Past the 4 week mark

 4th Week of Training

Last week and half have been fairly successful, at least from a volume perspective. 

My long runs were up to around 5.5 miles and quite a bit more bike riding. Today I did some lap swimming for the first time in many years and the last time I did any consistent lap swimming was in 2011.  

I am running and riding slow, as one does when one has not done anything substantial in years. 

However, my impatience got the better of me on Friday. I wanted to run 4 miles. But I also had limited time, a little more than an hour including changing and showing. So I ran faster than I should have just so I could have 4 miles records. This was stupid and so now my left foot and the interior of my left knee have occasional pain. So I laid off the running for the past few days and will until Wednesday. Luckily the ride on Friday of a little more than 20 miles was totally fine, with no foot or knee pain. 

This morning I got up early and did my first lap swim. I thought, this is slow but seems like it is going well. Until my 20th lap and I feel a little burn in one of my shoulders. And currently as I am typing this I have some pretty good pain in both my shoulders because, like my legs, my arms were not ready for the load I put on them. Despite my experience in doing one of these Ironman competitions in the past, I still don't know what I am doing. Or at least I don't know how to get back into shape as smoothly as I hoped. 

All the bumps aside, I feel pretty good. I will back the speed down a bit, but frankly it is hard to go much slower without it turning into a leisurely walk. 

If I were to do a 70.3 Ironman today, at the pace I am swimming, biking and running, it would take me about 8hrs 15 min. Which is under the time limit by 15 minutes. HOWEVER, I do not have the endurance to go that far currently and so I would not finish within the time limit right now most likely. But, I have about 11 months to get ready. I am sure I will be ready to finish by that time. 

Ironman 70.3 Oregon "A" Goal is to finish in under 7 hours. "B" Goal is to finish between 7 hrs and 7hrs and 30 minutes. The "C" goal is to finish under the cut off of 8 hrs 30 mins without injury.

I realize I need to drop some weight though. It is just more difficult than it should be right now. I will have to figure out an eating plan, but I do not have that figured out right now. When I started working out I dropped about 8-10 lbs. But that has stalled out over the last week. I am still about 40 lbs heavier than when I did the Ironman Arizona in 2011. Not that I have to be that same weight necessarily but I certainly need to drop at least 20 more pounds. 

This week I am off to take Jack to the University of Utah. I will likely bring a bike, but I will also get in a run or two if the foot and knee do not get worse.   

Let's Go.

It has been 12 years since I last posted here. Wow. Time has flown. I thought about where to post what I hope to be a journal of my activities in the near future and this old BlogSpot website seemed like the best choice. Facebook is too cluttered with all my other stuff and it hits a wider audience than I am going for, which is mainly just me and perhaps a few friends. I could do a personal journal, but that is less public than I am going for, since there is little accountability in private journaling. Anyway, so I figured I would resurrect this blog for purposes of journaling my endeavor. 

I will not sum up the last 12 years in detail. I will devote only one paragraph to it. After the last post in 2011 I did indeed complete the Ironman Arizona in November, 2011. If you are interested in how I did, feel free to google it. The results can be found. After that I slowly started to lose my fitness until for the past few years, other than a couple spots of activity, I have been very sedentary. 

While maintaining the blog 12 years ago I was pretty transparent in my measurements, and I will be again. A month or two ago I was back to around my heaviest which is in the lower 250 lbs range. Not healthy. This is nothing new. I have not been particularly healthy for a number of years. in my last weigh in on Saturday I was 244, so about 9 lbs. down. 

But why did I let myself go? Well it was super easy. Kids got busy in their sports. Work started loading up. I am now a partner in a law firm. I handle a significant load of work and I help in the management of the firm. And when I am home it has been very nice to do nothing. Doing nothing in the evenings is the way I dealt with my stress. And eating a bit more than I should. In time it all added up. 

