TriGreyhound

The Most Interesting Man In The World

2009-12-11T07:04:00.004-06:00

In the last week, I have been going back and forth on whether to man up and do Ironman St. George in May. As an unreformed addict, I'm a bit lost without an Ironman, but I think one of the main reasons Ironman is going on hiatus is that there are other things I want to try that would be impossible if I were training at an Ironman level.

For one thing, it is high time I got serious about working on the craft of writing. I have signed up for a fiction writing workshop, and I want to put in the effort of writing and rewriting that it deserves.

And remember in my last post where I mentioned "professional obligations" that I ought to be attending to?

Well, some of you know that when I doff my cape and super hero tights, I take on the secret identity of a mild-mannered lawyer.

In fact, I am an appellate lawyer, which means I read, write and research about the courts all the time.

When I have spoken at seminars on the law and the courts, I often get "best speaker" awards and high marks for content and entertainment.

(To be fair, law nerds are easily entertained. We don't get out much).

And some of the marketing people at the firm know that I blog.

So, if you combine my legal savoir faire and my mad blogging skillz with my dashing good looks and razor wit, do you know what you get?

The Most Interesting Man In The World.

As if there were any question.

Or at any rate you have the makings of a legal blogger.

Or blawger.

Maybe even a blawger that lawyers and clients would want to read.

So, as it happens, the firm has asked me to start a legal blog in the area of my professional expertise, Texas and Federal Appellate Law.

For the last several months, we have been trying to set a legal blog in a fashion where it could be done properly, and it looks like we are about to hit the ground running. Very soon we will launch a law blog called:

The Appellate Record
Because if it's not in here, it didn't happen.

Consistent with my history of biting off more than I can chew, I intend to make that legal blog the most authoritative and useful and entertaining voice on its subject matter in the Great State of Texas.

Yeah, let me know how that works out.

I say that to say this. I am expected to post regularly to the law blog without decreasing my billable hours or my collections. And I don't think I can post regularly there and write fiction and make speeches and write scholarly articles and continue developing as an athlete and be a good father and husband all while continuing to post here two or three times a week.

Not to mention the fact that this blog has largely been about me, and I have thoroughly exhausted that topic.

So, while I hope that this blog is not ending entirely, it is definitely going on a hiatus and at minimum is probably changing its focus. After the law blog gets going, I have some idea that I might repurpose this blog as a place for once weekly posts to encourage and instruct the new athlete who wants to get up off the couch of doom and reclaim their life and their health. I might even start a fiction blog to write a wovel.

And I'll probably maintain this space as one method of shouting out to my virtual friends so as to arrange races and events across the country.

So, don't delete me from your RSS feed or your google reader just yet.

But, trigreyhound, as it has existed before, a self-absorbed blog focused on my multi-sport mediocrity, is coming to an end.

It is time for what's next, and that "next" requires room. That means, at least for the moment, I pause and put down my pen.

I put it down grateful beyond words. The comments I have received on this blog tell me that this blog has mattered to some of its readers. Some are better off for having read it. Some have dared do great things that they might otherwise not have done. Some have broken beyond their comfort zones. In that, I have succeeded beyond anything I would have imagined when, 603 posts ago, in March of 2006, I first said . . .

So, here goes . . .

It has been a great ride, and I prize the friends this blog has brought me more than you can know. Those I will keep long after this URL dies. A mid-life that could have been colorless and dead has been made vivid and life-affirming.

You did that, not me.

You have taught me how to be an encouraging friend, and if you find me on Facebook, I will ever be that still. There is nothing more precious than a true friend to walk beside you, and with love, I will always be,

Your faithful friend,

Greyhound

What Now?

2009-12-08T09:47:00.002-06:00

As I begin writing this post, it is Sunday night, the house is quiet, and I am bluer than B.B. King on a drunken bender. It's nothing unnatural or worthy of concern. I get this way after every season-ending Ironman. It's the Ironman blues.

Typically, it gets worse if I sit still, but right now I cannot train. Indeed I ought not train. So, the next best thing I can do is start scheming and planning for next year. That's where you come in. I always enjoy racing more when friends are involved. I'd love to host you in magnificent Tejas, and I'd love to race with you somewhere else.

But first . . . about that Ironman thing.

I am addicted and conflicted. I feel lost without the epic threat of an Ironman date on my calendar. It creates organization and purpose from necessity--sheer survival. And part of me wants some Ironman redemption. I did not race as strongly at Cozumel as I wanted to do. And that has only a little to do with the number on the clock.

And yet, I think my plans to do IM St. George are unwise. Cozumel took the starch right out of me. I cannot see being ready to commit to another Ironman, even by January. In addition, I've started thinking about other things I would do if not training 15 hours or more a week. There are family and professional obligations I should be attending to. And I want to pour time into my writing, including a fiction workshop here in Houston, instead of training on an Ironman level.

And Ironman is not making me better any more. Ironman is not making me improve. I've plateaued with the long and slow. I know what I need to do to improve and another Ironman is not it. I need to learn how to race and to suffer and to go fast. I need to get my butt into masters swim 5 days a week, regular swim lessons with a coach, and race HARD at the Olympic distance once or twice a month all year. Later in the year, I ought to try building up to a substantial PR at the Longhorn 70.3 and try to see how far under six hours this old dog can go.

Toward that end, I'm already scheming next year's schedule. What follows are some of my ideas. You are invited to come along and stay chez Greyhound, and they are subject to change if you want Greyhound couch surfing at your place:

2/27 Rodeo Run 10K (Houston)

3/13 Bayou City 10K (Houston)

4/10 Gateway to the Bay OLY (Kemah, maybe)

4/25 Lone Star OLY (Houston, definitely)

5/15 Ogden 1/2 Marathon

5/31 Cap Tex OLY (Austin)

6/25 Philly Tri OLY

JULY/August--Colorado Cycling Adventure, Boulder Stroke and Strides

8/29 Alcatraz Triathlon (REALLY? Swim in S.F. Bay? Holy Shit!)

9/6 Austin Tri OLY (prolly only if no Alcatraz)

9/26 Houston Tri OLY (new race)

10/17 Longhorn 70.3 (Austin)

Then in 2011 something epic, like IM Lake Placid or Austria or Brazil or New Zealand!!!

Come on, peeps. Help me out of this funk. Let's get some suffering on the calendar and make some bad decisions.

Ironman In Review

2009-12-06T15:45:00.000-06:00

So, the Ironman experience is over for the year--for good and for ill. And it bears looking back to see those people and experiences that made the Ironman Cozumel experience what it was.

First, a tip of the hat to those parts of the race that were all awesomeness.

To Mrs. Greyhound and Superpounce who gave me the grace to go my miserable pace into the night rather than either quit or stress that I was taking too long because of any impatience to be done. Sometimes you just gotta walk.

Coach Kris deserves a tip of the hat for writing programs and answering e-mails and phone calls and guiding me through a year of training. He got me to the start line fitter than ever, healthy and ready to go. He wrote a program that I could complete while keeping my job and my marriage. I liked having a coach for the first time in my life, and I could not have had a better or more knowledgeable one. At times, he deserved a better athlete, but you git' what you git.

To the fine folks at Endurance Sports Travel: we tested your theory that Ironman travel can be idiot proof, and your theory held up. If you ever want to do a destination Ironman race, and you want someone to handle the details and take care of your family while you race and treat you like a rock star, even if you are slow, then Endurance Sports Travel is the only way to go. Owned and operated by Ironman legend Ken Glah, Endurance Sports Travel makes an Ironman trip worry free, at a cost less than what many of the athletes paid to make all those arrangements on their own. I don't know where my next destination Ironman will be, but I plan to pick the destination off of their itineraries. HUGE Tip O' the Greyhound Chapeau and A++ to them.

To bloggy peeps like Greyt Times and Coach Liz and Speed Racer and Kim and Johnny Tri, and The Artist Formerly Known As Iron Kahuna: People and friendships make this sport special, and all of you were a big part of why this trip has good memories for me. As I sit here in the house on a quiet Sunday afternoon with a profound case of the Ironman blues, I'm missing people like you. My only real regret is not having enough time on the island with each of you, and it will be a true disappointment if we can't share a race venue again some time in the very near future.

To Cozumelenos, you people turned out and opened the town for a bunch of weirdos in spandex with pointy helmets as if we were all rock stars. You cheered and chanted and applauded and offered hospitality never before seen north of the Rio Grande. Cozumel rocks.

To the race organization: Great spot for a race, very well executed overall, problems on the day were tackled quickly, the spectators were fantastic, and if you want a tough, tough (did I say effing TOUGH) Ironman experience, then this is the place to go. I say this, though, as preface to what I hope will be some constructive criticisms that will make the race even better.

The water bottles handed out on the race course were CRAP! As designed, one could not get enough water to come out the nozzle to pour down the gullet or over the head. Thus, people finally resorted to grabbing the nozzle in the teeth and ripping them off entirely, creating an open spout. Get a different bottle.

Mosquitos on the run course. Race organization needs repellent at the aid stations, and you best put some in your special needs bag or you'll be eaten alive.

Bike Aid Stations: Volunteers were game and friendly and eager to do a good job, but they needed training in some of the particulars--e.g., you have to take the inner seal off the Gatorade bottle so a cyclist can use it, and you have to keep the water bottles filled and ready to go. No water on the second loop of the bike course was not acceptable. This race will always be hot and you should anticipate needing twice as many iced water bottles because everyone is taking on cold water every 10k.

Special Needs Bags: the special needs bags were a clusterfuck. You can't do it on the narrow side of the island where there is no space. Do it before or after where the road is wide instead. Have someone down the road with a walkie talkie calling numbers so people can ride by and grab their bags on the run. This business of stopping and pawing through 2000 bags on the side of a narrow road was way below average.

Coastal rode: OK, so it is chip seal. It doesn't have to be washboard, bucking bronco, pound your testicles into your Willie chip seal. That road sucked--as did a notable section of the pavement in town--dangerously so. Obviously, this might not be the priority of local government, but if it could be resurfaced . . . . .

Ice and Coke: The organizers refilled it quickly when it ran out, but when it is this hot, you should never, EVER run out of ice, even for an instant. Ditto Coke later in the marathon. Never run out, and you must de-fizz the coke if runners are going to make use of it.

Medical Tent: if half of your participants are going to speak English, you must have someone in the medical tent who can tell an English speaking spouse that her husband is not there. Otherwise, Mrs. Greyhound will punch your lights out.

So, I would do this race again in a heartbeat, but I would do it for a Mexican vacation, not looking for a PR. It was a great experience, and I know it will be even better for the competitors who turn up for the second edition of Ironman Cozumel.

And So It Begins

2009-12-04T17:22:00.004-06:00

Maybe it's because this was my best race this year . . . maybe it's because I can't stand having no training schedule and no race calendar, even for a week . . . but this is gonna be the key race at the end of next season.

October 17, 2010.

Come on bloggers and Facebook friends. Let's do this thing together.

The Artist Fomerly Known As The Tri-Geek Kahuna

2009-12-04T08:18:00.003-06:00

**Editor's note: it is with great pleasure that I bring you a guest contributor, a man who was key in inspiring this blog and my exploits in the first place. I bring you the race report of the Iron Kahuna, one of the original tri bloggers**

35,000-FEET SOMEWHERE OVER NORTHERN MEXICO—Big thanks to TriGreyhound for allowing the Iron Kahuna to post this race report on Ironman Cozumel on his site. Those triathletes of a certain age will remember the Kahuna from TriGeekDreams, one of the first triathlon blogs on the Internet that suddenly went dark a few years ago, retiring like NFL Jim Brown did at the top of his game.

Well, the Iron Kahuna is back and badder than ever, at least for this single post.

About a year ago, Greyhound sent the Kahuna a message. “Hey, they’re starting an Ironman in Cozumel. How about we sign up?”

The Kahuna had one Ironman under his race belt—in Florida three years ago when the Gulf Coast did a nice imitation of a freezing fall day in New England. Still, surrounded by his tri-blogger friends—and with the proper training under his belt—it turned out to be one of the best weekends of his life. You can still see the Kahuna and Trimama getting their tattoos on YouTube (and yes, the Kahuna did cried like a little bitch, Trimama didn’t feel a think and Robo-Stu laughed his ass off).

Three years can make a memory hazy. The physical and mental pain of an Ironman recedes and eventually is stored into the that-was-no-big-deal? compartment in the brain. The tattoo looks a little less sharp, along with the clothing purchased in a frenzy after the Florida race. The Iron Kahuna was beginning to feel like the Rusty Kahuna. Though he had continued to race various distances over the intervening years, he wanted another crack at an Ironman.

So, Cozumel? The Mayan Riviera? With Tri-Greyhound? The Kahuna was in and signed up that day.

Well, training ebbed and flowed over the next 12 months. Juggling multiple jobs, four boys, a book tour (“Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America—and Found Unexpected Peace”) and two finicky calves, some weeks the triathlon training gods were pleased, other times they were extremely pissed.

There was something else heading into his second Ironman. The Kahuna didn’t have that epic, I’m-going-to-conquer-Mt.-Everest feeling in his gut. In fact, he had nothing. Little nerves, little anxiety, little excitement. He wondered if this meant his race was doomed.

Less than a month before the race, he competed in the Big Kahuna (no relation) Half-Ironman in Santa Cruz, Calif. and had to walk the last six miles of the run because his calf had popped. He decided during his long stroll toward the finish that he would drop out of Ironman Cozumel. That was the sensible thing to do.

Of course, after sleeping on it, he decided to eff his calves and at least get to the start line. The entry fee, airlines, hotel and food had already been paid. What the hell? He started running in the deep end of the pool—a practice that studies show keep runners in nearly as good of shape was running on dry land. He logged three hours on extremely boring Sunday morning. And he got Active Release Technique (ART) massages twice a week, sweating and tearing up at the pain caused by the doctor stripping away scar tissue.

So on Thanksgiving Day, he found himself full of doubts and pending doom but on a plane from Los Angeles bound to Cancun, Mexico. (By the way, if you’re thinking about doing Ironman Cozumel, there’s no easy way to get there. Most triathletes hopped a flight to Cancun, took a 50-minute taxi ride to a Playa del Something, board a ferry for a 45-minute vomit-inducing voyage to Cozumel, and then (in the Kahuna’s case) a 25-minute taxi ride to his hotel. Thank God Greyhound had wisely signed up for package deal from Endurance Sports Travel, which shepherded us along the way—he will never do another Ironman without its services).

On Cozumel, everyone soon discovered that the island produced few easy race days. If it was windy, bad for the bike. If it wasn’t, the heat could wreck you. Turned out, the triathletes got a little of both.

The swim had to be the best course in Ironman history. You start by walking along a dock that enclosed a pod of dolphins (that tourists swim with) and then jump off on the platform into the warm and crystal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The Kahuna, a swimmer more than anything else, took his place in the second row of triathletes. He didn’t feel nervous, only under-prepared and wondering if his calves would hold up on land enough for him to see the finish line.

He didn’t hear the gun, but everyone took off and so did he. The ocean bottom, probably 30-feet below, served as a guidepost. He would look up at the buoy, and then find a spot on the bottom far ahead that was in line with it and just swim to it. He easily stayed on course.

The majority of the swim had a favorable current, enough that the Kahuna pulled off a PR of 54:48. Hmmm. Maybe this was his day! Running to T1, he felt a twinge in his left calf. Holy crap. Right then, he decided to go all out on the bike because he would, at best, forced to walk the marathon.

So he took off on the bike and for the first 20 miles or so, he flew, his speedometer registering a steady 19, 20, 21 and sometimes 22 miles per hours. Like a freaking idiot, he began calculating the math and thinking it could get under 6 hours on the bike. This Ironman was going to be easy.

But then, he turned a corner and his bike, buffeted by 30 mph winds, almost came to a stop. The landscape gave a clue as to what to expect: the windward side of the island didn’t support much vegetation because nothing much could grow against the strong, steady winds. He struggled to maintain a double-digit speed. The mental torture?

He’d have to pass by this section of the course two more times before he could get off the bike.

Near the end of the first lap, he rode back into town and was greeted, for the first time, by the locals. The Mexicans were the best fans EVER. It felt like being on the pitch at a major futbol game: ear-piercing noise makers and residents lined along the street shouting, “Vayamos (Let’s go!), “Si, se puedo (Yes, you can!), and “Animal (Animal).”

It wasn’t until the third bike lap (after not finding his special needs bag) that the Kahuna felt like was he was dying, thanks mostly to the wind and heat (93 degrees was the high he registered on his bike computer). He had taken in his nutrition well, but his body didn’t want anything more.

At T2, the Kahuna sat for a while trying to cool his body and thinking, “Now a marathon? Really? Why did I ever sign up for this?” It was a familiar Ironman panic that seems new each time. He found some solace in that everyone inside in the men’s tent seemed to be bewildered by the difficulty of the bike leg.

Finally, the Kahuna forced himself to get out of his plastic chair and onto the race course. The crowds, as stated earlier, couldn’t have been better. And the truth be told, the Kahuna’s legs didn’t feel too bad, despite being hammered on the bike. His body overheating was the problem.

Want to know the most depressing part of an Ironman for the Kahuna? Passing by the Mile 1 banner on the run. Only 25.2 miles left! That will play tricks on your mind.

The Kahuna slogged on, running (slowly) between each aid station (they were only 1k apart). At the stations, he forced liquid down him and ate only bananas (the one food that seemed even remotely appealing).

The field of triathletes seemed like a pretty even mix between North American and Central and South American triathletes, which left a language barrier and resulted in little talking on the run leg (different than other triathlons the Kahuna had competed in). But that was OK because the Kahuna didn’t seem much like talking. He just was trying not to totally blow up (secretly he was hoping his calf would pop and he could either a) walk the rest of the way or b) quit; however, his ART doc had too good of a job).

As the sun set, the island delivered another soul-crushing obstacle: clouds of mosquitos. These bastards bit the hell of the Kahuna, who wasn’t in the mood. Finally, a volunteer broke out some repellante and the Kahuna splashed it all over his body. Problem solved.

After lap 2 of the run, the Kahuna did some quick mental calculations. If he hustled, he could finish under 14 hours. Here’s the internal debate he had with himself for the next couple of miles.

“Push! You can break 14 hours!”

“What, are you crazy? That’s just an artificial barrier. You are dangerously close to a heat stroke. Be mature about this.”

“But 14 hours! And you only have a 10k to go. Think of all the training you put in. This is nothing.”

“Just walk it in. Be safe. You will still be an Ironman today.”

Of course, the bad guy won. The Kahuna hustled along, making sure he kept ahead of the 14 hour barrier. But as he closed in on the 26-mile mark, the Kahuna realized he didn’t factor in the .2 part of the 26.2-mile run. So he sped up even faster (by know, faster was a relative term).

Finally, the Kahuna turned the final corner and saw, maybe 50 yards ahead of him, the finish line and the large digital clock above it that read: 13:59:50. He was in too much of a hurry and in too much pain to hear the cheers of the crowd (or even hear what the announcer was saying).

He crossed the line (head up, arms extended overhead for the good finishing photo) and triggered the timing mat: 13:59:59.

The Kahuna swam, biked and ran his best race he could that day. The course was much tougher than expected. Throughout much of the day, he swore that this would be his last Ironman. He wouldn’t go through all this pain again.

But now, a few days later, he’s announcing his un-retirement. He’s got more Ironmans in him. The feeling of accomplishment after finishing one is just too good to not experience again. Maybe Ironman Brazil 2011.

Greyhound, you in?

The Best Laid Plans

2009-12-02T18:32:00.004-06:00

You might recall how I asked Coach Kris for advice in formulating a plan for Ironman Cozumel. He gave me great advice: Plan A for the ideal day, Plan B for if something goes wrong, and Plan C for just getting to the finish. As it turns out, I needed all three plans just to get through the hardest Ironman course I have ever experienced in two hours slower than my unstated goal.

See, going in, I kinda had some numbers in mind. I thought it reasonable that I could swim--MAYBE--about 1:30 if the seas were kind. I had no idea what to expect of the current in Cozumel. I had trained to bike about 18mph if conditions were reasonable. Then, if I were strong and my nutrition was good, I might be able to hold 10 minute miles or so on the run. If it all worked out, I thought, based upon the results of my training, that I might finish in the mid to high 12 hour neighborhood.

Based upon my half-iron results on a hilly course and the higher level of fitness Coach Kris had given me this year, I think this was reasonable. But see, Ironman and Mother Nature have an unholy alliance. Here's how it went down.

The Swim: Plan A

I was nervous about the swim. Before the race I had the opportunity to take one practice swim on the course. The wind had decreased from the gales the day before, but it was still quite a challenge--two to three foot swells and strong current. I needn't have worried. Like everyone in the race, I had the swim of my life.

On the morning of the race, it was calm and still on the western side of the island. I jumped off the dock with 2000 of my closest friends and treaded water against the current until the horn sounded and we all pummeled each other on the way to the first turn buoy 500 meters up current. Because of the current, it seemed like it took forever to make that first turn. I choked down some sea water a couple times but did not wear myself out.

Squished and crowded around the turn buoys and we were heading back down current. This was like walking the moving sidewalk at the airport. I had some difficulty seeing the intermediate bouys as wakes and swells arose, but before I knew it I was at the far end of the course heading for home.

I was afraid how much effort would be required to get back to the finish, but the course must have been laid out close enough to shore that the channel current was not a factor. Each buoy passed in course and before I knew it, I was getting out of the water, fresh and ready to ride in only 1:20.

That's abysmal for some people, but pretty good for me and 10 minutes faster than Plan A.
"Sweet!" I think to myself. "10 minutes in the bank for later!"

Yeah. Not so much.

The Bike: Plan B

In and out of transition and I was on to my favorite part of the race--or so I thought. I love the bike, and the first few miles were going just as planned. I got my heart rate calmed down and settled into 20-22 miles per hour at a heart rate way under my thresh hold. I swam and rode so fast that Mrs. Greyhound and Superpounce barely made it out to the bike course to see me fly by on the first lap.

"Sweet," I'm thinking to myself. "I can put some more time in the bank for the eastern side of the island where they told us to expect cross-winds. I mean, how hard can it be? It's only 10 to 12 miles next to the open ocean. I've ridden 5 hours at Galveston before."

And then reality hit. We turned left onto the bumpy, rough, chip-sealed coastal road and were nearly blown off our bikes by a 30 mile per hour head wind with gusts even faster. My speed dropped from 20 to 15 to 14 and sometimes down to 12. It was less than 30 minutes into the bike, but I knew immediately that the numbers in my head were now just fantasy.

Time for Plan B. If I pushed over the edge here, the finish line might not happen at all. So, I dropped to the small ring and tried to maintain a cadence and heart rate while watching the mileage tick slowly by. Mezcalitos, the left turn back to Cozumel, seemed like it would never come. And all the while, I knew that I had to do that same stretch two more times.

By the time I reached the turn at Mezcalitos, my average speed had dropped from 18.5 mph to 15.8 mph. So Plan B was to see how much lost speed I could get back without digging myself into a hole. I road as fast as I thought I reasonably could without exceeding my target heart rates, and I got back some of my speed, but not nearly all of it by the time I made it back to the coastal road.

The second time through, I lost less speed off my average (the average being lower to begin with now) but several aid stations were now out of the water I had been using to cool myself, and my stomach was starting to rebel against Gatorade and calories. I was feeling bloated and stopped up, and yet I was bonking. I needed water to drink and dillute my stomach, not just pour on my head and torso. But second time around, there was none to be had.

The whole time on the coast road, I was counting pedal strokes--100 revolutions down in the aero bars at a time then start again. Don't look at the speedometer or the mileage markers because it is too depressing.

It was all I could do to go out for another serving from that course, but the two professionals in the lead of the male race lapped me as I got to town, and you can't stop and quit when the whole city is out cheering--even if they're cheering for someone else. I was able to get some water, but I was already overheating and was still 40 miles from home.

I don't remember much about the third lap. I was woozy and suffering and my body was in rebellion. Unlike a course with elevation changes, this one has you down in the bars the whole time and tears up the same muscles. By the time of the final turn into town, I could barely maintain 16 mph, even with no wind to contend with. I weaved a couple of times and thought, "Wow, I might crash. That wouldn't be so bad." There were also dark clouds over part of the island, and I half hoped for lightening in the hopes the run would be called off.

Yeah. That's not the place you want to be when you're starting the marathon. Plan C was firmly in play by this point.

