It is the clothing equivilent of screaming.

“Most of my marathons have been after a 2.4 mile swim and 112 mile bike…” or

“Why are you stressing out? Your race will be done after ONLY 3 hours. My ironman took me 10.”

It is why I hate it when people ask me if I’ve ever done a marathon. While I’m very proud of my race accomplishments,  it is hard not to sound douchey when responding with  ”only during an Ironman.”

As yesterday’s hot ass Boston weather reports slowly started to become reality and the BAA announced that it was allowing runners to defer because of the heat, Twitter blew up and the triathlon HTFU-ness was turned up to 11.

To be honest, I was completely on board in the beginning. What a bunch of p^$$!e$! Did they not think that this race would be held OUTSIDE? Did someone convince you that this was supposed to be easy? Are you allergic to ice and sunscreen? Your race starts at 10am. Most IM marathons start at 2! The hottest part of the day!

I’m not sure what happened, but all of a sudden something clicked. BAA wasn’t doing this because they thought the athletes were fragile flowers that would wilt under the hot sun. They were doing this because they know that marathoners are kinda screwed up in the head and are capable of dishing plenty of damage to their own bodies without blinking an eye. You’ve got every type of runner, young and old, but they’ve all got that in common. Add plenty of heat to 22,000 crazy masochistic runners and something bad is bound to happen.

It isn’t uncommon to have someone die during or immediately after a marathon. It just isn’t. As conditions get worse, the entire race infrastructure gets stressed. Every single extra degree requires more water, ice and medical support to make sure everyone gets to the finish line safe.

While it is easy for iron-distance triathletes to pound their chests about the crazy conditions that they survived to get to the finish line, comparing an IM to a huge marathon just isn’t fair. 1,855 athletes finished Kona last year. 22,426 athletes started Boston this year. Every marathoner is going to require a TON more support (ice, gels, medical, water, etc.) to get to the finish line. While an IM is a far more complex race to organize, the BAA is dealing with more than 10 times as many athletes.

What I started to realize was that this wasn’t about protecting the athlete’s ego. It isn’t an issue of who has the biggest balls. It is a public safety issue. For every runner who decides to defer, they are able to be that much more confident that the resources they’ve put in place will be able keep everyone safe and healthy along the way. The BAA made a smart move in recognizing that putting added pressure on people to race when it may not be in their best interests was irresponsible. They recognize the inherent risks in running 26.2 miles in 85 degree weather with little shade. I have to respect that.

For everyone that finished today. Congratulations. You just became someone’s hero. Never forget this accomplishment.

For everyone that deferred, don’t hang your head in shame. Just tell people that you know enough about yourself that you are sure that you wouldn’t be able to hold back and keep your engine revving within safe limits and would run until your face hit the pavement in a big bloody mess. Live to fight (and run) another day.

Instead, I picked out a local 5k just down the street from my house for a little run fitness test. It could not have been any more different than the craziness going on downtown. I registered 30 minutes before the race. Just walked up and handed over cash in exchange for a bib and timing chip. Then Sam and I decided to just lay in the shade on a soft patch of grass until the race director called everyone to the start line. It felt more like a big neighborhood group run than an actual race. I loved it.

Also, my trusty race photographer/wife decided to pull a fast one on me. As I was getting dressed yesterday morning, she kept asking questions like “So, how much does this race cost?” “You are just going to pay cash and register before the race?” Then she threw on her running clothes and decided she’d join me. She has been working out a lot lately, but hasn’t been training for the race at all. We’ve only ever done one race before, so it was a fun change of pace. She kept apologizing for not being able to take pictures of me on the course, but I was much happier knowing that she was out there on the course with me, kicking butt.

The race itself was pretty uneventful. I tried to go as hard as I could at a pace I could hold. For a 5k, if it wasn’t hurting a lot, I wasn’t going hard enough. I was about 10 seconds/mile slower than I wanted, but I just kept pushing. By mile 1, we started up the second hill and I dropped a few people. I was left with two people right in front of me. An older guy and the first place woman. I tried to hang with them, but couldn’t. I was only able to keep them close enough to use them as my rabbits for the rest of the race.

