The season Begins!!

The first race of the season is in the bag!

Hits Series Marble Falls Texas

The date was April 27th 2013.

First off Marble Falls is a very nice place.   Is 30 minutes from Austin Texas.  It is situated in "hill country".  When it comes to Triathlons "hill country" should be a warning, ha ha.

Really not that funny.

It started with the swim (doesn't always).  Actually I had to scramble to fix my bike the night before.  When I got to Marble Falls to check in I saw that the pad on my aero bars had come off during the drive.  Marble Falls does not have a bike shop so other than taking a couple of hours to drive to Austin I was going to have to improvise.  After some quick text messages I decided to fix it with the insoles from an older pair of shoes and duct tape.  It actually worked out well.  I was 10 miles into the bike leg before I even thought to check on the repair work.

Back to the swim.  Crowded start.  I usually try and start on one of the sides.  Since I am comfortable swimming bilaterally, I can start on the least crowded side and breath to the side that alllows my the best draft position.  In this case the starting channel was so narrow and the number of so swimmers high that the start looked more like a marathon corral start.  I did not hurry to the start line so when I got there it was shoulder to shoulder across the entire start line.  In fact it was 3-4 deep as well.  I worked my way up to the second row.  I knew that I was in a bit of trouble where I was.  Starting on the side gives you a bit more freedom to move and relax.  Unfortunately I was in the "Washing Machine"; so when the gun went of it was a bit of a riot.

My plan was to cut quickly to my left and get to the side of the main pack.  this meant that I had to go over, around, under or through a half dozen people.  When I played hockey I had no apprehensions to going in the corners and digging out a loose puck.  So bumping into a few swimmers is not such a big deal.  I got bump a few times and someones foot grazed my cheek.  I was quickly where I wanted to be.  In open water (open water is only a couple yards from the closest person) and letting the pack string out.  This then allows me to watch and quickly look for a swimmer to draft off of.  I quickly found a swimmer and locked on to their hip.

Swim time was 35:22:18.  Generally not a bad time.  I should be able to do better.  When I got the good draft I got a little complacent.  I could have looked for a faster draft and got a better time.  I did have the 3rd fastest time for my age group.

Smooth T1 and on the bike.  The plan on the bike was to go easy and let the HR go down below training pace.  Then after about 5 minutes of low intensity slowly bring up the HR into training pace.  Unfortunately the bike began with a 5 km climb.  Pretty hard to keep the HR low when you are climbing a long and relatively steep hill ( it is hill country).  Also with the bike problems the night before I did not have enough time to fully scout the bike course.  I did drive the first 10 miles or so.  I knew that after the first climb that a series of average size hills remained.  I was able to lower the HR on a couple the down hill sections but not enough to keep on the plan.  The entire course was a series of hills, almost not flat sections.  The biggest issue with hills is your heart rate (HR).  If you are trying to maintain a consistent HR hills do not help. Yes you can recover on the downhill side of the hill but you spend less time going downhill than uphill.  This was definitely a bike course that you would need to train specifically for.  I spent about 2/3's of the time in Race Pace.  The plan was to spend all of the bike in Training Pace. Considering the Hills and the lack of scout time a 3:07:36 time was not bad.

The run course followed the bike course.  So again a 5 km climb out of transition.  After the first 200 yards my right leg started to cramp up.  I was able to quickly stretch it out and massage it and get on my way.  Run strategy was similar to the bike start slow and low HR and build through out.  Again the hills made this a little difficult.  I was able to settle in a build to a nice pace.  Noting flashy just a nice steady pace.  The only problem I was having was that my HR was staying a little higher than I had hoped.  With a little "emotional"
relaxation is was able to lower it a few beats.  Emotional meaning relaxing my mind and any muscles that should be relaxed.  Just a general de tensing of your body.

At about mile 4 I began to pick up the pace a bit.  I was feeling pretty good and moved the pace a little faster.  At the water stop around mile 5 I was hoping to get hydrated and I heard those fateful words " we are out of water".  At mile 6 the same message no water.  The course was a simple out and back so after the 6 mile mark there was the turnaround and you then passed the aid stations on the way back.  The 2 aid stations  that were out of water still had no water.  I was coming up to 3 miles now without water.  At the pace I was running that was a good 30 minutes without water.  So after the mile 7 I decided to slow it down a bit.  At about mile 8 I came a across an aid station that had water.  I guzzled down a bunch and continued on..  Time was quite slow, 2:54:27.  I really need to get faster (a lot faster).

All in all not a bad start to the season.

Swim 35:22
bike 3:07:36
run   2:54:27
total 6:47:40

Reflections of the past couple of months.

I have used a analogies writing these blogs.  Reading through previous entries one that is prevalent is how we as triathletes train and how musicians train.  Train, practice, rehearse are all verbs that describe what we do to prepare ourselves for the big day.  It is fair to say that whether you are an athlete or a musician you spend much more of your time preparing for that big day than the event itself.

I may compete in one ironman event per year.  Along with that maybe 2 or 3 half ironman distance races and a handful of local sprints or Olympic distance races.  For a musician who does not derive his or her income from playing music may have a similar number of gigs throughout the year.

