So my training and racing season were going along quite nicely until the 3rd of this month when everything came to a screeching halt.

I crashed my bike while I was out on a training ride and I took the brunt of all the damage.

All summer long I was making most of my training and racing goals with the exception of running, but then I think that will always be my Achilles heel. But more on all of that in a future post.

On the 3rd my goal for that training ride was to hit 32 miles per hour on a flat. Previously I managed to top 30, so I was pretty confident that I would be able to that night… and I did.

I know that I hit that mark both from my cycle computer and the fact that one of my riding companions told me he was doing 30 and I was pulling away from him.

The problem with that; is that as I was cruising along at 32, down in the aero bars, something caused me to veer to the right a bit and I ended in the gravel on the shoulder of the road. I tried twice to get back on the blacktop, but the lip between the gravel and blacktop was too big for me to get the bike over it.

As I was contemplating what my next move would be my front tire dug in and I flipped.

The next thing I remember was lying alongside the road being asked if I was okay and having my legs completely covered with mosquitoes; this happened on River Road in Brookfield, if you aren’t familiar with that area it is all swamp and wetlands around there.

A huge thanks and shout out by the way to the 2 guys that stopped to help me; Chad Weber who I train with all the time and Brent Emery whose group we were riding with. Chad and his wife Renee along with my beautiful bride Shelly helped me from that point on.

So the bike made it out with only a small ding in the front rim and Wheel and Sprocket (where I got the bike and have all my work done) was able to true up the wheel within less than a millimeter of perfect. They figure I should be good for a little while on it. Good thing since I want to upgrade those down the road.

As for me, I didn’t make it out of that incident quiet as good. I ended up with a level 3 separated shoulder, 3 broken ribs, numerous bruised ribs, road rash on my legs, arms and face, and just to make things annoying a sprained thumb on the good arm side making both hands useless for a few days.

I also busted up my helmet to the point where it won’t even fit right anymore, but after a CT scan there was absolutely no head trauma.

And due to that, I can honestly say that the helmet saved my life!

And one more shout out to everyone else (Ray, Julie, Chad, Renee, Leah, Dave and Andy) that I train and race with for all chipping in together to get me a snazzy new helmet so that my noggin is continued to be protected!

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

I ended up with a conference that I had to go to for work up in the Dells the last week of October and as a result I missed the Lakefront Discovery Run.

The conference was great and well worth it, but the fact that I wasn’t going to do the run caused me to slack on my training.

And that caused me to lose even more motivation and slack off completely for the last couple of weeks.

But that cost me big time, let me tell you.

As a result of all that lack of training I managed to gain back 10 pounds over the last few weeks.

However, I did get back out on the road this past week and started a new training plan with a new goal in mind.

The new training helped me to drop 2 pounds for the week, so that’s headed back in the right direction.

And the new goal; well if all goes well, Shelly and I will be doing the Disney Princess half-marathon.

I know what you’re thinking and yes you read that right, it is called the Disney Princess half-marathon. But they actually allow coed teams to enter as long as the guy runs with the girl.

And for me to finish a half-marathon, I’ll be very happy just keeping pace with Shelly and not worried about tearing up any records which I have no hope of doing anyway.

Plus the race will help to keep me training through the winter and I need to get up to that distance any way so that I can start to plan for my half-Ironman. It’s still 2 years out; but that’s a lot of training, so why not tackle it in chunks rather than all at once.

I figure I can get up to one distance, and then work on maintaining that level as I add another one.

We’ll see whether that is a good idea or not in the end.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

I was looking forward to tapering up after the Devil’s Challenge and continue on my training plan for my 15k at the end of October. But, it seems a small microscopic virus decided to get in my way.

Tuesday night (which was supposed to be my next training run) the tickle that was in my lungs all day long decided to take a turn for the worse and I tapped out of the training run. I also uncharacteristically went to bed very early thinking that I could possibly beat whatever it was before it got to bad. HA!

Wednesday I was hard down for the entire day and in fact don’t even remember anything about it. Thursday was a bit fuzzy, but I remember bits and pieces of it. I think.

Friday was no picnic or walk in the park, but things were starting to be better by the end of the day. And Saturday it seemed like I finally ran out of sleep and was starting to feel better.

Today I was finally able to leave the house and do a few things including taking the girls for a walk. And believe, they were getting more than a bit antsy about that one.

I’m not sure which strain of flu I had, nor do I care. All I know is that it kicked my butt for three days and has now put me a week behind on my 15k training schedule.

I’ll have to talk to the boss and training partner about how to handle this and get back on track as quick as I can.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

Not that I always remember to listen to my own advice or knowledge, but I try.

But proper nutrient is important whether you are talking about a race or training, without you are sure to hit the wall and crash and burn.

And once again I managed to do just that.

As my last big workout before taper week, I did a brick consisting of a long bike ride and a run. Prior to heading out I had a big breakfast and then did a few things around the house to at least let it settle down so I wouldn’t cramp up.

I still felt a little full as I headed out on the bike, but nothing terrible. As I was headed back home I took a look at my watch and had only burned 600+ calories. Nothing too drastic and since I was feeling okay, I opted to not eat anything that I brought with me.

