And So It Begins

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.

Old School

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.

Who's In?

So is you is, or is you ain't? I'm in a pickle.

OK, so knowing that my race next year needed to be in November, I had signed up to volunteer at Florida and at IMAZ. At the time, I also knew that I probably would not have to race alone because lots of the local athletes and bloggy peeps were making noises about doing one of those two races.

NOW, howevah, everyone is downing tequila and talking about a Mexican vacation with the new Ironman Cozumel race. While I don't relish a 2.4 mile ocean swim or winding up in a Mexican hospital after being run over by a Mexican pickup truck, I also don't relish swimming Tempe Town Lake and riding/running a multiloop desert course by myself.

By.Myself.

Alone.

So Cozumel's registration appears to be open. What's it going to to be? Who's going? Anybody ready to commit?

Come on, all the cool kids are doing it. Who cares what mom says?

I See Thin People

The average body mass index of Lubbock, Texas had dropped dramatically this weekend. For, this is the weekend that the abnormally thin, freakin' fast, Ironskull triathlete crowd comes to town for Ironman 70.3, Buffalo Springs Lake Triathlon.

Oh, and I'm here to along with many fellow bloggers like Kona Shelley and Triboomer.

Sers'ly, if you've never been to an Ironman branded race with Kona slots on the line, you don't know what it's like. This is not your local sprint or Oly or even half. Everywhere you look is a muscled up, lean body on a six foot frame wearing a wetsuit or toting a space shuttle bike and a pointy helment. You see things like this:





and this:





and this:




and this:




Oh, and this:







and this:

(She's kind of a big deal. So I'm told. )

We saw Andrea Fisher all rocked up with her long, broad shouldered swimmer chick physique. I am telling you, a woman like that could break a little hobbit like me in half. I don't care who you are, that's just hawt.

Last year, I did my second ever triathlon here and was COMPLETELY intimidated. This year, now that I know I can do the distance, I have the utmost respect for the course, but I just resign myself to the fact that those rock stars are doing a different race than I am. I mean, yeah, I'll be on the same course with Andrea Fischer, Desiree Ficker, Natasha Badmann, Tim DeBoom and Simon Lessing, . . . . you get the picture. I'm not doing the same race that they are.

Pretty much the same with the me and the elite age groupers. They are still as intimidating, but they're going to do their thing and I'm going to do mine. I'm racing me and father time. Father time will eventually catch me, but he'll be clutching his chest and wheezing when he does.

So in preparation for race day, Triboomer, Kona Shelley and I went out to the course for a little warmup swim.




We followed this with a prep bike and run checkup.

I am pleased to report , in a completely unbiased endorsement, that my new 2XU wetsuit, which I purchased with my own jack, is BEEEEYOUUUUUTIMOUS. It is understandably a little tight across the Trigreyhound's massive chest and latimus dorsai, but it's like swimming with a freaking life jacket on. Uber-bouyant. Much better than my crappy old wetsuit. Really helps the confidence and relaxation in the water. I am go for launch to have my most comfortable swim ever, whether or not it is what one would call fast.



After a bit of a swim and a bit of a bike we checked out the run course:


(Uhm, that's me up the road there a bit, droppin' the hammer on Kona Gurl)


The run has some of the wicked hills that dive in and out of the canyon at miles four, five, eight and nine.

(Well, isn't that special)

In the heat of the Texas sun after 3+ hours of work in the water and on the bike, these are truly special.

After the prep work, we went to eat and I got what I thought would be a little bowl of red beans and rice and a baked potato. What I received was enough carbohydrate energy to power the Eastern Seaboard in the form of a potato the size of Rush Limbaugh's head. These potatos have obviously been doping. Trigreyhound just hopes he is not the subject of a random drug test tomorrow.


(Rush is smaller than this potato)

As I was sitting there looking at the excessive food, I was reminded what makes the U.S. great. I spied two native Lubbockians, probably husband and wife, each at least 300 pounds, waiting for a table at the IHOP and passing a cigarette back and forth. Ah, . . . **sniff** . . . that's America. Sharing the love.

Finally, in a side note for the betting public, my Canadian challenger's wave has been moved. Instead of starting 20 minutes ahead of me, she starts five minutes behind. This means we will have more immediate feedback on who is "winning" the challenge she laid down to the dawg. She will undoubtedly pass and drop me in the swim, I will perhaps see her on the out-and-backs on the bike, and I will then have to catch her and put 5 minutes back into her on the run.

Can I do this? I have my doubts given the predicted heat tomorrow. But then, that's why they hold the races.

Could be. Who knows?

This is a recovery week for me, and not a moment too soon. I was just getting to that can't-stay-awake-can't-fall-asleep-droopy-overtrained state. I am getting where I know my limits.

But the thing about recovery weeks is that being still sometimes causes me to think too much. Some of that thinking has my stomach tightening into a tight little knot. See, if my tri-season were a Broadway musical, this would be about the time that everyone breaks into song, and someone like Tony from West Side Story croons:

Could be!
Who knows?
There's something due any day;
I will know right away,
Soon as it shows.

***
Something's coming,
I don't know what it is,
But it is
Gonna be great!

(So, um, yeah. I kind of know some show tunes. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Don't make me post about the road trip where I learned all the lyrics to the patter songs from The Music Man. Don't make me.)

The air and waters have turned warm here in South Texas. Sweat is once again dropping to the asphalt as we bike. We live in 45 spf suncreen. Dreadmills are a thing of the past. And all the shavey-legged, spandex crowd with abnormally low body fat are all a-quiver. All this training isn't just for grins. RACES are just around the corner.

I know a lot of you think Wildflower is "just around the corner," and it is. I can't wait to see all those triblogger friends in one place. I'm truly California Dreamin' about that race. But, my first corner is just a lot closer than that.

This Sunday, April 1, I have the first race of my season. This time out, however, the first race is the Lone Star Triathlon Festival at the half-iron distance.

**gulp**

So this explains the little knot in my stomach. It's one thing to put a local event on your calendar with the intention of simply treating it as a long training day. It's another to get back on a race course with real athletes, and buckle down for 1.2 miles in the open water, 56 miles on the bike, and 13.1 miles on your feet. Still, it can't be the hardest thing I've ever done.

The swim is in a sheltered, salt water bayou, not in the open Gulf.



The bike course is pancake flat alone the coast. I have ridden it before and have a good feel for how to meter my effort.



The run course is . . . a run course.


With the exception of potentially brutal winds on the bike, the course should be less of a challenge than Buffalo Springs Lake last summer. Still, . . . .

There's always that doubt . . .

and that faith . . . .

Could be. Who knows?