) to make sure I’m properly pre-hydrated.
• Keeping a semi-normal social life while rocking an ironman is possible. She is proof. Now I’ve just gotta repeat what she has proven.
• Pre-lubing with chamois cream is essential.
• Dropping some $$$ on swim stroke analysis will probably do me way more good than the same amount on coaching, V02 max testing or anything else. My swim stroke is almost definitely the low hanging fruit of places I can improve on to get my finishing times down.

We shot the shit about local triathlon club gossip, her latest boy stories and It also gave me a chance to show off my new Trakkers cycling kit that came in the mail this week. Gotta love some fresh threads.

Playing with my camera while Kim “takes care of business” off in the woods.

Here is to hoping that all these lessons learned transfer into some faster race times this year! I’m starting to feel a little more confident about making the potentially insane decision to coach myself to my first ironman.

Wow, just imaging if my mom didn’t force me to pick a sport each season in high school so I didn’t just come home and sit on the couch all afternoon, this whole “journey to ironman” thing might never have happened.

Scary.

I was back home in Connecticut this weekend visiting the family and decided to hit some of the same trails I ran in high school that got me hooked on running.

Saturday I did a short run around two loops while Sam and my mom were hiking. I met back up with them half way through the second loop to hike the rest of the way back to the car and catch up on life.

Good Times.

Sunday I had big plans of waking up just before dawn and running to a steep overlook  (the pinnacle) and watch the sunrise, until some serious clouds put a major damper on that idea. Oh well… Some other time I guess.

Instead I waited a few hours for it to warm up and keep it safe.

First way point: An old quartz mine with tons of bright green moss and icicles hanging everywhere. None of the spring leaves have sprouted yet, so the green moss against all the brown practically made the trail glow. It was really cool.

Next stop: The Pinnacle

Almost to the top…

Overlooking half of Connecticut.

The best part of the run was that while my quads and lungs were screaming from the hills and completely drained me, the scenery kept giving me tons of motivation to keep pushing so I felt stronger at the finish than when I started. (my legs still might tell a different story, but my head felt great…)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Runners high? Musta been. I haven’t had one of those in a while…

And of course, the essential post-run recovery time with my nephew, Carter.

(Yes, I’m totally bribing you for blog comments with cute baby pictures.)

Here is the sunset over the Congress Ave bridge. I hung out under the bridge watching the bat colony swarm out as the sunset while chowing down on a burrito. The perfect ending to a long day.

One of my favorite things about Austin was the trail around Lady Bird Lake. There were people constantly out running, biking, walking their dogs or canoeing, kayaking or rowing down the lake. Loved the super athletic vibe all around town. “The fit shall inherit the earth.”

After another hard tempo run around the lake, my doggies were hurting pretty bad and I decided it was time to return back to my ice bath routine. Ice baths in a hotel room poses some special challenges, specifically obtaining said ice. It took at least eight, no lie, trips back and forth to the ice machine to fill up the bath tub. I was tempted to use a garbage can since it could hold at least twice as much ice, and would require half as many sketchy trips back and forth to the ice machine, but I decided to use my better judgment.

Man I sure missed that burning chill of frozen toes. I stuck it out for 5 minutes this time before I had to jump out and dethaw.

Later I met up with one of my Trakkers teammates, Doris, for the first time at a karaoke party. I have a tendency to be really introverted and antisocial sometimes, so the fact that we chatted and tossed back beers into the wee hours of the morning with someone I just met says a lot. She is one awesome chick. Plus, she can totally party harder than me. We even sent some late night tweets to try and get Michael and Amanda Lovato to come join us for a swim the next morning since we knew they were in town.

The next day was beautiful, so I took a stroll off to Barton Springs to check it out as planned. As I walked over, I ran into this HUGE kite fest and remember that Amanda had Tweeted about going there. (Yes, Doris and I turned into total Twitter stalkers). More harassing of the Lovatos continued, but our efforts were fruitless.

Relaxing on the side of Barton Springs.  I’m pretty proud to say that I peer pressured Doris into joining me. She was even at a restaurant and chased after the waitress to cancel her order to rush off to join me for a dip. Margaritas can wait. Swimming with teammates  in an awesome natural pool on a beautiful day wins every day. 

