Ironman Lake Placid Community Site Launch

Its very rudimentary...but if you know anyone who is competing in Ironman USA in Lake Placid in 2007 I am trying to build a meeting place of sorts.

www.IMLP2007.com

I will play with making it a robust blog or site once I can draw out some competitors who are registered for the event and who are bloggers interested in sharing their thoughts/training logs on the upcoming event.

Emerald Isle Tri - an ocean swim and my new bike test!!

Results are in from the Emerald Isle Triathlon. Big improvement for me against a bit less competitive crowd than my past two triathlons. Still plenty of fancy tri bikes and fast competitors though.

My results:
Swim 825meters 20:28 (78/205)
Bike 12miles 37:47 (33/205)
Run 3.2miles 20:50 (9/205)

The ocean swim was a blast. The running start from the beach was a new twist for me. I was mildly exhaused and a bit delerious by the end of the swim but I felt like I'd survived some sort of test rather than raced 350 yards offshore and back. I will try to do more ocean swim races!

The bike leg was fun on the new tri bike. My pedometer/speedometer didn't work as I foolishly forgot to calibrate it when I bought it last week. It was calibrated all wrong and told me I was going 34mph. I wish. I still feel pretty good about 33rd place. I need to really spend time on the bike as I move into next spring.

Run was pretty normal. Had some salt water sloshing around in my belly that didn't help me run faster...but I did OK anyway.

Off to a big travel week beginning Monday. Will likely get a few runs in but nothing on the bike or swim until at least Friday or Saturday.

New bike ride, big run.

Well, after purchasing the "flame" (my son's suggested name for my bike) or the "lightning" (my daughter's suggested name) on Thursday I did what anyone would do after getting a new bike....I went for a 20 mile RUN on Friday. Don't try to understand the logic. I have trouble not making my 5AM big run every Friday...that's it. As far as the names, I'm flattered that both my kids seem to think I'll be dangerous on my new ride. I can only hope to live up to the names they've chosen!

The downside of letting my bike sit idle for 48 hours after purchase is that I was, of course, dying to get out and test ride. So I followed my 20 mile run Friday with a short hard ride of 16 miles on Saturday. Not the best of ideas despite my feeling like I was riding fast. I couldn't tell if the discomfort on the bike was the result of ill fitting bike parts or just non-working human body parts. Seems like I'll need another ride this week to find out if bike adjustments will actually be needed.

The Emerald Isle Sprint Tri is Saturday so I'll get my true test ride there. I know nothing about this race other than where it is and that it has an ocean swim. Apparently the ocean temp is still hovering at a comfortable 75 degrees. Should be nice.

The new ride..can she go 112 miles in 6 (or 7) hours?

Scott Plasma. Will write about my purchase experience and first 15 mile ride shortly. Thanx Travis for modeling. I feel about that age as I admire my new toy!!!

Pinehurst Results

Official finish time 2:38:14
Mens overall place 163 out of 454
35-39 age group place 38 out of 72

Swim 34:44, 62 out of 72
Bike 1:14:57, 44 out of 72
Run 44:13, 20 out of 72

I'm now officially a triathlete and I've officially begun this new hobby as a rock-solid-right-in-the-middle "mid-packer". Only one way to go I say...especially with swim and bike. Stay tuned for bike update.

Pinehurst Race Report (pre-results)

The Pinehurst Triathlon was yesterday. The weather was marginal for spectators but great for race conditions. About 55 degrees at the start with 72 degree water. After the swm I was surprised to see the wide variety of racing clothes chosen for the bike. Saw one or two riders without shirts and at least a dozen with rain gear or riding jackets on. For me, my Mountain Hardware full sleeved weatherproof, breathable, lightweight pullover was perfect for both bike and run. Best piece of clothing I own.

My personal results were triathlon-marginal but very satisfying to me. I don't have official results yet and I forgot to start my watch in the nervousness of standing in the water at the start... Overall I feel pretty good about my first Internation distance and only second triathlon. Distances covered in about 2:38 = 1500m swim, 25mile bike, and 10k run.

Swim: My swim went OK (I swam the whole way freestyle/crawl!) as I got off course a few times and I'm sure my form was lousy on the second half. I was fired up to see my wave of light blue swim caps all around me for the first half of the swim. After that I got a little crooked and ended up seeing more caps of the wave behind me around than my own wave. I will be very curious to see where I finished the swim relative to my age as well as overall.

Transition 1: Mediocre. Put my helmet on before my shirt so I had to rewind a bit. I didn't want to particularly hurry. Ate a few Clif Shots as well. I wasn't freaked out at all, which is good!

Bike: Had a great time hammering away at about 90% of max perceived effort. I'm still riding the road bike that is better fit to my wife (we bought it for her) but adjusted for me. I put a longer stem on it and moved the seat post up and seat back long ago to better fit me. Regardless, there was great satisfaction passing one or two solid disk wheels and generally passing vs getting passed on what I'd guess as a 3:1 ratio. Those who passed me were generally flying aboard awesome machines. My finish was strong as I picked it up for the final 5 miles. At the end I still had a lot of gas in the tank ready for the run. 19.1mph average on the bike.

Transition 2: Mediocre but better than T1. Ate some more Clif Shots and sat down to take off my cycling shoes. Not in a particular hurry on this one either. Smooth but slow.

Run: Lets work backwords on this one...After feeling pretty relaxed as I crossed the finish line I think its safe to say I didn't run a max effort. I passed at least 75 or 100 runners and I was passed twice. Once by a 17 year old and once by a 24 year old. I made back at least 15 places on my age bracket with what felt like an 85% effort. It sure is nice that they write ages on the back of the competitors legs so we can all see which age groupers we're passing in the run (and which age groupers pass "us" on the bike).

Thanks to all the volunteers and congrats to all the competitors and especially to my friends from the Finley YMCA. There were about 6 or 8 of us racing. Check out the pic as its not likely you'll be seeing the Trek SLR for much longer. I'm getting fitted for the superbike this week!!! More on that and official Pinehurst results coming this week. Oh, and I'm not sore at all. Feel like I could go on a big ride or run today if it was in the Plan...but its not so it will be family and "honey-do" day.