The Beast Swimming the Crawl

This is my little triathlete in the making -- she already swims on her back faster than me.

2010 ATP

I have not completed a triathlon in over two years. I went from one sometimes two or three a month from 2003-2005 to nothing. I've still done a few road races and that sort of thing but since my divorce and then re-marriage and a baby and a whole new larger family plus I've been working like a fiend I've just been completely unable to string together a plan and schedule in any sort of consistent way that resulted in my completing a race. I have decent fitness. I'm capable. What I know is that I won't perform to my standard (though those standards aren't all that high) so I just tend to avoid it. Fact I had been training for a late season olympic distance that was to be oct. 18th of this year and I elected to take the family to Disney instead. Lucky for me as it turned out because that was our first 'cold' day of the year and wet on a bike and 60 degrees is not fun.

I have let my weight creep up to 195 which is 21 pounds heavier than I was in January of this year when I ran a PB of 21:52 5k.

All that being said tonight I re-signed up for the Training Peaks web site as a premium member and set up my annual training plan for 2010 with two weeks of 'prep' period built in for this week and next. I've got to get a fire burning because this random training is all unrealized potential.

First workout of 2010 ATP was tonight: 3 minute intervals @ 30 minutes. Felt very strong. Good lungs. Gotta drop weight

Started working more free lance

Let me get this out of the way first. The baby is great.

I know I've been in and out a lot lately basically non-existent really. I've basically determined that twitter is more my style of banter little quick short notes vs. writing big long posts you can follow me @heliocreative. Mind you I try to only use twitter for work purposes though sometimes I can't help myself considering the state of affairs in my once great nation that some how or another has become Erkel-In-Chief's socialism sandbox.

I'm still running nearly every day with Cooper. He's a big dog living in the burbs so the only exercise he gets is when we go out and pound some pavement. Don't worry he mostly runs in the grass where he attempts to stop and pee on nearly every mailbox he can find. I never run him more than 5 miles typically in the 3.5-4 range.

I know in the past I rarely talked about technology. Even though its a big part of my life and puts food on the table its not always something I'm overly excited about. I've got my little free lance company Helio Creative Palm Coast Web Design (yes that is an SEO trick) up and running. Before you go ripping on the misspellings etc on my site understand I'm not a creative writer I'm a guy that really likes to build sites that people can use.

My aunt has a natural skin care site that has been my first project at www.robins-spa.com. I've also been doing some work on my dad's drive shaft site www.aandibalancing.com.

While I've been working on these I've been picking up bits and pieces of jquery and slowly but steadily thinking about bailing on ASP.NET as a core technology and making the switch to PHP. As a Mac family I've grown somewhat tired of all of the bending over backwards I have to do every time Microsoft releases a new product. I can proudly say that aside from needing it to VPN to work I have not run VMWare Fusion at home in well over a month and I can tell you every time that happens the teeth grinding begins.

This blog may start to feature a bit more technology items in the hereafter. A good portion of which may be my returning to my development roots. PHP and Javascript. My first foray into this being what IDE to use.....To be continued.

First race of 2009 - Matanzas 5000 - PR

Its funny to me to say race because my main competitor is myself and the clock but it gets the job done. My primary goal for this race was a sub 24 minute 5k in order to get a top 2000 number for the upcoming (March 14th) Gate River Run. My time was 21:55. That is actually 3 seconds faster than my previous PR of 21:58. When I ran the 21:58 I was 23 pounds lighter (presently 186) so that should be a small hint at my present running fitness. If I could drop a couple more gallons of milk I may set a new PR this year. My goal is a sub 20. 19:59. My training partner, Jose, finished in 18:56.

We live about 30 minutes south of St. Augustine and we are up there about once a month or so to walk around so the Matanzas 5000 is probably my favorite 5k. It's a loop around town and far as I'm concerned they easily have the best looking long sleeve shirt design. Eye of the beholder. The race has a purse and draws over a thousand people many very competitive runners. Could be the shirts, the course and the long race history, not the purse, that causes the big draw for a 5k. Whatever it is if you live in the area skip the novelty of the race at the speedway (been there done that) and run St. Augustine. Has a real family feel over the more corporate feel of the race at the track that typically falls on the same weekend.

