THE PUPPY IS GROWING

I took Otis to the vet this week for his last set of shots. 3 months old and the vet said he looks a month older. He weighed in yesterday at 28 lbs. Here are some pics.

YEAR END TOTALS

Well this is a little late due to holidays and going to see Ron and his family. At any rate here are my totals.

Swim Distance: 72.88 miles Swim Time: 51:18 hrs 73% OF GOAL
Bike Distance: 2567.95 miles Bike Time: 165:28 hrs 64% OF GOAL
Run Distance: 1256.98 miles Run Time: 200:02 hrs 84 % OF GOAL
Total Miles: 3897.81 miles Total Time: 416:48 hrs.

I'll tell you the truth it sure seemed like more than that. I fell short of all of my goals, but was pretty close on a running. My goals were swim 100 miles, run 1500 miles, and bike 4000 miles. And its pretty easy to see that time on the bike is a problem. 64 % of my bike goal directly correlates to my less than great Ironman. If you average out the % of goal for all events that would give me a ~74 % a low C, that's about what I think about my Ironman a low C. So needless to say I have a lot of room for improvement. So goals for this year will stay the same as far as my distances, but I have to improve on the completion rate. My emphasis though has to be the bike. I think a 10%-15% improvment in the bike would make a huge difference in the race. We shall see.

HTFU

I found this video and had to share it.....Man after my own heart.
Hey Hobbit HTFU

Fell off the Wagon

Well today I was at the end of my rope. I just couldn't take it anymore. I got on the treadmill and started my daily slog. But 2 miles into my Max HR of 145 running I couldn't take it any longer. I pressed the button to increase the rate thinking I would speed up just a little. But as I sped up it felt great. The faster I ran the better it felt. I quit when I got to 6:58 pace. I ran at that pace for 1/2 mile, then 1/2 mile at my slog pace. I repeated this for 3 reps, then a mile of cool down at slog pace. It felt so good to feel my lungs just beginning to burn a little. I got my HR up to ~176 on the last rep. This is just below my LT .I was a little worried that I may have screwed up the past 2.5 months of MAF training but Lucho assured me that it will be fine. I new that if I was at a plateau that it was time to start adding some speed work. I'm actually due to do anonther MAF test this coming week. But after this past weekend long run, 13.1 miles. I felt totally stale. I needed something,I hope this was it. We will see on Saturday when we retest.

1 WEEK WITH OTIS

This week has been fun with Otis. We have got to discover so many new things. He got to play in the snow and play with his new toys. Today we are taking him with us over to Tony "the Hobbit's" house. As it turns out Tony and his family got one of Otis' brothers. They got a yellow one and after much debate have piked a really bad name, I think. His name is Hudson.....I know a river, a crappy car.....Hudson stupid....Tony had come up with a great name....Miles. That is perfect...after all one of the reasons we wanted these dogs is to run with us, hunt with us and in general cover alo of MILES. I thought it was a great play on words but his stupid girls out voted him. Oh well. Here is a great video of Otis with one of his toys.

Tough 12 mile Run

The long run this week was a 12 miler. It was a crisp 27 degrees with cloudy skies, snow didn't start until we were done. The weird thing about this run was that my HR seemed to creep a little higher than I thought it should have. This then made me run a little slower. The tough part was that "the Hobbit's" HR was low....meaning he could have left me in the dust. We are pretty sure that his HR monitor is a piece of crap. Hopefully Santa will bring him a new one.
Otis got his first exposure to snow and loved every minute of it.

My New Training Partner

With Tony "The Hobbit" getting slower I thought I should get a better training partner. And like Tony this one too shits in the woods ,but does not need to rip off his sleeves to wipe his butt. I would like you to meet Otis. He is not quite as fast as Tony yet, but he is almost as tall.

MAF TEST #2

Last week marked the fourth week of our MAF only training. We had planned a test for Sat. but as luck would have it the track had about 6 in. of snow on it. Thanks to the pineapple express we had 2 days of rain and today's temps were ~50. So off to the track we went. We did have about 25 mph winds to contend with but it was OK. The wind was blowing such that we either had it in our faces or at our backs on the straits.
test #1 11/3
mile 1 @ 141, 8:51/mi
mile 2 @ 144, 9:08/mi
mile 3 @ 143, 9:16/mi

test #2 12/4
mile 1 @ 143, 8:34
mile 2 @ 145, 8:48
mile 3 @ 145, 8:58

So I have improved!! Bottom line. Even though I actually thought I was getting slower, I wasn't. Tony improved as well but not quite as much as I did. I think he is running with a slower cadence to run slower. With his little hobbit legs he always ran with a high cadence but now that we have slowed down I think his cadence has as well, which is making him work harder, ie increased HR. It's not a big difference but by the end of the 3 miles I was about 3/4 of a lap ahead of him. Well I guess if you extrapolate that out over 26 miles....that would be a little over 1.5 miles...I'll take that.

