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.

I imagine that the feeling is a little different for everyone, but for me the pain in my legs goes away, I get a huge smile, a burst of adrenaline and my entire body gets that “pins and needles” tingling. It doesn’t happen at every race, but when it does, I know it has been a great day.

At Timberman last year, the run course was a two loop out and back. At the half way point as I passed by the buzz of the finishing chute, I started to get “that feeling” and had to mentally calm myself down because I still had 6.6 miles to go and didn’t want to drain my adrenaline reserves with so much left in the race.

Yesterday, I did my longest training run so far for my first Ironman. 19 miles of running with only stops/walk breaks at “aid stations” that I set up to top off my fuel belt water reserves. At about mile 13, I started to get that “finish line feeling.”

It was the realization that all the pieces were coming in to place. My training is going smoothly. I am able to run farther than I ever have before with less effort. It was the ultimate “holy crap, I’m actually doing it! I’m going to be an Ironman!”-type of moment. But then I had to swallow it, calm down and knock out another 6 miles on my feet. There is still plenty of work to do between now and September before I can get that feeling again for real.

I’ve been dreaming of this day for at least 10 years and it is finally becoming reality.

I’ll be living the dream on September 12, 2010. Meet me in Sandusky, Ohio.

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!

These things are super sweet and I was pumped to get to test them out before the went on sale to the rest of the world.

Ultimately, what makes the Kinvara more than “just another running shoe” is that it is super minimalist but can still be worn for longer road races. It looks like a futuristic version of an ordinary training shoe, but are only .7 oz heavier than my racing shoes.

My Experiments With Minimalist Running Shoes

Before I get into the shoe itself, It probably makes sense to talk a little about my adventures with running shoes over the past year. For the last two seasons I rocked a few pairs of Asics GT-2140′s. It is one of the best selling running shoes out there, I never had any major problems with them. My main irk that I eventually noticed with the 2140′s is that it was physically hard making the transition away from them to any other shoe. During triathlons I also noticed that they can take on a TON of water if I am water over my head (which is the cast in most races). Running with five pound sponges strapped to each foot for 13.1 miles is NOT fun.

The 2140′s were essentially like two big comfy couches for my feet. They felt great, but soaked up so much of the impact from each foot strike that they dumbed down my foot/ankle/calf strength. Hence the difficulty in switching away from them to any other shoe. I’m definitely not a fan of having my fitness dependent on my gear. It is like the equivalent of training all winter on a spin bike, but having just a fraction of that fitness translate into bike speed out on the road.

Since I started to have some issues with my Asics, I did some experimenting with Vibram Five Fingers (which is just about as minimal as you can get), race shoes and trainers with a little less support and have been slowly building back my foot/ankle/calf strength and am noticing huge gains in my running.

So when the Kinvara came out, it wasn’t just a sweet new piece of running gear to test out, but another step for me on my minimal(er) running journey.

Kinvara Review

The first impression is that these things look freaking awesome. Sam even loved the futuristic styling.

While they don’t look super light and “minimal” as soon as you put them on you can tell just how light and smooth these things are. The upper has just enough material to keep my feet centered and is super breathable. There are no stiff plastic pieces anywhere in the shoe and they feel like comfy slippers when you put them on.

The main thing that isn’t obvious at first glance is that the thickness of the sole in the forefoot is really close to the thickness of the sole in the heel. (This is a similar construction philosophy to that other heel-striking preventing shoe, the Newton). Most traditional shoes have a lot more heel cushioning. Keeping the sole thickness more even promotes mid/fore-foot strike, which is more efficient and quicker than heel striking, but that is an entirely different conversation. Google it.

Test Runs. They feel just as quick as my Fastwitch race shoes, just with practically zero stability. I noticed the lower heel height right away, mainly because my calf was a little more sore than usual after the first run, but probably because it was stretched out a little further with each foot strike. Just a little bit of growing aches I guess, but it wasn’t anything bad enough to still be lingering the next morning. After that first run, my calfs weren’t any more sore than usual after a run.

Conclusion. I’ve brought ‘em out for the run of my half iron race simulation last weekend, hill repeats and a tempo run and they’ve performed great for all of it. Since the sole is thinner than my other shoes, I can feel every rock that I step on. They definitely won’t be hitting the trail any time soon, but that isn’t what they are made for.

To cut down on weight, they reduced the hard rubber sole and it is extra thin, so I’ll be tracking my mileage in them to see how long they hold up and see if they wear out any faster than my other shoes.