The Run: Plan C

I have never come so very close to quitting a race as I did at T2 in this race. The fact that I continued cannot be attributed to toughness or character on my part. Character is what you do when nobody is watching. If nobody had been watching, I would have stopped. But my daughter was there, and she was watching. I don't want to raise a quitter. And I had written that damn fool thing about imagination, and I knew you had read it. So you were watching, and I couldn't stop with you watching me.

So, I put on my shoes, picked myself up off the deck of the stifling hot transition tent, and went out on the road. Still, it wasn't like I was prepared to flog myself anymore. I was done going to the well for the day. I was in the race in name only.

I walked for about two minutes and then started jogging with the goal of going very easy to the first aid station at 1km. With that accomplished, I decided to jog to the next aid station only 1km away. At each aid station I tried to catch up with water to get the calories to absorb again.

I made it all the way out to the far end of the three loop run course and managed to take on some calories without yakking. Turning around to come back, however, the slight breeze that had been cooling us running one way disappeared. Running in the same direction as the breeze, I started to overheat again in the muggy, tropical air. The dull headache I had been carrying became more pronounced. At the second aid station on the way back into town, the ground lurched and I almost lost my balance.

OK, this might be more serious, I thought. Suffering out of T2 makes no sense if you don't finish at all. So, I decided to be more careful. My aid station jogs became four minutes jogging, 1 minute walking, jogging to the next station, then one minute more of walking. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The second lap was the hardest. My body had still not come correct nutritionally, and mentally, you're still so far from the finish, it's hard to focus on the goal. I maintained the four minute jogs out to the far end and most of the way back, but those too deteriorated to three minute jogs and two minute walks by the beginning of the third lap, and thence to two minute jogs with three minute walks.

And I was not the only one suffering. Many were not jogging at all. It was fair carnage on the course by that hour, and they were not all pudgy one-timers who lacked training or experience. There were some very sharp and fit athletes who had been destroyed on the bike course and were barely surviving a 26.2 mile forced march.

One athlete, who was both young and fast, was curled in the fetal position on a cot at the medical tent furthest from the finish line several times that I went by. He was faster and fitter than me on any given day. And yet, slow and shame-faced as I was, I was faster that day. I finished. He did not.

He took the ambulance to a Mexican hospital.

But I finished.

And I went back to a nice hotel with a family who had only one Ironman they cared about in the whole race. They don't know that Yvonne Van Vlerken biked like a Norse Goddess and Rutger Beke won the men's race. They could not pick those people out of a lineup.

But they know I am an Ironman. And that is enough.

Vamos, Mexico!!

2009-12-01T06:29:00.003-06:00

That was the hardest course conditions I have ever experienced at Ironman. Had it been my first, I don't know if I would have made it. Full race report to come when I get back to The States and dry out, but can I just say one thing?

Mexicans cheer WAY better than Anglo spectators.

WAY.

Not even close. We’re talking Mexicans are to Michael Phelps as Anglos are to me.

If you’re doing an event in the U.S., you’ll get the occasional “way to go, guys,” or maybe “good job” or the dreaded “you’re almost there” along with the ubiquitous “WOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

This would be sorry fare indeed, judged by the prevailing norms south of The Border. The people of Cozumel lined their streets and made them into the equivalent of a rowdy soccer match. Men, women and children were out all day long, cheering pros and age groupers alike.

They were beating on drums.

They were beating on buckets and pails.

They were beating on pots and pans.

They were singing and chanting.

They cheered audibly and rhythmically for every sad sack that was limping by, well into the night. We heard:

Bravo!! Bravo!!

Bravo, Muchachos!

Vamos!

A-r-r-r-r-riba A-r-r-r-r-r-riba!

We heard much that I did not understand (which might be best later in the day), But every competitor decked out in the Mexican flag was regaled with a rhythmic:

VA-MOS, MEY-HEE-COH!

VA-MOS, MEY-HEE-COH!

The little kids in their soprano voices were the best. They cheered every Mexican competitor as if he or she was an Olympian in the home stretch on the way to certain gold for the Mother Country.

Late in the evening, a little boy about 8 or 9 years old was sitting on a wall by an aid station as the walking wounded and left-over carnage from the bike course were limping through their marathon. In his little, heavily-accented voice he singled out an older, Anglo participant, and broke out his elementary school English training:

“GO! You-cahn-doo-eeet! You-cahn-bee EYE-RON MANG!”

The participant, to his great credit, acknowledged the encouragement. He looked straight at the boy and said:

“You can too. Some day, you can be an Ironman.”

Pay it forward people. Currency exchange is not necessary.

Imagination

2009-11-28T15:12:00.004-06:00

"The man who has no imagination has no wings."*

So, here we are again, the night before another Ironman race. It is at this point that you start to wonder why it is you do this for "fun" and how it is that you will complete a 2.4 mile seas swim, 112 miles of cycling in the Caribbean sun, and a marathon on the Cozumel sea wall.

In the end, those types of things are completed with the same power that causes one to push "Register" on the race's internet site.

It's imagination.

That inner eye that let's you see history before it happens, to see what can be, to dare to do things, "not because they are easy, but because they are hard."**

You watch a race, and you do your first triathlon, and you watch an Ironman, and you begin to imagine that you can do this.

And you can.

Not all at once, but one bouy at a time.

Not all 112 miles, but the 10 minutes until your next drink.

Not all 26 miles, but 1 kilometer to the next aid station.

As long as you can imagine just that far into the future, just around the corner where only the mind can see, you have wings.

And when you have wings, anything is possible.

*Muhammad Ali

**John F. Kennedy

The Rules

2009-11-24T07:36:00.002-06:00

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”*

Two more sleeps and I will be taking off for Cozumel. The trip is the fulfillment of a goal to compete in Ironman Cozumel. I signed up for the event over a year ago, and I have been following a triathlon training plan from Coach Kris since January. And I will be only one of a couple thousand people who have been training steadily for most of the year to complete that race.

But that process began long before January. And it began long before I ever signed up for an Ironman race. The process began over a decade ago and with very different goals.

First it was a gym membership and jogging three times a week. Off and on exercise. Off and on weight loss. Then suffering through a road race. Off and on running. Then suffering through a marathon. Then quitting.

Then starting again. Joining a gym with staff who encouraged me. A faster marathon. MS150 bicycling tours. The first short course triathlon. The first half-iron triathlon. Watching an Ironman swim start and swearing I would never do such a thing. 24 hours later signing up for an Ironman and one year later doing it. Now it's time for Ironman Number three.

So, if you read about Ironman triathlons or other endurance events--here or elsewhere--and you say, "I could never do that," you are wrong. That is simply an excuse to make you feel better for choosing NOT to do it. Assuming that Ironman and marathons are never your thing--which is totally fine--you can duplicate the process of becoming active and healthy.

But if you go against "The Rules" you are doomed to failure. You might as well repeal the law of gravity. Ask Wylie Coyote how that works out. Follow the rules and you can succeed.

Rule One: Start where you are.

You have no choice but to start where you are. It's no use bitching about being slow or being fat or being old or being achy or having bad knees or what have you. You are where you are and you have to move forward from here. If you bite off more than you can chew, you'll get hurt and discouraged and quit.

And if you have quit before. So be it. Start now again. Start where you are. It takes the average person 5 attempts to quit smoking, and I think it took me at least that many attempted programs over three or more years before exercise became automatic.

So, no more head talk about can't. Start where you are.

Rule Two: Use what you have.

Just like you are where you are, you only have what you have. Don't waste breath or mental energy on what you don't have. Is your time limited by a full time job? OK, so you cant' train 40 hours a week. No surprise there. But I bet you can roll out 30 minutes early and walk the neighborhood. I bet you can turn off the television and play soccer with your kid.

Don't have money for a gym membership? Use the playground.

Don't have motivation and discipline? I bet you have shame and laziness. Use those instead. Sleep in your running clothes. Set the alarm. Make a date to meet someone more disciplined than you are. The embarrassment and the shame of not showing on time will get you going. (Watch this space for more later).

The point: even things that hold you back can be used as tools if you are creative enough. Use what you have--whatever you have.

Rule Three: Do what you can.

I've already alluded to this in the prior rules. It does not matter how fit or how woeful your current condition is. You have to start with your current abilities and build from there. And there is no profit in being judgmental about what you ought to be able to do.

In fact, I might even add to this rule--do LESS than what you can while you're building the habit. Set the coffee maker the night before, go to sleep in your workout clothes, set the alarm 30 minutes early, and walk around the block or the neighborhood with a cup of coffee every morning for the next two weeks.

When this becomes a habit, you are ready . . . . to walk faster . . . to run a little . . . to play.

(More later).

The point is this: going forward, you are not responsible for failing to accomplish the impossible. But the flip side of the coin is that you are very responsible for failing to see and do the possible -- where you are right now, using what you have, and doing what you can.

*Arthur Ashe

Coach Kris: The Man With The Plan

2009-11-20T08:14:00.004-06:00

Dear Coach Kris:

I have this little race thingy coming up. I'm told there's a 2.4 mile swim, a bike segment of 112 miles, and then a marathon, 26 miles 385 yards. I suppose one should have a plan for such as this.

My first time at this distance my plan was: finish. If you wonder whether you're going to hard, you probably are.

My second time my plan was: don't die in the frigid swim, bike too strong, and then run just fast enough to get a "13" in the finish time.

I am unimpressed with my planning ability.

So, how do I make a plan for this race, and what should it be? One lap swim, the home stretch of which is downhill with the current. Three lap bike. Three lap run. I hear it's hot, flat and windy.

Your most obedient and humble servant,

Greyhound

P.S. Does Tequila make an appropriate recovery beverage?

*************************

Re: Ask Coach KrisGreyhound,

I hope the 13 in your finisher time was in the hour column not the seconds one. Here is a sure fire Ironman strategy that has work for many athletes of all abilities. It comes in a three stage format.

Plan A

Swim solid, but not too hard. You can’t win the race in the swim, but you sure can tank your race. Stick to steady pace. Current does not matter, everyone has it, so it doesn’t give you a pass to lollygag it on the return.

Bike CONSERVATIVELY! Every Ironman race I have seen implode has been due to over doing it on the bike. Start off moderate and get settled in. Bike inside a box, don’t let others influence you. This is your race and your day, don’t blow it by chasing some guy who is going to blow up later. Eat and drink according to what you practiced in your training and goal for peeing at least two times. If you have gone too soft on the bike, prove it on the run.

Run according to your pacing plan you have been practicing. Start off easy and be sure to drink, drink, drink! Monitor your effort and shoot for consistency. If all this goes as planned, you will be set for a great finish.

Plan B

Something goes wrong, whether it is you lost your salt tablets or blew two flats. Before you leave for your race, think about what can go wrong and plan that it will. Pack your special needs bags as if your life depended on it.

If your issue becomes more biological, think what has worked for you in the past. A good rule of thumb is when in doubt cut the simple sugars like Gatorade or gels. Drink lots of water, the more the better. If you throw up, don’t force it, back things down and try to reset your inner clock. Don’t try to over eat to make up for what you lost, just keep up with what your doing. On the run Coke can be your best friend or worst enemy. It can give you that added bit of energy you need on the run, but hit it too soon and get ready to ride the sugar roller coaster for 26.2 miles. Broth is great if they have it, but not all races do.

Plan C

Everything is going wrong!

Wipe the tears and dig deep for what motivated you to get to where you are. Slow down and just walk it out. At the end of the day, only you and a very few tri geeks really give a crap about your time. The fact that you did it plain and simple is the big win. Don’t believe me? Ask any kid if their dad/mom does Ironman and they will brag all day about everything but your PR (they don’t care). Your co-workers think you're crazy, they don’t care, they are just amazed you are alive.

Plan ahead and your day will go better than planned. Stay calm and don’t panic. You don’t want to look like Norman Stadler in 2005 at Kona, swearing in German and blaming everyone but himself for not doing things the right way.

Enjoy!
Coach Kris

But I Hate Exercise!!!

2009-11-18T15:10:00.005-06:00

This is the fourth in a series of posts, primarily intended for folks who are not yet where they want to be in terms of being active and healthy. You can go back and read of the concrete benefits of exercise, encouragement that everyone can participate, a sermon to the effect that everyone should be participating, and a court room argument dispensing with most of the excuses why people do not. This, I hope is the first in a series of posts on how to get started and stick with it.

OK, OK! I hear you. You would exercise but you HATE exercise. Not so, says I. You don't hate exercise, you just suck at it. If you were good at it, you'd enjoy it. Don't you usually enjoy things you're good at? We just need to get you "good" at this.

And if exercise is drudgery along the lines of eating your vegetables or taking your cod liver oil, you are seriously doing it wrong. When it is done right, exercise is play--the best part of your day, the one thing you look forward to, the one thing that you refuse to do without and that dictates all the rest of your schedule.

Think I'm nuts? Ever heard of the runner's high? All those endorphins and oxytocin and stuff that athletes experience in the wake of a good workout are the same chemicals that course through your body in response to sex and orgasm.

(That ought to increase my google search optimization).

So what I'm saying is that exercise is as good as sex! Just like it!

OK, so that was a lie.

Great sex is still way better than exercise. If not, you've taken that whole Ironman compression socks look way to far. You need to find a balance. Make a little friend or text your spouse or something.

But I would say that great exercise overlaps mediocre sex. The point is this: when done right, exercise is way more like making love than eating Brussels sprouts.

So how do we get you from where you are now, to daily whoopie (i.e., exercise)? Well, Dr. Greyhound, your own personal Dr. of Sweet Lovin' has the prescription. I think there are three parts to this game plan, each of which has lots of ways to approach it. They are:

1. Developing The Habit
2. Increasing The Challenge
and
3. Celebrating Successes

Watch this space. More to come.

HTFU Greyhound

2009-11-17T11:25:00.000-06:00

Enough of this taper-induced wussification.

Game Faces!!!!

It's Time

2009-11-16T07:49:00.002-06:00

We interrupt this blog to bring you a very special news bulletin. It is time:

Greyhound For The Prosecution

2009-11-13T07:59:00.004-06:00

This is the fourth in a series of annoying, kick in the ass posts. At this point in the sermon, the faithful reader has been presented with the undeniable benefits of the active and adventurous life, been cajoled with the encouragement that everyone can participate, and then confronted with my proposition that everyone, as a moral imperative, should be participating.

Now, anticipating the affirmative defenses and mitigating proofs of readers so accused, Greyhound, esq., rises in rebuttal with closing argument for the Crown. But fear not, gentle reader. There is mercy to be had at the bench and bar, and that will be the next post. Read on!

My Lords and may it please the court, Greyhound, esquire, for the Crown.

My right honorable friend hath propounded to the Court many and illustrious proofs wherein he claims the Defendant ought to escape the consequence of the charge wherein he stands accused, to wit, that he did knowingly and and voluntarily choose, both by neglect and by willing sabotage, to despoil the fleshly vessel given him. But, the Bard hath said, and methinks 'tis true here, that "oftentimes excusing of a fault doth make the fault the worse by such excuse."*

We, here gathered, have heard it said, "I don't have time to exercise." No time? Are we to be given to understand that the Defendant has time to be dead--that is to die five years hence of his self-induced corpulence and be prematurely committed to the earth 20 years before his time? Defendant would trade 20 years of life for five hours each week of exercise and the consumption of some greenery?

Nay, my Lords. Defendant most certainly does have the time for exercise. He simply chooses not to do as he ought. Why his very wife and children took the stand as hostile witnesses for the Crown and most reluctantly admitted that the Defendant doth spend two or three hours each evening of the week on his most prodigious hindquarters consuming televised entertainment. Moreover, he does this so far into the night, whilst consuming such alarming quantities of delicacies not even seen on the King's table, that he is quite unable to rise in the morning. Why the common tradesman or laborer, with none of the Defendant's advantages, is most commonly about with the tools and accoutrements of his trade long before the Defendant so much as stirs an eyelid.

Indeed, my Lords, we have before us a cloud of witnesses, those objectively having much less time than the Defendant, who nevertheless complete extraordinary feats of daring do -- marathons, century rides, triathlons, ultra-marathon trail runs -- all whilst conducting demanding professions, raising children and contributing to the communities in which they find themselves. The law does not demand this of the Defendant, but only regular activity and perhaps the odd fun run. Yet, he refuses.

Time, my Lords? No. That is not the issue. "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is."** This Defendant has simply made the choice to expend time in neglect and hostility to his own flesh--the very crime wherein he stands accused.

But then we hear, "Have pity on me, my Lords, for I am unable to comply with the law in that my mortal frame will not bear it." The Defendant then proceeds to complain of bad knees, or a bad back, or various and sundry injuries.

Injury? My Lords, the Defendant's plea is silenced in shame, or should be if ever he had any shame. The injuries of which he complains are not excuse for his crime of neglect. Nay, they are the very product and evidence of that crime. Had he been about his business many of those injuries would not exist. Moreover, we see before us the tales of Team Hoyt, Sarah Rheinertsen, Rudy Garcia-Tolson and any number of challenged athlete s who, though they be missing limbs or the ability to make them move, are nevertheless in the arena, braced for the fight.

And I need not remind this Court that the Defendant does not stand accused of failing to be Michael Phelps. The charge is only that the Defendant failed to use what he had. In that he stands guilty.

Finally, my Lords, the Defendant doth protest, "but I don't like exercise. I don't like to run." Are we then to understand that the law may be avoided by those who find its duties distasteful? Surely not. And who among us has ever known a child who did not like to play tag on the playground at recess? Nay, my Lords. Properly understood, the Defendant's plea is just as nonsensical. In protesting that exercise is dreary, the Defendant would have us believe that play and recreation are toil. May it never be so.

Which, my Lords, brings me to the matter of sentence for these crimes, here proved and not avoided. Defendant should be sentenced to a lifetime of vigorous activity, without opportunity for parole. And it would the recommendation of the Crown that such sentence be carried out under the direction of the Warden, Trigreyhound, who has been known to say, "Training is recess. Go play."

Which will be the subject of my next post . . . .

*William Shakespear, King John, Act IV, Sc. ii (1594-96).
**C.S. Lewis

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Coach

2009-11-12T09:21:00.000-06:00

With apologies to Johnathan Edwards.

This is the third in a series of posts. The first is here. The second is here. But this is the part of the show where you probably start not to like me so much--if you like me at all. Even some of you in the choir (those already engaging in an active lifestyle) will probably think I am taking this a little far. But having grown up Southern Baptist, I know no other way. I'm about to serve up some o' that "come to Jesus" luciousness. If you can hang in there, I'll issue an alter call and will help you down the aisle.

But if that is not your particular brand of vodka, there's a little red "x" in the upper right hand corner. Use it. You have been warned.

In the last two posts, I tried to lay out an inspiring case that "anyone can do this," that is, anyone can create their own healthier outcomes and participate in a vigorous sport. Now, I'm switching gears. Anyone and everyone can do this, but more, anyone and everyone should be doing this. And there is a moral component if you are not.

Now, bear in mind, I'm not talking to everyone. There are people who cannot participate in an active lifestyle and who suffer from debilitating chronic diseases that cripple and kill due solely to genetic factors. I'm just talking to the 99.99% of people who were born with two arms, two legs and sufficient ambulatory gifts to move themselves across the face of the planet.

So, yeah, brothers and sisters. I'm probably talking to you. And I'm talking about moral and ethical duties.

If you are Roman Catholic, I would point out that gluttony and sloth are both included in the list of seven deadly sins. In fact, between these two, you've got almost 29% of the list covered.

If you grew up in Baptist Sunday School like me, I'd roll out the parable of the talents and liken thee unto the man who received one talent and who, instead of investing that talent on his master's behalf, buried it in the ground. "Thou slothful and wicked servant . . . cast him into outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Wow, that was cheery, huh?

If you believe in any kind of supreme being at all, I would simply ask how one can squander and dishonor the temple of a perfectly adequate body, especially when many don't have those blessings. How can we not live lives of thanksgiving in motion?

If you are a complete atheist, I would point out that you are a marvel of millions of years of evolution. Your very body was evolved to run. You are the hairless mammal of the steppes who is adapted to dissipate heat through sweat rather than respiration like the mammals you hunt. You are evolved to run four and five hours with your tribe at a time at a 10 minute pace until the antelope or deer drops of heat exhaustion and the protein and calories from its meat feed the ginourmous brain that sets you apart from Australopithecus. You, my friend, were born to run.

It's so easy, even a cave man can do it. Why are you sitting on your ass?

"OK, preacher," I can hear you saying, "Now you've left off preaching and gone to meddling. You ain't better 'n me just because you exercise, and if I don't wanna, that's my business."

True, friend, it is your business--if you alone suffered the consequences. But now I'm going to get really personal (as if I had not already). I want to talk about the people who count on you.

If you are putting yourself slowly to death with your plate and your inactivity, are not just an island nation having no effect on anyone else. The message you are sending by your choices to those who count on you is that they are less important to you than your cheeseburger or your reality TV.

You'd rather have Cheesie Poofs and put your feet up while watching electronic sedatives every evening than walk down the aisle at a future wedding.

You'd rather sleep an extra hour than grow old with a spouse.

You prefer fried Twinkies to playing with grandchildren.

And, prepare yourself, all you sedentary conservatives, for I am about to drop the conservative equivalent of the nuclear weapon ----------

No matter what your words say, your actions say that you expect and demand your offspring or your government to take care of you as if you were a helpless and incapacitated ward of the state rather than exercise personal responsibility by being a grown up and taking care of yourself.

**Gulp**

Gone too far have I?

Do we not think some of the same things about people who harm and prematurely abandon their families through abuse of drugs, alcohol and tobacco?

How is abuse of food and leisure any different?

So, I've probably pissed you off or touched a nerve or at least prompted a moment of thought. I hope so.

If you're human, you are looking for a way out, a way to mitigate or avoid altogether the moral charge I've leveled.

Well, watch this space because there's more on that later.

In the mean time, can I get an "AMEN" from the choir.

The Triathlete Next Door

2009-11-07T09:56:00.005-06:00

This is the second in a series beginning with my last post in which I wrote concerning the blessings of my own good health and made the claim that anyone could find themselves in the same place.

At the end of this post, I'm going to tell you a dirty little secret about Ironman. But let's start at the beginning. The starting place is that it takes a very special kind of person to be a triathlete--or does it?

Look around you carefully, and I bet you can start to pick out the triathletes from amongst your neighbors. We have things in common, we triathletes.

If you see him in your neighborhood, he's probably a middle aged guy like me having a temper tantrum with Father Time and wanting to feel like he's immortal and forever young and vigorous.

Or maybe not. He could just as easily be a she--a brave, confident and headstrong girl (i.e., woman) in her late 20s who has been stewed in post-Title IX sports participation and told by her parents that she can do and be anything she wants. And when she's at her best, she believes them.

Or maybe she's over 50 and started road racing back before marathons had 30,000 participants, and she runs fast because that's the way it was done back in the day. Or she might even be a nun who is 75+.

Or the former governor of South Dakota.

But he probably has 2 or 3 $10,000 custom bike in the garage with power meters and carbon everything that he rides every weekend out in the Hill Country or on Peak to Peak Highway.

Or maybe not. He/she could just as easily be on a road bike with clip on handlebars in a group ride on weekends and spin classes during the week.

He/she might even be doing brick workouts by riding loops around and through the neighborhood to avoid drive times to the country that would take more time away from family.

But certainly he's shaved down and wicked fast and vainly gazes at his perfect body in the mirror while eating his organic free range everything and downing supplements.

Or maybe not. He/she could just as easily be fond of the occasional pizza and beer and hasn't touched anything other than a multivitamin. The significant other seems pleased with the appearance, and that is counted as good enough.

His/her body might not be perfect at all. She might have one leg.

Or he might have no legs.

Or he might be blind and unable to gaze into a mirror at all, let alone race without a sighted companion.

But you can count on this type of person to be independently wealthy or voluntarily poverty stricken in order to train 30 hours a week at the expense of family, friends and relationships of all kinds.

Or maybe not. He/she could just as easily be an early riser or figures out some other way to train when it is hard and inconvenient so that family life goes on.

So, yeah. These triathletes all have something in common. They have lots of time to train, or are very busy. They have perfect bodies or are (to borrow an pejorative term) "crippled." They diet strictly or not really at all. They are consumed by the sport or do it as a hobby. They are fast slow and middle of the pack. They have lots of money and flash equipment, or just an entry level bike and borrowed wetsuit.

And yet they are the same in one crucial respect. They have made a choice.

Whatever barriers to participation exist, and all of them have barriers, they have made a choice to push through. They choose to do and choose to be.

And the dirty little secret of Ironman? Anyone can do it. That's good news.

Or is it? Watch this space for more later.