I got back and headed out on my run, still not eating anything during my transition.

I finished the first mile of the 3 mile run (it turned out that my 15k training plan gave me a 3 mile run today which play into my brick quite nicely) and things started to take a turn for the worse.

The remaining 2 miles where totally brutal; I was able to complete each mile within the training plans time limit, but it involved a lot of walking and wasn’t very pretty.

I got back home and bonked big time. A look at my watch showed that I ended up burning over 2,000 calories in the end.

I was light headed, starving and couldn’t seem to get my feet back under me. I finally ended up crashing on the couch for at least an hour before I was able to start feeling normal again.

A quick intake of a couple hundred calories would have prevented all that from happening.

I learned that lesson during a race and now I’ve learned it during training. Hopefully I can remember those lessons and not have that happen again.

So, as I mentioned earlier; it’s now taper week for the Devil’s Challenge. I’m not as ready as I would like to be, but I’m feeling like I should be able to at least better last year’s time, especially since I have the new bike.

A quick look at last year’s results had me finishing at 2:01. I’m hoping to cross the line with a time of 1:50 or less. We’ll see what happens.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

But what you don’t see (at all as far as I can recall) is any bumper stickers about cyclists following the rules of the road.

And there needs to be!

I can’t tell you how many times, whether I’m in my car or on my bike, that I see people on bikes completely ignoring the rules of the road and just doing there own thing.

This list in my opinion is endless, but the big ones that I see all time are; riding on the wrong side of the road, riding on the sidewalk, blowing through stop lights and stop signs like they aren’t even there and getting off traffic as if it was obligated to stop for you.

Physics is hard to deny or fight; when it is car versus bike, the car will almost always win. And the losing side can be very, very ugly and painful!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a perfect saint when it comes to this stuff, I stumble once in a while myself. When I’m riding through my neighborhood which has stop signs every other block, I don’t necessarily come to a full and complete stop at each one (it’s just too hard getting all this mass moving again). I do, however, always slow way down at each one of them (see previous comment about physics) and I do come to a complete stop if there is a car coming.

I can even do the stop and go (as long as it’s not for a long time) without unclipping. So at 4 way stops I can come to a stop and let the car (who has the right away) proceed first.

That never happens!

The driver (being so conditions by other cyclists) is convinced that I should go first and will sit there and either stare at me, or will way me through.

I’ve also gotten yelled by at least one person on a bike for “cutting them off” when I started to do that same thing in my car. Bad idea on their half; I yelled backed and they didn’t like what they heard I assure you of that.

Bottom line of all this rambling; let’s all just follow the rules of the road (and watch out for each other as well) and the road will be a much safer place overall.

I now step down from the soapbox.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

Well, I’ve had a few too many things going on the last 2 weeks that I haven’t had a chance to blog about this until now.

But a couple of weeks ago I dumped my bike and took a serious header in the process.

The only thing that saved me from any kind of serious injury and allowed me to ride away from it was the fact that I had my helmet on.

And the whole was caused by a momentary lapse in concentration on what I was doing.

Shelly and I were out on a training ride and luckily more than halfway done with the ride when it happened. We were starting to get close to an intersection and I thought that Shelly was planning on either getting a lot closer or possibly even going to go through it when (for some reason that I still haven’t figured out) I looked away for a brief moment.

It was at the point that Shelly came to a stop directly in front of me, unclipped and was standing with her right leg on the ground. I know that much for certain because when I looked forward again I saw the bike and from the angle that I was going I only had two choices; swerve to the right and hit her leg or stay the course and run into her back tire.

I opted for the tire since I knew that if I ran into her leg I could do some serious damage to her leg.

What I didn’t think about was the whole spinning tire hitting stationary tire thing and what would happen to all the momentum. And yes, I was hard on the brakes as well, but that just meant the crash wouldn’t be as severe.

Well, we smacked tires and the sudden stop of my tire meant that my bike was now the only thing left to keep moving… but in more of an upward and arching type motion rather than forward.

I somehow came unclipped and landed right on the top of my head and then body slammed down on my back right side.

It hurt like hell, knocked the wind out of me, and banged me up quite a bit. But other than a bit of a shore neck, shoulder and hip; the only other major damage I had to myself was a scrapped up knee.

Remove that one element of the helmet though and things would have turned out a lot worse.

As for the bike; the aero bars had to be readjusted (but they were already needing to be tweaked anyway) and there is a small scrape on the down tube.

Oh yeah, and I needed to get my back tire trued. Of course I didn’t realize that I needed that to be done until the night before the race. My bad for not riding the bike before that and checking it out.

I guess that’s another lesson learned.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

I didn’t know the person who drowned, but I did the (Steve) the guy that dove in and tried to save him. In fact, I was at his house the day before talking about triathlons.

We actually talked about how a lot of people don’t always take the shorter distance races as serious as they should.

I’ll keep this short and to the point this week; you have to get open water swim training in before your race. And don’t just do it once either.

The first open water swim that you do merely serves to point out how different it is to swim in the lake versus a pool. And it also helps you figure out what things you are going to want to change.