PICS FROM CANCUN

Here are some pictures from our trip to Cancun.

ANOTHER 50+ MILE WEEK

Tony "the Hobbit" and I had another big week. I had 51.3 miles and Tony had 56. This was a pretty big jump for us from last week. But we both feel pretty good. My left ankle is a little tender. My new shoes are not quite right for me. I bought a pair of Saucony Trigon 4 shoes this week. They felt great out of the box but not so great after 30 miles. I hate trying find new shoes. I wish the Newtons had a little more support. They are good for the 1st 13 miles. I just don't think I could run a marathon in them. They do make me faster though.

Dr.J had a real nice post on his blog about he and his brother's. It got me thinking about Ronnie and I and the fact that we have spent all of our adult lives living so far apart. Despite our differences when we are together we have alot fun working out together. We always play some basketball, he is tough on the boards. When he was up here a couple of years ago I took him mountain biking over in Idaho and we had a blast. He sucking wind on the 7 mile ride up this logging road but ripped it up on the singletrack through the woods. He even had a pretty crash. My friends that went with us were amazed that it was his first time on a mountain bike. But Ronnie and I both rode a million miles on our bmx bikes when we were kids.We also have had alot of fun running together. I'm lookng forward to running with him in January. I'm going down to San Diego to spend a little time with him before he heads back to Iraq. This will be his 3rd tour over there, this war. He was also there in the first war. We should all sleep better knowing that he is one of Marines helping protect our country, I know I do. As for my other war hero/daughter, Shandra will be getting out of Navy soon and be coming back to Washington as a civilian. She has been in Iraq/on the carrier for the past 6 months. I'm really proud of her!
I guess this is what Thanksgiving is about, for me anyway. A brother and daughter

The Streak Ends at 38

Well as much as I hate to admit it life got the better of me on Wednesday. I ran out of time then motivation. So 38 days in a row of running. By far the most I have ever done. So since I had had a day off Tony "The Hobbit" and I ran 12 miles on T-day. It was a great run. Cold, about 22 when we started,may have warmed up to 25 by the time we were done. Still on track for a big volume week with 27 miles heading into Friday. I started back to work today though so that will slow me up a little.
But I should be able to get 7 a day for the next 3 days.
I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

The Streak Continues

Well, now that I have successfully completed the 30 in 30 I'm well on my way to the 40 in 40. As it stands right now it's 36 in a row. What is surprising to me is how well I feel. What is frustrating to me is that my HR has yet to respond. But as I've been told over and over, I need to be patient. I have been logging alot of miles, for me anyway. This past week was no exception with just over 37 miles. Tony "The Hobbit" Dibartolo and I have been talking about increasing the volume. After talking to some of friends that are better runners than we are. As well as my continued reading of Chuckie V, Lucho and Gordo. We are convinced we need to get closer to 70 miles. However we also think we need to build up slow, 10-15% per week. This of coarse was totally screwed up a few weeks back when I jumped from 30 miles to 51 miles then back down to 35 miles. So I will just add them as they feel. I'm going to increase the daily runs to > 1 hour and the long runs to > 1.5 hours.

Great quote

I just read this quote and thought it was profound enough to share with the world. Or at least the people in my world.
I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all. -- Leo C. Rosten (1908-1977) American Writer
As hard as it would seem to be able to sum up a human life in a single paragragh this comes pretty close.