You Gotta Have Heart

2009-11-06T07:05:00.003-06:00

Only a few of you that I know personally have been aware that this fall I have been a little worried about my health. At the Austin Triathlon I experienced some pressure in my chest and higher than normal heart rates.

All I could think of was Steve Larsen, an elite former pro that died of a heart attack during an interval session on the track. Am I having a heart attack? Is this just indigestion?

Of course it was hot as balls and I'd had a wee bit of stimulants that morning.

Then in the Houston heat, I was doing an evening run and I felt a blip in my torso followed by a jump of my heart rate from 130 to 180+ with no change in my effort or pace. Again, all I could think of was Steve Larsen.

Of course, the job had been stressful that day, and I'd had a little bit more than my normal level of caffeine.

Then, as the training volume maxed out, I felt pressure in my chest and fatigue when I tried to get going in the morning or rose from my chair to go up the stairs. And all I could think of was Steve Larsen.

Rather than be the typical man and avoid going to the doctor -- especially in the run up to Ironman Cozumel -- I decided that it was a little bit stupid to risk sudden cardiac death in pursuit of a hobby. Ironman, for all the grandiloquence and purple prose expended in its praise, some of it here, is (at the end of the day) just a hobby. Call it extreme stamp collecting or model railroading on steroids.

So, I went to the doctor and went my way through the American Health Care System in search of an answer.

There was the Primary Care Physician visit with normal heart rate, normal blood pressure and normal resting EKG. Check. OK, but that did not really test my heart at stress, even though I was experiencing that icky feeling in my chest.

Then there was the referral to get a Holter Monitor to wear for 24 hours and while exercising. Check.

Then there was the referral to have blood drawn for lab work. Check.

Then there was the referral to (and selecting a) cardiologist to poke me and Check.

Then Dr. Cardiology though he might hear a heart murmur through his stethoscope; so, there was the cardiology referral to get an echo cariogram (essentially an ultrasound of the heart instead of a uterus, which would be an interesting search in my case).

Check.

And at the end of the day all the tests were normal. Indeed, they were way better than normal. I just needed to mix in some decaff and some tums.

**whew**

Four years of triathlon and three years of Ironman have made me healthy beyond my wildest dreams.

I am 43 years old and take no medications -- save for some acid reflux. No blood pressure medication. No cholesterol medication. No Viagra (**wink**). No diabetes medication. Not bad for a 50+ hour per week lawyer at an AmLaw200 firm.

At 43, I have no injuries or knee problems or back problems in spite of (or because of) hours and hours of training and physical training every week.

At 43, my resting heart rate is 51 beats per minute.

At 43, my total cholesterol is 169, "good" cholesterol of 71. Most people have to take drugs or pursue Veganism to get numbers like that.

At 43, my weight is 139 pounds and my body mass index is 23.1 -- while 2/3 of my fellow citizens are overweight or obese.

I am healthy and blessed beyond my wildest expectations. But here's the dirty little secret: t

There is nothing special about me.

If you are a person of normal health, even normal "bad" health for a person of your age, this could be you. Over time, within limits, slow and steady, this could be you.

This is good news. Or is it? Watch this space. More later.

LonghornTriathlon in 8000 Words (8 Pictures)

2009-11-05T06:12:00.004-06:00

Beautiful morning.

Before the gun

That's not so scary, is it?

Love how this makes me look like I'm first out of the water. Not so much.
Note the studly SCS Multisport gear.

Early in the bike. Note how the shorter crank size that Phil put on there means my knees don't have to come way up into my chest. Allows a lower and yet more comfortable bike position.

Better position. Thanks Phil.

Finish Time: 6:04:09
Again with the SCS Multisport Stud In Training Gear.

Greyhound's California Adventure

2009-11-03T08:20:00.003-06:00

Hey, peeps! I know from the website info that I have at least a few readers in Southern California from time to time. Well, I'm coming your way the latter part of this week.

And there was much rejoicing.

I know that's not exactly "stop the presses" material, especially since the LA Times is hardly in the "press" business any more, but I will be doing some training whilst in the area, balanced around full days of law nerd conferencing and business getting.

I am staying in La Jolla and thinking of bringing my wetsuit in the event that some folks with local knowledge might show me a safe place for an open water group swim.

I hear there's a relatively big body of open water immediately west of my hotel. I'm all over the local intelligence that way.

So, if there are any geeky tri-blogger types out there, maybe someone affiliated with the San Diego Triathlon Club, who could get me in on a group run or group open water swim or the slow lane of a masters work out, leave me a comment or e-mail me at trigreyhound at yahoo dot com.

On the other hand, I hear Macca is in Southern California right now, and we're totally tight Facebook friends, so maybe I'll "poke" him as well. Surely he's lost so much fitness in three weeks that I can hang with him, right?

Running With Myself

2009-10-30T08:00:00.005-05:00

Finish time: 6:04:09

This is where it started, you know. It started with running.

It started those years ago now, alone and early in the sweaty Houston mornings, when two sticky miles around the sleeping neighborhood at 11 minute pace was "cardio." That was when it was hard. Really slow, really alone, and really hard.

It started with the achy knees and the shin splints and the 800 calorie breakfast after the 400 calorie jog. Quitting running, starting again, getting injured, starting again, running well, running poorly, weighing 169 pounds.

Doesn't it always start that way? Faltering efforts on one's own, pain and foolishness. Pain and failure, glimpses of success, endorphins and thrill followed by the loneliness of the long distance runner when you wonder why you're the only one out in the cold rain on a Sunday morning. Even through the windshields, you see the looks of drivers on a morning like that. They think you're a fool.

Even as children, we scarcely learn to walk before we are walking fast and bobbling then running--usually away from the worried grownups who try and fail (as they must) to prevent us from running into things, falling and starting again.

I suppose it would seem like foolishness for a two-year-old to run from safety to skinned up knees. But, after all, that's how growth happens--for two-year-olds and for forty three-year-olds. Foolish and necessary all at the same time.

"I pray--for fashion's word is out
And prayer comes round again--
That I may seem, though I die old,
A foolish, passionate man."*

Off the bike this fool jumped in T2, and despite some lollygagging and habitual complaining, it felt good to get out into the sun and onto the run. My legs were not overtired and I was not overworried about completing the day's training task. I was blissfully ignorant about the features of the three loop course save the downhill and up between the arena where T2 and the finish were located to the lake park where the turnaround was. So, I practiced Ironman pace and decided to run past the first aid stations until a mile or two was under my belt.

Whisk-whisk-whisk-whisk. Light and easy were the quick steps that began to chew up little bites of feet and yards and miles. 138 pounds now--31 pounds down from a younger and slower self. The hills just meant smaller steps and slower pace but also the fun of gliding down the other side. The sun came and went behind sticky, humid clouds, but the warmth did not drain my energy. Steady on, and on with ease, one small landmark at a time, breeze sometimes but not at others.

There were lots of people on the run course, and the out and back nature of the route meant you would see them over and over. And there were lots of bands and music and entertainment and hooplah. Honestly, though, I was quiet inside, almost like I was out for one of those runs in the dark. I was out for a run by myself. Whisk-whisk-whisk-whisk. Smooth and steady--an occasional walk through an aid station and once to handle a side stitch on a hill that will not exist in Cozumel.

And then it was three laps done. Whisk-whisk-whisk-whisk. Two hours and a fraction and the knowledge that I could have gone much further still without going to the well. Thirteen minutes faster than my previous best when I tried hard and worried. 13 minutes faster as a passionate, and relaxed, fool.

I don't guess it matters how many Iron Distance races one has done. I always wonder at points in the year, "Who was that guy? Because there is no way it could have been me. I'm never going to do this."

But then at different points I know--at that point I knew--anything is possible for "a foolish, passionate man."* Cozumel awaits.

*William Butler Yeats, A Full Moon In March (1935). A Prayer for Old Age, st. 3.

Biking With Yoda

2009-10-29T07:56:00.005-05:00

That spectator did not just call me "Tiny."

Yep. He did.

He called me "Tiny."

Judge me by my size do you? Mmmmm?

And well you should not. In cycling size matters not. For my ally is The Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are, not this crude matter. You must feel The Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere. Even between the land and the bike.

Better to be small it is, but large in the ways of The Force.

Fifty Six miles to the transition it is. Plan we must! Mmmm? Yes!

Big cyclists you are, and hammering the hills out of T1. Great warrior, hmmmm? Wars not one great.

Grave danger you are in. Impatient you are. Impatient I am not. Strong in the ways of the force am I. If the heart rate low and steady you keep, then strong at the end will you be. But you? Grave danger you are in.

Spinning up the hills I was, and low within the wind my shape I made. Fewer than 135 heart beats to the minute did I make. The Force was with me. 1 hour did pass and more than a third of the course had I run. To the end in less than three will I make? Always in motion, the future is.

Ah, hour two. Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you. But fear you? I do not! Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

But my ally is The Force. Even smaller do I become and invisible to the wind am I. This is not the cyclist you are looking for. Move along. Slower I must go, but still there is no weakness. No impatience. Use the Force I must. Because . . .

Now the third hour is. A few minutes behind am I. And yet, no impatience. Three hours can I make? Do or do not. There is no try.

So through the wind I must ride until we turn for home and then flow with The Force at my back I will. 22, 24, 28 and 30 mph riding on the Force.

And three hours I did make, faster than my own efforts have yet permitted. Faster still could I have gone. And now run I will.

And when 43 years old you are, look as good, you will not.

Swimming with Ernest

2009-10-27T09:44:00.001-05:00

In the early fall of this year we traveled to a city in the hills next to a lake that looked across the farmland towards the plains. In the lake were water plants, long and soft, dark in the morning light, and the water was grey and dark, still in the October morning.

Crowds went by and down the road to the water. And the noise around them did not stir them, each man alone with each other together. And it was a fine thing looking out over the water by one's self in that crowd.

The day had been cool before the sun, and we gathered by groups. Men in groups. Women in groups. Groups by age, the largest by far being men between 35 and 45. All these men with half a life behind and maybe less than half before, and lots of money between them; yet, all preparing to plunge in the lake and swim away from shore.

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another. To all these men, it seemed a noble thing to swim that morning. We don't kill our food to survive any more. We don't run with the tribe until the antelope falls from exhaustion. We of the suburbs do not even hunt for fun. We don't shoot big game anymore. We don't battle game fish.

Even war is not the same. My enemy and I will never see each other's eyes. I from my country will try to kill him from afar on a screen. Only when pressed will we send our youth to be boots on the ground while leader and leading class dine in safety. He from his will prefer to kill everyone except my soldiers--relief workers, journalists, secretaries in office buildings. He will immolate himself (or persuade his weak contemporary to do so) because believes this will hurt me above all else. Acting as we do, are we, then, men at all? Where the "grace under pressure?" In modern war . . . you will die like a dog for no good reason.

But we are men. We were not made for lives of safety and comfort and electrons entertaining us with the struggle of others on a Sunday afternoon. We were not made to be fearful or still. Our excess makes us that way--excess money carried in our garages and homes, excess food carried around our bellies, excess status carried between our ears. Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. We were made for struggle, and ambition, for striving, for the fight, for the arena. If life does not provide it, we will create it for ourselves.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age. Reaching the middle of our years, we start to fear the arena is past. Then we search for grace under pressure and we'll reach almost anywhere looking to see it in ourselves. We try to be the heroes in our own narrative, for as you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

And it was so necessary that we stood with hundreds of our fellows, long before our sleeping, half-living friends stirred in bed. The dark was still upon us as we formed our ranks and our battalions. Commands rang out from the loudspeakers. The flag was saluted, the anthems sung. The dawn began and clouds took up the colors of from gray to pale purple to peach and then to gold. The hills looked out over the mirror lake and file upon file of hills beyond it. Group by group we took our place and came to the water, following the order to swim.

And once more we took to the struggle in the water, hundreds of men with perhaps less than half their lives before them. I moved forward in the surge while the man on the speakers shouted at us. The water was dark, soft and warm to the touch, and the air around our heads fresh and cool. Plants in the water brushed and grabbed my legs and the mud sucked me ankle deep.

I swam out hard and strong, head up at first and then pushing my face into the lake. At first, the air and water were good, smooth, and full. I breathed and blew and all was well. I swam with the group of men until I ran into one, tried to swim around, clocked another, and drank the brown, silty water. About 200 meters in, my shoulder ached from the unaccustomed wetsuit and I was just sick of the whole thing.

I choked, looked up and tried to keep myself on course. The far corner of the course seemed no closer, and I took a couple of breast strokes, as if there was something to be done other than swimming on. I don't enjoy swimming, and I am always looking to abbreviate the experience. But stopping would feel good temporarily. It does not solve the problem. Cycling is only allowed if you complete the swim. The more you half-ass it an complain to yourself, the longer it will take.

So, I looked for some way to swim that would account for the stress on my shoulders. I kept my head down for longer in order to make progress, and swam some off course. Lifting my head more often, I stayed on course, but swam slower. There is nothing heroic about a man swimming, except the finishing of the thing itself. So, nothing to do but keep going. Hercules or not, the manure in the Aegean stables still needs shoveling.

And shovel I did. Made the first turn far too slowly but glided around and swam for turn two. By now, faster swimmers from the wave behind had caught us up and I gave up more time trying to move outside to let them through. Again, trying to make distance between citing and a gimp shoulder made me swim like a drunken sailor. Correcting course, I finally made turn three.

More shoveling.

The waves at this race had some "slower" waves ahead and some "faster" waves behind, with a good alternation between male and female waves. By some freak of physics or combination of bell curves, I swam into a gathering of faster and slower swimmers all arriving around turn two at the same time, like bigger and smaller pieces of flotsam caught in an eddy. Again, I felt in the way, but could see the final buoys and the swim exit some 500 meters off. I pushed my face again into the lake, pulled hard, glided when I could, cited often, and tried to make this last bit count.

As the end came closer, it also came faster. No watch was on my wrist nor was one seen by me. I am what I am in the water. And I am not what I cannot be. Though always tempted to quit, finisher I will ever be, and finisher I was. Because man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

**I don't know what kind of literary dweeb thinks of Hemingway while waiting for a swim to start, but I did. So, I tried to write it down.**

PR, Bitches!

2009-10-26T07:55:00.003-05:00

Full race report to come, but I dropped 13 minutes from my half-iron PR.

And this course was WAY harder and hillier than my PR course or the flat, Ironman Cozumel course.

And my PR was set when I was 40. I am now 43.

And with the exception of about 8 miles at the end of the bike where I pushed a little harder, I was keeping Ironman heart rates all the way through.

Current Ironman pace at 43 years of age on a hard course = 13 minutes faster than old half-iron PR at 40 years of age.

**blink**

Coach Kris is a freakin' genius, riding with Coach Liz will make you fast, and Phil Shama will pimp your ride like no other.

I think I am seeing the light of possible at the end of this training tunnel.

Ask Coach Kris: Conehead or Not?

2009-10-23T10:15:00.007-05:00

Dear Coach Kris:

I noticed that at the Ironman World Championships this year, few if any of the top pros wore aero helmets. The speculation was that this was due to the heat at Kona and the better ventilation available by way of a normal cycling helmet.

Of course, it's hot at Cozumel where I'll be racing too, and aero helmets (like race wheels etc.) provide a bigger advantage to faster racers--i.e., not me. On the other hand, seaside wind could mean that I face a constant head wind at some point on which would make an aero helmet even more efficient.

So, the question: should an age grouper who will be racing Iron distance well under 20 mph in hot conditions wear an aero helmet or go for the increased cooling properties of the ordinary cycling helmet?

Greyhound:

Re: Ask Coach KrisGood question. This is going to come down to personal preference. I can not speak for the pros in Kona, but would guess they had made their choices based on hard proven results from training. You may have noticed Chrissie wore a traditional helmet on the bike and no hat on the run. This would have me guess she has some heat issues she manages in her own way.

For you Greyhound, I would recommend choosing a newer aero helmet with plenty of ventilation. Some, like the Lazer, even have ports to dump water on your head. If you can tolerate these, you should wear one. The aerodynamic performance advantages of an aero helmet at an Ironman distance has been proven in wind tunnels across the world. I have personally been a part of wind tunnel experiments at the Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel at MIT in Boston, MA and have seen just what they can do.

I hope this helps shed some light on your head wear choice delema. Keep trying things out and go with what works for YOU!

Cheers,

Kris Swarthout
USAT Level II Coach
USAT Midwest Regional Chair
USATF Level I Coach
Co-Owner SCS Multisport LLC
612-396-3801

Size Does Matter

2009-10-21T08:08:00.002-05:00

I've often wondered: is bigger necessarily better?

If you were to believe half the things you see or hear in the media--legitimate media or the questionable forms that appear in 24 hour stores and Supreme Court cases--you'd think that size was the sine qua non of satisfaction. Indeed, the whole world economy has been in a downward spiral due to the bigger is better, people borrowing (and banks lending) money at too much risk in order to get that McMansion or house they can't afford.

And when was the last time a woman swooned over the little guy--and Tom Cruise doesn't count because he stands on a box. And I would further note for the record that there was only "Mr. Big" in the popular TV series. There was no "Mr. Really Knows His Business" or "Mr. Just Right" or "Mr. Rocked My World" even "Mr. Kind."

But again, how can bigger necessarily be better? I mean, how can something that doesn't fit feel good? What of size-induced discomfort? I mean who wants to climb on top of something huge that just doesn't fit and try to make it work? Is that really fun? Does that really feel pleasurable? You can see, I hope, how someone who is 5'4" (with all parts scaled to fit) might wonder about such things.

But finally, this weekend, I knew for sure my crank was just the right size for the job. A lot of guys resort to self-help when it comes to crank size. And sure, I like a "do it yourself" crank job just as much as the next guy. DIY can be lots of fun and should be a part of any healthy person's life. There's certainly no shame in it. But, this time I went to a "professional," if you get my meaning. And the professional attention made all the difference.

The feelings and sensations were mind blowing. I just kept going and going and going. Six hours I went. Seriously! Six hours! And a few minutes after finishing, I was ready to go again. It was so smooth and effortless, gliding like a well-lubed piston fitting and moving within the tight walls of its cylinder. Sometimes I pushed hard and slow. Sometimes fast and quick. Changing tempos and position and pace.

I think I felt the earth move.

So, big thanks to Phil Shama of Shama Cycles for persuading me to reduce the size of my cranks on Carmen Tequilo, the tri-specific bike in my garage-mahal. It totally changed my pedal stroke and positioning on the whole bike, enabled an efficient, circular pedal stroke and markedly reduced the fatigue of riding 100 miles. Seriously, every part of the bike fit better and every party of the bike worked better with my body just by putting on a shorter crank that fit my anatomy better. It was remarkable and I cannot overstate how much Phil's expertise helped me out. Phil is the Jedi master of all things crank and bike related.

What?

Why are you snickering and looking at me that way?

Of course I was talking about a bike. What did you think I was talking about?

Light as Iron--Morning Run

2009-10-17T18:24:00.005-05:00

Shade and breezes and bending light. Morning behind a cool front that has cleared it all away: the tension, the smothering heat, the crushing humidity, the doubt, the questions.

Today, all I feel is almost nothing at all. My feet turn the earth beneath me like it is on ball bearings. The ground whispers by. I am running but I might as well be riding a bicycle with no chain. It is effortless.

Time stops. Or maybe all of time is now. Mile 16 is just as easy as mile 8 and as easy as mile four and feels like it would go on no matter how far over the horizon I ran following the rising sun. And all the while, my feet whisper -- swish swish swish swish -- at 180 steps per minute.

Back straight, body light, held aloft by something that defies gravity. I don't need to push myself because I am being pulled along.

I have been wondering how one makes it 140.6 miles to an Ironman finish line. I always do. How am I going to drag myself all day long and into the night.

Perhaps I won't have to. Perhaps I'll be pulled along.

Iron Juggler

2009-10-16T07:24:00.005-05:00

Timing is everything.

If you want a simple and convenient run up to the Ironman, sign up one year in advance for a race that occurs before the intense heat of summer. To avoid burnout, start your real preparation about 6 months out when large numbers of your triathlon club will be out in training groups. Oh, and make an effort to be independently wealthy so that work will not interfere with your almighty training calendar.

Or if you like a challenge, pick a late season Ironman

So you can start training 11 months in advance

And so you can train through the heat of summer when no one wants to ride with you

And so you can train through the fall after most of your friends have already shut it down for the year

And so you can peak at the same time that the autumnal acceleration of work duties and trials and receptions is at its most intense.

Oh, and be sure and do it the year that fall temperatures decide never to show up in Houston.

Then you can develop some side skills in addition to swim bike and run such as

1. Eating pre-prepared crap in your car or at your desk

2. Experimenting with sleep deprivation

3. Mental calendarical juggling so that you can keep all or most of your training sessions and still do your doctor's appointments and that lame reception which lasts until 9pm after which you drive home and arrive at 9:45 and turn in 90 minutes later such that you sleep so late you miss your morning swim session (but not so late that you can avoid getting up and going early to the office) which swim session you must now fit in some time later in the day after the bike fit perhaps but before picking up the kid from school for piano lessons because of the spouse is on the scrap book retreat or perhaps this evening or perhaps tomorrow morning before the long run that is moved from Sunday to Saturday in order to run while the kid is at band contest due to the scrap booking retreat and that little thing called parenting.

Whew.

Given my somewhat timid and bookish nature, I have rarely been accused of having "balls." But right now, I'm pretty sure that whatever balls I have are in the air. I don't relish dropping them.

Ah, December. Glorious December. I can hardly wait.

Winning Mullet

2009-10-14T08:44:00.003-05:00

The runaway winner in the mullet song lyric contest was Carrie from Tri to Be Funny. I had to include a picture of her hubster, Shawn, given that he probably gave her the answers to the guy songs. He's lucky I didn't put a mullet on him to.

As a result of winning the mullet song lyric contest, Carrie is entitled to choose amongst three fabulous prizes:

1. A gently used Body Glide stick;

2. Pink compression socks; or

3. An itunes gift certificate.

She can claim her prize and make her victory speech via iphone in the comment section.

Just Another Day In Paradise

2009-10-13T07:33:00.004-05:00

Maybe we've been here before.

You know, that period of time right before an Ironman race where it's no longer this thing way out there for which you are preparing, but an imminent challenge. It gets real. Really real.

It's sort of like looking under the bed for that monster you were always afraid was there as a child only to feel the hot breath and see the yellow eyes of an honest to goodness monster.

My monster is the swim, so much so that I've been lately going off the reservation and swimming sets that exceed the distance prescribed by My Personal Yoda, Coach Kris. Fear will do that to you.

So here's the question I have about my particular monster. I know I can swim 2.4 miles in the open water. Been there. Done that. I'm pretty sure I can swim 2.4 miles without the aid of a wetsuit. But when the water starts moving up and down or side to side, or when I have to swim into a current, my weak little canine brain starts to despair.

Cozumel is a one loop swim course, leaving more time for despair and less opportunity to break the swim into bit sized pieces. In addition, the first half of the swim is into the teeth of the prevailing current that flows from south to north and which is used by divers to "drift dive."

Has anyone actually been in this water to know how serious this current is? Are we talking "lazy river" current or are we talking "Deliverance" current. I don't want to drift. And I don't particularly want to swim for an hour on the redline into a current before turning for home. But I think I hear banjo music.

SWIM FASTER!

Ask Coach Chris

2009-10-08T06:53:00.004-05:00

And now we return to our regularly scheduled blog. Another in a series of tri-training Q&A called, "Ask Coach Kris" in which we get to propound our most bedeviling training questions to the big giant brain that is Kris Swarthout of SCS Multisport. This time we have two questions from blog readers.

First a question from Fe-Lady, an experienced, uber-fit, 57 year old Ironman finisher.

Dear Coach Kris:

I have missed a couple (just a couple!) of longer workouts (bike/run specifically) due to illness. Should I try to make that up during a rest week, or just continue with the program I have and call it a loss?

Thanks Coach!
Fe-Lady

Iron Lady,

I would ask what is the distance of your main goal race and how far are you out from that race? I will assume it is an Ironman (old detective skills still flow through my veins). As a rule I say missed workouts should never be made up. By trying to make up those missed workouts during a recovery week you can throw off the balance of your program. Since the key workouts are what you would have been recovering from, I would recommend repeating the workouts on your rest weekend at 70% of the volume and 100% of the original intensity prescribed. Be sure to recover well and think about getting a post workout massage to aid in recovery.

You were wise to skip the workouts due to illness. They would not have helped you and they could have drawn out your illness recovery time. Good luck!