The hardest part of the race was having to run PAST the finish line, up a hill to my car so I could grab my camera  and make it back to the finish line in time to capture Sam coming across the line. Awesome form and great sprint to the finish. Proud husband. Rocking a vintage pink Trakkers visor too.

And we were able to head back to our house for a quick shower and still have time to check out the awards. I ended up a minute behind my goal time, but locked down 1st place in M 20-29 and 9th overall!

Not a bad way to start the season, eh?

Do you train to race or race to train? 

Just about everyone that I’ve met that is into triathlons seems to fall into one of those two categories.

Is racing just an excuse for getting out of bed every sunday morning and charging up hills on your bike before the birds start chirping?

Or is training that annoying thing that you have to do when race directors are inconsiderate enough not to have a new event for you to compete in every single weekend of the year?

Me? 

I 100% in the “train to race” category. While I love racing, testing myself and competing against the clock and others, it is nothing compared to the fun I have splashing through Walden pond as the sun sets behind me, hitting switchbacks on a hilly trail run or rolling for miles on quiet country miles on my bike. I’ll always add a few races throughout the season to keep me motivated, but given the option on any given weekend, I’d much rather spend a long day training with friends than slogging it out by myself on the race course.

What about you? 

Apparently at HQ a few weeks ago, there was a conversation that went down something like this:

“With all the buzz that we’ve gotten over the last few years, I really think we need to up our game and look for new ways to give back.”

“How so? You mean like offering complimentary back waxing to help hairy male athletes swim faster at our races?”

“No. Like doing something big for the Ulman Cancer Fund. We’ve supported them in a lot of ways in the past, but I’m thinking about something BIG.”

“Like what?”

“What if we tried to raise $100,000 for them? That could do a lot of good for people with cancer, right?”

“Heck yeah, but how are we going to do that?”

“Let’s run across the country. And invite others to join us along the route or run with us ‘virtually’ and tally up their own miles.”

“Shiver me timbers! That idea it the cat’s pajamas. Let’s start planning.”

Okay, well I’m pretty sure that no one said the last part. But the rest of it was pretty accurate. Even the back waxing part.

Starting Monday, March 26, a bunch of Rev3 staff and a few members of the AG team will start off running from Oceanside, California and won’t stop for 21 days when they reach Washington D.C. And they will be working on raising $100,000 in donations to the Ulman Cancer Fund all along the way.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to join them in person, but especially since my family had to start battling cancer head on last year with my dad’s lung cancer diagnosis, their mission really hits home for me. Me and the rest of the Rev3 AG team will be tallying up our training miles with hopes of at least matching the Run Across America team’s +3,000 miles over the same 3 weeks.

There will be more details on how you can help support the crew on their journey physically, emotionally and financially over the next few weeks. So stay tuned. Until then, if you have it in your heart to donate anything to help the team, please do. See the link on my blog’s sidebar or go directly to http://rev3tri.com/america/donate/

I’m fortunate enough to be able to plan my triathlon schedule 9 months out from now. Others have doctors telling them that they won’t be around by in 9 months. This is for them.

Like goals of going really fast verus going really far. For me, that means goals of a sub 2:15 olympic triathlon or 100 mile trail race. Two things that I can’t logistically accomplish in the same year, but both are things completely TERRIFY me and I REALLY want to do both of them someday soon. But where to start? I’ve got no clue.

Last season, I tried to go sub 2:30 and qualify for age group nationls nationals. I did that and managed to go 2:25 and still feel like I have a ton of untapped potential to unleash on the olympic distance. I think I can cut another 10 minutes off my PR if I really focus on it and give it the energy and focus that it deserves.

On the other hand, I’ve kind of gotten obsessed with the Hardrock 100 trail race and REALLY want to do some crazy rocky mountain endurance adventure. Obsessed as in watching this video over and over.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obviously, this would be a multi-year journey since I have to build up my endurance enough to not only handle 100 miles of climbing through crazy elevation changes, but to qualify by doing another 100 mile trail race just to get in.

