On the road towards being an Ironman

My good o’l buddy Joe has been on my case about updating my blog now that I’M SIGNED UP TO BE AN IRONMAN – that line still makes my stomach sink every time I or someone else says it. So, let’s not say it. Let’s say, ”I’m training for this dumb idea I signed up for” Yeah, that seems better.

Since my last posting I went to the East Coast to ride with my brother while he completed his first century! It was called the Salisbury Century – one of the flattest courses I’ve ever ridden. It started in Salisbury, Maryland headed to the coast where at mile 63 we stopped and put our feet in the icy Atlantic Ocean (my first time). It was a long day. 7 hours in the saddle but hell he did it! It doesn’t matter how long it took or how much coaching I had to do to get him to the finish line he made it and I was there to be part of it. I told my sister-in-law around mile 80 my neck started to hurt because I kept looking back to see where he was – he had the keys to the car so I had to keep an eye on him.

Last weekend I attempted to ride up to Duluth, MN from Andover, MN (about 140 miles). I got about half way (80 miles) when I thought I better pack it in when dreaming about Advil overtook my thoughts of food. For the last 50 miles we battled a relentless 25+ mph headwind with only brief, very brief, moments of shelter. Before I packed it in I knew I would do this ride again and formulated a plan to do it in June – seems like a beautiful time of the year to head north.

I’ve also been plotting my 2011 moves towards “The dumb idea I signed up for” – which means I signed up for other dumb ideas.

Here’s the plan as of right now:

• April 10th—St. Louis, MO Marathon <- I'm not kidding. I already signed up for this one. Let the bitching...I mean training...begin!
• June 11th—Liberty Tri (Olympic)
• July 9th— WI Insane Terrain Ride (120 mile 12,400 ft of climbing)
• July 24th—Chisago Tri (Half)

Road and TT races when I can fit them in.

I’m looking for one more tri. Let me know if you know of a good sprint or another Olympic course sometime between the end of May—mid-July?

One of my biggest obstacles I need to overcome is learning how to swim without the damn nose plug because when you go into battle you can’t have your opponents knock off your crutch or you’ll be out. In my case drowned. If you’ve ever witnessed an Ironman the swim IS a battle so I’ve been going to the pool to “figure it out”. I’ve heard the tips, you need to blow out of your nose underwater and you need to breathe in with your mouth. It’s not quite that simple. This past week I jumped in put the fear aside and figured out it wasn’t either of those tips I was doing wrong it was the fact that I wasn’t blowing out all of the air from my lungs so when I would go up to breathe I was pushing out and pulling in air and quite frankly I didn’t have enough time to do both. Now, I feel like I’ve taken a step backwards in my swimming endurance to work on this new technique. I’m determined to get it down and back to where I was because I’m not going to go into Master Swim Classes with my damn nose plug. Might as well be wearing arm flotties.

This weekend I’m going to be checking out a running group. My co-worker runs with them but after going to group rides that don’t have you pay to be in their group I’m having a hard time justifying paying to be in a running group.

So that’s what’s been going on. I’ll try to keep this blog updated daily. I’m going to have to scale back on the length of my posts so it can be more manageable with my training/sleeping schedule.