Coach Kris

From Iron KT in the Woodlands, an experienced triathlete who came to triathlon through competitive swimming, and who finished her first Ironman (Wisconsin) last year:

Dear Coach Kris:

Why do you think my heart rate rises drastically when I run (average 178 bpm), when it stays reasonable (average 140 bpm) when I swim and bike (assume I am exerting the same output for all 3 sports)? Actually, I'm probably going [comparatively] slower when I run (9 - 10 min. miles) vs swimming and biking.

Thanks. I am so frustrated by this issue! I had to stop my run yesterday after 1 mile because I couldn't sustain my hr.

Thank you!
KT

KT:

HR rates vary between sports , i.e. your zone 3 for running will not be the same as your biking zone 3. Normally the levels are 5-10 beats per minute different. I would recommend having your zones checked by a professional exercise physiologist.

They should run VO2 max test on you while you are running and biking. By doing this you will know for sure if your zones are correct. If you have done this with one of the two sports, then I would suggest returning to the person who tested you and doing the test on the other sport. If you compare the results and you still find a wide swing in your HR rates, I would seek the advice of your doctor to rule out any cardiovascular issues.

If you have acquired your HR zones by using the old 220 minus your age, you should know that scale has a rate of error of +/- of 20 beats per minute. The error balance should be enough of a reason to convince you to seek out professional testing.

If you wish to field test your threshold HR try this simple field test. Begin your workout at an easy pace, warming up for 10 minutes, then proceed to slowly increase your effort monitoring your HR and your breathing. Make a note when you begin to audibly breath (breathing loudly). Your threshold will be around 3-5 beats below that point. If you are doing this test on a bike trainer, increase the effort by increasing your gear ratio while holding a consistent cadence. For running, gradually increase speed and incline on a treadmill. Have someone with you who can listen with a non-partial ear. I hope this helps!

Coach Kris

If you have a question for the guru triathlete coach to the stars, feel free to e-mail me or leave it in the comments. Better yet, if you are thinking about where to get coaching next season for a big race or because you want to improve, hit the links for Coach Kris or SCS Multisport in the side bar.

Now, GET OUT THERE AND TRAIN!!!!. Make every day count.

Please Stand By

2009-10-06T07:44:00.001-05:00

I wanted to post today, but I have a court appearance tomorrow and much work to be done. So please stand by, and when we return we will have (among other things) the winners of the mullet contest.

But for the record, Houston, October 6 is not supposed to be 80 degrees and 90 percent relative humidity at 0500 in the a.m. That was truly sub par and I expect better.

And Sometimes It Rains

2009-10-04T16:11:00.003-05:00

Well, it's been a quiet week in Spring, Texas, my home town, out on the edge of the Megalopolis.

Seven weeks from the moment I am writing this I hope to be about half way through the marathon at Ironman Cozumel.

While some might think that's pretty exciting to think about (and in a certain way it is), I can be a glass half-empty kind of guy sometimes--especially when there are 56 days to go in an Ironman buildup.

Something about 15 or so hours of training can do that to a fella that works 55 hours a week in an office. This week was 15 hours and 48 minutes of training including:

108 miles on the bike in three sessions of which one was 90 minutes on the trainer
A bit over 25 miles of running
About 8000 meters of swimming
One strength session with Miki

It is at this point in a build up, especially if you've been going all year, that you start to think you might be over this whole Ironman thing. Everything hurts. Everything is hard.

It's hard to go to sleep when you want to sleep. It's hard to stay awake when you want to stay awake. It's hard to stay asleep when you want to stay asleep. It's hard to get up when you need to get up. It's hard to work. It's hard to train.

But then, sometimes, it rains--a drizzle that is just cool enough to break the back of summer and let you know of autumn's promise. And you get to run in the drizzle and spalsh in the puddle like you're three again. And you get to be three again with your tri club president. Only when she was three, she probably played with Barbie or Strawberry Shortcake instead of riding her pink Barbie bike like a pink predator.

And while Memorial Park is not full, there are others out on a Sunday morning enjoying this small miracle with you. In a city of four million people, there are a few good people enjoying good things.

And the miles tick by while the road goes ever on, bringing darkness into flat and pale grey light.

And then I remember why I would not trade it for anything.

And that's the news from Spring Texas, where all the schools are exemplary, all the food is fast, and all the commutes are above average.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

2009-10-02T07:50:00.002-05:00

Coach Kris tells me I need to train in the heat.

Which means that yesterday was a perfect day to train for Ironman Cozumel: hot, humid and windy as hell.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiice.

So, Coach Liz, my local IM COZ peep, and I went out for a two hour tempo ride in the middle of the day. I drank buckets. I sweated buckets. And it was the perfect conditions to simulate Cozumel.

Niiiiiiiiiiiice.

Nearly 90% humidity. Upper 80s for the temps. And winds gusting above 20 mph.

Niiiiiiiiiiice.

I'm so lucky to live where I can get such wonderful training.

yeah.

Love that.

Ask Coach Kris

2009-09-30T15:54:00.004-05:00

**In the run up to Ironman Cozumel, I'm going to be asking my coach some questions, and publishing his answers here. If you have a question, enter it in the comments and we'll see if we can get the great and powerful Coach Kris to lend us his expertise!**

Dear Coach Kris:

When I am training in the heat, I notice that my heart rate gets higher and higher as the day goes on and as the temperature increases. I know sometimes "heart rate creep" happens when people are dehydrated and the heart has to work extra hard to pump thicker fluid. But this Saturday, I know I was super well hydrated because I . . . you see I was constantly needing to . . . well, trust me, I know.

But even when I'm well-hydrated, my heart rate really spikes when it is hot--like at Ironman Cozumel for example. Does my lactate threshold also go to the higher heart rate or does it remain the same? Specifically, assuming that my running threshold is 147, and I'm trying to keep it below threshold, does my threshold go up with the heat and "heart rate creep" or should I still stay below 147, even if my HR is 10 beats higher for the same pace?

Yours truly, Greyhound

Dear Greyhound: An excellent and very perceptive question my Iron Paduan. The answer is you'll have to run slower when it is hotter outside. DUH! (OK that was me writing, not Coach Kris).

Your Lactate Threshold remains constant. Your heart rate is increasing because your body is working harder to cool itself off. In the event you find yourself running in the marathon at Ironman Cozumel and you start to see your HR drift up while your pace remains the same, you should back your pace down to allow your HR to remain in it’s targeted area.

You can acclimate your body to work more efficiently by training in the conditions of your event, this will allow your HR to stay more in line. For you, Greyhound, it will be important that you do the majority of your training in the heat of the Houston daytime temps. This may be uncomfortable and against the vampire norms of H-Town, but it will allow you to adjust your body's response to the heat, and to practice HR control along with proper hydration technique.

Now get back out there and stop whining, Coach Kris

(OK, that last bit was mine, too.) If you have any thoughts or a question for Coach Kris, give us some love in the comment section.

Ride Like A Vehicle

2009-09-28T16:37:00.001-05:00

OK, I'm as big a militant as anyone about how bikes are vehicles, but dude I saw riding his bike on the shoulder of the HARDY TOLL ROAD this morning needs to exercise some judgment. For those of you who don't know, the Hardy is Houston's answer to the Autobahn--six lanes wide, limited access, and no effective speed limit at rush hour.

That reflective vest you were wearing won't save you when the Yuppie in the BMW irons you out at 90 mph whilst fiddling with his Ipod.

Still the point is well taken: if you want to be treated like a vehicle, then ACT LIKE A VEHICLE. Obey the traffic laws, place yourself in the lane like a vehicle, signal, and keep your head on a swivel. Check it out:

Hat tip to Devin Wilson for posting the link on Facebook. Let's be careful out there.

Mullet Contest

2009-09-26T15:34:00.004-05:00

***This is a contest. The fictional letter set out below is chock full of references to 70s and 80s bands, song titles and lyrics. Whoever identifies the most references wins some fabulous Greyhound Schwag. Contest rules are in the comment section.****

Dear Ironman:

It's been quite a journey these last three years of Ironman races. It seems funny to call you Ironman, for it is clear that you are an unforgiving mistress--more like an iron maiden if you ask me, cold as ice. All we do crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see.

And poor Mrs. Greyhound an iron widow. She was just a small town girl. We were just two American kids doing the best they can. Those crazy nights, I do remember, in my youth. I close my eyes, only for a moment and the moment's gone. Sometimes, the best that you can do is fall in love.

Now its me out training, while she sits, alone, an empty stare, a mother's face she wears. Heartache to heartache we stand. People always told me, "Be careful what you do. Don't go around breaking young girls' hearts." I'll be lucky if she doesn't tcall the Police and tell me to "beat it," or at least "don't stand so close to me."

And no matter how much I train, you cry, "More, more more." You sink your teeth down to my bone. You make it hurt so good. You're a real tough cookie with a long history. But I've seen the toughest around.

Now I fear my body is going. Losing ground, I'm reaching for you. Oh, well. Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky. Sure, I'd like to finish an Ironman in about 12 hours. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? 12 hours? Only in my dreams. Out of the blue. All my money won't another minute buy.

And yet I'm addicted to love. Caught in a landslide--no escape from reality. It ain't the way you move. It ain't the way you move me. I can't escape. I'm shot through the heart, and you're to blame. And very soon, I'll be a foreigner racing in Mexico. I imagine riding my bike through a flock of seagulls, a painted sign on the side of the road saying, "15 miles to the Love Shack," dancing the night away, going sailing and Mrs. Greyhound with a drink in her hand and her toes in the sand. Pretty maids all in a row. Come on set 'em up.

But that's after the race. Don't tell me you love me. Just bring it, Ironman. Any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me. Hit me with your best shot. Sometimes I think I'll lay it down, but I gotta keep on rocking. I just can't stop. (You can still rock in America, can't you?) I was born to run. I was born to dream. I keep my motor clean. I wanna be a man in motion. We all need new frontiers. So, I'll keep on running.

Forever yours,

Greyhound

Iron Kegger

2009-09-25T17:51:00.004-05:00

What's on tap this weekend?

Well it depends upon who you ask. Walking around UT last week, all appearances indicate the answer would be "Old Milwaukee" or "Pabst Blue Ribbon" or "Bud," something cheap and plentiful.

Why?

Because even being old enough to have fathered those undergraduates, and even being slow and way below average triathlete, I could still kick most of their asses in any discipline at any distance.

Swim. Bike. Run.

Sprint to Ironman.

You pick it, junior, because you're a disgrace. Nineteen years old and pot bellied.

Are you kidding me?

And it wasn't just the rare "hefty" kid. It was everywhere. A majority of waddling, carbon based life forms that weren't even fully emancipated from mummy and daddy.

And not in the agriculture college town of College Station where they slaughter and eat their own pets for breakfast. No, in liberal tofu eating Austin.

Well, me and the "old" folks have a different kind of activity "on tap." Tomorrow is a wee brick workout--swim, bike and run back to back. All at Ironman pace. 30 minute swim, four hour bike, 40 minute run off the bike.

And Sunday, we aren't sleeping it off either. For me it's gonna be a couple hours running above Ironman pace and negative splitting a long run.

Tyler Durden (Fight Club) was heard to remark that he "didn't want to die without any scars." Well, me neither.

Wanna come, junior?

Nope?

I didn't think so.

Punching the Clock

2009-09-20T15:39:00.005-05:00

Well, it's been a quiet week in Spring, Texas, my home town, out on the edge of the Megalopolis.

Mother Nature cannot decide if she will show us some mercy and allow fall to begin, or whether she intends to strangle us like a woman scorned -- which I assume you have heard has furies of which hell hath never conceived.

The other day, I literally experienced July and October all in the same run. A mass of cooler air had entered the Megalopolis, and I thought I was in for a pleasant, pre-dawn run. But out on the bayou, pockets of stale, stagnant July still festered in the thickets and oozed up from the fetid water. One minute, you'd feel a fresh breath of football weather, and the next you ran into a movable sauna that tries to strangle you.

Whatever Mother Nature decides to do, I'm laying odds she switches course a dozen times, because changing the mind is a woman's prerogative.

But training waits for no man--or woman. The show must go on. Punch the clock and get it done.

This week was pretty solid. The speed and pace were nothing to write home about, but the time-in-saddle and overall volume is getting solid enough that I feel like there's an Ironman afoot.

This week involved 17 hours 15 minutes of total training. Involved in that was an 89 mile long bike with a 15 minute run off, an 11 mile long run, and 10 thousand meters of swimming.

Oh, and there was the small matter of a court appearance and about 50+ hours of "day job" to do.

Nothing to exceed what every age grouper out there does, but solid nonetheless.

Speaking of day job, tomorrow I have to report for jury duty--me with my suit and bow tie and "board certified appellate lawyer" persona. Yeah, I'm really popular with lawyers. I've been struck every time.

And that's the News from Spring, Texas, where all the schools are exemplary, all the food is fast, and all the commutes are below average.

The Sexiest Man Alive

2009-09-17T08:15:00.004-05:00

Last night I was wondering whether I still want to do this. It was "once more into the breach" and an hour of 30/30s on the trainer.

Check. Done.

This morning it was "once more into the breach" for an hour of running including 3x7 min. hard.

Check. Done.

Walk to the scale.

Yawn.

Notice some additional ribs and abs and muscly stuff in the mirror.

Step on the scale.

140 pounds.

**BLINK**

ONE HUNDRED FORTY POUNDS BITCHES!!!!!

I. Still. Want. To. Do. This.

That is worth getting up early and doing two workouts a day.

That is a reason why.

Damn near 43 years old and 140 pounds with 9% body fat.

My tapered shirts need more taper.

My skinny suit fits.

I just cinched up another loop on the belt.

And Day-uhm, I'm a sexy beast. Nothing like hitting your race weight to make you feel like the sexiest man alive. I may be slow, but I LOOK FAST!!!!!

And, to paraphrase Fernando, "it is better to look good than to be good."

Can't wait to work out tomorrow.

Pig Iron

2009-09-15T19:19:00.004-05:00

Superpounce came home from her sleepover feeling all gimpy. Gimpy turned to fever. Fever turned to fever with a headache and sore throat. Definitive scientific testing confirms that she has the swine flu. Never fear, she's already on the mend with Tamiflu, and the recent cases don't seem to be any big deal for people her age.

So far it does not seem to be affecting the grownups in the house very much. Pauline went from gimpy to fever on Friday, but she survived the 70s, so she may have had some previous immunity to the disease.

I haven't had anything except gimpy, and that may have had something to do with the four and a half hour bike ride on Saturday and the 10 mile run on Sunday. I did both at what would have been a massive PR Ironman pace and all 10 beats or more below lactate threshhold. I'm gonna chew through 140.6 miles like a knife through hot butter.

Ain't no pig flu coming to live in this body. The environment is too hostile, what with nearly 13 hours of racing and training last week and seven or so hours of training in the last three days. Ironman has no time for pig flu. Hurdle the weak, trample the dead.

**furiously knocking on wood***

Hot n' Sweaty Southern Fried Triathlete

2009-09-09T09:09:00.003-05:00

So, it's Wednesday. Which means its time to start thinking about this weekend's bike. I may not be able to swim, but I can get efficiently from T1 to T2, especially when its flat like Cozumel. I want to get me some o' that bikey awesomeness this weekend. Liz and I are considering another hot Galveston ride on Saturday, but it would be better/safer if a few other folks came with us. Anybody in Houston wanna come out to play?

In Which I Bang My Head Against The Wall (But Do Not Stop)

2009-09-08T07:38:00.003-05:00

I am seriously starting to wonder whether, having started this sport so late, I have reached the age that I will get no better, regardless of how I train.

Yesterday was my third Olympic-distance race--the second this season--and was by far the slowest. It was a putrid swim followed by a decent, hard bike, followed by a horrible run.

Looking at the numbers, the lion's share of the guys in my age group swim within 10 seconds of 2:00 per 100m--even the super fast runners that finish at the top of the age group. I swim those kinds of times EVERY DAY in the pool, easily and without knowing how to flip turn. I even swam 2:15 per 100 in my first Ironman. Then, I've proceeded to swim slower every race since.

It does me no good to warm up. I just wind up standing around for 35 minutes waiting for my wave to go off. And when it does, it's the largest wave of the day and I started by getting smacked upside the head, kicked, swallowing half the lake, and spending 3 to 5 minutes hyperventillating and making little or no forward progress. After getting my wits about me, I thought I swam pretty strong, and seemed to be making good progress. Then, towards the end, I'm all, "are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

And what should have been a swim in the low 30s was FORTY FREAKING MINUTES. Gawd almighty I'm getting sick of this. It's like banging my head against a flippin' wall.

As always, I enjoyed the biking, especially pounding down hill at about 30 mph, but the drafting and crowing on the course was a problem.

Perhaps I biked too hard or drank too little, but by the time I got to the run I could not run with any tempo. I was cursed with a very uncomfortable breathless feeling and even tightness in the chest. (Not Good). I did not have the watch set to look at heart rate, but observing the data afterwards shows that I was holding a heart rate comparable to an interval workout even though I was only putzing along at 10 minute miles. Potentially dehydration or heart rate drift because of the heat.

So, the goal of running well was out the window and the secondary goal of Ironman Cozumel training was in. No walking between aid stations allowed. No matter how slow, keep on running.

And I did.

I banged my head against the wall, and I did not stop. That's about the only good to come of this race.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice

2009-09-04T07:03:00.002-05:00

My ability to bound out of bed without an alarm clock at whatever ungodly hour is legendary. Today, the machinery did not fail me. At 0400 my eyes were open and at 0415 I was up and putting on the Speedo. By 0417 I had a cup of tea steeping.

But at 0418 there was a flash of far off thunder and at 0425 there was thunder, lightening and a light rain. By 0426 I had recalculated where I would fit this swim workout and the brick that was supposed to occur this afternoon.

And by 0430 I had turned in for 2.4 more hours of the best sleep ever to the sounds of a gentle rain.

I could pretend I was disappointed, but you know me too well for that.

Old School

2009-09-03T07:48:00.004-05:00

This weekend is the Avia Austin Triathlon, an olympic distance race Coach Kris and I put on the schedule to keep me from getting sluggish and to get some practice "racing" (air quotes here) in the run up to Ironman Cozumel.

According the Austin peeps, it has been hot as balls all summer and they've had essentially no rain. According to the race organizer, this means that the Lady Bird Lake, the swim venue, is too warm to be wetsuit legal--i.e., roughly like swimming in your bath tub with a few hundred friends trying to beat you to death.

Of course, why you'd have a few hundred people in your bath tub trying to beat you to death, I wouldn't know. That's your business and I don't judge.

Well, that's perfect practice for Ironman Cozumel, which is also not wetsuit legal, but it also raises additional questions. I've lately shunned my square leg swimsuits and jammers in favor of the trusty, black Speedo briefs for my swim workouts. My belt is cinched one loop tighter. My skinny suit tapers nicely to the waist and is taut across the shoulders. I have ribs. I have some abs (at least a four pack). I even have that intriguing little crease that runs from the outside of the hip bones, tracing its erotic course . . . down . . . . to the . . . . well . . . just think Abercrombie & Fitch underwear model and that's TOTALLY what I look like, m'kay?

I can't prove it, but I can say it.

So, with no wetsuit involved, do I go old school with an homage to Ironman Dave Scott by rocking the Speedo on the race course? And maybe throw in some ginourmous sunglasses and dayglow gear and a Bud Light visor too?

Alas, that would risk Dave Scott old school looking a bit too much like Will Ferrell's Old School. SCS Multisport and Coach Kris, apparently believing that there's no such thing as bad publicity, have encouraged me to wear their gear. (I wonder what message this sends when a bedraggled looking athlete limps to the finish with a website URL on his kit?)

So, instead of potentially causing a riot with the Speedo briefs, this is what I'll be wearing the one piece tri suit pictured below:

Look for me and give some encouragement out there. I'll be the one at the back of my swim wave trying to make up at least a little time on the bike and run.

Infection

2009-09-02T18:48:00.003-05:00

An article last year in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that obesity (and thinness) are socially contagious. Among other things, we redefine what "fat" means in relation to the people we hang around with. (Just try it: find the high school pictures from your era on Facebook and look back at the "fat" kids. They are shockingly normal seen with today's eyes, and not nearly as "fat" as you remember them. The fat man from church would not even raise an eyebrow today.)

I am hoping that fitness is contagious as well, because if one is infected with fitness, there is never any need to worry about weight or appearance. The experiment seems to be working at the Greyhound compound.

On Tuesday, Superounce was all keen to tell me about the girl's athletics class that is her first hour in junior high each morning. ("junior high"??!!) In particular, she wanted to make sure that Ironman-freak-show-dad knew about her running workout that day, what they had done, and that she was doing the same running drills that I do. Everything else about school is "fine," (**roll eyes and sigh extravagantly here**) but she had to give me the details about running.

I am loving that. I have heard it said that our values are "caught" not "taught." If so, maybe I have infected her.

Confidence

2009-08-31T10:47:00.002-05:00

So, the Missus is checking on the price and necessity of "evacuation insurance" for transporting my mortal frame, in whatever injured condition, from Ironman Cozumel back to the United States.

Just in case.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, hon. kthxbai.

Tale of the Tape

2009-08-30T17:30:00.002-05:00

For lunch, I ate a potato bigger than my head smothered in ham, turkey, bacon, cheese, butter, chives and sour cream.

I started drinking beer at 4:oo--having waited a whole hour and a half.

Beer and birthday cake.

I'm wearing a bad Hawaiian Shirt, baggy khaki shorts and baggy boxers.

Did I mention they were baggy, even roomy or airy?

Very unlike my garb this morning.

72 miles of cycling in the liquid air on the coast: four hours, 18 mph average, balls hot, average heart rate of 148, intervals above 20 mph.

Did I mention "balls hot?"

Balls.

Baggy? Roomy?

Yeah. Ow.

A perfect end to a week with twelve and a half hours of training.

Three swims totalling 7000 meters.

Three runs and a brick including a 10.4 mile run with a heroic negative split.

Six hours on the bike.

I am so not ready for Ironman yet. Not even a pedestrian "just finish" effort.

But I think I can see it from here. Bring it on Coach Kris.

Pushing Past "Good Enough"

2009-08-29T10:09:00.005-05:00

Someone once asked John D. Rockefeller, "How much money is enough?"

His reply, illustrating the potential poison of material greed, was, "Just a little bit more."

At the risk of sounding like Gordon Gekko, I discovered something about greed this week. In triathlon, a little greed is good--at least with regard to the amount of effort you're willing to put out.

You see, I have a bad habit when I workout--especially in the dog days of summer. My mind is always doing the numbers. I know precisely when I get 1/5 or 20% of the way through the workout. I know when I am 1/3 or 33.33% of the way through the workout. I know when I am 2/5 or 40% through the workout, 1/2 or 50%, 2/3 or 66.67% . . . . .

You get the picture.

And at some point past 2/3, when the workout starts to get hard, I get to a point called "good enough." At that point, the intensity can sometimes wane, and the completion of the time or distance becomes a pedestrian affair of merely completing task--kind of like a felon whose sentence is coming to a close. I have perfect attendance, but it's no real credit to me.

And it happens in races too.

But I've discovered a secret this week. Maybe its because I still have thickened blood from Colorado. Maybe its because I am comfortable with higher heart rates after living in a place where I reached Zone 5 rolling out of bed at 9000 feet above sea level. Maybe its because Ironman is less than 100 days away. There is something about 140.6 miles that focuses the mind. But whatever it is, here's the secret.

When I reach the point called "good enough," my mind often thinks, "I've got x minutes or miles or meters left in this workout. This level of effort is really uncomfortable. I cannot sustain this level of effort for x more minutes or miles or meters. This is 'good enough.' Ease off the gas pedal."

But if you want to get that 90% of improvement that comes in the last 10% of the workout you have to push past "good enough." But pushing past "good enough" is not a matter of lasting until the end of the workout. That's too big of a bite to chew. Think about that bit and you'll choke.

But you only need to take a wee little bite. It's only a matter of lasting "just a little bit more." You can nearly always keep going for "one more song" on the ipod, or "one more light pole" on the course, or "one more length" in the pool without pulling the plug. And if you go "just a little bit more" you can find that rhythm that allows you to keep going further still. You find the turn that lets you see the light at the end of the tunnel.

You find the ability to finish the 4th and 5th of 5x300 at pace. You find the heart to negative split a 10 mile run by almost 7 minutes in heat that would choke an jungle cat.

It's not a matter of either pushing to the end or giving up. It's only a matter of pushing "a little bit more" past "good enough."

It works for triathlon training. It probably works for law and jobs and relationships too, I'm thinking.