FINISHED THE 30 IN 30

Today wraps up the the 30 in 30 challenge. I had to run a double today. Which meant I had to run this morning after I got off work, then slept about 7 hrs and got up and ran again. It also meant that I missed my son's band, Drawing Two, second live performance. But they have another show on the 28th that I will go to.
As for the last few runs they were all run on the treadmill. We have a new treadmill that has been in the garage since early Oct. We had no place to put it in the house until Kellen got his drum kit out of the way. But now it's set up and has already made life easier. It's a pain in the butt to go to the gym before work and about half the time when I try to use the treadmill we have at the hospital some fat chick is walking on the damn thing.
Anyway the last 2 runs went like this.
29 /4.65 /45:00/141/9:40
30 /4.32 /45:00/140/10:25
This treadmill has a program that allows me to put in a target HR and it will make adjustments to keep it there +/- 3 BMP. All but 2 of ther other runs throughout the month were outside using my Garmin 305. So I'm sure that there is some variability between those 2 HRM's and also pace calculations via gps and treadmill.
If you read the comment Lucho put on my last post you'll see that he is suggesting that I continue as I am. When I whinned about not taking a little break to recover. he said "Taking your fatigue and muscle breakdown to the edge of "too much" and then resting is the true art of training. In order to stimulate growth we need to force our bodies to adapt and that's never a comfortable thing". And if you have taken a trip over to his blog and seen the kind of numbers he puts up then you know that I'm going to keep plugging away. Of course I'm listening to my body because unlike Lucho, I'm old. And I haven't been doing this endurance stuff most of my life. Tony is being a bit of a sissy about the whole thing though. Whinning and crying about how he has been looking forward to a break. I told him to take his skirt off and put his running shoes on.

30 IN 30 UPDATE

Well, I think I'm going to make it. Right now I've done 28 runs in 29 days. So with a double either on Su or Mo I'll have done it. Here are the numbers through run 28.
23 /5.3/51:10/138/9.39
24 /5.63/55:46/140/9:54
25 /4.85/47:04/138/9:42
26 /5.32/50:59/139/9:35
27 /4.85/45:00/141/9:16 on treadmill at work
28 /4.59/45:00/144/9:48 on treadmill at home

I think my body is feeling the cumlitive effects of this challenge. Not that I feel tired or sore or anything but I don't feel fresh. So when this comes to an end on Monday I will take 2 days off then start my next phase. I'm not sure exactly what that will entale but I think I will run 5 days a week 1-1.5 hrs with 1 long run closer to 2 hrs. I want to keep my milage up above 40 and my running time >8 hrs. I will also begin to focus more time on swimming. DR.J and his crew have started 30 swims in 30 days....that ain't happening. But I will get to the pool 3-4 times a week. I will also ride the mtn bike, nothing technical just climbing and spinning. The Serotta will be on the trainer for 4-6 hrs of spinning per week.

BIG WEEK

Wow this was my biggest week ever in terms of miles ran and number of runs. Total miles for the week 51.6. Total number of runs for the week 10. So I was able to make up 3 of the runs that I missed earlier. I also did a MAF test yesterday. For those of you not familier with this test it is a way to gage your fitness. After a warm up you run 3-5 miles at a constant heart rate (HR) as your HR increases you slow your pace to maintain the HR. You do these tests every 3 weeks or so and watch the trends of each mile. The HR that is used is based on a formula 180-age. There are also some adjustments that can be made. So for me 180-44=136 then based on my current fitness I added 5 beats. This gives me a max HR of 141. However I have also had some physiologic testing done that measured my lactate thershold (LT) at a HR of 177. Based on this number, using Joe Friels/Training peaks this calculates the top end of my zone 1 at 151. So what I did was split the difference and set my Garmin to a range of 135-145. And this is what I got when I did the test.

mile 1 @ 141 8:51/mi
mile 2 @ 144 9:08/mi
mile 3 @ 143 9:16/mi

So we will repeat the test every 3 weeks for a total of 12 weeks. All of my runs will be at this slower lower HR as well. As for the 30 in 30 challenge here are the runs to finish out his week.
16 /5.33/ 47:16/157/8:52 this was the 1st make up run, 2nd run of the day
17 /5.3 / 49:39/144/9:22
18 /5.29/ 45:00/146/8:30
19 /5 / 45:00/143/9:00 MAF test with wu/cd
20 /5.04/ 49:06/138/9:44 2nd run of the day and 2nd make up run
21 /5.24/ 52:43/138/10:03
22 /4.94/ 51:11/141/10:21 2nd run of the day and 3rd make up run also went for short mtn bike ride in between the 2 runs.
So this puts me at 22 runs in 23 days. A little sore but not to bad. Lucho gave me some needed encouragement with regards to the discipline and patence required for this low HR training. And for some great reading check out Chuck V

