training update

I'm in week 10 of training and overall I'm where I want to be.  I have shin splints so no running for me for the next couple weeks or so until it gets better. I need to do some strength training to make it better and probably should start swimming.  I can focus on swimming and biking for a while anyway. 

As far as nutrition goes, I'm still on my now infamous oatmeal diet, but specifically, I'm drinking more water, cutting out red meat and sweets, and no caffeine or alcohol (no alcohol starting January 1st maybe?).  What was interesting was when I cut out sweets, I was craving steaks and stuff.  Apparently that's what happens when you cut out sweets, you crave more protein.  So the inverse is, if you eat more protein, you'll want to eat less sweets.  I'm trying to get down to 180lbs by end of December and then 165-170lbs by August.

Anyway, that's it.  IronTeam is gelling together and I raised over $4,000 (officially, $5k unofficially) this year for Team in Training, Leukemia/Lymphoma Society.  My goal is $4,500 by August, I should increase that goal, we'll see.

 

Saturday's Bike Ride…

I'm in week 5 or 6 (it's been a tad busy at work) of Ironman 3.0. I started at 7am and went over into Orinda via Claremont ave again to do the 3 Bears route a few times. It was pretty challenging got done around 11:30am. The views are just great.

I got some new equipment for this ride. A Fizik Arione bike seat, which I'm in the process of breaking in, is a nice bike seat because it's longer than usual. It also has these little break points that's supposed to help to make it more comfortable.

I also got some new shoes, Sidi Genius 5.5s. They have a carbon sole and they felt pretty good. You want bike shoes that are pretty stiff, especially if you're a big guy, because it makes each pedal stroke more efficient – no wasted energy.

I'm still not in the shape I want to be in for the bike or for Ironman in general. I need to stretch more, lose some more weight, and really be smart about what I eat. Anyway…

awesome weekend

What a great weekend.

On Saturday, I started the day at 6am, drove over to Crissy Field, around 7am started my jog over to the Ferry Building and ran back (about an hour and a half give or take), met up with IronTeam, did an hour bike spin, and ran for another 30 minutes afterwards.

In the afternoon, Katina and I went shopping. We got this cool Yamaha receiver, bought some clothes as I'm wearing out my current rotation of shirts.

That evening, we went out with my parents for Japanese food at Kirala. Highly recommend the Uni, the Unagi, and the baby lobster robata.

Sunday was a gorgeous day for a bike ride. I started from my house at 7:30 am, up Claremont Ave (had to stop 4/5ths up as my legs were tired) but then continued till I got to Orinda. I met up with an old friend though I wished more than one person showed up. We did the 3 Bears bike ride loop and it was a gorgeous day for it. We finished up by going up Wildcat Canyon and I got home around 11:30am.

The Raiders won (finally, so they're 3-4). I went to my favorite bike shop and bought a few things, more shopping :-)

After doing some work/chores, Katina and I took a walk to the market and came back home for some dinner and then back to work/some stretching/some hot chocolate before bed.

Not a bad weekend.

Claremont Ave.

I got back on the bike today, outside for the first time since Ironman in the end of August. I climbed Claremont Ave, rather slowly but made it to the top. It's my benchmark ride so I am still in better shape than I was 2 years ago. I was probably in better shape last year but I have 10 months or so to go till the next Ironman.

Ironman Canda '05 is in the books

Ironman 2.0

I can't wait to look up Technorati for other folks who blog about Ironman Canada up here in Penticton. I doubt there will be many entries there were "only" 2400 participants (largest so far) and of course thousands of spectators and 4500 volunteers just amazing.

Quick Summary: I finished, doing it again next year, it was a pretty cool day outside of my own race and this is not an easy day.

Ironman Day started for me at 3am with breakfast. I prepared my race food, had some Peet's coffee from Alex and headed off to take care my bike and drop off my gear/food around 5:15am w/ Kris. (By the way, I did the race w/ Team in Training's Ironteam a one of a kind). I had a flat tire when I went to pump up my bike and a friendly bike barn technician took care of it for me. I watched as my teammates went by and headed off to the start line.

Right side! You know like the movie Remember the Titans. I helped my friend Alex on the swim to the first buoy with Jeff, one of my heroes who already did Ironman Couer D'Alene a couple months before. This was Alex's third try at making the swim cut-off and this year he made it, the highlight of this whole race — you just wouldn't believe.

The swim, otherwise, was pretty boring except I was able to a good chunk of it with my friend Jeff by my side. The bike ride (especially on a new double crankset) was pretty hard but aero bars which I used for the first time was great and helped me shave some time. I caught up with a lot of my teammates and as I walked the marathon, they caught up to me which was nice. The highlight of the bike ride was seeing Alex on the bike, it was beautiful sight. When I left him at the first buoy, I honestly wasn't very confident he'd make it. I was just crossing my fingers the whole time.