Train de Pain

2009-08-26T18:35:00.004-05:00

Eeeez Wendesday, so eez day for st-r-r-r-r-rength training mit Miki.

"You know, my shoulder was kind of achy this morning in my swim workout. Way down inside, it feels kinda sore and stiff."

"Oh, we be car-r-r-r-reful, den."

"So do you think I should skip the workout?"

"No. No skip. In Amer-r-r-r-eekah, dee bourgeois gym r-r-r-rats, day no t-r-r-rain when eez leeetle bit uncomforTAHbull. But in Soviet R-r-r-russia, vee must to train de pain away."

**gulp**

"Sooooo, how exactly do we do that?"

"Today, dair eeez no pr-r-r-ressing ovah head. No heavy bench pr-r-r-r-esss. Vee use body weight. Vee vork mit rubber bands. Vee vork Swiss ball and planking. Vee vork core bahdee shtr-r-r-rength. Vee vork shoulder shtabileetee. Vee make shoulder varm, und stable, und flexible, und shtr-r-r-r-rong."

"You don't think maybe a rest would be a good idea?"

"Nyet. How you get better if you no vork?"

"But I--"

"Nyet. No rest. Vee vork. Den Vee shtr-r-r-r-retch you goot."

Apparently, inactivity is the opiate of the masses. Soviet shoulder feel better.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

2009-08-25T08:19:00.007-05:00

So, Coach Kris wanted me to channel my inner Simon Lessing this morning and "go hard or go home." In order to fit in the 90 minute brick before the day job that pays for all this, I prepared all my gear and nutrition the night before, rolled from the rack at 0350, on the road by 0415 so as to arrive at Memorial Park and be wheels down by 0500.

Under normal circumstances, Memorial Park is an easy place to work out, filled with cars driven by regular runners and cyclists who know how to drive courteously and look for runners and cyclists. But when the whether is "non cold," i.e., too F-ING HOT To WORK OUT, the newbies come out in force. Herein, a few modest suggestions in the spirit of "share and share alike."

First, dear-invisible-stealth-mountain-bike-guy-wearing-all-black-and-riding-with-no-lights-no-helmet-and-no-speed at 0515 in the a.m.: I almost hit you on my bike. There's no way the automobiles could see you. When you get ironed out, it will be your fault, and then your default will rub off on me if I ever have an incident: "I didn't see him. He swerved in front of me. He came out of nowhere. He wasn't obeying the law." If you'll wear some lights and a helmet, I'll promise not to be "that guy." You know the one: the holier-than-thou elitist who screams by you on a $10,000 TT bike with race wheels and screams "on your left" before lecturing you about blinky lights and the lore of cycling. Just think "Christmas Tree" or "Highway Emergency Beacon" and you'll start to understand what you ought to look like when riding in the dark.

How 'bout that?

'Mkay?

Second, all you internal combustion junkies who were u-turning in front of me and backing into parking spaces on the wrong side of the road in order to avoid walking an extra 30 yards prior to your "workout," how 'bout you just park a little further away, obey the rules of the road, and don't endanger my life in order to serve your personal convenience and laziness of epic proportions. If you do, I'll promise that I won't judge you out loud or get blood all over your fancy car WHEN MY HEAD EXPLODES.

'Mkay?

Awesome. Have a great day. Thanks and come again.

Just Another Weekend In Paradise

2009-08-24T18:53:00.004-05:00

The weather man is a tool of the devil sent to torment Houstonians into a false sense of hope.

We were told that Friday's thunderstorms would give way to drier and cooler air -- a decent weekend for outdoor training.

A cruel hoax, that was.

A lie.

It was almost 80 when the sun came up on Saturday. Mold spores were heard to complain about the mugginess of the conditions. By the end of the day it was in the 100s.

Sunday was even warmer and even more humid. I went for a wee bit of a run and nearly killed two Austinites who were foolhardy enough to attempt a long run in our fair city.

I have lived here for 15 years now, and this is the worst I have ever seen it. You can't even escape the swelter by becoming a vampire and training completely in the dark. You need F-ING GILLS and a respirator to filter oxygen from this putrid, pollution-choked, butylene/toluene/ethylene/xylene-infested, particulate-laden liquid atmosphere.

BWAAAAAARRRRRRRRGHGHGHGHGHGHG!~!!!!!

No wonder we waddle from our air conditioned houses to our air conditioned cars park in air conditioned garages and take elevators to air conditioned tunnels to our air conditioned offices and thence waddle our air conditioned route back home.

Except if the escalator is not moving, in which case rather than climb one flight of air conditioned stairs we stare dumbfounded and blink three times before waddling our air conditioned arses to the freight elevator.

I need a hug.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE

2009-08-22T10:30:00.012-05:00

***This is a rant. If a rant is not your cup of tea, and if you're not prepared to hold out the possibility that the things you accept as true might be in error, then you might want to skip this. If, however, you want an entertaining cranial explosion from someone whose law practice has involved health care policy for the better part of the last decade and a half that just might make you think, read on and enjoy. You have been warned.***

If you watch American television, and if you're an American the chances are very high that you watch A LOT of American television, you've doubtless seen the Sprint "direct connect" commercials about "what if delivery people ran the world," or "what if lumberjacks ran the world," etc. The object is to sell "direct connect" cell phones by applying the problem solving ethos of a certain profession like lumberjacks to problems outside lumberjacking such as family court.

I want to ask a different question, and that question is:

WHAT IF TRIATHLETES RAN THE WORLD?

I'm going to apply this question to the issue of health care financing and reform. The purpose, beyond being to entertain, is to point out questions and issues that should be front and center in any discussion about health care, and which neither the agents of reform nor the opponents of reform are adequately addressing.

First, if we know anything, we know that triathletes are the science geeks of the athletic world. We are, after all, the folks who brought heart rate monitors, power meters, aero bars wetsuits and aero helmets to the mainstream endurance sports. Thus, if Dave Scott or Mark Allen were tasked with overhauling health care, they would first take note of certain laws of economics and policy that are as immutable as Newton's laws of motion. Keep these laws in mind throughout the rest of the rant, because just as physical laws of the universe affect how you move through space, these laws affect whether any policy idea is a good idea. The laws are two:

1. THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.

2. YOU GET MORE OF WHAT YOU SUBSIDIZE AND LESS OF WHAT YOU TAX.

Taking the first "law": there is no free lunch. This is really just the law on which all of economic theory rests. Economic choices are merely the result of individuals or groups with unlimited desires deciding how to prioritize those desires consistent with their limited resources. The point of this next part of the rant is just to get you to put down the electric Kool-aid. What I hope you conclude is this: we have to carefully and wisely marshal very limited resources to handle a very expensive problem.

Electoral politics is the art of persuading individuals and populations that this "no free lunch" law does not exist: you can have everything you want and there will be no consequences and and it will not cost you anything. It has taken numerous forms over the decades regardless of party:

Reagan: the promise to eliminate the deficit by cutting waste and fraud in government.

Bush 41: "Read my lips: no new taxes."

Clinton: Promising consequence-free FHA home loans to low income families -- who are now in default at astounding rates to the detriment of the world economy.

Bush 43: American troops will be greeted as liberators in a short, clean Iraqi campaign.

And not to pick on the Messiah or anything, but the campaign statements on health care are full of this sort of thing: We will cover everyone and it won't really cost anything because we'll pay for it by eliminating (i.e., Ronald Reagan) waste and fraud in Medicare and (i.e., Bill Clinton raising taxes on "The Rich."

No one should have believed the "free lunch" promises from any of this President's predecessors, and one should not believe the current variety now. The plain fact of the matter is that you could confiscate all the income of everyone making over $250,000 and not pay for the current federal budget without the expense of health care. Moreover, Medicare reimbursement rates are already so low that medical students wishing to make a living no longer pursue gerontology as a specialty. As a result, the average gerontologist in America is himself rapidly approaching retirement age.

A scientific triathlete, therefore, upon hearing such nonsense would immediately conclude that someone had just attempted to repeal the laws of gravity by the power of his own voice or told him he could expect to do an 8 hour Ironman without significant training. He or she would conclude that rather than count on this coming true, we must take for granted that "there is no free lunch." Again, the conclusion: we have to carefully and wisely marshal very limited resources to handle a very expensive problem.

So, how do we spend currently our health care resources in this country? The answer is fairly clear: we spend an astounding amount of money on lifestyle-induced chronic diseases--expensive, life-long illnesses we acquire by our own choices.

Let's take just one example: Type II Diabetes. According to one source I heard this week (and I'm sure it depends upon how one counts), 40% of all of our health care expenditures are related to treating this one condition and all of its complications. There are an estimated 23.6 million people in the U.S. (7.8% of the population) with diabetes with 17.9 million being diagnosed, 90% of whom are type 2. With prevalence rates doubling between 1990 and 2005, CDC has characterized the increase as an epidemic.

It's no mystery where Type II diabetes comes from.

Type II diabetes is the type you choose--the type you earn through lifestyle, diet, and obesity. If (as is reported) health care is 20% of our Gross Domestic Product, this means we spend approximately 8% of our entire gross domestic problem on this one aspect of being lazy fat arses.

65% of American adults are overweight or obest. That's nearly two thirds, people. This means it is normal to be unhealthy. The flip side is that it is abnormal to be a healthy weight. In fact, only one state (God bless you Colorado) has an obesity rate lower than 1 in 5:

You can click here to see how the obesity rates have exploded over time. During that time, Type II diabetes, long thought to be a disease of adulthood, has appeared with alarming frequency in children as childhood obesity rates have risen.

And this is just one example of one lifestyle-induced chronic disease. Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are also related to osteoarthritis, cancer, heart disease, depression, disability insurance claims, blah blah blah. It's no secret how to prevent any number of conditions of this type:
Healthy habits and choices--often times with lots of outside support and intervention because this is admittedly hard work. This brings us to the second law, which works on opposition to making hard but good choices. We not only fail to enable the making of good choices, we are actually paying people to make bad choices.

YOU GET MORE OF WHAT YOU SUBSIDIZE AND LESS OF WHAT YOU TAX.

One example of this law is the obesity crisis itself and government subsidies for the ingredients of fast food like corn (high fructose corn syrup), grains, soybeans, etc. rather than broccoli, spinach and organic free range chicken. Another is the moral hazard posed by any type of insurance.

If someone else pays for the financial consequences of your bad lifestyle choices, you are insulated from the costs. You have less incentive to choose wisely. Even worse, if the government is paying those costs with other people's money--healthy people's money--the government has instituted a policy of taxing health and subsidizing chronic disease. (This same phenomenon was reflected in the problems behind the fee for service system: the doctor gets paid more for doing more, whether or not it is truly necessary, and the patient does not care because the costs were largely born by his employer and his insurer.) This will not "bend the curve" of health care inflation. To the contrary, it will keep it on the rise. And back to "no free lunch," at one point, it has to be paid for.

So, if Triathletes ran the world, what would they do? They would turn these laws to work on the problem. If poor lifestyle choices were directly reflected in the cost of one's health care, you would be get less of what you tax. If it were expensive to be fat--instead of the government paying for your electric scooter or your insulin--people would get skinny. If your coach and your masseuse and your physio were fully paid for, you'd get more of what you subsidized.

Mark Allen or Dave Scott might well make your diabetes coverage contingent upon inspecting your training log and food diary. But an insurer (government or private) might well make your health premiums increase as your BMI increases, or might have higher deductibles for all lifestyle diseases. (Our current insurance plan already charges me an exhorbitant deductible for Mrs. Greyhound's home injectibles for a non-lifestyle disease because it is trying to make insulin injections more expensive.)

"How dare they," some of you are saying. "It's none of the government's business how much I weigh or what I eat or what my cholesterol numbers are." Ah, but there's the rub, my friend. This is the flip side of taking the government's money: if Uncle Sam pays the piper, Uncle Sam gets to call the tune. And the closer we move to a single-payor system, the more Uncle Sam will call the tune. Indeed, it is actuarially sound for any insurer, government or otherwise, to charge high risk individuals higher premium. It would be morally hazardous and financially foolish to institute a system that failed to do so. That's why teenagers and habitual speeders pay more for auto insurance and why it costs more to insure a house on the coast or on a fault line. Duh.

The other half of you are asking, "Why don't we do that already? Why should I pay for the health care costs of some fat arse with a smoking habit?" Why? Because it is currently illegal to do make individual risk assessments in group health insurance.

Because of the historical accident of wage and price controls during WWII, most Americans get their health insurance through their employment. (Employers of the era dcould not give raises, but they had to compete for scarce labor while the men were off in Europe, and so they began offering health care coverage. We never broke the habit). Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and other federal laws that regulate employee welfare benefits, the insured groupr can only be determined by those who are "active at work" when they sign up for benefits, and risk analysis is illegal. Oh, and all that talk about "pre-existing conditions," such exclusions are already illegal under the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA) for employee health insurance. (I don't recall the President pointing that out in selling insurance reform to town halls full of people who mostly get their insurance from private employers.)

Ever heard anyone on either side of the debate talk about ERISA or HIPPA or the moral hazard or lifestyle chronic disease. I didn't think so. As long as they don't, we are courting a system that is primed for demographic and actuarial and political melt down.

Most people in this economy do produce and are reasonably satisfied with their health care. (Granted, many are unaware of the problems baked into the system and have given it very little thought). Among the people in this system are a whole gaggle of baby boomers who are getting older and largely fatter and sicker by the day (except for those baby boomers who can and do regularly kick my slow skinny arse at the races). In the big picture, we are contemplating taking money from people who produce (and from people who don't need health care, for that is the nature of insurance and risk spreading) in partial subsidy of people who don't produce and who, in the final analysis choose to be sick. The solution is not to fail to provide health coverage at all, for "there is no free lunch" and those costs will be born in some fashion. But "free health care for everyone" is not an option either.

Father and Son

2009-08-20T07:57:00.007-05:00

Massive thunderheads tower over Southeast Texas tonight--beautiful, dangerous, unavoidable. They formed giant pockets of black boiling danger offset against other sections of sky that were clear, blue and free of drama. This happens when things change, when hot moist air filled with energy shoots skyward upon meeting cold dry air sweeping in from elsewhere. The change and the difference creates noise and electricity and energy, and sometimes even destruction.

The opposite of these storms is a dome of high pressure that remains static while air and weather rotates around it. In the spring time, it can be warm, mild and pleasant. In summer, it is stale and oppressive, baked with pollution and heat and suffering.

I love a good thunderstorm to clear all that away, but I found myself wishing tonight for some stagnation and stasis. I was wishing that things could just stay the same.

I don't like the role reversal that is happening between my father and me. I don't like being the protector or the adviser for the man I used to think was the toughest dad amongst all my friends' dads. (I was wrong, of course. He is small and slight of stature just like me.)

It is uncomfortable to watch him decrease and need my help, to see him stumble on a leg that no longer obeys him, to have him seek after my approval as if I were the parent.

We went to the gym this morning. It should have been fun, but it was weird. We've never really recreated to any great extent together. He only did yard work when I was living at home. And it would have been unfamiliar enough this morning if we had got on as equals, for we've never really done that either.

It's not some power trip or ego thing. It's just that since I left home in 1985, we've not spent much time together and have never since lived in the same city. I did my best to be pleasant (and I succeeded) but the dynamic was clearly of me being the dominant partner, and he seeking my approval. And I did not like the reversal at all.

And tonight, quite the opposite. After a very pleasant dinner out with both his sons and their families, I could tell it hurt his feelings when I so casually paid for dinner rather than allow him to buy as he would have twenty years ago. I wasn't a pig about it, but I just make it a practice to get the check if I let Superpounce order King Crab legs and desert. It still hurt his feelings.

Thirty years ago, it seemed that nothing would ever change. Grandmother and grandaddy went to the office every day until some time in July or August. We, cousins all, got in their van every summer and drove off on the Great American Road Trip to Yellowstone or New Mexico or some such place. Five generations of family would gather around the table for every birthday and holiday--FIVE generations of which I was the last.

Now it is gone. They are gone. And more of it disappears every day. Even the ones still here are not the same people. Great grandparents become a more and more distant memory. Grandmother and grandaddy are more vivid, but all that is left are pictures. I have parents who I scarcely recognize as having raised me. And they do not know who I've become or what enervates me. I am the father to my daughter and now to my father as well. And I can feel seeds of my own returning dependence--the exhaustion at day's end, the arthritic pain in my hands and wrists, the faltering steps when climbing out of bed before dawn.

Massive thunderheads tower over Southeast Texas tonight--beautiful, dangerous, unavoidable.

In Soviet Russia

2009-08-19T16:46:00.002-05:00

The power was out today in the Pennzoil building where my gym is located.

In Amer-r-r-r-reeeKAh, vee must to haff Car-r-r-r-r-rbon footpreent to exercise. Dis iz why vee stand in lobby and looook up at gym on second floor when dair iz no electric powah.

But I t-r-r-r-rain mit Miki, who iz from Serbia and who trained in Soviet Russia.

In Soviet Russia, vee do not need elevators to get to gym. In Soviet Russia, vee take stairz.

In Amer-r-r-r-reeeKAh, gym no work without electr-r-r-r-ricity. Vee must to haff zee bourgeois r-r-r-r-ock musik. Vee must to haff tr-r-r-r-readmills with individual television screens with bourgeois TV r-r-r-r-r-eality shows und zee MTV videos. Where to plug bourgeois headphones if dair is no electr-r-r-r-ricity?

But in Soviet Russia, gym still work without electr-r-r-r-r-ricity. Gravity still work. Kettlebells still work. Free weights still work. Stairs still work.

Gr-r-r-r-reyhound still work.

Clean und snatch.

Squat.

Dead lift.

Bench press.

Russian twist (of course).

No headphones.

Nyet.

Stronger Secrets

2009-08-19T08:42:00.004-05:00

An update on yesterday's information that I sent around. Several whom I contacted inquired about pay pal. Stronger has created a super secret pay pal link on her public blog here to donate for our friend. Pay it forward and love one another.

Blogger Down: TOP SECRET

2009-08-18T08:28:00.002-05:00

As you probably know by now, our AJ (aka Little Miss Runner Pants) had a terrible cycling accident this past Saturday. She's healing well, but has a lot of recovering to do. This e-mail is to organize some help for her, principally in the form of care for her dog and light, household tasks. THIS IS A SECRET so don’t spill the beans. (I have it on good authority that she does not read my blog).

Her biggest concern right now is to make sure her dog, Asher, is getting enough exercise. Her face and jaw are in the early healing stages, and she has been advised to stay completely out of the sun so that the scar tissue doesn't get discolored. She's also still on some heavy meds, so should not be walking a HUGE dog around. While her local friends have been getting out to her place to walk Asher 2-3 times a day, it's not easy for many to do that during the week.

Coach Tammy in Austin is in contact with a dog walking service that will be able to take Asher to the dog park and supplement what AJ’s local friends are able to do.

It would also be nice to have a professional house cleaner go to AJ’s place and make it squeaky clean, especially since so many people are coming and going. If nothing else, it is doubtful she'll feel up to cleaning for a while, so this would take that off her mind.

Tammy is going ahead to arrange these services on faith that many people will respond. If you can send $5-15 or whatever is within your means, please do so we can help AJ get through this horrible incident. Tammy will buy a card and put everyone's name on it. Send checks payable to:

Tammy Metzger
PO Box 7463
Austin, TX 78713

Keep AJ in your thoughts and prayers. She's healing great, but concerned about how she will look and how well she will heal. It's too early to tell her it's going to all be alright... but it will.

In Which The Swim Gods Hate Me

2009-08-18T07:05:00.003-05:00

OK, so day two of attempted swim smack down? Not so much.

Yesterday: got up but was greeted with an unexpected rest day on Training Peaks.

Today:

Got up at 0400: Check.

Swim workout in hand: Check.

Psyched myself up for 2800m of short, hard, smack down intervals that would be hard to maintain: Check.

Business attire packed: Check.

Swim equipment packed: Check.

Breakfast: Check.

Out the door at 0445: Check.

But why are all those people standing around outside L.A. FATness? Why are we not going inside?

Prolly 'cause the employee who has to hold down two jobs to make ends meet did not (perhaps could not) get up at 0400 to get the club opened on time.

SON OF A . . .

If I don't work out soon, my head's going to explode.

Put me in, Coach!

2009-08-17T19:29:00.004-05:00

I thought last week was easy.

But Coach Kris has taken recovery to a new level. I have even less training this week than last.

C'mon, Coach. **tap** **tap** **tap**

Is this thing on? After three weeks of living above 9000 feet, I feel like a super hero with my freakish extra red blood cells. I'm ready to pour it on. Let's DO this Ironman thingy.

MORE recovery? Only 5 and a half hours of training this week? I ought to be doing that on Saturday alone. It's less than 15 weeks away now. Shouldn't I be smashing myself?

OK, yeah, so I had 19 and a half hours in one week in Colorado. I rode about 300 miles in a couple weeks and climbed 15,000 feet on the bike and scaled a Fourteener.

But . . . but . . . BUT . . .

I'm sure Coach Kris has an evil plan and is ever so much more expert than I am, . . . .

BUT . . . .

Put me in, Coach. I'm ready to play.

Get Busy

2009-08-16T13:43:00.004-05:00

It's time to get busy. Colorado is done. Vacation is done. Work and fall and school are upon us. It's time to focus and to "gird my loins"--not least because 15 weeks from today is the first edition of Ironman Cozumel: 2.4 miles swum in a single lap in the ocean, 112 miles ridden in two laps on the island, and 26.2 miles run under the hot, Mexican sun.

My base fitness is good, but I am not in race shape. I'm not hard and lean and hungry. So, it's accountability time. Time to get focus and honesty and intensity back into the workouts after some Summer doldrums. Time to get control of the fuel system. Drop the nonessentials and the alcohol and the stubborn soft spots. There will be time for leisure and waste and softness and idleness and slack in December. Now it is time to get all parts of life organized around getting myself across the line as quickly as I can--while keeping the home fires burning at the same time.

So, watch this space. You are my accountability partners in this venture, and although it will not make for thrilling reading necessarily, I intend to post honestly what I'm doing and failing to do, not because my training is impressive. There are many who do more and faster than I do. I will post it here because I want someone looking over my shoulder.

Character is what you do when nobody is watching. I don't want to risk any failure due to lack of character. I'd rather be watched so I don't have to find out what I'm necessarily made of. So, if you don't mind, watch and hold me to account.

This week? Coach Kris prescribed some recovery from the Colorado Trip on which much epic cycling, hiking and trail running occurred. Fewer hours this week but some pretty good intensity in the medium distance ride and run this weekend.

Total Training Time: 9 hours this week.
3 swims for a total of 7600 meters.
3 runs for a total of 17 miles.
3 bikes for a total of 64 miles.

In the next 15 weeks we have to get from half-iron fitness to full-iron sharpness. C'mon, Coach Kris. Pour it on and let's get busy.

In Between

2009-08-11T11:39:00.002-05:00

As I start this, I am on my way down from the height of Breckenridge, Colorado, back to sea level in Houston, Texas. I am truly in between.
Part of me wants to stay up here or near hear forever. Sure, its understandable to want to stay on vacation, but I mean more than that. I’d like my life and work to be in the mountains. I’d like my view to be far and vertical rather than restricted by my own yard fence or the roof line of the neighbor’s McMansion.
And yet I wonder if it is even possible to bring my life and work to the mountains, or if I’d really want to. There’s something about being in the high country that does not tolerate normalcy and work-a-day stuff.
If you are cycling a mountain pass, or running a trail at 10,000 feet, or riding 100 miles through a valley and into a canyon or especially if you are climbing a “Fourteener,” it seems like certain things melt away. Sure, you can distract yourself with the fun of biking and running and taking pretty pictures, but there seems to be more than that.
Certain concerns strangle for lack of oxygen. Certain modern pollutants and whirlygigs are choked out by the sharp purity of human powered locomotion, subsumed in footsteps and pedal strokes and energy created by life rather than by burning former life. Some anxieties cannot compete for attention when more important things to decide--things like where your next footstep goes in the next millisecond whilst suspended in mid-air running a trail or how strong to push off in order to maintain an aerobic burn rate. Divided focus is not a luxury you can afford at times like those. And in the end some nonessential things are just too heavy to be carried when the grade is steep enough and the challenge high enough.
But then again, some of those things you forget or leave behind while climbing are not disposable. My main job is not leisure athlete. My real job is dad and husband. I perform my daily tasks as appellate law nerd to fund those dad/husband responsibilities, and I have not yet mastered the art of providing home and hearth in a manner that is consistent with abandoning the sultry flatlands of Houston. There is some chance I could master that balance if I put my mind to it, but therein is difficulty and much inertia.
Houston is easy and familiar and cheap, if hot a miserable four months a year. There is a big house and a big yard and a new public school and a good job. If I consulted a headhunter, I could doubtless find some type of acceptable position suitable for an uber law nerd to keep us clothed and fed and comfortable in Boulder or Denver. But how much smaller would the house be? Would the schools be as good? How much more time or how much less money or how much more hassle would a new job be? How fair to ask Superpounce to uproot from a good group of friends at age 12? And to be fair, I have friends too. I am reluctant to leave them, even with Colorado in the balance.
The consensus for a move is not there as of now, and though I could probably force the issue economically, I don’t want the weight of such a unilateral decision when (as inevitably occurs with any move) the pack opines, “I wish we were back home.”
And so I wait and wonder. Can it occur? Will it occur? Am I “balancing” or copping out?
All the while the mountains are there. They beckon and wait and they will be there whenever I return. They’ll still be there. They’re always there.

