inauspicio.us

between star and moving to colorado springs this fall, i lost about four weeks of training and gained about eight pounds. which is not a huge deal, but it was enough fitness lost to finally push me over the edge and find myself a coach. a little looking around led me to paulo, aka smartasscoach. i sent him an email and he said, ok, why don’t you come to el paso for this training camp and we’ll see how we get along. so with four weeks of rest under my belt, i went to el paso for a sound ass kicking. here’s a tip: if you haven’t worked out for a month, maybe it’s not a good time to go train with a multiple-time ironman winner. anyway i survived, and at the end of the camp, he said that yes, he’d coach me, but did i know i was really out of shape? and overweight? we would really, he said, have to work on that. further, i would not be allowed to do ironman florida in november because i was just too out of shape. we could target the SOMA half ironman at the end of october.

so we did. i came home and regrouped, we did some tests, and then i got to work. i worked out twice a day every day from mid-september up through race day. in the process i dropped about ten pounds, and by the time i got to tempe last saturday i figured i was about ready. i’d forgotten my wetsuit so i had to rent one, but aside from that getting ready was pretty mellow. i built my bike and took it for a ride, got checked in, and went back to my hotel.

because i hadn’t rented a car, i had to ride my bike to the race start. at 5:15 in the morning in october, it’s still quite dark. but no one is on the roads, so even in a busy city like tempe riding through downtown is pretty mellow and i got to the tempe waterfront park with plenty of time to spare. i got in the water with plenty of time to warm up, and took a space near the front. my swim went OK – after the usual roughousing at the beginning when i took a pretty hard fist to the taint [i'll let you look it up, if you don't know], things settled down. it took me a little over 28 minutes to get out of the water, 29:09 to the timing mats, which was disappointing but you just never know what you’re going to get in a triathlon swim. i did swim more in october than the whole rest of the year combined and i’ve made great strides. at any rate, even though the swim was slow it took nothing out of me.

i managed a perfect flying cyclocross-style mount to start the bike leg, and then spent the next 20 miles with my aerobar pad slipping around. it was really annoying, but i thought i’d be ok with just yanking it back up every few minutes. nothing doing. i eventually had to stop, get out my bike tools and tighten it down, at a cost of about a minute. but it was better than continuing to lose time by being forced to ride gingerly with loose handlebars.
it wasn’t that big a deal. i make mountains out of molehills. the bike went fine, a few minutes slower than i would have liked but i got into transition in 2:28:30 feeling pretty rested. so that was fine. i was behind pace, but not every race goes your way, you know? i figured i’d get running and see how it panned out.

it panned out really well. i hit the mile in 6:03 and two miles in 11:55 running with a guy from a relay team. he surged and i let him go, knowing that i was running much faster than i ever had in a triathlon. and i’m reeling people in, which feels GREAT. I hit halfway in forty minutes even and prayed that i could hold on. i did hold on, even managing a slight negative split on the strength of a fast last mile. i finished in 4:19:54, just eight seconds slower than at the 5430 half ironman in august. i was ninth overall and sixth professional, thanks to a run that was a full four minutes faster than any half-marathon i’d ever run in or out of a triathlon.

even though it wasn’t the time i’d been hoping for, i’m very excited about how this race went. i’ve never been able to run well off the bike in long races, so i feel like i’ve really found a missing piece of the fitness puzzle. i’m pretty excited for next season, now. look for me at Ironman Arizona, next April.

more updates you might have noticed:

• a little redesign. cute, huh? check out the archive page
• the photo gallery is back, and it works better. you will have to sign up again. sorry.
• by popular demand, the jeff emmons song. a work of genius by my brother dan.