Anyhow, the marathon/walk was uneventful. I was doing a lot of math just to make sure I squeaked in on time. I hung out with Colin most of the evening, a Canadian Mountie, and we chatted and had a good time. He's a big dude like me, and it was his first Ironman. I also had never seen so many ambulances before on a race. There were also about 200+ people who didn't finish the race.

I came in with 23 minutes to spare. Katina walked the last mile and a half with me and I took her by the arm and cross the finished line (wearing my Firefox t-shirt, if I may add, can't wait to post the photos). I got a couple slices of pizza and hung out at the finish. I gave a hug to Alex, Susan, Kris, Gina as they all made it to the finish. It was pretty incredible. It's the big perk for being so slow this year.

The team was great! Everyone, from all the familes and staff cheering us on through the wee hours of the night. I'm getting my massage today, hopefully can walk and drive to work by Wednesday. And I'm signing again for this for next year and signing up a friend as well. While I'm signed up to be on the team next year, I maybe on the fence.

Oh, so some takeaways:
– The best kisses in the world are: wedding day kiss, and Ironman race kisses at the top of mile 100 on the bike and at the very end of an Ironman race. Those kisses are just amazing.
– People in Canada are so nice. This is such a great country and very pretty too.
– I need to train next year and actually lose some weight, I can't carry all this weight around with me next year. I need to at least drop 20lbs.
– Opera CEO's 1 million download publicity stunt where he said he'd swim to the USA was so dumb and I took it as a personal insult as I actually do swim and that would've been pretty cool. The CEO ended up blaming his PR Manager. The whole thing was just absolutely lame. Our (Mozilla's) PR manager, mcolvig, did his darn Ironman race. We don't do publicity stunts here, we just get our stuff done and try to do big things.

the replacement

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So my bike broke, so here's the replacement. A little bit lighter and now just a double chain ring. Riding a new bike at Ironman Canada is going to be interesting. (not supposed to do anything new)

chasing Tim Deboom

It was a good weekend, not perfect, or great, but it was good. Spent the weekend in Guerneville for the 1/2 Vineman Race.

We left late on Friday evening to stay at this bed and breakfast the Ridenhour Inn. I can't say I can recommend the accomodations, Garden View was more like view (and sounds) of the major thoroughfare but it was 3 miles away from the start of the race and the breakfasts were really good (also, 1/4 mile away from Korbel).

On Saturday, Katina and I had a full day. Woke up late, had breakfast, wine tasting at Korbel and Roshambo, lunch in Healdsburg, shopping at Macy's, race registration in Santa Rosa, and dinner at an Italian restaurant.

Sunday was race day.

Highlights included: seeing Tim Deboom and Peter Reid do a swim to bike transition in 30 seconds (I took 8 minutes), seeing most of my teammates, seeing this fairly good looking woman athlete let out this major belch, seeing this dude with bloody nipples (blood dripping down his shirt), learning that Jeff Kutash got a drafting penalty (after I told him I was trying to get one), finishing the run even though I couldn't push off of either feet, getting Doug and Glen a primo parking spot, and seeing Katina at the end. The prior week was actually harder. While the Vineman race was a 7 hour workout, last week was a 9 hour workout.

In any case, not a bad way to spend a weekend.

City of Guerneville

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Trying to strike a balance with this post, too much web stuff lately. This weekend I'm going up to Guerneville with Katina, for the 1/2 Vineman Race. Guerneville is supposed to be a gay and lesbian destination, but I wouldn't call it the West coast equivalent of Provincetown. I was there last year but for the race so didn't get chance to see Guerneville that much. I think Guerneville is on the Russian River and there's a lot of great wineries in the Sonoma/Russian River area. One of them is Roshambo. There's a bunch out here (that's why they call the triathlon Vineman).

The Lure of IronTeam 2006

Probably not going to do IronTeam 2006. For anyone wanting to do an Ironman, it's a big time suck and it's very costly. To even get started you need to buy the following:

– bike gear ~$3,500 ($2k for the bike, the rest for clothes/shoes and maintenance)
– run gear ~$250 (shoes)
– swim gear ~$300 (wet suit, goggles, etc)
– other gear ~$200-300

Then there's the race entry which is $500 at least, and travel to the Ironman event, and races/travel in between at $100-200 a pop. Then there's food and stuff.

Once you get past that initial expense, it's still costly to keep doing these Ironman events. Still need to pay for travel and race entries, maintenance, and tune-ups. It's not a cheap sport (but it sure is fun!).