So what does 2012 bring? Go fast or go long? I have no idea…. Time will tell, but I’ll have to just pick one. For now…

Giving back? I think I did pretty well. I loaned out my old trainer to a friend training for Rev3 Cedar Point, volunteered at Quassy and another local sprint. Gotta think of some more creative ways to give back for next season.

Nationals? Done. I went, had a blast and improved my olympic-distance PR by about 15 minutes! It was a lot of fun, and I hope to make it back. The one thing that I didn’t like was the whole qualifying process. The qualifying criteria was fair, but it was just a big psychology change for me to be competing against the top guys in my age group instead of just myself and the clock.

I’m very competitive, but I’ve never cared about what anyone else in my age group was doing while I raced. I rarely ever looked down at people’s calves to see if they were in my AG. I just stuck to my own race and tried to meet or beat the standards that I set or myself. My competition used to be all internal. This year, it was all about competing with other M25-29ers. I wasn’t used to it at all. I ended up turning into “that guy” walking around transition before a tiny local sprint, nervously stalking the competition. Even at a tiny local sprint triathlon. Not awesome.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just different. And I wasn’t used to it at all. If I continue down the route of being more competitive within my age group, I’ve gotta get my head straight so I don’t let that get away from me and ruin my chances before the gun even goes off.

Other accomplishments this year?  I trained hard enough to be FAST on the bike and had a ton of fun.

I got a sweet new wetsuit that I lovelovelove. Plus it makes my ass look hot.

I went swimming outside a lot, made stupid faces underwater in front of my camera, and found a secret outdoor pool.

I did post-race cool downs in the ocean.

Oh, and I got to interview Natalie Coughlin.

I think I’ll chalk up the 2011 season as a win. Now I need to sit down and do some serious goal setting for 2012.

What are your big goals for next year?

This is the race that I built my whole season around and picked my rache schedule just so I could qualify and earn my entry. All that work paid off and my work with Coach Hirsch has me feeling strong. Needless to say I’m VERY excited to race and VERY ready to taper.

I just got a new aero helmet that I can’t wait to rock this weekend too! I love it.

Last weekend I had two more days of hard workouts before starting my taper. It was raining so I took my 2 hour bike onto the trainer. Once I warmed up, no matter how hard I pushed I couldn’t get my HR above 135 or the life of me. It was just stalled. That is completely not normal for me. I don’t think that has EVER happened to me before. Or at least I’ve never noticed it before.  I cut the workout short and focused on stretching, massage, some time in my Recovery Pump boots and some good nutrition. I immediately booked a massage with Soar Body to get my muscles rubbed down and refreshed.

I talked to Coach and he said that my decision to back off was a smart one. My body was cooked and that is why my HR wouldn’t rise. Looks like my taper is starting early this time around!

Now I’ve got some easy swimbikerun sessions to keep the muscles fresh and loose, but I also need to make sure I don’t go stir crazy.

I felt a little scratch in my throat and started freaking out that I was getting a cold. I’m also relentlessly checking the Burlington weather forecast for this weekend. What looked like it could have been a really wet race, looks like it might be pretty sunny. Still, it is one more thing that I can stress out about forever, but don’t have any control over. I’ve gotta focus on preparing and not waste any mental energy on all that other crap.

So time to go have some under water fun! I can ALWAYS have fun taking stupid pictures of myself in the pool.

The rest of my To-Dos this week include cleaning my bike, degrease and lube my chain, eat healthy and get LOTS of sleep.

See you in Burlington!

The Starting Line: Can you see me? I’m the one in green. 

Photo Credit: Kevin Morris

The Finish Line: The “Beacon” – Portland Head LightPhoto Credit: Kevin Morris

The Finish Line: From The Other Side

Photo Credit: Kevin Morris

The Awards Ceremony

And one of my favorites… Some shirtless Mainer with nipple rings and a crab hat inside a mini lighthouse on wheels. The results say he ran it in under an hour. I hope he ran it from inside the lighthouse! That would have been AWESOME. He flashed me a double shaka just after I took this picture once he saw me with my camera. Wished I got that on film.

