It’s been a few years that I have really been putting in some solid, consistent work but I have found that all of my work and fitness have not shown up on race day.  I was great at ‘training’ but was not a ‘racer’.  Everyone reading this can relate- you just feel like you could have done something better, or avoided doing something wrong, etc.   It seemed like every time I was starting to feel ‘fit’ and was getting ready to race; something happened or I had to travel for a couple of weeks for work or something else which just threw me off.  I was in my own head and making a mess of it.  This year, I had a few solid results sprinkled around the year that made me feel like I was on the right track(1:56 in an Olympic distance race, 1:14 half marathon) but I never really felt like I have had a ‘great performance’ that was indicative of my ability.

Fast forward to August/September and my training was really starting to click.  I even skipped over 70.3 Worlds because my training was going so well and I really wanted to build on what I was doing…I was dropping weight, power numbers were going up and mile times were going down.  I told my wife and my coach that I felt stronger now than I have felt in a really long time.  With that said, I did not have any races on the calendar and had the ‘itch’ to validate what I was feeling with a solid result.  So, two weeks ago, I decided to race SOMA Half Iron Distance Triathlon.  My coach(mike doane), and I decided that we would try something new and train through the event. This past week, I got a bit nervous when I saw we had about 30 hours of work in before the race with some pretty serious efforts all the way up to Friday. On top of that, work really started to SLAM me.  Instead of getting stressed out and worried, I said to myself- “Just relax, have fun and see what happens: enjoy trying something new”.   It really helped that I travelled to the race with 2 of my swim buddies who were doing their first half distance triathlon. Being able to share in their experience with them helped calm me down(they were nervous enough) and more importantly, it really made me thankful and appreciative of the entire experience.  Here’s a shot of us at the finish:

Final result(Roughly):  4:06 -

28(swim) / 2:13(bike) / 1:22(run)

Which gave me  3^rd Overall / 1^st Overall Amateur and SUCH A FUN DAY!

It was really great to have people to compete with on the bike/run as I caught the pro’s pretty early on.  It is a completely different race when you have people to race with as I am always used to being by myself all day.  Mixing it up, throwing ‘punches’ at each other, surging, etc… it really made racing fun.

Thank you to my wife who puts up with my OCD behavior on a daily basis, my daughter who sacrifices without even knowing it, my friends, family and sponsors who make all of this possible. I think there is some more “validation” to come in the next few weeks, stay tuned J

One last thing- most people get nice finisher photo’s they can hang on their wall. Me, I get a shot of me doing the frantic search for a place to throw up… gotta love triathlon!

 

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So many times I sit down to write about my race experiences after they
happen and often do not reflect on everything that I was thinking
prior to the event.  This weekend, there will be a lot of ‘unknowns’
for me and ‘firsts’, so I figured I would jot down a few things now.

This saturday I am participating in the Leadville 100mtb.  As I sit on
the plane right now- I do not have MTB. Shoes, tires for my bike, a
spare kit, gloves or a clue of what I have gotten myself into.  What I
do know is that on Saturday, I will:

- Ride my mtb. bike for a longer period of time than I have ever
ridden a MTB. bike in
 my life; CUMULATIVELY.
- Ride for 4 more hours than I have ever ridden any bike at one time
- Ride for 5+ hours longer than my longest ride of the year; 4.5 hours
back in march
- Be at the highest altitude I have ever been at except for when I was
heli-boarding.
- Brave the elements of a sub 40 degree start, thunderstorms and
temperatures soaring
 to the 90f+ range.

Above all else-  I know that I will have a great time doing it… I hope ;)

Stay tuned!

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Here is something I just learned about the global trainer that is useful for everyone-

 

 

If your watch text is too light or too dark to read, you can fix the contrast.  To fix the contrast, turn on the Global Trainer, and when the IRONMAN TRIATHLON logo appears press the UP or DOWN button.  A partially filled bar graph should appear in the middle of the display, and press UP to increase the contrast (or DOWN to decrease it).  When the contrast level is good, press ENTER to release the adjustment and go into the regular watch modes.

 

Have a Great Day!

 

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What Do you do to get Race Ready?  Here are some of the things I did this past week in the days leading up to Oceanside…

 

Ready:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RACE READY:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ready:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race Ready:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ready:                                                                        Race Ready:

 

 

Ready:                                                                        Race Ready:

 

 

Sometimes,  no matter what you do… you are just fooling yourself.  So, I will just go do what I should be doing, shopping for purses and skirts because I raced like a little girl(no offense if you are a little girl… you probably beat me anyway :) ).

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The other day I was out on a ride just pedaling along, getting lost in my thoughts and then I sort of ‘came to’ and realized that I was in the middle of nowhere.  There was not a car, person, house or anything resembling civilization(despite the poorly paved road I was on) for miles.  Those are some of my favorite moments while training, when you realize that you are out in the middle of nowhere, with a sense of exploration, purposefulness without purpose (if that makes sense), stillness and can just soak it all in.

So, you might be asking what got me thinking about this; well it is a really convoluted set of twists and turns through my psyche more or less.  I was surfing the web trying to find some return information for a product I recently purchased and one site led me to another site which led me to another one which led me to 3 other sites that had nothing to do with my original intent but seemed interesting.  In the end, I stumbled upon this:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/mannahatta-project-maps.php

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/10/01/slideshow_071001_maps?slide=9#slide=6

Being a native new yorker and someone who now spends an exorbitant amount of time ‘in the wild’, I thought this was fascinating.  I mean, we all know that our neighborhoods, cities, etc, all looked very different a couple of hundred years ago but to be able to explore and look at it with such detail really made it sink in.  How about the fact that Manhattan’s borders are wider now than back in 1609 due to the exorbitant amount of dumped garbage; or that Manhattan’s ecosystem was more biologically diverse than that of Yellowstone or the Redwood forests.

I don’t know, I just thought it was pretty neat stuff, something to share and some food for thought so that we are all thankful of the few open spaces we have left that we can all get lost in sometimes.

Train Hard, Train Smart, Have Fun,

DB

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