So why now? I am in my 50s. I do not expect to get back to as fit as I was. To be honest I am not sure what spurred this on now. Here are the recent facts. I went to Belize with my second eldest son to work on a humanitarian project for 17 days. There were many 16 and 17 year old kids there doing the work and I was one of a couple of parents there to help with the kids and organization. There were two other adults leading the group. It was very hard work. I pushed it quite a bit even though the 16 and 17 year old kids dusted me. I felt a bit better though when I arrived back home. 

My first week back I went and ran twice. I did not have plan then, I just wanted to stay active after Belize. I ran and walked 2 miles and then walked to cool down after hitting the 2 mile mark. My goal was to keep my heart rate under 150 bpm. My pace was 15:09 per mile. The next time was a bit faster at 14:38 pace, but I was cheating a bit more. I kept running too fast and then walking to get the heart rate back down. I think that the pacing yo-yo'ing worked to make faster pacing. As I have since found out that my continuous running pace has to be pretty slow to not break that heart rate threshold. Anyway, evidence shows that I had a budding desire to improve my fitness. 

I have developed some friendships with parents of kids on my daughter's soccer team. At this point I have known some of them for a few years. One of the parents, Rob, did Oregon 70.3 Ironman last year. That was cool, but it did not tempt me. He did another one this year, same event, two weekends ago. It was fun to watch his progress on the Ironman app. Then at the end we were sending texts of congratulations and Bridget, my lovely wife of now 23 years, took my phone and typed to the text group of people that were watching Rob's progress and typed:

 "Rob and Devin will do a full Ironman November 2025. This is Bridget"

I had considered it a little during that day watching Rob's progress, but I just kept thinking about how much training there was back in 2010 and 2011 to get read for it. it seemed a bit stupid and crazy. I thought about how horribly out of shape I had become. I really did not want to go through the trouble of trying just to realize I am too far gone fitness-wise to do something that extreme again. I told Bridget she was writing checks I was not sure I could cover when she committed me to this. 

So I started thinking (maybe obsessing). I had been thinking a lot about buying a new vehicle. I don't think I will now. The old one is not that old and has great fuel mileage. It is not my favorite vehicle but I think I just need to deal with it for a variety of reasons which are not the subject of this post. The point is that thinking about the possibility of doing an Ironman has been very distracting. I think that is a good thing. 

Ok so I ran again last week and upped my mileage to 3 miles and kept the pace even slower, again trying to keep my heart rate from going too high. Here is the data: 

July 25th THPRD run

I was running at the Tualatin Hills Park & Rec District area in Beaverton while Maddie was practicing. If you click on the link above you can see all the details. Slow. But that is totally ok. 

I went on another run last week. Here are those details: 

July 27th THPRD run

And while this run was also slow I felt pretty good. No injuries after 4 runs in 11 days. My opinion of my prospects about starting a training program was improving.

Friday I came home from the office and started going through some of my cycling stuff in the garage. I have not touched my road bike in 2 years. Serious. I basically have 3 bikes right now. Road bike, commuter bike and a cyclocross/gravel bike. I also have a mountain bike but I am selling it. I just don't get out much and it takes too long to go mountain biking. After considerable time I managed to locate necessary cycling gear, take off the stationary trainer tire I had installed on the rear tire of my road bike and install one in good shape road tire I had on a shelf. Here is the bike: 

 

I doubt any of you will have heard of the bike brand, L'Ecu. It is a lovely bike designed and perhaps built by Devin Zoller back in around 2012 or so. More likely it was built to spec in China, but that is ok. I picked this bike up 3 years ago from a nice fellow named Aaron that I know. It is a wonderful bike but I had just a bit of trouble getting the seatmast high enough to fit me. It was too short by about 3-5 mm. The last thing I did with the bike after I last rode it a couple of years ago was buy some used Speedplay pedals which have a lower stack height than the Shimano Dura-Ace pedals I had been using. This means that it increases the distance from the seat to the pedals, which is what I needed. I never even road the bike after putting the pedals on. As it turns out, those few millimeters made all the difference judging by my ride Saturday. 