Please Stand By

2009-08-10T08:17:00.002-05:00

I am in the midst of writing something to sum up the Colorado experience. Until then, a little kick in the pants for you:

Playing With Gravity

2009-08-03T17:44:00.005-05:00

Mother Nature can be a dangerous bitch in Texas, but only once every few years when there is a tornado or a hurricane or if you forget to hide inside from her during the summer months.

In Colorado, her beauty and her danger are both in full flower--every day. In large part, this is because the ground forgets to stay "down." It tips up at dizzying angles as forces in the earth collide and bang the mountain plates together, thrusting them skyward.

Because ground is "up" instead of "down" sometimes, you can't see the thunderstorm, hiding behind the peaks. White fluffy clouds sneak over, barely scraping the tops of the mountains and looking for all the world like innocent cotton swabs. But in an instant the wind changes and the cotton swabs give way to cold blankets of coal-colored water, spewing rain and hail and even snow in July.

And you try to escape, but you can't. Although you had dressed for a cold ride, it is not enough. You are clammy with sweat and overheated after climbing 4 thousand feet from the valley floor at Dillon over Swan Mountain Road and thence to the Continental Divide at almost 12 thousand feet.

But at the top of the pass, there is no shelter from the wind, which is now blowing at 30 miles per hour, air temperature 40 degrees, cutting right through to the sweat congealing on your chest. You snap a couple of pictures and try to dive back to Keystone and the warmth of the Starbucks store.

But on the way down, your tires are getting wet and you dare not bank fully through the turns, lest your tires slide out from under you and gravity takes its toll. And the slower you go the longer you will be in the cold. But the faster you go, the colder you are. And your front tire is shaking at 35 miles per hour because you cannot stop shivering.

And you always do these climbs, because descending is not "real" if some bored teenager rents you a townie or mountain bike with a comfort seat and drives you to the top of a pass. And riding just isn't the same where the horizon and mother nature are predictable. It is the risk of not overcoming that gives the avoidance of failure some taste. And it tastes good. Not sweet. More complicated than that. But good.

You can see opportunity for more taste all around. Turn up the valley and head toward Breckenridge and you cannot help but see a rocky monolith towering over the peaks making op the ski area. That, pictured above, is Quandary Peak.

Quandary gives you over 14 thousand feet of gravity to play with. It is the tallest point in the Ten Mile Range in Summit County, Colorado. And without all that oxygen weighing you down, thoughts are clear. Not terribly lucid, but clear. At least at the time.

Tomorrow morning, at first light, three Ironman finishers will go out to play. Why do we do all that training and nonsense? Put this down as one of the reasons.

The Sound of Gravity

2009-07-28T10:50:00.001-05:00

In the last five miles of the climb, the road tips sharply skyward and bends back upon itself like a long piece of asphalt spaghetti draped randomly over the mountain by an ill-humored god. It's about this point that the music that had been playing in my right ear stopped, the end of the hour long album having been reached. It is here you discover what gravity sounds like.

Having started early, the beginning of my ride began in bone chilling shadow. Occasionally in the climb up Hoosier Pass I reached a point where the morning sun had crested the surrounding ridges and streamed down into the valley through which I was climbing. In the sharply slanting light, steam rose off the headwaters of the Blue River and the beaver ponds.

But with five miles to go, the music stopped and I heard gravity. When the rise is moderate, say 3% to 5%, gravity sounds like the gently gurgling water in the drainage ditches and and beaver creeks alongside the road. It sounds like the rhythm of your breathing and the whisper of your tires as you move aerobically skyward. But when the ride tips above 7% and reaches 10 and 11%, it sounds completely different. The gurgling of the creek becomes a torrent and a rush. Breathing is faster and more ragged as you have to stand to whip the bike around a hairpin switchback approaching 15%. And then there's the groaning--as the internal combustion engines downshift and complain in an effort to climb.

And once you're over the top, having smirked to yourself at the folks who waddle from their minivans to snap a picture of themselves in front of the sign marking the Continental Divide, gravity is a scream. Your freewheel whirs like a cyclone of angry hornets as the valley floor on the other side comes up to meet you. And you'd scream too, only your heart is in your throat. You know you're supposed to relax and flow with the descent, but the warmth and sweat of climbing in the morning sun has given way to the bone chilling sweaty terror of descening in the shadows on the other side.

You can see the demarcation point where the shade of the mountain ends abruptly in bright sunlight, and you hope you can hold on with your rapidly numbing fingers until you get there. You start to wonder whether you got the headseat of your bike assembled correctly, whether everything is tight enough, whether your tires are sound, whether feathering the brakes will cause your rims to overheat and blow the tube, whether the road is in good enough condition to be going this fast . . . and how relaxation is possible when the windchill must be in the 20s.

But finally, Alma, Colorado comes rushing up to meet you, and you pedal downhill through town with the wind at your back, matching the speed limit for cars. And you continue to warm and hammer your way over to the Brown Burro in Fariplay, Colorado, the location of the object for today's ride.

A hot latte enjoyed at a picnic table in the warm sunshine.

Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Eats Colorado

2009-07-24T16:46:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to get back on the wagon.

Really, I am.

I'm shedding my Houston-get-it-done-yesterday-state-of-mind.

I'm shedding the unknown number of pounds of goo around my middle that comes from undisciplined eating.

(You know, if no one sees you eat it, the calories don't count. I have this on good authority).

I'm shedding the attitude that is all too willing to hypothesize about the meaninglessness of non-key workouts 4 months before an Ironman race.

And I'm trying to become un-pissed-off about UPS losing my bike, ripping off the luggage tag labels that were supposed to be unrippable, having it arrive two days late in a bike box where all four locks had been cut off and with a rear deraillure bent.

I need to find my pressure points. Woooo-Sah.

I need to eat more plants.

I need to eat less chocolate.

I need to ride my bike.

And I need my friends to show up here in Colorado as soon as physically possible so that cold nights can be properly spent over whiskey and beer doing absolutely nothing.

I am so glad I'm here. And now that my bike has joined me, let's find some Iron and get ride of this gut.

Come to Papa

2009-07-20T19:32:00.003-05:00

Unless you've been hiding under a rock, I'm sure you know the significance of today? You know, July 20?

Yeah, moon landing, whatever. One small step for MAN (sexist pig), yadda yadda. Nope. wrong.

July 20 is the day Garmin releases the new 310xt upon the world.

My old Garmin needed a lobotomy as it became very unreliable and would not boot up in the morning. Finally, this week, it gave up the ghost, just as this lil' baby came out. It's got all the GPS and heartrate and cycling functions of the prior Garmin devices, but you can also swim with it.

AND its got enough battery life that it will last through an entire Ironman--even if you do your Ironman races Trigreyhound style (i.e., finishing well past dark).

It matters not whether you are an elite, professional level endurance athlete, or whether you are a middle-aged, desk-bound office worker who has plateaued at "slow and mediocre" and couldn't get onto the podium with a gun and a Marine Force Recon platoon behind him.

Not that this would be descriptive of anyone you know.

Nope. Whoever you are, you too can have more computing power on your wrist than was available to the Apollo XI command module. For simply trading in some American dollars (or swiping your magic plastic wish master) you too can have new shiny things to invigorate your triathlon training and give your coach raw data over which to cogitate.

So, just about the time Coach Kris was about to pull his few remaining hairs out by the roots for lack of data from his remedial athlete, I'm about to receive my new shiny thing.

Over the past month, I've tried two local stores without luck: one took my name and never called and one had no idea Garmin was coming out with a new toy. I tried my usual, online source for tri-gear, but today I got an e-mail saying the device was still back ordered. So, one google search later, I found a Google Ad saying "Garmin 310xt in Stock" and ordered the sweet little confection for overnight delivery. A couple hours later, I got an e-mail saying it had been shipped and giving me a tracking number.

Yeah, baby. Is that a stimulus package, or are you just happy to see me?

Come to papa, darlin'

Oh, yeeeaaaaaahhhhhh, baby. Right there. Mmmmmmmm, that feels gooooooood . . .

**blink** **blink**

I'm sorry. I forgot you were here. What were we talking about?

I mean, I NEED this, right? What's the point of riding over the Continental Divide and doing epic climbs in Colorado if I don't have Garmin data to record the whole experience?

Yeah, scenery. Nature. Whatever.

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE NUMBERS.

Because in the blogosphere, there are two rules:

1) no pictures means it didn't happen; and

2) no data means you didn't work out.

Slug

2009-07-19T15:10:00.003-05:00

I heard of a study the other day setting out the inverse relationship between temperature and productivity. Supposedly for every degree higher in average temperature, a geographical area will have 3.5% less in economic output. By this measure, Houston should be draining the nation's economy rather than powering it, for we have had the most brutal summer since I moved here 15 years ago.

Every morning when we awake, it is 80 degrees or very nearly. There is dew on the grass because the humidity is even higher than the temperature. The Garmin 305 finally and completely gave up the ghost, and so all the training feels artificial, i.e., with no numbers to upload, the training really never happened--notwithstanding the persistent fatigue and dehydration of just existing in the Bayou City. With no race in the immediate future, few if any friends really stoked about getting out in this weather, and no numbers to motivate me, this past two weeks has been very unmotivated. Times and distances have been completed, but it is all very pedestrian.

Usually, I will have had my sojourn to the mountains by this time of the summer, the better to cool my freakishly large brain and find again some reason to continue on commuting to my air conditioned box in the sky where I organize electrons into words and sentences and paragraphs designed to demonstrate the truth and justice of a client's position. This year, however, I have been delayed. The month of July has been a doldrums just waiting for that day to arrive.

Mrs. Greyhound left for the mountains in early July, and so add the training doldrums and the heat and the job to an empty house. I now know why unmarried men die sooner than married men. With no one here to motivate my better nature, all I want to do is eat bad food and drink alcohol while the clutter mounts up on every side. Again, it is a real challenge just to "get up and do what needs to be done."

And then, of course, the blogging. No blogging to speak of because who wants to hear "woe is me" from me? Not me. Not you either, I suspect.

But at least there is the tour. Although this year's route left a lot to be desired through the first two weeks, Phil and Paul are my soundtrack to July. I am even writing this in a posh, British accent whilst I dream of climbing my own alp. I arrive 9000 feet above sea level on Wednesday and Delilah, my road bike, arrives Thursday. I want to be dancing on the pedals not long after that.

And I want to be cold again. I want to sit outside in the evening with a hot drink or perhaps a good whiskey as the setting sun paints blue shadows across Peak 9. Maybe it will even rain. And as the light grows short and the shadows long, the air will chill. You can see your breath and know for certain that you're alive.

Wish you were here.

The Man

2009-07-09T13:39:00.002-05:00

I've started doing little news items for my Tri Club's website. I'll post them here from time to time if they have appeal beyond the local. This one does. Check out this guy. Whatever training secrets he picked up at Tri-Club have obviously been withheld from me.

HRTC News

What do you call a 50-year-old man who beats every female professional and all but 11 age groupers on one of the toughest half-iron courses in the world? You call him whatever he wants. And so we await direction from Houston Racing member, Roger Wacker, concerning the name he prefers. Perhaps simply, “The Man.”

Roger qualified for the Ironman World Championships at Ironman California 70.3 in April, but why coast into Kona? On June 28, Roger competed at Ironman 70.3 Buffalo Springs Lake in Lubbock. Roger turned in a sterling 4:31:25 performance to win the Grandmasters title, swimming 1.2 miles in 29:22, biking 56 miles in 2:22:57. and running a hilly half marathon in 1:35:27.

Very few of us can imagine Roger’s disappointment in being passed by professional athletes young enough to be his offspring. Really. We can’t imagine it because we’ve never ever bridged up to professionals on the race course. Roger has. Roger’s swim time beat 10 male professional athletes’ times. His bike time, 8th fastest among all age groupers at an average pace of 23.5 miles per hour, beat 8 male professionals, including multiple Ironman champion, Cameron Brown. And his run time, 7:19 pace, found Roger being edged out by a 30 year old and a professional female.

Of the age groupers to beat Roger, the youngest was born when Roger was 31 years old. That 19 year old athlete only beat Roger by 2 minutes, 21 seconds. The oldest age grouper to edge him out, a 45 year old, only nipped him by 29 seconds. The nearest female professional was more than two minutes in arrears and his nearest age group competitor was twelve and a half minutes back. Indeed, Roger’s time would have placed him second among men 30-34 and third among men 18 to 24–that is, it would have if he had not been born during the Eisenhower administration.

Hearty congratulations to Roger Wacker for a superior race result judged by any standard.

120db of Cyclist Rights Luciousness

2009-07-07T16:49:00.004-05:00

I can't wait until Thursday, because the Wells Fargo Wagon (or FedEx or UPS) is gonna bring me sumpin' special. I was reading the comments on a cycling blog where someone had experienced a near miss and an annoying honking motorist, and one of the contributors turned me on to this little number:
It is a 120db air horn for your bike with a reservoir that recharges to 80psi by just using your bike pump. I'm sure i's highest and best use is warning a motorist who is about to pull out in front of you or right hook you. Supposedly you can blast it 50 to 80 times before pumping it up, and it is loud enough to be heard inside a car with the windows rolled up and rattling to Eminem.

Beyond this noble purpose, however, I'm also thinking it is a fitting response to the red neck who gives you the "git off'n the road, fag" message with the horn on his pick'em up truck. Now you can honk back and say:

"Hey, Clem or Jed or Rick Perry or whatever your name is, you toothless, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging waste of carbon. I've got one too!

"AND MINE IS BIGGER THAN YOURS."

**snicker**

But I'm not bitter. I'll let you know how it works when it gets here and I get it installed.

Lollygaggers

2009-07-05T15:16:00.005-05:00

The Almighty hates Texas triathletes

Anybody out there a fan of "Bull Durham" like me? Do you remember the scene in the locker room where the coach starts to berate the players for their lack of effort?

SKIP

    What're you laughing at?!

  
      SKIP
    You guys lollygag the ball around
    the infield, ya lollygag your
    way to first, ya lollygag in an'
    outta the dugout.  You know what
    that makes ya
     (beat)
    Lollygaggers.

That's one of the big differences between me with a coach and me without a coach. When I was following "Coach Greyhound" I lollygagged for a week or two after a race effort. Coach Kris is not so down with the lollygagging.

Apparently, he's all about the gagging without the lolly part, because yesterday I had the Eurobrick from hell on the schedule, and this only a week after a long half-iron effort.

Why "from hell" you ask? When it is well over 80 degrees in your garage before you open the door at 0530 in the morning, when you start riding your bike before sunup in hopes that you'll be running before Satan quits for the day because of the heat, when you are dripping down onto your top tube one mile into your ride in the dark, when your heart rate jumps into zone 5 while running at 10:00 pace, and when the dogs that usually bark at you don't even lift an eyebrow because it's too hot to give a sh!t, you are in hell.

Or, perhaps it's just Texas.

But hey, our Starbucks will stay hot in the car all day long. So, we've got that going for us.

Which is good.

Why "Euro" brick, you ask?

Well, it's not because "Le Tour" is on, although I am again addicted to the spectacle, suspecting all along that much of the athleticism I am watching is about as authentic as professional wrestling. (Side note on stage one: I have serious reservations about anyone who beats the best cyclists in the world by more than 20 seconds in a 15.5k time trial. If you see a performance far outside the bell curve, you should suspect pharmaceutical intervention. Just as Barry or Roger.).

But I digress.

My brick Saturday was a Euro brick because I was in metric, not by conscious choice.

My Garmin Forerunner 305 went missing over the Buffalo Springs half-iron, and I did not want to replace it before the Garmin Forerunner 310xt comes out on July the 20th. I spent all this effort to hook my old Polar up to Delilah, my new road bike, so as to have data to crunch, because every good triathlete knows that if there are no numbers on Training Peaks, the workout did not happen and it provided no physical benefit.

In all that effort, I somehow got all the units set in Euro numbers instead of good ole American miles per hour. (Of course, we know that's why Lance won all those Tour victories. He trained in miles instead of doing baby Euro, metric centuries. Ever hear of a Canadian tour winner? Non! Coincidence? I think not.)

Anyway, there I am sweating over my bike and riding the first 45 minutes of my ride before the sun even peaks over the horizon, and I'm just waiting to see what my pace and distance are like. I'm giving it my all, trying to maintain a good cadence and level of effort, just anticipating first light when I can see the pay off. Then, all I see is . . .

KM/H

Ugh.

And after two hours of incalculable, metric suffering, I pull back into the garage, and throw on my running shoes. Last minute, I reach into the bento box on Carmen Tequilo, my tri-bike, still crusted with mud and ill-used from her half-iron effort, in order to grab a spare gel pack for the suffer-running to come. Low and behold, what do I find?

Il y a Monsieur Garmin, n'est-ce pas?

Oui. C'est vrai.

So not only do I not know how I rode in the Gulf Coast Stank we call "air," I know exactly how slowly I ran for the last 55 minutes, and exactly how high my pathetic little heart rate was for all that.

I decided to take a "heat discount," by walking in the last five minutes, for which I received the "no lollygagging" e-mail from Coach.

Okay, I get it. Mexico in November=Hot. Houston in July=Hot. Pefect bank of Ironman I have here. Seems like I should at least get a toaster or something for opening up an account in this blast furnace.

Chasing Butterflies: Iroman 70.3 Buffalo Springs Lake

2009-07-02T09:29:00.004-05:00

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. "

--Nathaniel Hawthorne

I think my mental processor must be getting slower, or else my RAM needs to be upgraded. I have been trying to process a race report on the Ironman 70.3 Buffalo Springs Lake for days and days, and yet it just would not gel. It is a great event, and I am glad I undertook the challenge, and I had a lot of fun. But at the same time, it was the Murpyh's Law of weather--windy swim and bike, rain in Lubbock (WTH??!!!) and then a sunny hot run with high humidity -- in Lubbock??? How do you write any kind of unified account of that type of experience.

Then, things went from bad to worse when I read the race report from Crazy Jane, M.D., who seemingly just floated, unworried and untroubled, through conditions that I found very challenging. Since Jane has a license to practice medicine and the ability to prescribe medications to her psychiatric patients, I immediately suspected that she had been self-medicating. That, and I rationalized that the swim did smothe out for the later waves and the wind died down for the later waves on the bike. So. See, it was much harder for me. (Blah blah blah excuses and rationalizations).

And then I read a version of the quote set out above in reading a recent magazine article in connection with the Boston Marathon about Bill ("Boston Billy") Rogers. And it kind of snapped into place. I have been chasing butterlies, trying to get faster and be happier with my skills as a triathlete. The worst moments of the weekend happened when I was chasing the fastest, the inability to sleep the night before worrying about swimming open water without my wetsuit, bumming out about my swim time, being judgmental about my bike performance, pulling the plug in the last mile of the run rather than risk puking. The happiest moments of the weekned were when I just "sat quietly" (or as Mark Allen says, "quieted the mind") and just focused on the task at hand--making a good swim stroke, efficient pedal cadence or rapid foot turnover. If I had done that more, the race, which all in all should be considered a success, would have been even more of a positive experience.

The Swim

I swam what time?

The day began very windy, me shivering in the water before the swim start, sans wetsuit. I had decided to swim without one to begin getting accustomed to the feeling in advance of Ironman Cozumel, which is not wetsuit legal. I ran and swum a good warmup, which allowed me to start swimming without hyperventillating. I thought I was doing OK and would swim somewhere in the mid-40s, which is my normal, pedantic, half-iron pace, but it was not to be. I found the lake to be fairly choppy and sucked down much water. The swim times in the pros and the rest of the field would indicate adverse conditions and perhaps a course that was long. I saw myself bouys being blown and moved during the race. That said, with all the improvements to my swimming of late, I was not expecting to swim ELEVEN MINUTES SLOWER than I've swum the course before. I was not happy, as you can see:

Starts with "F" and rhymes with "Duck"

Note to the race organizers: 4 main buoys spaced 400 to 500 meters apart is not adequate for a half-iron race, especially one that starts in the dark and has lake chop. It certainly would neither kill you nor break the bank to have a little round buoy every 100 to 150 meters to aid in siting and provide interim goals for iffy, middle-aged swim novices.

The Bike

The bike involved a much quieter mind, and although I was not as fast as I had hoped, I showed some gains in fitness. I narrowly edged out my previous performances on this course, notwithstanding much tougher conditions than the last two times I did this race. I wanted to average a touch over 18 mph, and through the first 40+ miles I managed to do so. A stiff 20+mph wind from the north, and the last two northerly-oriented climbs out of Ransom Canyon, however, served to lower my average speed to such an extent that I could not bring it back above 18 by the time I re-entered Buffalo Springs Lake Park on my way back to T2.

Re-entering the park, one had to deal with car traffic on the road--getting stuck behind cars during a race?? That probably cost a couple of tenths of an mph off the average, but the main issue was one of safety. Note to the organizers: close the road over the damn to incoming traffic until the race is over.

The good news is that the parts of the course most like Cozumel--flat and windy--I did just fine. If the road does not tip up, I am in my element. I was able to just relax, hunker down, focus, and chip away at time and distance. Hopefully, this is a seed of confidence for a quiet mind on race day in November.

The Run

The good the bad and the ugly. The good was the relatively flat portions of the course where, notwithstanding some tired legs, I was able to get a rhythm going and set a sustainable pace that chewed up the distance and got me from aid station to aid station in good stead. I even overtook Coach Liz about a mile after T2, which surprised me to no end because she's a hard case and a great athlete. But, I took a cue from Hillary Biscay, "no walking in Ironman," (at least on the flats in my case) and every time I had a wave of discomfort, I just focused on my stride and rationalized, "the fastest way to get this overwith is to keep running." That is what one needs on Ironman day.

The bad--three very steep hills. It made no sense to run them on the day, so I power walked. It's just a tough course, so no excuses but no worries either.

The ugly--chasing butterflies. I wound up running a better pace on this course than I have in the past, due to my consistency (if not speed) running the flatter sections. Had I known that, I would have been content to keep the mind quiet in the last mile and a half and just suffer a little more discomfort and done even better.

At the time, however, I was thinking about the PRs and the time goal butterflies that had gotten away--indeed they were unrealistic given the swimming and biking conditions and might have been unrealistic even under ideal conditions. In so doing, the butterfly chasing brain began to ask, "what's the point? No need to puke if you're not going to PR." And so I began walking instead of channeling my inner-Hillary-Biscay. Coach Liz passed me back at about 3/4 of a mile to go. I should have run with her and finished a fun race with a friend, but I quickly cut her loose and hobbled until the finish line was comfortably in sight.

So, again, I finished Ironman 70.3 Buffalo Springs Lake. I did not get near the numbers that I had placed on myself, but in a sense, those numbers will come when I stop chasing them and just get down to the business of putting one foot in front of the other during individual moments.

Even more important than the numbers, however, was the experience and its fruits. I put some big deposits in the Ironman Bank on which I can draw in Cozumel in November, and learned a ton. Better still, the beer was great, the comeradery authentic, the after party loud and boisterous, and the hunger for more such races rekindled. The road goes on forever and the party never ends.

I've Seen This Movie Before

2009-06-27T07:23:00.007-05:00

I hated the movie "Titanic." There I said it. Beyond being the worst movie to ever win "Best Picture," I could not see the point of starting a movie where you know how it ends. No matter what twists the writers have put into the script to keep you occupied for the next couple of hours of your life . . .

THE SHIP SINKS, FOLKS. Really.

And Leo isn't going to get the girl.

Same thing for lots of historical and fictional movies where I know the ending: Glory, Diary of Anne Frank, Schindler's List, even West Side Story. Some people don't mind it, but I just sit there in dread for two hours. 'Cause that's how I roll. Mr. Positive. And I need to change that, because if I don't, it will progressively rob me of the enjoyment of Tony and Maria falling in love in the first reel.