And of course I hit up Wild Willy’s for a BBQ bacon cheeseburger, onion rings and a lime rickey before I headed back home. I showed self restraint and only at about 1/4 of the onion rings.

I rolled into Cape Elizabeth around 6:30, and hopped on a bus from one of the remote parking lots to take me to the race start. The bus driver had the heat BLASTING which only made the bus full of nasty nervous pre-race farts even worse! The bus was like I was in a giant fart oven. Not an awesome way to start the morning.

The only reason I’m smiling in this picture is because it is BEFORE everyone’s pre-race farts started. 

A 2 hour drive, a bus ride, and a half mile walk to the start line and I was finally there. I grabbed my number, ran into some old friends that were racing and moved out of Boston, warmed up, peed in the woods and waited for the gun to go off.

Waiting at the starting line

The race itself was fun pretty uneventful. I lined up somewhere just behind the 7:00 minute pace marker and waited for the gun to go off. I didn’t taper for this and the plan was just to train through it and test out my pacing strategy for nationals.

In the end, I was REALLY happy with how consistent my pacing was. Except for a hilly second mile, I held pretty steady 7:30 miles. I would have liked to be a little faster, but since my legs weren’t 100% fresh, I was fine with it. One thing I did notice is that compared to the average runner that was holding a 7:30 pace, I’m WAY better at running hills. At the start of even the slightest hill, every pack that I was running with seemed to slowly fade back as I kept a steady effort. I don’t think this is unique to me, but probably a triathlete thing. Looks like my cycling quads aren’t just dead weight on the run after all!

Does anyone else notice this when doing stand alone running races?

My final time was 47:03. Since I can’t remember the last time I did a stand alone 10k (at least 10 years ago?) I’m calling this a PR. Here are my mile splits:

Splits:
1 – 7:27
2 – 8:03
3 – 7:38
4 – 7:33
5 – 7:30
6 -7:23

After the race, I headed through through the food tent to suck down some chocolate milk, watermelon, and a fist full of mini snickers bars. They were hiding all the good stuff (chocolate and candy) at the END of the food line! Very sneaky.Then I hit up the massage tent, something I’ve never done post-race. Usually I’m busy regrouping with Sam after she spent the morning cheering me on. Since I was flying solo this time around, I took advantage of it and made some friends in the massage line before getting my butt rubbed.

Then, it was on to the beach for a soak! There was a little rocky beach just passed the finish line and only a few other runners took advantage of it for a cold soak. I was surprised more people didn’t dive in for a little cool down, but was happy to have it (almost) to myself.

I tried doing a video race report, and almost got got knocked over by a ninja wave that came out of nowhere….

Click here to view the embedded video.

As for the race itself, I was a little hesitant because I usually hate gigantic races. This one had more than 5,000 runners and sold out in seven minutes. In MARCH. For a TEN K! Fortunately, it was super casual and really well run. There were a TON of spectators lining the course and you can tell how proud the locals were of the race. Super well run, GREAT volunteers, aid stations and finisher’s area. If you can get in, I’d definitely recommend this race. Plus, Portland is a pretty cool little city to hang out in if you’ve got some time to kill after the race.

One more week of hard training then it is time to taper for what I’ve been building my whole season around – Age Group Nationals!

Other than spending most of May not training and draining gallons of boogers from my nose and some random personal issues that are inevitable, my training hasn’t hit any major snags. Except for this weekend. Actually, just Sunday. I kinda wanted to curl up in a ball and cry a little.

It wasn’t a particularly spectacular or entertaining blow up, but just for the sake of making sure you know it isn’t always sunshine, rainbows and unicorns over here, let’s talk about it. Gotta keep things balanced.

They Fart Rainbows

Saturday was an easy 2k OWS followed by a hard HARD brick. A two hour blike at faster than race pace and an all out 30 minute run. It was a great swimbikerun session and the bike pace was faster than I’ve seen in a long time (read: ever). It was +90 degrees and my legs were destroyed at the end. I headed home for some ultragen, pulled pork flat bread and 90 minutes in my Recovery Pump boots.