The L'Ecu Module is a lovely bike. Not so much up-to-date these days, but it does well enough with its SRAM Red 10 speed drivetrain. Wheels are straight and true and the bike feels pretty nimble. It is a nice lightweight ride. But my rear end is not at all in riding condition. Knowing that, and knowing that my body needs to start slow I just went on a short ride Saturday. As it was it still hurt. The details below via the link: 

July 29th road ride

Not an exciting ride. And yesterday my low back was pretty sore. I obviously was not using by back correctly when leveraging it to try and ride up a couple of hills. Because my legs are weak things and I needed to use my low back muscles incorrectly I am guessing. But there was joy in riding. It was good. 

Later in the day we went to the Nike Employee Store. I picked up some running shoes. My current ones are at least 4 years old. 

One pair are is the Nike Zoom Fly 5 (or something like that) and the other is a Gore-Tex Nike shoe that I thought would come in handy when the rains come. The Zooms are super marshmallowy. I wanted to try them out and so I did a little run yesterday, which can be found here: 

July 30th run

 

Another nice slow run. But here the day after, I feel pretty good still. And importantly I feel like I am doing something good. My mental aspect, at least with this part of my life is pretty good. Now if I could just finish off a few of my cases and get paid on them... well life would be grand. But that will come too eventually. 

Ok, so long post, longer than I suspected. But for the first post in 12 years, shorter than it should be perhaps. 

What are my goals? Long term goal is to do an Ironman in 2025. That sounds a bit audacious to type that given my current fitness. But I think if I train reasonably for a year I can get to where I can truly train for the Ironman in 2025 so that in October or November (looking at either the IM California or the IM Arizona) I could compete/participate in the event with the goal to finish. Stretch goal would be to hit the time I had in 2011, which I thought back in 2011 that it could have been better had I not had some digestion issues that made me feel really bloated caused some pain/discomfort in my gut. 

I will want to have some smaller goals for along the way, but I haven't sorted all that out yet. 

Now with the long layoff not everything is the same as it was with fit of my gear. I am wider than I used to be. I really feel weird wearing my Half Fast Velo kits. I am so out of shape. When I rode on Saturday I did not wear the HFV jersey. I just felt like a total poser. I feel like I need some get riding more before and drop some weight I put anything on that has any racing feel to it. Frankly, I need some old fat guy cycling stuff to wear, on the casual side of things not just because of the looks, but so that it is comfortable. 

On the inside I will be pushing myself, but externally, I don't want to feel like people are rolling their eyes at the fat guy in the cycling kit. I should not care what others think I know, but I just don't want the mental baggage. Frankly, having to go out all kitted up in spandex would make me less likely to go out sadly. Maybe I need a therapist or something, but it is what it is and I admit it and own it. 

I hope Bridget knows what she started. And I hope I know what has started and that I keep it going. I really want this right now. I really want to do something big again. This might be a second midlife crisis, but I think it is on the healthy side of things. 

I plan to do regular updates. I think when I did this in the past it helped keep me going.

I don't feel the need to have it all figured out right now. In the end I wanted to post this to hold myself accountable in the future. I don't want to slide back into inactivity. So... let's go!

That was then, This is now

I am in my 3rd week of training for my November Ironman. I stress at my ability to fit everything into my schedule. For the first 13 weeks of my training I am following a plan for a Half Ironman distance. At the end of the plan I should be ready to do that race. Instead at the end of that I will be switching to a 13 week plan for a full Ironman. The progression seems to be appropriate between the two plans. Still, I have been concerned about being able to do the scheduled training so that I can finish a 2.4 mile swim followed by a 112 mile bike ride and finally a 26.2 mile run.

Then I looked at my preparation for the Half IM in 2009. Other than having a long runs being longer (a 12 mile long run compared to a 7 mile long run currently) a few weeks prior to the event, I am already doing what I was then. My weekly training total was probably 10 hours on average for that event and this week I will hit the same amount of time.