I can’t say that there is a set number of swims that you should get in, but you should do enough so that you start to feel comfortable in the lake.

On race day, swimming in crowd in the lake, with your adrenaline going is still going to be a whole different animal. But at least you’ll be used to the lake environment.

And now it’s time to start looking forward to next weekend…
Tri-ing for Children’s is Sunday and I’m as ready as I can.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

My big race, the one that I have been planning on and thinking about since last year not long after I finished the race. Which also happens to take me back to my very first triathlon that I ever did, I’m talking about Tri-ing for Children’s.

And last year after the results were posted for the Clydesdales, I ended up finishing in fifth place. And riding the “Grocery Getter” at that.

So this year, all of my training and preparing has been to take me back where it all started to see if I can better that time and actually finish in the top three.

However; I’m discovering that the more that I pick up my game, the more everyone else is as well. It seems that every race that I look at the Clydesdale division just keeps growing and the competition keeps getting tougher.

So I guess that all I can do is keep tri-ing and keep training.

One thing is for certain though; no matter where I finish in the pack, I will at least finish. And in the process, I’ll keep getting in a little better shape as well.

Besides, I can’t let myself get too hung up on what place I finish in. I always have to remember that there is another race and another goal still out there for me to accomplish.

One of which is to keep moving up to the next distance… But that’s another training plan for down the road.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

Well, I’ve tapered back up after my race and this coming week I’ll be back at full training insanity. Or at least as much as I can anyway.

The next race that Shelly and I both have planned is the Bigfoot triathlon down in Lake Geneva. A few weekends ago we checked out the bike course by driving, but we decided that it was time to ride it and see what it was really like.

We also wanted to get in an open water swim, so we figured why not combine them into a brick.

The beach area for Bigfoot state park is in a pretty nice area of the lake for a nice long straightaway swim. According to the car as we drove along the shore line, it is about .4 to .5 miles of a stretch.

So we put on the wetsuits and headed out for a nice long swim. We figure we came close to putting in a mile. I have to say that I’m getting more comfortable in the open water with each swim that I do.

I can’t say the same thing for Shelly though. Neither one of us can figure out why, but in the open water (or with the wetsuit on) she gets far more winded than she ever does in the pool. No matter how far or fast she swims when she is in the pool.

Seems to me we have a little research as well as maybe some trial and error to try and figure that one out. More on that at a later date if we ever figure it out.

From there (and only after the longest transition ever due to a long walk back to the car) we headed out on the bike course. We did the Olympic route since that is the race that Shelly is planning on doing.

Although I have to say that after doing the swim and the bike I’ve been thinking long and hard about possibly doing the Olympic distance for that race as well. I still haven’t fully made up my mind yet, but I’ll probably do the sprint distance so that I can use that as an indicator as to how well I’ll do at Tri-ing for Children’s.

I really want to pull out all the stops for that race and try to finish in the top 3 for the Clydesdale division. And I think that the Bigfoot race will give me a good indication of where I may need to focus my training for the next month.

So back to my wild weekend; so today I meet up with Shelly’s uncle Dave and we both went down to do the Locust Street Beer Run.

For those that aren’t familiar with that race; it is a 1.8 mile run with 4 mandatory beer stops along the way. You must make all 4 beer stops and have your cups when you cross the finish line in order to be eligible for any prizes.

I didn’t win any prizes, but I did manage to complete the race in 16 minutes flat with all four of my beer cups. And yes, all beer was properly consumed on the course. From there we stayed for a few more which pretty much undid at least some of the training from the weekend.

But hey, it was some good beer!

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

Is there no justice in this world?

At least my Clydesdale ranking isn’t going to be in jeopardy any time soon.

Any way, back to this past week;
I managed to workout everyday this past week and even got in 4 bricks and 1 open water swim.

The open water swim was only about a quarter of a mile, but more importantly I was able to test out the new wetsuit. After checking with every place in town and finding out that none of them had one that would fit me, I went with the online option. I was able to find out what I wanted in my travels around town and what would fit me, so it made the purchase a bit easier.

I went with the NeoSport Sprint full suit from Wetsuit Wearhouse. I went back and forth with Shelly over whether or not to get the sleeves or not, but I can tell you that now that I found one that fits and I tried it in the water; I’m glad I went with the sleeves.

As for the rest of the training this past week; it went pretty good and I’m feeling about as comfortable as I can be with what I’ve done training wise.

Would I have liked to train more? Yes. But I feel as though I’ve gotten in as much as I could and I think I’m ready for next weekend.

I’m also looking forward to this week and the bit of a break that I get from the taper.

Although I’m not to sure how that will work this Thursday night at Tri Fit… I guess I’ll find out.

So my goals for Saturday; stay with my own game plan in the swim – long and strong with my strokes and don’t try to rush it. Kick the bike and take every advantage that I can with it since I’m able to really crank that thing out. Steady and smooth with the run, trying to maintain about a 10 minute mile for as much of it as I can.

Overall, I’m hoping to finish with a time of 3:20:00 or less. I’ll let you know how that goes next week!

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training