I’m not sure why, but I think this picture is funny. It looks like this little kid is taunting me saying that he can swim faster than me or something.

And now I’ve made it back to Boston and am trying to get back into my normal routine. Goodbye Austin, you were a fun city, but this New Englander has some Ironman training to get to…

First, I’ve never been to Texas before and I’ve only heard great things about Austin, so I’m excited to explore a new city. Second, I’m missing some pretty nasty sounding cold and wet spring weather in Boston and trading it for sunshine and heat. Can you say mini training camp weekend?!

Word on the street is that Barton Springs is open for the season starting Saturday! From everything that I’ve heard, it sounds like the Austin equivalent to Walden Pond for Bostonians.  I’m in love already, and it is only about a mile from my hotel. While the water might be a little chili (especially since I didn’t have room to cram my wetsuit into my suitcase) but I’m hoping it is bearable enough. I like to think I have pretty thick skin for cold water swimming, but we’ll see.

Also, two of my Trakkers teammates from the other side of the Mason-Dixon line who I haven’t met yet will be in town this weekend too. While the conference is pretty huge, I’m hoping that we’ll eventually run into each other and get in some swims or runs in together. The Trakkers crew is a classy group of individuals and has yet to disappoint.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/atmtx/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Then… this guy moved into my throat.

And not just him, his entire family. Without completely grossing everyone out, lets just say that two mornings in a row I coughed so hard that I immediately puked up my cereal. Nice way to start the day, right? Apparently my teammate Thor got hit with the same thing.

I gave my body three days of rest, vitamins and lots of water, but it failed. After that I started my new “sweat it out” treatment plan. Continue on as usual with my training, for as long as my sickness allows me and try to just drown the gunk growing in my throat in sweat and deprive it of oxygen.

So far, so good. Unfortunately I’m still pretty dependent on my Mucinex so that I’m not constantly blowing my nose and coughing, but hopefully that doesn’t last too much longer.

Ugh…

One of my favorite things about heading up to northern New Hampshire is the scenery. Driving through Crawford Notch with huge mountains on either side so high that you have to crane your neck just to see a slice of sky is so inspiring. We even saw some ice climbers out on Sunday morning off to conquer some frozen water falls. SICK!

Bretton Woods is right in the shadow of Mount Washington and is right at the end of the killer 90 mile/4 mountain pass bike ride that I’ve done the last two springs with my team’s training weekend. Just driving that route and thinking about doing it again makes me smile.

But back to snowboarding….

Given that I average (at best) one trip up to the mountain per year, I definitely wouldn’t call myself an “expert” but I’m definitely good enough to have a blast ripping up the mountain. Doing that just sometimes involves getting a butt full of snow…

We even each got a roll of mentos and decided to film our own “freshmaker” commercial while jumping over this fallen tree. Pretty cheesy. Pretty hilarious.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ll try and post a fully edited version with music later this week.

There is also a second video of us ducking under the other side of the tree and popping out the other side. I think I caught a branch or something and took a digger, but still came up smiling with the roll of mentos in my teeth. GOLDEN! Once I find out where that video is, I’ll try to share that too.

Last post, I joked about logging both days in Training Peaks. NOT joking about it anymore. After two days of snowboarding pretty challenging (for me) runs, my entire legs are torn up and I love it!

This whole ironman training thing can be pretty fun if you let it…

So, how do I look? Meredith thinks that I could have some “smashing” some finishing photos. I’m not sure about that, but time will tell. Drop your thoughts below.

Pink is punk. Right? Maybe?

Thankfully some green and black ones came with it, so if I’m not in the mood to look “cute” I can just rock the traditional Trakkers colors.

More fun team news coming soon too. Hold tight.

And on a separate note, I think I may have kicked my winter training slump! A workout every day of the week so far. Nothing major, but I’m giving myself credit for at least suiting up and breaking a good sweat every day.

Next up: snowboarding weekend up in New Hampshire! WooHoo! Can I count that as cross training in Training Peaks?