I would say that I was probably under prepared for that event and still it went fine. My workouts for the 2009 event were very loosey-goosey. It seems like I just threw in weekly runs or swims when my work schedule allowed for it. I have been much more regimented this time, again mainly out of fear. My plan has helped calm my fears because I have faith that if I train as specified in them I won't die out there (figuratively, not literally). Fear is a good motivator for me. But seeing that I was able to perform adequately enough to finish the Half Ironman on such a half-arsed training plan has given me some additional confidence.

I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in November.

Week 3 begins

Today is the beginning of the 3rd of 26 weeks of training for my November Ironman. I am still tring to work out the specifics on how best to integrate the training regimine, work and family.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 and was at the gym at 6am but that just barely allowed me enough time to swim for 45 minutes, change and drive to the Sunset Transit Center and find a spot to park. From there I catch the MAX into downtown Portland. I have learned that all of the parking spot are pretty much gone by 7:15AM. I was there at 7:10 and there were only about a dozen spots left. This means I gotta get up earlier so I don't have to stress about it

Today's work out was 45 minutes of swimming and 45 minutes running. I'll do the running during lunch today.

This week is not that hard of a week. I'll bike to work and back tomorrow; hour swim and hour run on Wednesday; bike to work and back on Thursday; 75 minute run on Friday; an hour swim and 2+ hour bike on Saturday. Off Sunday. However eventually my long days will be quite long. 6 hour bike rides... 90 minute swims with a 3+ hour run....

It isn't too hard now to get up with the long days, but I am sure it will be challenging to do so this fall. Anyway, the adventure continues....

How is it that I can sleep for 8 hours and still feel so tired. It is not that I have been doing tons of training. I rode for 3 hours on the weekend. Rode an hour yesterday. Ran for an hour the day before that....

I suppose I am still catching up from my lack of sleep over the weekend when I drove out to Utah with my oldest son Ryan. Good trip. Not much sleep.

Am I just getting old?

Portland Blues

Or maybe it should be the Portland "greys" with the near constant cloud cover the past months.

I was in Utah over the weekend for just a quick trip to pick up some stuff of ours. While there I went for a ride with Dave and Fish. It was marvelous. In three hours I got a nice burn on my legs. I had put sunblock on my arms, face and neck. I have been riding all year in Oregon and I was totally white up until Saturday. And now that I am back I am ready for some better weather in Portland. I think I saw the sun for about 5 minutes when the clouds got lazy. Yesterday, I ran at lunch and admittedly the cloud cover was a good thing, it made for a nicer time. But right now it is raining. Sick of this wet stuff.

In about 10 days Bridget and I are doing the 100+ mile Reach the Beach ride. I haven't been able to spend longer than 3 hours in the saddle yet this year. I am not sure that is going to happen anytime soon. Oh, well. I am good at suffering, I am sure I will be fine. My butt my not be.

I crashed pretty good a couple of weeks ago and I feel pretty much back to normal now. I am glad to be back at it because I gained some weight back. Most of it was probably driving to and back from Utah. I eat like crap when I travel. Plus, while in Utah I had to eat at In N Out Burger now that they are there. I felt good that I only ate a single...in the past I have been known to eat more than a Double Double. I can pound that stuff. I am drooling just thinking about it.

In two weeks I officially start my Ironman training plan. I wish I could say that I was excited.

Time to start again.

Life has just gotten in the way of keeping up this blog. I am busier than ever and so cuts had to be made. One of casualties was this blog. I am trying to balance life with a wife and four kids (2 of them have substantial activities), my job at the firm, training (soon for an Ironman) and my wife's training for this and that. There just isn't enough time in the day.

Nevertheless, I feel it important to start writing again both here and on our family blog.

First a few updates.

I am a fatty again. Not horribly so, but a good 10 pounds over the maximum I'd like to weigh and about 15 pounds over what I would like to weigh.

I am riding quite a bit, but mainly to work and back. I have started leaving home earlier in the morning and lengthing my ride. I have been able to take off on a few lunchtime rides which as been awesome. However, our weather here in Portland has been colder and wetter than I think Spring conditions should be so these rides haven't happened as often as I would like. Brianero and I went on a killer 75 minute ride through the West Hills near Portland. Nearly 2000 feet of climbing during that time. A great ride it was.