I am reaching the point in life where I am starting to realize that I know how this movie ends. Life is a sexually transmitted disease that is terminal in all cases. At a certain point in life, people in your first degree of separation start receiving news from doctors about their particular terminal condition.

"Well, you can see here, Mother and Father Greyhound, there's no circulatory problem, and there is no sign of stroke, but Father Greyhound has experienced some shrinkage of the brain consistent with Alzheimer's Disease."

Flash to Father Greyhound's confusion driving at night and getting lost in familiar surroundings.

Flash to our dear neighbor's wife who deteriorated over a period of 20 years until she was afraid of everything, including her spouse.

Flash to Father Greyhound's father, who looked exactly like him who looks exactly like me, and how he became increasingly combative and paranoid and withdrawn.

Father Greyhound only 70, and has not yet even had the opportunity to retire and take up a hobby. I imagine myself at 70 and it does not involve working my ass off to make ends meet or battling with diminishing faculties or loss of self. Now, however, I know how this movie ends, and I start to worry that I know how my movie ends. But there is a whole 'nother reel to the film, and (unlike Titanic) some great songs and scenes to enjoy along the way, for him and for me.

Indeed, that script has not even been written. If the ending totally determined the value of the intervening journey I wouldn't even do triathlon. I know that, in the end, no matter how hard I train, the podium will not include a short little welp like me who did not begin exercise until his late 30s. The ending of that movie has the tall, athletic kids on the podium who ran track or swam since they were kids. But that does not take away from the grace and joy of the first reel, wherein I learn I am stronger than I thought, and I know what it feels to be truly alive.

Sure, we all know how this movie ends, but very little of who you are will actually travel all the way to the ending with you. With the exception of one particular group of cells, every atom in your body will be regenerated and replaced at least every 10 years--from your red blood cells to your skin and even down to every cell in your skeleton. The lone exception is that mass between your ears, your brain. What is to be done with the new you that gets out of bed every morning? Do those new cells and the new you get a chance to excel, explore, enjoy?

No one would tell a toddler that it is vain to pull up on the coffee table and walk because, in the end, we perish. If, in the end, that one set of cells you were born with shrinks, and you become something other than you before you die, what are you doing with your first reel?

This weekend, my first reel includes a 1/2 Iron triathlon. It will hurt. It will probably be hot. And all along the way I will be tempted with the voice that reminds me how the movie ends. But I get to write this part of the screenplay.

Courage

2009-06-21T08:31:00.001-05:00

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together

2009-06-17T19:26:00.003-05:00

I haven't mentioned this lately, indeed I haven't mentioned much lately, but Coach Kris rocks.

This is easily said in a week like this one where I have gone down to 6.5 hours of pretty easy training--as compared with last week when I was at 15.5 hours of training. Grownups, much like toddlers, are happy and compliant when they are well-rested and fed.

That is me right now. Unlike some of the training plans I have followed in the past, Coach Kris takes recovery very seriously--maybe making a special issue of at my advanced age. My training is less than half what it was last week and I get two--count 'em TWO--days with no training at all.

Now if only I could get the psycho triathlete side of my brain to remain asleep past 3:30 in the flippin' morning. Seriously, I have done two Ironman training programs with key morning training sessions without ever being awakened by an alarm clock. I never use an alarm because I never need one . . . because I always wake up.

Always.

Even when I don't have to.

Even when I don't want to.

Which brings me to another point--the flip side of rest week. Unlike toddlers, psycho triathletes aren't happy unless they are hungry, exhausted, and on the move. That is me in spades. I'm a midget when it comes to racing, but I am a giant in training. I LOVE to train. So the flip side of Coach Kris, during the build weeks, suits me just fine.

Other plans I've followed had one rest day ever week, which always kind of annoyed me. Sure, I need reset, but I want to DO something. Coach Kris uses his Ouija Board or Magic Eight Ball or Divining Rods to give me something every day during the build weeks. I get recovery by Coach Kris' mix of intensities and the mix of swim/bike/run. And instead of piling all the key workouts into the weekend, I actually have some key sessions during the week, meaning more key sessions and better recovery between the sessions.

I think our only problem, Coach Kris and me, is that I don't speak "swim." He does speak the polyglot swim dialect, and he doesn't always stick to the glossary of "swimming terms" that he sent me. I'm not sure what kind of alchemy goes into swim coaching, but instead of saying, "swim longer and faster than last week," you get a lot of numbers and "@" signs and "s/dr/k by 50s" and "desc 1-4." I usually get the gist of it, but sometimes you just gotta e-mail and say, "WTH?"

He hasn't laughed at me.

Yet.

To my face.

All this is making me better, I can feel it. However, I have yet to show it in a performance.

But, Ironman 70.3 at Buffalo Springs Lake is a week from Sunday. It is a hard course that I have raced twice, but never very well. I'm starting to feel like I am a hard athlete. I'm starting to dream crazy numbers. Do I dare even say them out loud? Write them down?

Hmmmmmmm.

Perhaps I Should Just Sleep In My Bib Shorts

2009-06-11T08:31:00.005-05:00

Coach Kris regularly works with athletes at the Olympic Training Center, and he had athletes in the ITU peloton after the Cap Tex Tri when he came to Austin. This inalterably means that I, with three years of experience in triathlon, must be the oldest, slowest and least exciting athlete in his "stable."

Query, is the old bucket o' bones that chews clover out in the paddock, that one horse who gets no stud fees, still considered part of the "stable?"

But I digress.

Today points out the difference between being a full time athlete and an age grouper with a full time job. Last night was an hour bike workout with some accelerations up to and past the anaerobic threshold. It was 96 degrees at 6 p.m., and my water bottle of electrolyte replacement drink and ice very quickly turned into a salty, sticky, hot toddy without the alcohol.

Shower, recover, sleep and prepare for 2 hour morning ride.

Yeah. 2 hours. With some anaerobic intervals just to make it fun.

Do you know what time you have to get up to ride two hours before work? Even when the car is fully packed with bike, helmet, shoes, pump, nutrition, hydration, and a partridge in a pear tree? You seriously start to think about sleeping in your bib shorts just to save time.

After I've been up awhile, I pretty much slap the Dunkin Donuts man around so he'll be sure and get up to make the donuts.

But it was an awesomely fun ride, notwithstanding the heat and humidity before sunrise. Imagine trainer ride in a shower with a fan and you've pretty much got the conditions down pat.

Then, shower, eat, recover . . . and instead of a nap and a massage like Coach Kris' good athletes, I get a full day of legal luciousness. Mmmmmmmmm, just love that desk and the telephone and the computer and Westlaw. Good times.

Then, this afternoon, it's the track workout. Yeah baby. Same day as the two hour ride. Why this afternoon instead of after dark? Well, I'm glad you asked. See, my other jobs are dad and husband, and we have tickets to Swan Lake tonight at 7:30.

Now, I love Tchaikovsky more than is probably healthy. Having been a horn player, I've actually performed the music, and its great fun. But something tells me that I'm going to have to paint eyeballs on my eyelids tonight when the lights go down in the theater. And tomorrow may well involve a case of the Ironman flu--the better to get my swim workout at noon rather than before dawn.

The army may do more before 8 a.m. than most people do all day, but Houston area triathletes truly do "own the night."

Running From The 1980s--How To:

2009-06-10T07:23:00.002-05:00

**We now return to our regularly scheduled blog**

Several weeks ago, I got a cryptic text along the lines of, "I just finished my first 5k and it was AWESOME. Thanks for inspiring me."

I did not recognize the number at all, so thankfully, at the end of the text, the sender wrote, "This is Jeanie."

This made me chuckle, not only because it feels so good to think someone is out the door and moving because of you, but also because, in 1980, the notion that I would have been "inspiring" Jeanie would not have entered my mind.

In 1980, I was in the 7th grade--gee, what a great and confident time for all boys, especially those nonathletic boys who are about 5 feet tall and whose voices have not yet changed. Not awkward at all. Add to this that I had just moved to Oklahoma from Ohio, and was visiting a big, downtown church with my parents. It was my first time in a "youth group" (as opposed to children's Sunday School). Jeanie, among others, seemed otherworldly and really intimidating to me. I'm sure she never tried or intended to be, but she was an eight grader with blond hair and makeup and all sorts of other features that had not existed with my 6th grade classmates back in Ohio. Plus she ran in a pack with another blond, be-make-upped BFF, both of whom had features and wore matching, rabbit-fur jackets. Me, I never was permitted a "Members Only" jacket--the manly equivalent.

Alors, we knew fashion in the '80s, non?

Anyway, I grew out of my awkwardness over time as I got to know Jeanie and the other youth group members, and I continued growing after high school (thankfully). And recently Jeanie and the youth group have started meeting up on Facebook. In so doing, Jeanie (now the mother of at least four, including a stunning, college-aged likeness of herself) drafted me to be her running running guru. The changed circumstances give one vertigo.

To make a long story longer, Jeanie wrote me about doing her own triathlon, but bemoaning the fact that she did not yet enjoy the running part. "WILL YOU HELP ME ON THIS RUN THING??? I seriously have to whip myself to do it and actually do enjoy it once I'm there doing it." Here's some of what I wrote back, and I invite you triathlete friends to include your own suggestions for Jeanie in the comments concerning how you learned to love running.

Part of not liking running is feeling like you're not any good at it. You have to figure out how to make it fun, or at least enjoyable, or at least tolerable until your body adapts to where you can go for a run without feeling like you've been caned. There are some suggestions:

1. Do some of your runs with someone. If you have to meet someone, it will motivate you to get out of bed and you'll enjoy the exercise more. There are lots of more experienced runners who would like nothing better than to meet a newbie on their easy run day or for their warm up. Paying it forward is a big part of the culture.

2. Change your running routes. Drive to a park with nice scenery or other runners to watch or just somewhere new.

3. I-Pod. Gotta have it.

4. Create a simple training diary. Seeing progress will motivate you to keep going. At the beginning, mine was as simple as a dry-erase month calendar. I would put a red x when I ran, a Green x when I biked, and a black x when I lived weights. I wanted to have as few days as possible without x's and as many as possible with two x's.

5. Progress slowly--Sore muscles are inevitable, but if you always feel like you've been beaten with an iron rod, you're doing it wrong.

6. Run/Walk--the corollary to progressing slowly. It is easier to keep going if you break the run into bits, especially a run that is longer than you've done before. If you run 4 minutes, walk 30 seconds or a minute, whatever, it is easier to stomach. There are lots of run/walk programs on the internet if you Google "Couch to 5k," and you can start at whatever point of the program meets your current fitness level.

7. Have a Goal--The difference between a runner and a jogger is a race entry. Sign up for an event several months out that is beyond your reach, then plan how you're going to get there. An example might be a 10k in September. Then tell a friend who will hold you accountable. If it is a runner friend, use them to pick out which intermediate distance races you're going to do on the way. Then figure out how you need to train to progress slowly from here to there with an easier recovery week every three weeks or so.

8. Find a running group--there are lots of running clubs and training groups, some of which are set up for (or have programs for) people getting started.

9. Develop the habit--If you get on a schedule and run at the same time on your running days, you soon don't need motivation to get out the door. It is just something you do. (Incidentally, research has established that morning exercisers are most consistent, because nothing interferes with the early morning run.) Once it becomes a habit, you will find it is the best part of the day. If the habit doesn't take the first try, don't sweat it. Starting running is a bit like quitting smoking. Many people have to attempt it several times before the change becomes permanent.

10. Play--It will never be fun all the time, but if it is never fun any of the time, you won't stick with it. So figure out what would turn running (or any kind of training) into "recess" time for grownups. Is it running with your kid or a friend or a certain type of route or a playlist or running intervals or whatever? Training is recess. Go play.

Again, if you have suggestions for Jeanie or other folks wanting to get started this summer, put them in the comments.

You Might Be A Triathlete

2009-06-03T08:15:00.004-05:00

If any of the following are true for you, then you might be a triathlete--indeed, you might be taking this triathlete thing a little bit too far.

1. If you have magic marker on your skin underneath your business attire, then you might be a triathlete. They are either left over race numbers that haven't yet worn off, or you are a toddler and your parents need to do some childproofing.

2. If your business colleagues ask if you "still ride your bike," and you just smile and say yes rather than explain the hours of swimming and running on top of the whole "ride your bike" jaunt that your colleagues imagine, then you might be a triathlete.

3. If your mother-in-law, the Avon lady, gives you "Ironman" aftershave and cologne, then you might be a triathlete.

Thankfully, it does not actually smell like Ironman. I guess urine and B/O did not sell.

4. If you have to take a bike trainer, a wetsuit, a bike, four sets of workout clothes, a helmet, bike shoes, sunscreen and nutrition on a two day business trip, you might be a triathlete.

5. If you doubt whether a session adds to your fitness in the absence of Garmin data to upload to Training Peaks and share with your coach you might be a triathlete. For that matter, if you are over 40 and you have a coach at all, you might be a triathlete.

6. If you associate a massage with pain, you might be a triathlete.

7. If the word "base" does not conjure images of the National Passtime and "taper" makes you think of racing rather than candles or shapes, you might be a triathlete.

8. If you cannot stay awake in a darkened movie theater for two hours, you might be . . . a . . . z-z-z-z-z-z *snort*

9. If you start thinking on Monday about where you're going to ride on Saturday and who with, you might be a triathlete.

10. If you think neoprene is hawt, you might be a triathlete.

Feel free to add your own in the comments.

On Guts

2009-05-26T16:41:00.004-05:00

On Memorial Day, 2009, I returned to the site of my first ever triathlon. And on the day, I was fairly satisfied with the experience. After all it was not my "A" race of the season, and I had modest goals. I wanted to do better than my first triathlon, and I wanted to have a comfortable swim with my head in a better place than my previous efforts.

I did all that. I had a modest PR, finishing the course in 2:51:25, which is a few minutes faster than when I first did it. I had a modest swim PR, finishing the 1500m in a workmanlike 33:31, again, a little better than my first effort. I had a really fun/strong bike split of 1:13:13, which is an average of 20.3 mph over a course with lots of turns, some climbing, and several places where one has to slow to nearly zero mph to U-turn and then crank it back up to race pace. Then, in the heat of the day, being somewhat satisfied with the day's efforts, I "phoned in" the run, just lollygagging through the 10K, way below my potential.

I was pretty happy with the day's work, and had lots of fun. So . . . why am I becoming less satisfied with the race as time goes on?

Of course part of it is because I'm way too analytical for my own good and I think too much. It was supposed to be fun, and it was. It was supposed to be a day of play, and it was. It was supposed to be a super fantastic time spent with friends, and it was all that and a bag of chips.

But part of it is because I am just analytical enough to know that the unexamined life is not worth living. So, tolerate a little navel gazing before I make a bigger point that does not have so much to do with me.

Not to take anything at all away from an awesome weekend--but I've been thinking. (Uh oh). For this race, I aimed low and I hit the target. I swam better, but I swam easy rather than test what I was made of. I rode well, but biking is easy--I love the bike, especially on a technical, crazy-fast course. And when the run was harder than I wanted, I just couldn't be bothered. I aimed low rather than risk failure. Big deal. Sure, a good day of practice and preparation for Ironman Cozumel later in the season. But not very gutsy.

This race report, however, is not a pity party for Trigreyhound. In thinking about Monday, I really did learn something. I learned something about guts, but not from my own performance or from the performances of the fast kids. There were some extremely gutsy athletes out under the sun on the Cap Tex Tri race course. And if you look only to the race clock I beat nearly all of them. But somehow I don't think the race clock measures the winner of the guts race very well.

Everyone in the race, from the fast kids on down, is enduring something, whether it is the pain of the effort or the conditions or (very often) their own negative head talk about their performance or their chances for success. I'm sure we've all heard that voice: Why are you doing this? What is the point? You're not going to win. You're not even getting any better. I, myself, often have to deal with the critic on the shoulder who questions whether I belong on the course at all, and I'm at least a C+ athlete at this point.

Think, then, how much louder and more authentic the voice sounds with someone who is not a C+ athlete. For example, what of the first-time triathlete who doesn't (yet) have the skinny body and the muscles and the flash bike with the aero helmet? What about the woman who, 6 months ago, hated buying swimsuits and looking in mirrors who is now in spandex, out in public, racing and raising money for Team in Training? They were out there suffering in the sun, sometimes walking, sometimes barely running as I went by them at my "slow" pace. What's going on in their heads? Maybe they have a better and healthier thought life than me. Maybe they never doubt. Somehow, I think they do hear the voices or the criticisms or feel the judgments; yet, they keep on going. They show guts. They risk failure. They endure.

My time was faster, but I don't think I "beat" them.

And then there were the two racers that I want to point out in particular. Again, I passed them on the run, but I know for a fact that I did not surpass them. They were both younger than me, enough so that I might have been their father. They were running together, both dressed in red team jerseys. They both had haircuts that were high and tight, because they were both Marines, combat veterans. They both had jerky, labored running form, because they were each running on a prosthesis to replace a missing leg.

Not two years ago, these soldiers probably gave little real thought to injury or death, cloaked as they were in the immortality peculiar to young men and athletes. Their identity, to their very core, was likely bound to their physical strength and bodies that would obey their commands, bounce back and do it again the next day. Now, here they were, with bodies that were missing limbs, incomplete, unruly, difficult, nonresponsive. And yet, they aimed high. They risked failure. They endured. I ran right past them, but they've been in my thoughts ever since.

I was faster, but I most certainly did not "beat" them.

That's what I want to foster in myself. I want to aim high. I want to risk total, abject failure. I want to bite off more than I can chew, and then chew like hell. And I want to keep on learning from the people on the course who really beat me. Semper Fi.

Time Keeps On Slippin'

2009-05-23T06:58:00.003-05:00

Well, it's been a quiet week in Spring, Texas, my home town, out on the edge of the Megalopolis.

The weather gave us a head fake this week. Last week, mother nature seemed to leap ahead into the dog days of July with temperatures in the 80s and 90% relative humidity before the sun came up. Windows all over the neighborhood sweated in the darkness, and everyone was required to out the trash or pick up the paper before taking a shower, lest the whole routine of morning ablutions become moot in the sweaty aftermath of merely walking to the curb.

Then, this past weekend, a line of storms came through with a cold front, and we were mercifully transported back into late march. Monday and Tuesday morning the air was cool and crisp and dry. The temperatures and calm conditions in the upper 50s before sun up during a morning ride or swim were pretty much how I imagine heaven will be one day. It was a weird inversion, because at the same time we were experiencing heaven on earth, Minnesota was having high humidity and temperatures in the 90s--call it Houston on earth.

But mother nature and father time were only playing a temporary trick on us, sort of an "Indian Spring," like Indian Summer, only in Houston, our severe weather is follows spring. Things are back to normal weather wise, if not with father time.

This morning, I felt completely out of sorts. It is the first Saturday morning in moths that I did not have to get up early for a bike ride or a run or a race. I went to bed at my normal "toddler hour," and my eyes clicked open like a dairy farmer with insomnia at 0400, but I rolled over and went back to sleep. After a total of 9.5 hours of sleep, I woke again, and I could not remember where I was or what day it was or what I had to do. Usually, I wake with a training peaks workout and a long list of work to-do's, and my little dog brain is synching with Mircosoft Outlook as surely as if my Blackberry connected to an electrode in my skull.

But today, nothing. And it was weird. I don't know what I did with my time before I was swim-bike-running 12 to19 hours a week.

And the time distortion will continue this weekend. On Monday, Memorial Day, I have a race. It's not the first race this season, but it's my first race. Like, EVER. In 2006, The Cap Tex Tri was my first triathlon ever, and now I will return to the race for the first time since. In weird ways, I have the same feelings I had three years ago.

Back then, I was afraid I might not finish, mostly because of the long 1500m swim. Two Ironman finishes later, I'm still scared, not of failure to finish, but simply of failure. I really love the winding, up and down bike course, and I know I can muddle through the run, but for the Love of God I'd finally like to swim decently in the open water. For me, this means just being able to pay attention to my form and swimming long and strong if not fast. But, I'm afraid I'll have my typical freak out and muddle through swim.

Which would put me right back in 2006, which would be weird.

And Father Time taunts and confuses me in all sorts of other ways. My parents arrive today, and when you no longer live with parents, time rushes in all at once. My mother assumes that everything that she has experienced since Christmas has been communicated to me, by telpethy if not by telephone. So while she will have told me fourteen times about an inconsequential event involving a remote acquaintance from our church, she will have neglected to say, "oh, by the way, your dad has had trouble walking. Didn't I tell you?"

That is the reason their trip is rescheduled--to accomodate testing on Tuesday concerning a ruptured lumbar disc that has been troubling him since February. In the last year, dad has gone on a medecine (prematurely in my view) for dementia, has decided to retire, unretire, and retire again, and has become more enfeebled than I think is stricly necessary. And my experience of it is even more rushed, for it happened in one visit in December and a couple of phone calls since. I want to tell him to fight it, but this is foreign to their experience. If the doctor says you need a pill, you take a pill. If the surgeon ways you need surgery, you have surgery. And if you feel old, you stop going to the gym.

Meanwhile, I wax and wane. When I ran with Scuba Steve this week, I felt no different than I remember feeling in my 20s--only I am fitter now. I felt like I had more in common with this 23 year old engineering student than with my 40 to 50 year old law partners. And looking in the mirror, sometimes I see a lean young man in top condition, and others I see a middle aged man in denial--one who is never going to podium or excel no matter how much training is involved.

And it is difficult to know what to feel or what to think. But right now, I feel like Father Time better learn how to swim, because if I see him, I'm going to kick his ass.

And that's the news from Spring, Texas, where all the schools are exemplary, all the food is fast, and all the commutes are below average.

Race Ready--if I can walk

2009-05-12T09:10:00.012-05:00

I can totally tell that my fitness is getting sharp, because the fitter I am, the harder it is to get out of bed in the morning, pull myself out of a chair or haul my carcass out of my tiny car. By that measure, I'm the second coming of Dave Scott, because I'm stiff, sore, cranky and tired.

I blame Coach Kris (and I can only assume he will want some credit if I PR). He has not increased my training volume, but the volume and intensity of the running has ramped up, presumably getting me ready for the Cap Tex Olympic Distance Triathlon on Memorial Day. With Coach Kris' permission, I'll give you a little taste of the running of the hounds this past week or so.

Begin with Thursday night's track workout--nothing too crazy, just warmup, striders and then 8x400m above 5k pace with 200m recoveries. But add in the wussy factor, the liquid heat of Houston air, and the fact that I only max out at 185+ beats per minute on my heart rate, and the torture session looks something like this:

Two days later was the brick workout plus Mother's Day Mall Shopping in the jungle that I described here. Running off the bike in 91+ humid degrees is a unique pleasure here in the Gulf Coast.

Then was The Mother's Day Massacre--twice around the Rice Campus/Hermann Park Zoo loop with an added out and back to tack on time.

The workout was supposed to be 1:40:00 of long running with 3 to 4 times 6 minute intervals up into heart rate zones 4-5a. There are Five Zones? Sersly? Who knew?

When you're a long and slow diesel like me, that translates to "run harder until it kinda sucks a lot." Here's what that looks like:

I elected to do the intervals near the start of the run, relying on Scuba Steve and Coach T to join me for the last 45 minutes of the run to pull me through to the end.

Then, this morning was another rumble in the jungle. The weather was so schwetty in the Bayou City that my shoes were flinging water by the end of what I'll call the "Wonky 10K." The Holy Prophet of Training Peaks described the workout as "BT: Surges. Warm up. On a 10k course run 2 minutes (recover for 1 minute), 1 minute (recover 30 seconds), 30 seconds (recover 30 seconds) at ~5k pace. Repeat for entire course. Cool down."

Uhm, yeah. Cool down. This is Houston. Cool is not going to happen again until October.

I used a modified out and back on Buffalo Bayou:

And the data looks like this:

Scientifically, all those lines and the high heart rates translate to, "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" By about the 5th or 6th 2 minute interval, I was suffering acute booty lock when I tried to pick up the pace. And with an average heart rate above my anaerobic threshold, and a max hear rate in the 170s, it was a painful way to start the day--and not even that fast.

But I am told that that which does not kill me will only make me stronger. Apparently, Coach Kris is willing to test the hypothesis, although I am not yet sure whether I am getting the actual therapy or whether I am the "kill 'em" control group.

Thank goodness the taper has begun.