In the picture is my step-daughter. She ran her first 1 mile fun run after my 5k. I went with her just to kind of show her how to do it. If you feel a little tired slow down but don't walk just shuffle until you feel better. She did great and is psyched to start training for the big races after seeing another little girl about a year older that ran the 5k earlier and then the fun run. She is convinced that at the next one she is doing both. She is only 6 so I'm going to have to do a little looking up what that kind of running does to a child's bones although it reminds me of my own childhood there was no 'what is this doing to my bones' we just went and played all day. Let her go as long as its fun for her.

What's next

Most likely my next race is going to be a half marathon in Melbourne, FL on February 8th. I actually spent most of my youth living in Palm Bay and going to school in Melbourne and have only been back to visit once since my parents moved to Michigan when I was in the 10th grade. I'm not so confident I'm prepared to run that far yet so we'll see how my runs feel as the day gets closer. No PR's for that one just finish strong.

About iPhone Running Apps

I have tried just about every iPhone GPS running app available the latest being Trails and let me just say almost every one of them is just about completely useless. The iPhone has some rules that things can not run in the background so I have to make a choice between using my favorite app, Pandora radio, or give yet another GPS running tool a try to see if it produces better results than the previous. I am done wasting my time and will just enjoy my Pandora radio and map my routes on the gmaps pedometer which when running roads and not trails has a nice new feature "automatically for runners". Maybe some day I'll get a Garmin 405.

With the iPhone GPS apps, most had trouble finding signal running on open roads and those that didn't either just randomly quit working 30 minutes or so into a run. So I'd go out for an hour or so run look at the phone and it read 39 minutes 5 miles. I personally even though I work in technology am not a huge fan of technology. I don't like gadgets I just like things that make my life easier or more simple. This is completely contradictory to running with the phone in the first place but it serves two purposes. On dull days when I don't want to listen to traffic I get a little music and emergencies....somebody finally runs me over. Groove Armada radio here I come.

For family dying for new baby pitchas - My view while writing this post

Links

Matanzas 5000 & Fun Run
Gate River Run
Melbourne & Beaches Musical Marathon
Gmaps Pedometer
Pandora Radio

Introducing Virginia Adelaide

Born at home: January 17th - 10 pm. 9lbs. 14oz. 20 inches. chubby little thing :)

Let me just say this...Home birth is a far cooler experience than I had ever imagined it to be. Do it again without a second thought.

Blink and you'll miss it.

Life goes by incredibly fast even at 31 I get it. I often listen to preachers like Charles Swindoll and I've heard him talk about how fast life goes 'Blink and you'll miss it'. I'm one of those people who kind of got that pretty early on in life. That it goes by fast no matter who you are and I fully expect to be 60 any day now. Most people I know would probably say something like 'aren't you 60 already?' with my constant ranting and raving about the state of the world. Gotta lighten up.

I've been running around the last few weeks saying 'for the first time since Ironman' I've trained such and such distance or such and such time and its crazy how fast it all went. A month after Ironman I was side swiped by a school bus..just scrapes and bruises no injuries. The month after that my wife left. I instantly lost 12 pounds and started doing P90X. Following spring I did 2 or 3 sprints I went to do an Oly in Clermont my chain popped on the first climb and I haven't done a triathlon since 2006. I took up surfing the rest of that summer and spent just about every minute I wasn't with Maddie at the beach. Then I drug her to the beach :)

2007 got re-married, 2008 pregnant with our first child together, 2009 that bundle-o-joy is due any day.

I was thinking about all this during my swim last night. It was cold last night probably 55 and raining which pretty much means the pool is covered with one lane open for those willing to brave those 15 steps on the deck in your skivvies. Pool felt great and being empty it was easily the most peaceful swim I've had in a long time. I typically use these times when I feel this way to talk to God. Instead of counting laps I'm counting blessings and with each passing lap the lane seemed shorter and shorter it was like a swimmers high. Before I knew it I had finished 3,200 straight in a slow but very comfortable 1:11. I honestly believe with no family obligations I could have gone another hour. Course had I done that my blessings are home without me wondering if I'd drowned.