My training for the Ironman officially starts the end of May when I have 6 months until the triathlon begins. I have not been in the pool much. And I am dreading it. My running has been off and on. I am not as worried about the running because odds are that I will be so toasted by the time I get off the bike that I will end up walking at least half the 26.2 miles. I have been running up to an hour at a time once or twice per week. I will add more running miles at the months progress. In the end, my goal is simply to do the damn thing in under 17 hours.

In the short term I am doing the 100 mile Reach the Beach ride next month with Bridget. That will be a nice no stress ride. In July I am going to check off the ultimate "Fred" ride around here, the STP or Seattle to Portland. I will be doing the one day option. That will hurt. Mainly my rear end, but it will still hurt. 200 miles is a long way in a day.

With regard to bikes, I have a new one coming down the pipe from Neil at Cernitz bikes. But I won't talk about that one just yet. As a result my Lapierre carbon cross frame will be going bye-bye. It just didn't fit me the way I like. Neil has my likes dialed in now, and I expect it will be a stellar frame as usual.

Well that's it for now. More to come soon.

First Race of the Cyclocross Season

At least me first race of the season.

I've ridden a bit the past couple of days and so I am certain that my legs won't be too fresh tomorrow. But, I don't really care. I mainly want the workout, to get dirty, and to continue to get a bit more fit.

This summer has not gone as planned really. I got in about half the miles that I had planned. I had some great excuses in August when I was working between 60 and 80 hours per week. But still, it has been sort of frustrating. Plus, having 4 kids makes it really tough to get riding in that is anything other than going to and from work.

Speaking of work, my weekends are free now. At least free from work. There are all sorts of other activities demanding my attention. Kids have soccer. Church. Family stuff of varying sorts. But Bridget is very understanding and has not argued with my desire to race a bit this fall. She is very patient with us boys... ;)

Anyway, back to the race, going to race the singlespeed class. My choice comes down to a couple things. I know I am going to place near the back and that is OK. There isn't a singlespeed category to downgrade to, so I don't mind racing with the Cat A guys. I would like to spend some time pumping up Cernitz Bikes, and riding them seems to be a good way to do so. And one last reason is that I refuse to downgrade to Master C and I don't feel like getting shelled in Master B's quite yet.

Give me some more time commuting with my 600 foot climb to work and 1000 foot climb home and I will get there pretty quick I think. A bonus at the law firm is my ability to take long lunches. An hour is normal. Longer can be arranged too by the looks of it. I will probably start doing a bit of running at lunch. I need to start running sometime since I have verbally committed to doing an Ironman next year. I've done a couple of 70.3 Ironman events and that training sucked. Next year is really going to suck. But that will be checked off the bucket list.

Anyway...I will report back about how tomorrow goes. It is going to be rainy. And that is a good thing.

Zsa Zsa Gabor and Cyclocross.

Sorry, going to go on a bit of a cycling rant here.

Here in Oregon we have this wonderful little organization, the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association or OBRA. It has a wonderful little e-mail list that anyone can get on which allows us to complain, ask questions, learn about events and especially sell our excess biking related stuff. It is a spectacular service that I have used often over the past few years. It is free, unlike Ebay. And because it only goes to mostly serious cyclists I tend not to get a bunch of stupid questions unlike posting on Craigslist.

Often, especially this time of year as summer starts to get a little long in the tooth I start to see posts like this:

" Dura Ace 7800 shifters. Dented, scratched, work great, perfect for cross, $40 "

Works great, sure. I doubt for long. And I can't imagine using something on its last legs for cyclocross. Unless you like having excuses for sucking. Well, I guess I have my excuse, but it is more gut-related than anything else.

Anyway, I don't get it. I mean, I get it, but I subscribe to this view at all--Hanging all of the crappiest parts on your cyclocross bike.

I want my stuff to work, especially my drivetrain. If I wanted to race crap..., well, actually I would never want to race crap. And I absolutely hate it when in a race I start missing shifts and my chain can't seem to find and stay in a gear. Absolutely frustrating for me. It takes my mind out of the race.