Welcome to the Jungle

2009-05-10T06:33:00.003-05:00

Welcome to the jungle

We got fun 'n' games

We got everything you want

Honey we know the names

When you're training for Ironman, Saturday morning is always time for the long ride. As I have chronicled, riding on the streets in Houston can be a bit of a struggle as slow-witted pachyderms in their SUVs and Pickup Trucks compete with you for habitat. But this particular Saturday, I only had one SUV that refused to yield place, and that probably out of ignorance or inattention rather than malice. Today's jungle excusion was difficult for a different reason.

In Houston, you know that the day is going to be a challenge if the windows are sweating with condensation before the sun comes up. This means that, in contrast to the interior of your home, which feels like a low-humidity meat locker, the outside environment is doing its best to mimic Equatorial Guinea. At 0530, when you stumble out to get the paper, the humidity clamps a hot, wet washcloth over your face, and you're cast into the sauna.

Perfect training conditions for Ironman Cozumel, to be sure, but unpleasant to say the least. Coach Kris ordered up a 2.5 hour ride followed by a 15 minute brick run, ordinarly plenty of work but nothing to write home about. This day, however, the sweat was dripping and flying off my bike helmet before I'd even made 15 minutes of work. And by the time I was running off the bike, the sun was in full force. I wimpered my way through the run-off (read "shuffle off") and headed for the AC. I had drunk 1.5 litres of fluid during the ride, and consumed 2 litres of fluid in the hours afterward, but there was little evidence of it. I was wrung. out.

But there was more jungle to come--actually the wildest and jugleiest jungle of them all. For you see, it was the day before mother's day, which means shopping is required. And this particular day, the recesison was nowhere in evidence. The traffic jams and parking lots were such that you would have thought it was the last shopping day before Christmas, except it was a billion degrees outside.

Yes, those of you with weak constitutions might want to skip the rest of the post, for Greyhound went shopping.

Even more, I took two girls shopping: Superpounce and her newly-teenaged friend Mini-KT.

OK, to say that I went shopping is to exaggerate, like many of the feats described herein. But this is my blog, and I at least get to be the hero of my own narrative. Actually, I mostly functioned like an undercover, surveillance detail from the NSA--watching from a distance and loitering outside stores as Superpounce and Mini-KT texted me about where they intended to shop next.

Between Aeropostale, American Eagle, the Food Court, and Justice, we were able to spend a little time at Macy's in order to find someing Mom-er-iffic for today.

And I survived the jungle by making it much of the way through the Weekend Journal.

10 Risks Of Swim Training At L.A. FATness

2009-05-07T15:18:00.008-05:00

Long time readers will know that I used to swim in the beautiful, outdoor, saline pool at the Woodlands Athletic Center. I joined as part of the masters group, but I also had privileges to swim any ole' time I wanted. Alas, the WAC is no more. True, the local school system has built a natatorium that would exceed the facilities at many a university; but, I can only use that when the masters are practicing, not for individual swim practice.

When the WAC closed, I was forced to join yet another gym in order to have access to a pool within a reasonable distance of my house. Apparently the "Think Method" of swim training--wherein you just imagine you are a really good swimmer--does not work. Who knew?

The pool that is closest to my home is the local "L.A. Fitness" a/k/a L.A. FATness. It has an adequate, 25 meter, indoor pool, and it opens at 0500 in the morning, so it has become logistically very easy to get in the swim workouts before work. That said, there are certain dangers and risks to swimming regularly at L.A. FATness, and I thought I would put them out there, sort of as a public service. No need to thank me, I'm just here to help.

1. STEROIDS: Apparently, steroids is a danger amongst the population of middle-aged, hairy, iron-pumping, 40% body fat male clientele because there is a "STEROIDS WARNING" posted in bold type in the locker room warning me that my wang might shrink and my boobies might grow. Again, who knew?

2. Heat prostration: While it is definitely easier to slip right from bet to the tepid waters of L.A. FATness than it was to brave the cold pool deck at the WAC, swimming a couple of sharp 100s will make you sweat--inside the pool.

3. Objects are slower than they appear: If you swim at L.A. FATness, you can quickly develop a distorted view of your swimmy luciousness. Yesterday, for example, I was fingertip drilling across the pool in my slowest, easiest and most efficient glide and I went right by someone flailing out 25s at about 30 strokes per length. My tiny brain, for a moment, thought, "wow, I rock"--until I remembered that the better measuring stick is the masters group, where it often appears that I'm swimming in super slo mo as others glide Phelps-like to and fro.

4. Swimming in disinfectant: L.A. FATness has developed a prophylactic measure to be taken against swine flu. Swim in their pool. It has the taste, smell, clarity and viscosity of a bottle of Clorox. If you have any living organism on you, it will die upon entering the pool. If you swim more than three time per week, you will fade, more than 5 times a week, expect to completely disappear.

5. Hair Dryers: I don't use a hair dryer. The only hair it is appropriate to blow dry is the hair on one's head, and mine is cropped so short it needs neither drying nor coming. At L.A. FATness, however, there are two problems: 1) John Edwards wannabees with copious feathered locks c1985; and 2) hairdryers are apparently used to dry hair folicles in nooks and crannies of all sorts south of the Mason-Dixon line.

And just FYI, the crop top muscly girls that are in the L.A. FATness artwork, or the incredible butterfly swimmer dude--never seen them at the club. Never.

6. Simulated Open Water Swimming: I suppose I should thank swimming-trunks-IM-guy for the excessive turbulence he creates when heaving his prodigious girth through 5x100 IM on the 5:00. His butterfly, in particular, turn the little L.A. FATness pool into a terrifying ocean swim. But the L.A. FATness water tastes like a combination of bleach, rubber and White Rain hairspray. I need to improve my open water skills, but would prefer to do so without choking on eau d'jazzercize.

7. You ain't all that: Like speed, your perception of duration will be warped upon swimming at L.A. FATness. If you swim a 60 minute workout, some of the other lanes will empty twice before you're done, as the L.A. FATness crowd swims their 500 meters of floaty breast stroke and head-up length of freestyle. Before you throw out a shoulder patting yourself on the back, Greyhound, remember that the transition area is still devoid of bikes when you emerge from the water.

8. Elevators: I know it is probably required by the American With Disabilities Act, but L.A. FATness has an elevator to the second floor loft where the cardio equipment is. And every time I am there, I see people taking the elevator up one story -- avoiding the stairs on their way to do "cardio." HUH????

9. Showers That Save The Earth: L.A. FATness is doing its part to save the planet, in this case by using the aerating shower heads that turn a dribble of water into a dribble of water and air. Corporate Fat Cats and Robber Barons like me, however, cannot make it through the day if we have not pillaged the earth by pasting ourselves to the other side of the shower with a fire hose of hot shower water.

10. No Excuses: If it is too easy to skip masters, it is also too easy to swim. There is NEVER any excuse to skip Coach Kris' swim sessions. It shows up in your e-mail box, and you know it must be done. L.A. FATness calls.

Now, this is an interactive medium. Some of your favorit gym training risks go in the comments.

Super Cop

2009-05-02T11:08:00.006-05:00

Today I experienced the antidote to Officer McBreakfast Taco.

I was riding my normal training route in and through the Woodlands and was proceeding along a side street with plenty of room for both car and cyclist. I was politely and safely passed by three cars/SUVS in a row. Maybe it was the ginourmously visible yellow, safe passing jersey:

Or maybe it was the blinky light that can be seen from space.

But apparently, this was not enough for a dumb sh*t motorist that I will call "Frat Boy"--you know the type--20 something, hipster side burns, too sexy for my baseball cap/God's-gift-to-babes self-image, and get-off-the-road and ride-on-the-sidewalk-faggot attitude.

Frat Boy, in his black Nissan, four cylinder-fake-sports-car with his nicotine habbit, tried to force me out of the lane and squeeze by to get to the upcoming traffic light. And this right after three other cars had passed properly and given me nearly the whole lane. Bad move, Frat Boy, because see, you have to stop at the traffic light, and I'm going to give you an unwanted education on the traffic laws. I've got sweatshirts older than you, Sparky. And if you want to go, you'll wind up in jail and bankrupt, because that's how it works when you go with the legal beagle. And if you're rude, you're also going to get a piece of my mind. And because today is today, I've got another surprise for you. (You'll see).

Of course, he was rude. Of course, he told me to "get out of the road." (Any of this sounding familiar?) Of course, he let go some F-bombs and called me a faggot. I asked Frat Boy if he'd like to discuss this with a police officer right then and there. He (having quickly run through his limited vocabulary) told me to F off, and get the F out of his way and get my hand off his f-ing car because I was a faggot, blah blah blah.

But Frat Boy miscalculated, and I was so emboldened because I was thinking ahead. You see, all those cyclists in the Woodlands today were doing a triathlon. (Not me, I was just training). And that meant nearly every intersection was blinking red with one lane blocked off and a line of cars waiting to get through an intersection controlled by at least three police officers. So, while Frat Boy waited in the line of cars (evil laugh here), I biked 400 yards up the shoulder to the next group of police officers, told the officer in charge that there was a motorist in the line who needed an education on the traffic laws and maybe a ticket as well because he had tried to squeeze me out of the lane with his automobile and then threatened me.

And I was standing there with my new-found friends in law enforcement (wearing my "I'ts the Law" jersey) as Frat Boy approached the intersection. And I identified his sorry a$$ for the four officers controlling traffic. And he saw me identify his sorry a$$. And I watched as the officers directing traffic ordered Frat Boy to turn into the parking lot where they intended to have a little talk about what the law requires and how grownups are required to behave when they are behind the wheel of a deadly weapon.

Go ahead, Frat Boy.

Make. My. Day.

***After Action Report***

Things I wish I had done:

1. Should have photographed his license plate and his face. I carry a camera for just such a purpose. The first thought should be to go for the camera and the cell phone. Bullies are cowards when they've been called out of their vehicles and identified.

2. I wish I had brought my laminated copy of the traffic laws to toss in his open window as I spit on his car and rode away to taunt him into trying to attack me in front of the officers so they'd put him in jail.

OK, that's not exactly true, but it's a nice fantasy.

The Biggest Winner

2009-05-01T09:39:00.005-05:00

"I want to be muscular, like Jillian."

That's what Superpounce told me not long ago. I nearly jumped up and high-fived myself. And this may be the prime reason why every middle-aged man should run and exercise: so healthy habits of self-determination will rub off on the progeny.

You see, as the dad of a daughter, I've probably become a little bit more of a feminist than I otherwise would have been. Part of that has been an increased awareness of the differences between the difficulties faced by boys, and those faced by girls in their respective struggles to reach healthy adulthood. As a dad, I figure that a good portion of my job is to make myself obsolete--transport this child from helpless infancy to healthy adulthood where I'm nice to have around, but strictly speaking, no longer needed.

Either shortly before or shortly after Superpounce was born, I read several books about the unique challenges of bringing up girls and how important Dad's messages are to girl growing. One of those books was Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, Ph.D. The book chronicles how girls enter a dark tunnel around age 13 or so, becoming less confident, more subservient to boys, less likely to learn, more likely to suffer from eating disorders, etc. It hypothesizes how media messages and other societal forces play a role in causing this tunneling, and (if I recall correctly) notes positive influences like sport and the influence of a father that combat those forces.

With that book on my mind these past 11 years, I have observed and influenced the objects of Superpounce's pop culture admiration to notice and impact what is influencing her. When she asked to be a cheerleader, for example, I declined. "Why cheer for someon else," I inquired, (especially boy football players). "Wouldn't it be better to be the one people are cheering for?"

I've also been trying to model good "dad" behavior by admiring strong women worthy of admiration--watching women's sport, avoiding air-headed pop culture fluff, surrounding 'Pounce and the family with good people, Ironman finishers and other athletes of all types, and of course doing my best to walk the walk with my own conditioning. None of this is in hopes that 'Pounce will be a scholarship athlete and live out any athletic fantasy of mine from days gone by. She does have my genetics, after all, and I can only smile when the small, skinny daughter of a 5'5" dad dreams of playing basketball.

The reason, in addition to my own health, is so that Superpounce will say something like the words I heard while watching Biggest Loser--as a family while she works out as she always does. "I want to be muscular, like Jillian." Those words carry more than admiration of a pop-culture icon. They also buy into her message self-worth and power and her rejection of victimhood. "I want to be muscular, like Jillian," is effectively the pop-culture opposit of "I wanna be rich like Paris Hilton" or "I wanna be skinny, like Lindsay Lohan," or "I wanna be a singer, like Brittany Spears." Those words made me feel like "The Biggest Winner."

Sure, she can be rich if that's in the cards. She can even be a knock out and a singer. She can be or do anything she wants. But she can do it from a position of physical and personal power rather than personal exploitation or pain.

Because she's muscular like Jillian. Look out, world.

Swine Flu Traced To Its Source

2009-04-30T20:33:00.001-05:00

Top Ten List

2009-04-28T08:11:00.006-05:00

And now, from the home office in Spring, Texas, top 10 reasons every middle-aged man should run (add your own in the comments):

10. Because the God of Training Peaks and his holy prophet Coach Kris said so, praise be to him.

9. Because you can't be young at heart unless you skip, and running drills are the only way to do skipping with any kind of plausible deniability.

8. Because if you weren't a runner, your fascination with Kara Goucher would be way too creepy.

7. Because a running playlist on your ipod is about the only legitimate way for a middle aged man to enjoy Justin Timberlake in a public setting--and no, you're not bringing sexy back.

6. Because you still love Guns n' Roses and Van Halen, but need something to do while you rock out. (And no, not the post-David-Lee-Roth Van Halen, the real stuff. Rock on.)

5. Because if your circle of friends is restricted to other 40 year old men, you're a bore.

4. Because if you're not an runner/triathlete and your circle of friends is still highly populated by fit women in spandex, you're a creep.

3. Because beer is a good thing, but love handles are not.

2. Because beer in a state of exhaustion is a foretaste of heaven.

1. Because when father time catches you, you hope he's clutching his chest and wheezing.

And now, yours?

Man On Wire

2009-04-25T09:51:00.005-05:00

"This is your life, and it's ending -- one minute at at time."
--Fight Club

What a whirlwind the last couple of weeks have been. I'm usually pretty good at balancing training and working and family, keeping all the plates spinning and keeping all the balls in the air. But the thing is, when you live like that, there is very little margin for error. If the work creeps up ever so slightly, you start not to eat quite right or you lose a little sleep, and you miss a snack, and all of life starts to feel anaerobic. You never quite recover before the next interval. Everything starts to hurt a little more, you lose all intensity, your hobby starts to feel like a job and your job starts to feel like a sentence.

My job ramped up--in a massive way. One court hearing before the MS150 (brought about by bush league, chicken shit lawyering on the other side of the case) resulted in them spilling their guts on the courtroom floor when they realized the supposedly damaging document they were using as a prop was actually the wrong contract.

Then race home to fix quinoa and black beans for the peeps who were riding the MS150 with me.

Then watch a horrible looking storm front roll through and wonder whether Saturday was going to be rideable.

Then get up at o'dark thirty to fix breakfast for the peeps and see if we can ride.

Then drag them out to a ride start that did not occur because the lightening started just when we arrived--and I'm stressing about getting everyone out of bed and not showing them a good time (as if I can control the weather).

Then drive to Bastrop and settle for mere trainer rides when I wanted to ride across Texas with the peeps.

Then have the awesomest time ever with Terra Castro who came out to provide massages for the peeps. Best dinner conversation and smiles all around. Peeps are happy. Greyhound host is very happy.

Then ride through some of the toughtest wind ever on Sunday to finish up the ride.

Then race back to Houston so I could prepare to fly out on Monday morning to San Antonio for ANOTHER court hearing

Then two days of preparation and more bloodletting on the courtroom floor with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals actually laughing at the other side's argument.

Then back to Houston where I missed my swim workout. (But thank God its a recovery week)

Then got three more appellate cases to put on the docket.

And I've got another brief due this week and two next week.

And all the while trying to be helpful (or at least not unhelpful) as Superpounce prepares for a very stressful piano performance

And looking at a full calendar of things to come

And it starts to feel that I'm not only a man on a hire wire doing a balancing act, but that I'm joined with a squad of ADD Spartan Cheeleaders bouncing up and down on my balancing pole while looking for their next hit of methamphetamine.

But at least I haven't spiraled into a multiple personality alter-ego bent on "project mayhem" or some other such stunt aimed at sticking it to the man and finding that primal man-ness that my generation has lost as nature's "middle children."

Oh. Wait.

Who is this guy who's life feels incomplete if he doesn't do 3 swims, 3 runs, 3 bikes and 2 strength sessions every week? What's that all about, Mr. Tyler Durden?

OK, so maybe I am a little "Fight Clubby" if you peel back enough layers on this triathlon thing. But you know what is not adding to the stress? This is the first year that I have someone doing the thinking for me. Someone else is watching the numbers and charting the workouts, and it is so much easier just to open the e-mail or sign onto Training Peaks, see what Coach Kris has on tap for the day, and just do it.

I used to think age group coaching was oh-so pretentious, or only for the fast kids, or not worth the money. Boy was I wrong.

If you really want to enjoy this sport to the fullest, get a coach.

Get.
A.
Coach.

Please Stand By

2009-04-22T08:02:00.003-05:00

There's been so much to blog about, but no time to do it. For that, I apologize and hope that I don't forget it all before I have a chance to get back to it. For now, I've had an MS150 sandwich--that is a weekend event sandwiched between two hearty slices of court hearings and appellate arguments that required lots of prep time and left me with no energy or time for writing. Boooooooooo. It also slammed me with work that stacked up while I was in court, so I can't even write now. I need a clone to get all this done.

Coach Kris probably thinks I'm dead because I haven't been on training peaks, but I've only missed one workout, Coach, and that in a week where I probably need more recovery anyway.

So, bear with me and please stand by.

So, is this a problem?

2009-04-17T08:19:00.000-05:00

She Told Me Her Name

2009-04-16T14:25:00.003-05:00

She finally told me her name.

She shall be called, "Delilah."

She is the nubile, young object of the songwriter's obsession. "Oh, what you do to me." When you love her, you don't mind the laughter of your friends because you know that "none of them has felt this way" and "a thousand miles seems pretty far, but they've got planes and trains and cars; I'd walk to you if I had no other way."

But she's more than that--more than just a willowy, young thing.

She is a temptress of Biblical proportions who will have her way. Sampson, shorn of his locks, will become as weak as any other man if he abandons himself fully to her wiles. It matters not if you can slay thousands of Philistines with the jaw bone of an ass. Delilah will empty you.

She is Delilah.

Let it be written.

Let it be done.

Get On Your Bike And Ride

2009-04-16T08:11:00.004-05:00

It is that time again, time to get on our bikes and ride from Houston to Austin with 14,000 of our closest friends, the largest charity cycling event in the nation, in order to raise $17 million to wipe out multiple sclerosis. The chronic, currently incurable, and potentially crippling disease affects millions of people, but it is important to me because it is in our house. Mrs. Greyhound has it.

We have been very lucky, both because her course of the disease in the past 10 years has been remarkably benign, and because we can afford the treatments that can help stave off disability--treatments that did not exist 15 years ago, and would not exist now but for research that is funded in part by the MS150. But even there, our co-pays for these expensive drugs have risen dramatically. If I were not blessed with a good job, we'd be in a bad situation. And many MS patients lose their jobs due to disability. Part of what the MS150 does is provide services and treatments to people like that.

The other part is funding research. Houston, where we live, has premiere research being conducted to develop new drugs. One of the biotechnology companies in the Woodlands is responsible for a drug that has shown remarkable promise in Stage II clinical trials in halting the progress of the disease and restoring lost function. And the Baylor MS Center in Houston's Medical Center is developing an MS vaccine in which material from a patient's immune system is removed from the body, modified, and then reintroduced in order to alter and shut down the immune response that causes the body's immune system to improperly attack the central nervous system as if it were an invader. If and when that is perfected, a cure will have been achieved.

I have not been as aggressive in fund raising for the ride this year, and I'm working on a vehicle to fund raise directly for the Baylor MS Center through Ironman, but I do hope you'll consider donating by clicking HERE or on the widget in my sidebar. This year is my fifth year to do the ride, and as always, we'll be doing up the ride in style.

I will be joined by three triathlete friends, and we will be doing the ride m-dot style. My posse includes Houston blogger and Ironman veteran Coach Liz, Austin blogger, super fast marathoner and Ironman veteran Carrie from Tri-to-be-Funny, and lastly, the non-blogger doctor/triathlete Carrie is currently shacking up and sleeping with . . . her husband Shawn. Rather than stop at La Grange about 100 miles into the ride, we'll be riding on to the Lost Pines Resort in Bastrop, which oughta be about 130 or so miles. We'll probably run off the bike, break our arms patting ourselves on the back, and then top off the day with massages by professional triathlete and massage therapist, Terra Castro.

So, yeah. When you're on Team Greyhound, we take care of you. We do it up right. If you see us on the road, ride with us. And whether or not you're riding this weekend, click on the fund raising link and be generous.

BLARRRRRGH!

2009-04-13T10:53:00.006-05:00

I can't swim 10x100m @ 1:55.

I can't. Not possible.

I can't follow that up with 6x 25m @35 and a 500m time trial.

Training Peaks can say it all day long, but it might as well say:

"Remove your own spleen and describe the procedure in the blue book that has been provided for you. You will find rubbing alcohol and a scalpel under your chair."

I tried my hardest. I can't.
I can't.
I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.I can't.

I'm condemned to the ignominy of greater than 2:00 per 100m and a transition area devoid of bikes.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

And all you swimmer kids can just STFU with your turning up your noses at a mere 2:00 per 100m. You people who warm up at 2:00 per hundred and swim an Ironman in an hour. PTUI!

I find it startlingly easy to play Chopin nocturnes or Beethoven slow movements on the piano. What's so hard about that? Didn't you take piano from your mummy from the age of 5?

And writing a 50 page brief with a 100 or so citations to authorities in a couple of days? Piece 'o cake. What? You find this complicated?

I guess you mighta' missed something staring at the black line on the bottom of the pool.

But I WANNA SWIM!~ WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And enough with the "technique technique technique"

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHH

I TOOK lessons from Total Immersion. I glide. I float fine. I drill. But apparently I'M JUST FREAKIN' SLOW.

And I'm getting slower

And I gained a pound

And I fell asleep at my desk like an octegenarian

And I want to be 6'4" and look like Tom Selleck.

BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHH

Rule No. 1

2009-04-08T14:06:00.002-05:00

1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about FIGHT CLUB.

In the midst of all the work craziness this week, I confess that I have felt a little like someone who got beat up at fight club but couldn't talk about it.

I really don't want to be "that guy." You know the one--the guy who tells everyone in the office about his sprint triathlon or his charity ride or his marathon. I make allowances for "that guy" if folks are new to sport, because it's neat that they're excited about they're newly found health and fitness. Heck I probably was "that guy" not long ago.

But if you're four or five years in, it starts to get a bit unseemly if you talk as if you're the second coming of Dave Scott every time you do a 5k fun run or a 10 lap pool workout.

So, I very rarely tell people at work if I'm racing, especially a normal, build up race. It's a "need to know" kind of thing. If you "need to know" why I'm not available, you'll get told. If you don't know, you don't need to know.

But then, I'm sure that there are some people who wonder why I've been gimping around this week like I can't walk--sort of like the office worker who comes in with the shiner and can't talk about fight club. But you guys are in fight club--so I can talk, right?

Well, to tell the truth, I've got blisters that are all the more painful in my lawyer shoes, the result of trying to be a sockless tri-geek on race day. That was the end of the race. Going backwards in time, I ran the last 3 miles with a decent stride, but the first three and a half miles were severely hampered by a back spasm off the bike. The bike rocked -- nearly 20 mph average speed. Passed lots of people like they were tied to posts. Great fun--until the back started to get tight. Gotta get that bike fit looked at again.

Of course, I had a lot of people available for me to pass. That huge sucking sound you heard to your south on Sunday was me sucking in the water--literally and figuatively. It was overcast, I couldn't see, the wind kicked up some chop, I swam or got blown off course, and mostly I just had my typical beginning of the season freak out. I swam a better pace for all 4k of my two Ironman swims than I swam on Sunday for 1k. Which is why there were HUNDREDS of people in front of me on the road.

And I'm starting to get pissed off at this problem of the transition area being devoid of bikes when I get out of the water.

And the pissed-offedness state is usually about the time that I start to solve problems. I don't have to be Andy Potts for crying out loud, but this swimming like Mr. McGoo has got to stop.

So, there. That's why I've got a shiner and can't walk too well. Next up, the MS150.