What I am leading to is that as a non-professional we really have to love what we do.  Why would anyone spend as much time as we to training and preparing and practicing if we truly did not enjoy the actual day to day toil?  Not to say that professionals do not enjoy their work.  Of course they do.  It is true as well that they usually have contractual obligations to fill.   Athletes have to finish above a certain spot to continue to receive performance money from sponsors.  Musicians have to play well enough so that customers enjoy the music and return to listen to them again (In that way I think musicians have it much harder, much more subjective than a first or second place finish).  So professionals do have other motivations.

Back to us non pros.  What motivates us?  This is thought has been in the back of my mind lately mostly because I have hit one of those rough spots in life where other things became much much more important than training.  Especially the concept of what is important in our lives.  There is probably no better indicator of what is important in our lives than that little day-timer that sits in our heads.  If we had a constant log of how we spent every minute of every day we should get a pretty good indicator of things that are important in our lives.  In the end we are the ultimate decision maker in how we spend our time.

Even work, if we feel that our job is taking too much time away from other things we are free to look for another. So if I was to look at that log I would have to say that I have chosen to make training an important part of my life.  I could make a “magazine list” of reasons (a magazine list is a collection of generic items that most anyone could come up with).  Health, focus and wellness are some of the magazine list items.  How about companionship; I have met many people that have become good friends.  You get the idea of a “magazine list”.  Maybe I should update the term to “internet list”.

The obvious danger to any hobby is to have it become too important.

Back to the rough patch that has derailed my recent training.   I guess my log file got radically altered for a month or so.  Just hit the low points.  Imagine sitting around with part of your family anticipating the trip of a life time.  The vacation was booked and paid for.  Not only where we going to Hawaii but the rest of my family was going to meet us.  I was especially excited to have my wife, both children, their husbands/boyfriends and best of all my grandson under one roof for a week.  My oldest daughter and her husband are stationed overseas.  It has been close to two years since we were all together.  I was pumped!

Beginning about 2 weeks before the trip the wheels started to come off.  My mother in-law has been ill since the New Year and her condition deteriorated rapidly.  She passed away the week before the trip.  While this was going we received news from overseas of a serious medical condition that was affecting my daughter and her pregnancy.  These 2 events caused many changes in plans.  Changes that were altered and then altered and altered again.  My daughter and her family were not able to meet us in Hawaii.  They were to proceed immediately to the states.   Along with these events 3 other deaths occurred that impacted my family.

My wife and I decided that I would go to Hawaii with my younger daughter and her boyfriend.  My younger daughter and I had less flexible work/vacation schedules so we had to take the week we requested.  My wife had a more flexible schedule and was able to alter vacation days.  My wife made plans to go to Houston and help our older daughter's family get settled in Houston.

Hawaii is a beautiful place but it is hard to enjoy while part of your family is flying half way around the world for medical reasons.  Each morning in Hawaii I walked from the Hotel to the local Starbucks to get on Facebook and e-mail to get status updates as to where everyone was.  With missed flights weather delays etc.  It took my daughter and her family about 4 days to get to Houston.

Through all this it was very difficult to train.  Logistically you are flying, sitting in airports.  You are in locations where you may not have access to all the right facilities.  It was definitely more to it than just logistical roadblocks.  The focus was just not there.  I remember telling my coach that I was so distracted mentally and emotionally that I did not think I could ride my bike safely.  I could easily see myself getting lost in thoughts and riding off into a ditch or worse a moving vehicle.  

So many training sessions got put aside while we dealt with things.  I did a few runs here and there mostly because I really did not know what else to do.  These runs were merely distractions from the events around me.  They were not focused training sessions.  I did some beach runs on the in Waikiki and enjoyed them, like I said a beautiful place.  I returned from Hawaii  ready to focus on training again.  

When we returned home my older daughter and her family were there!  SCORE! it was grandpa, grandson time!!!!  My daughter was still needing surgery but now we were all together and would be able to face it together.  In the next 36 hour period the 3 other deaths occurred and it was separate cites again.  We were all afraid to ask, "What next".  My desire to train again was instantly derailed.

Training to me was always something that conveyed a sense of living.  Both in the physical sense (strong and healthy bodies) and the spiritual sense (I feel alive when I train).  It was difficult to train and approach this living sense when you feel surrounded by death and fear.  Fear is one of the most limiting feelings. Fear of failure, fear of the the future, not knowing what is coming next can all impede our growth.  In fact it can all out stop it.

I am not a psychologist and I have never been a bar tender so I am not trained or predisposed to dispensing wisdom.  All I can tell you is what happened over the ensuing week and month.  There was not great lightening bolt from the sky. No great cathartic event.  Just a slow and deliberate desire to train.  No inspirational background music, no "rocky" speeches (it's time Rock!).  Just a family working to get its feet under itself.  Slowly getting on track after life throws it a few (or more) curve balls.  We had a lot of support from friends.

During this I made a conscience decisions to return to a training regime.  Not because i needed to train for a race not because I wanted to maintain my level of physical fitness.  I wanted to return to it because I felt a responsibility to infuse life into an aura of fear and death.  By training I felt I could in a small way face and help my family continue to face the fear and uncertainty of the current time.