Maybe it is the cost? $40, no big deal right? If the shifters break...rather make that when the shifters break you are only out a fraction of the cost of new. Fine. But until then continue to be frustrated during the race and bemoan the fact that cyclocross kills your equipment. Despite the fact that what you are doing is probably akin to putting present day Zsa Zsa Gabor in a beauty pagent.

Sure she was hot once, but why are you putting her out there now? Ridiculousness! Her time is past. She is probably lucky to get around the block a time or two. And that is exactly what should be done with that old dented up Dura Ace shifter. Time to retire that thing. Let it spent its last days in peace going to the store, or on your commuter or whatever. But don't spend money on race fees riding a bike with that shifter. Folly!

Meanwhile if you just had something nice and took care of it it would probably last a long time and you'd actually be able to find a gear. And I don't necessarily mean nice and expensive.

So here is my recommendation to those who are trying to race on the cheap: Just buy thumb or bar-end shifters and new mid-lever derailleurs and chains. Forget about buying the well-used Dura Ace that is in worse shape and has swapped more times that a West Virginia trailer park harlot (I've lived in West Virginia, there's some scary stuff going on out there, yikes). Seriously, retire that old stuff. Just go with what works, simple stuff that is difficult to break becuase there are only a couple of moving parts instead of dozens.

You may think to yourself, "Oh easy for him to say now that he has Di2..."

Umm, yeah, it is easy to say. But I ran a 9 speed Shimano drive train with bar-end shifter for about 3 years when I started racing cross because I didn't want anyone's sloppy seconds or thirds or whatever and because it just freakin' works just about all the freakin' time. Sure the shifting isn't as quick, but at least you can find a gear. And when it absolutely hits the fan, one can always switch that bar-end shifter to friction mode and find your gears in the worst situations sans busted gear. And that three season old friction shifter has been on my Cernitz Mule commuter bike that has over 1100 miles this year. All I ever have to do to it is occasionally switch cables and housing. Booyah Brothers and Sisters!

Anyway, enough. Most of you don't care. But I at least feel better.

Another Broken Carbon Crankset

I have broken the following in order over the past several years.

Ritchey WCS ISIS splined Crankset
FSA K Force ISIS splined Crankset
FSA K Force 2nd generation Crankset
Easton EC90 Crankset
FSA K Force 2nd generation Crankset
Easton EC90 Crankset

All are carbon. The interesting thing is that only the Ritchey had a carbon failure. All of the others is was a bond or some metal piece that failed. This time the Easton EC90 Crankset spindle came loose from the driveside arm where it is bonded. It doesn't spin totally free, it just moves a bit as you go through a crankarm revolution. It is very noticable on the road, but off road because of all the bumps it is not nearly so. This is why I raced with it on my Cernitz Buttercup singlespeed without realizing that there was an issue. And then when I did notice, I thought it was the Crank Brothers Eggbeaters which also have a reputation for breaking. (Speaking of that, I broke an Eggbeater pedal last night at cyclocross practice)

Anyway, a little research on the web and I found that this has become a common problem for these cranksets. In fact, Easton is not selling them anymore. And instead of giving me a new one, they are sending me a check for what I paid for them. Cool. So I am getting another Shimano Dura Ace crankset, which is pretty much exactly what I am getting back from Easton. That leaves me with only a 3 year old Campagnolo Record carbon crankset that was actually last produced about 5 years ago. It has an old style square taper bottom bracket. It currently resides on my commutter bike. It get more abuse than all of my other cranksets and has more miles on it than all of my other cranksets combined and multiplied by 2.

The FSA cranksets each lasted about 1500 miles. The Eastons each made it about 150 miles total. The first one was improperly manufactured so that one couldn't torque down adequately and I have already stated what went wrong this time.

Sigh....

No carbon cranks for me. I am not sure what I do, but I am Kryptonite to them. Maybe I should get a job doing product testing for these companies, because if there is a flaw, I'll find it.