Finally some progress on the weight front last week. 189.6 on Friday morning. The biggest change I've made is being absolutely militant about not digging around the peanut butter jar or milk at 10 at night. [In regards to the comment in the last post ....throwing away peanut butter = blasphemy]

Last week was an extremely busy training week for me culminating in a 2 hour 18 minute trail run at Graham Swamp 7 am Saturday once again chasing Jose.

I keep meaning to post my tentative race schedule for the year but I've been too tired from all the training to actually do it. I know my first one is coming up on Jan. 24th in St. Augustine at the Mantanzas 5000. I've you've never done it you should. Great shirts. Which is really the only reason I do the races :)

On the baby front
Stubborn little girl is passed her due date. Im going to respect her right to privacy and keep quite on all the details.....soon.

Hard to run carrying all this milk

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong...I swam an hour and 2 miles on Friday night. Ran a 2 hour half marathon on a trail on Saturday morning. Then a 3 hour (2:45 - 48 miles bike 15 minute run) brick on Sunday....I went into the weekend weighing 195 I left the weekend 195.

I don't know how to train, lose weight and MAINTAIN POWER at the same time ....that is without starving. I'm constantly hungry. Even while I write this all I can think about is the giant jar of Peanut Butter with honey on my counter. Which is why I'm sitting here drinking a giant bottle of water trying to curb the hunger. I know throw it away. The PB not the water that is. If that weren't there it would just be something else. Like milk. I drink milk every night at bed time. It is a life long habit and I lost weight doing it before but I'm beginning to think I'm gonna have to suck it up and let it go for a while.

Took my first crack at timing 1,000 in the pool tonight and finished at 19:34. Anything under 20 minutes I could live with. Hopefully within six weeks I'll have that under 19 maybe even close to 18. A guy in the next lane challenged me to a race and he beat me by a body length. Course he caught just after my 1,600 but he still beat me fair and square.

I know men aren't supposed to be worried about weight. Get your weight up not your hate up. Thing is that my endurance feels great my body feels great I'm finishing my workouts strong not exhausted. However, when you're running a trail chasing the world's fastest unknown Venezuelan (my buddy Jose) and carrying around what amounts to 3, that's right THREE, extra gallons of milk its a little difficult to not get frustrated.

December Numbers

I'm really psyched to be able to post some numbers from an entire month of training, even though it was the holidays and there were several missed days either recovering from tough workouts that I'm not used to yet or recovering from the holiday sweets....gee wonder why I can't drop some of that weight. :)

Swim: 12,500 yards
Bike: 240 miles
Run: 56 miles
Strength: Unknown but roughly 5 hours a week.

ps: How bout dem Phish!

1 and 15 to 11 and 5. Wish they could have had a better outing yesterday but ay things are lookin' up babee

Welcome Back, Your dreams were your ticket out

Hola! Long time no see! I wonder how many times I've now come back to this blog with reports of running and dreams of races never seen.

Just another blog that never gets updated. For the first time since my divorce I actually have a membership to a pool. This past weekend I swam 3000(not continuous) for the first time since the Great Floridian race over 3 YEARS AGO.

Holy Cow Batman!

On the family front we are on official countdown now. The baby is due on January 6th. My wife is a private person so I'm going to limit the inclusion of family in the majority of posts going forward.

Here's the real kicker. Since getting remarried I've gained 30lbs. All that work to get rid of this sludge in the first place and its just steadily crept back. I've been training for 3 weeks straight now and my endurance is getting better every day but I've just not been able to drop the weight yet.

I've laid out my 2009 ATP (Annual Training Plan) with my first 'A' race being the gate river run in March with a goal of being top 1000. I figure that means I need to run it in the 1:10 range. We'll see right now I'm running just a touch more than 5 miles an hour in Zone 1. And about that St. Anthony's that I mentioned 2 or 3 posts ago ALMOST A YEAR AGO? That registration was deferred to this year. No way I'm missing it this time around.....

Some visual evidence....a picture from my 30 mile ride on Sunday.

I promise I will be back to post the progress.

An interesting video on the current financial turmoil

Recent Trip to Chicago