Half way There

Well I'm half way to my goal of 30 in 30. Well sort of, I have run my 15th run but it has taken me 19 days. Since I already got my run done for today, and it's still early I will make up one of the runs today. So it will actually be 16 runs in 19 days.
14/ 5.06/47:42/145/9:25
15/ 5.32/45:31/152/8:33

Back from Vacation

I will write about the trip later for the family and friends and post some pictures Jayne took as well. But on to the more important matter at hand. The 30 in 30 challenge. Tony and I both did great in Cancun as far as consistent running. I ran 8 out of 9 days and Tony I think was 7/7. This included 1 day following a binge of tequila that would have made Jose Quervo proud. All but one run was done on the sidewalks of Cancun. Each of us tried running on the beach, once! Man that is brutal.
All in all at this point I have run 13 times in 17 days. I lost 2 days to travel and 2 to my work schedule. But I am off for the next 11 days and intend on making them all up.
run/dist/time/avg hr/pace
5 /4.23/48:36/155/11:29 this was in the sand
6 /5.05/46:05/152/9:07
7 /5.15/46:15/143/9:07
8 /5 /43:26/157/8:41
9 /4.94/46:15/151/9:21
10/5.3 /46:07/145/8:42
11/5 /43:29/161/8:41
12/4.99/45:32/141/9:07
13/5.04/45:05/154/8:56

what's interesting is that run 10 was with the hangover, run 11 was in the afternoon and it was quite a bit hotter. This was after a morning of deep sea fishing. And no we did not catch a thing, 1st time we have been skunked. As for the hangover I did not feel bad....I was lights out at 8:30 pm and slept until 0800. Maybe the extra rest helped????
B

30 IN 30 UPDATE

Well here are the numbers so far. I did miss monday do to this crappy work schedule of mine. But I will make it up.

run#/dist/time/avg hr

1/30/5.1/46:41/157
2/30/5.13/45:05/155
3/30/5/49:37/????forgot my gaget
4/30/5.1/45:27/158
so far so good, legs feel fine. I actually swam today too....wow It does not take long to loose that. My shoulders got tired pretty fast.
With regaurds to the hr's being so high for such a slow pace....This is what happens when you don't run for 5 days, then run a 1/2 marathon, then don't run again for another week. We ran the Colbert Classic Half on 10/6. I ran a pr 1:41 with avg HR 176 and max of 186 it was a very hard course, big hills. And my legs were sore for about 4 days. But hopefully by the end of the week the HR's will begin to come down again.

We leave for Mexico on Friday. Can't wait to dive Cozumel. I will post some dive pics when I can.

ANOTHER YEAR OLDER

Well as the title points out I had another birthday. And by the way I have not gotten your present yet, but I'm a patient man. It's one of the many facets of my character that I've been working on lately. It seems, much to my chagrin, that you can't get everything you want right when you want it. This has become evident to me as my 1st year as an "Ironman" is coming to a close. After all the hard work I've put in it turns out that I still suck. Not as bad as I used to suck but suck nonetheless. As I have been reading some other blogs I see some of things that I think I have always known. 1st and foremost no matter how hard you think have it someone else has it worse. This has multiple meanings too. No matter how are you are working, your competition is working harder. No matter the size of your obstacle, someone elses is greater. And no matter what your gifts, or lack thereof someone has it better or worse. But bottom line it's never easy and not all paths are the same even if the destination seems to be. So what does all this mean, probably not much to alot of people. For me it means I need to quit my whining and bitching and work harder. This requires patience this is a slow process. I spent most of my younger life as a power/speed type of athlete ie: wrestling,skiing, football etc. I did not even begin this endurance stuff until I was 35. And didn't really start getting serious about it until 2 years ago. And by serious I mean ran 1 marathon and then decided an Ironman would be a good idea. Bla bla I know it is was it is and I am were I am. So from here I enter the next phase, a concerted effort to improve as an endurance athlete. Beginning with consistent training. And by consistent I mean I am going to step up to a challenge posed by an athlete who's stuff I read, Dr.J. His challenge is 30 runs in 30 days. Each run 30-45 min depending on your beginning fitness and goals. For me it's 45 min/run. Gordo then upped the ante by suggesting swimming twice a week as well lifting once a week. Which with respect to time and job and all the other things that are life he states "just do it". I love that. bottom line there is no easy way, just like he always says. I will keep you posted on my progress.