I inhaled the crap outta this pizza. I’d been waiting for it all week.

Sunday is when the shit show started. My recovery work the day before helped me start to recoop, but I still had a long way to go and my legs still felt like death. Clearly I dug my hole pretty deep on Saturday.  I moved my 12 mile to the afternoon in hopes that a few extra hours would do the trick.

The plan was for six easy miles and six tempo miles. The first half was okay. I took a new route along the beach and enjoyed some really interesting people watching. Nahant beach has some interesting characters (I’ll save that story for another day). The second half, I tried to kick it up into some tempo work. The harder I pushed, the more it hurt, but I didn’t go any faster at all. My nutrition with EFS was spot on, but my legs just had no desire to come with me. It was like trying to argue with a toddler. The more I pushed, the harder they pushed back and threw a massive tantrum. Full on Ironman shuffle style. Dragging my feet forward with every step just to hold a 9:30 pace.

I held on for the last 6 miles and was barely able to sustain the same pace as the first 6.

Here is the route that I took. There is a sidewalk along the beach that goes from right to left. I went out to that little island sticking out on the left and back (twice) for 12 ish total miles.

The moral of the story is that no matter what you do sometimes with your planning, nutrition, stretching, recovery pumping and sleeping, sometimes the wheels just fall off.

In the words of Coach Hirsch: “In the end the legs have the final say in the workout we do!”

But unlike baseball, which usually puts me to sleep, I LOVE triathlon AND sports psychology.

Psych was my minor in college and if I could ever find a way to get someone to pay me to get my PhD in psychology, I’d jump on it in a heart beat. Plus, at it’s core, my job of helping companies understand and make use of social media is all about psychology and sociology.

Anyway, my point is that I’m fascinated by the whole psych element of triathlon and love experiencing first hand how important the mental side of this sport is sometimes. I dragged myself out in some nasty mid-day heat and humidity for a 12 mile run on Sunday. I didn’t want to have any part of it. I wanted to sit on my arse and drink beer and play video games. It took me a solid 30 minutes to put my shoes on and another 30 get out the door and actually start running.

From there on out, the next 12 miles were was a complete roller coaster. I couldn’t focus and kept letting my pace slip REALLY really slow. As soon as I stopped paying attention to my pace, I was doing slow 10 min miles and dragging my feet. (I wanted to do high 8′s.)

It wasn’t that my legs were dead from my 3 hour ride the day before, they had plenty of energy. I’ve actually been giving them plenty of love with Ultragen and my Recovery Pump boots, so they were feeling strong. I just had trouble getting the energy OUT of them and laying it out on the road.

I found myself thinking back to REALLY hard run sessions and races. Specifically, the last run leg at Ragnar New England and the marathon at Rev3 Cedar Point. I started thinking about how dead my legs were, but how I forced myself to keep on moving forward. Instantly, I felt my turnover picking up and even got goosebumps on my arms. Crazy how the mind can impact the body, eh? Over the rest of the run, I kept thinking back to some of my hardest and most memorable runs in my head to keep my motivation and my turnover up high.

What memories do you pull up when you have to dig deep and keep moving forward? 

I have been consistently coughing up a few pounds of snot for the last six days and was a no show on the start line yesterday. Even while medicated, I know that the race would have been a complete disaster and would have been really disappointed in my performance, so it wasn’t too much of an emotional hit. I do really wish that I was at least well enough to have gone to cheer on my friends that were out racing, but that didn’t make sense either.

As the gun went off, I was sitting at the clinic getting advice on what meds to take to keep myself from drowning in boogers. I did at least get a little smile when the nurse practitioner was impressed my my low resting heart rate…

I tried working out a few times too, but it just made me feel lightheaded and a lot worse.

At day six, there still aren’t any signs of improvement, but I have picked out a new replacement race to try and snatch up my AG Nationals slot.

Let’s just hope I can kick this thing before the next starting gun goes off.

I am going to try running and biking again with the new meds and am hoping for better better results. I am already starting to get twitchy from the lack of exercise.