My initial hopes were to wear them for the marathon of my ironman in September. I’m not sure if the benefits of a lighter shoe will outweigh the risk of going with something with such little stability, but they will definitely play a big role in my training. I’m guessing that their sweet spot will probably be around the half marathon distance, but I’ll reevaluate that as I get used to this whole minimalist running thing. Unlike my race flats that I only use in training for track and hill workouts, I’ll probably end up spreading my Kinvara use across all of my workouts.

Overall Saucony did a really good job with these shoes. Most importantly, they didn’t just make a minimalist running shoe for the sake of being minimalist. They designed it so that it is still a usable shoe that doesn’t require you to completely re-learn to run. I can definitely see why Runner’s World gave it their “Best Debut” award this year. If you are looking for a “pseudo-barefoot” shoe that has a little cushioning and encourages you to keep that efficient mid-foot stride, I’d definitely try this out.

My old super supportive and cushion-y shoes simply ALLOWED me to be a faster runner as a result of my training. My hope is that the Kinvaras will HELP me to be a faster runner (or at least that is what the theory is). Only (race) times will tell…

If you’ve made the jump and tried out the Kinvaras, let me know what you think.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Disclaimer: Saucony provided me with these shoes for free, but did not contribute to the content of this review. My triathlon team, Trakkers GPS, is also sponsored by Saucony, but if I didn’t honestly love these shoes, I wouldn’t be writing this post.

I want to get some final tweaks in my half iron nutrition/pacing/hydration before Rev3 Quassy next month. What better way to test out your fitness than to replicate a 56 mile bike and 13 mile run back to back?

If you like shaky videos with lots of wind noise, this explains my whole day.

If not, here is the quick synopsis.

The bike went great. I was rocking it. The best long bike ride of my life, then I cramped up at around mile 40. My legs still felt pretty good, but my stomach was all bloated and unhappy.

56 miles later, I rolled back to my car, downed some water in hopes that it would help reset my gut and jetted off on the first of five loops for the run.

I pushed it hard for the first 5 or 6 miles of the run. I got into a rhythm pretty quick and was feeling good, but then totally bonked. I kept on  pushing through, tossing water over my head and alternated sucking down EFS and straight water. Nothing was really doing the trick, but I eventually made it through.

Once I got home, I realized what the problem was on the run. All that water I sucked down went right through my system and didn’t get absorbed at all. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but at least it helped me figure out what was happening to me.

So here are the lessons from today’s epic race simulation.

I have a lot juice on the bike than I thought.

Sucking down tons of sports drink is great, but I’ve gotta mix that with plenty of water to keep things flowing.

“Emptying the tank” before a race and pre-hydrating is just as important as hydrating durring the race.

The more I learn about how my body works at race pace, the better I’ll be able to rock it once Ironman race day comes around. I’m slowly getting there…

I was snapping some landscape pics for a blog redesign that I’m working on (to go live sometime in the next few weeks) during a 2 hour trail run on Sunday and ran into a big ‘ol snapping turtle.

Click here to view the embedded video.

That is all. Just wanted to share this big honking turtle sighting.

Happy Training!

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.

Get out of bed whenever I felt like it, have breakfast, jump on my bike, point my wheels south towards the Boston Marathon course and go have fun.

I had finally recovered from a pretty wicked stomach bug that kicked my ass this weekend and I was eager to see how my legs really felt without fully committing to jumping back into my training plan.

I arrived at the Newton hills (around mile 20) just as the wheelchair athletes cam rolling through. I kept weaving in and out of the crowds and chasing the runners up the hills. Total Blast.

As more and more runners came in, I made my way closer and closer to the finish line. I even managed to spot two of my Trakkers teammates, Chris and Thor out of the entire mass of 25,000 runners. Because of my fantastic efforts, I have been given the best spectator of the race award by the Boston Athletic Association. That is how awesome my cheering skills were today. Granted if it wasn’t for the  bright green Trakkers gear, it would have been a lot harder, but let’s not dilute the awesomeness of my skills here.

He isn’t a local and I hadn’t actually ever met Chris before, so just yelled out “TRAKKERS!” as he ran by at around mile 23. He flashed a huge smile and kept on flying. I tried to weave around the crowd on my bike to catch him later in the course, but he was too speedy for me. Stupid one way roads. Either way, you’ve gotta love mid-race team meetups.

Congrats to Chris, Thor and everyone else that raced today. Awesome event. Inspiring athletes. Great day out on the bike taking it easy.

Here are some video clips of some of the top Americans powering it up the hill at mile 20 (Ryan Hall and Meb Keflezighi). Totally impressive.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Tonight’s workout:

1 mile warm up

8x200m all out with 200m jog between each

400m drills: scissors, high knees, kick butts

1.5 mile cool down

Time goal: 40 minutes

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.)

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