He also won’t clear me to race until he sees me again which isn’t going to be until September 13th. Our last race of the year is September 19th – The Devil’s Challenge, my other “A” race of the year.

So that means that my racing season is definitely over for this year.

But I’m okay with that, or at least as good as I can be any way.

The way I see; I haven’t even been back on the bike yet since the crash. I had high hopes to get on it this weekend, but that didn’t happen. In the interest of full disclosure and to keep myself honest when I look back at this post; I lost my job on Friday, so Saturday was a bunch of running around to do, hitting up some of my contacts for potential leads and working on the resume and Sunday was a recovery day from drowning my sorrows on Saturday night.

But back to the bike – I only have 3 weeks of training before the race and I only barely started working hills before the crash, so there is no way that I could be ready for Devil’s Challenge in that short of time.

Also, the idea of flying down those hills at the speeds we can hit is a bit intimidating right now as well. I figure that will take a little time to get rid of that, but I’m not that worried since I’m a speed junky and once I feel the rush again it won’t take me long to build up my nerves.

Now add in the fact that I can’t even work on my swim until the Monday before the race and that pretty much takes care of things for the year.

But, I’m going to stay focused during the off season and make sure that I’m ready to hit it hard starting with the first race of next year.

And to keep on my Ironman time schedule, I have to do my half next as well. So, even more incentive to keep training.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

One of the tougher decisions, that I believe I’m getting closer to making, is how hard do I want to push myself in doing a half-marathon. I found one that I could do at the end of March, or one of two that I could do in the middle on May.

While I don’t mind pushing hard, I’m just not certain I can be ready to go by the end of March. So from that perspective alone I’m pretty sure which way I’ll go, but for now I’m keeping my options open.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

Ergo, if you stop training you can lose that technique very quickly. And I just discovered that the hard way this past Saturday when I got in the pool for the first time in over 2 months.

The lack of training hurt my running a bit, but overall I didn’t lose that much time and what little that I did lose I was able to get back pretty quickly. If anything suffered with my running it would be stamina. And I could pretty much same the same thing about the bike now that I’ve gotten back on it a few times.

But the swim! That’s a whole other story.
I really felt the lack of training right from the first few strokes and it never got any better from there.

On both my easy 100 and my fast 100; I was slower by over 15 seconds. That may not sound like a lot at first, but multiply that out to either a half or full mile and the number becomes significant.

And while I’ve never been the prettiest swimmer out there when I’m going all out for time, I could feel that even my slow pace was sloppy, ugly and anything but smooth.

Oh yeah, and I could really feel it in the muscles both right then and there as well as the next day.

Next time (hopefully I won’t, but you never know) I lose my motivation I need to make sure that it isn’t for as long of a period as it was this time.

I think the better thing to do is to just take some planned time off with a set schedule as to when training will start back up. That way I can let myself slack off for a little bit, but there is a fixed end to it rather than just flailing around aimlessly which is definitely what I did.

At least I’m back at it now, now the only trick is finding the time to get to the gym and get in the pool.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

I only mentioned one of them last week, but I had two that I really wanted to accomplish.

The first was to not walk any of the hills. It wasn’t easy, especially since Shelly and I didn’t train on hills as much as we wanted to this past year. But, with sheer determination as my driving force, I was able to climb each one of them with out getting off the bike and walking.

Although, when I got to the top of that first hill I wasn’t to sure why that was such an important goal. In case you aren’t aware of it, the first hill is only about 2 tenths of a mile out of the transition area and is a full mile long.

I still hadn’t caught my breath from the swim.

The second goal was to beat last years time of 2:01 with at least a time of 1:50 or less.

My official time was 1:49:09, I’m pretty happy with that.

Nutrient, as mentioned last week, was still an issue though. I plan for enough calories during the race (I burned 1749), but the hard part was getting it in while still trying to catch my breath. More training is obviously needed.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

It is our nemesis and yet at the same time the race we look forward to every year now as well.

I’m of course talking about the Devil’s Challenge Triathlon. The one race that everyone in the Triathlon community knows about whether they done it or.

For me; it’s my last race of the season, for Shelly, she will have one more left.

And as of tonight Shelly and I are now registered and ready to take on the challenge.

When it comes to this race there only seems to be two schools of thought when it comes to this race; you either hate it and you never want to do it again or you love it (in a strange love / hate sort of way) and can’t wait for the challenge each year.

The biggest reason for the first school of thought is the hills on the bike course. And by hills, I mean all the hills that are on the course! It’s not uphill all the way, but at times it feels that way. In reality there are some killer downhill runs that let you get up some serious (and I do mean serious) speed.

Last year on the old Grocery Getter I believe I topped 40 MPH. This year with the new speed machine (I’m still working on the name) I have no idea what speed I could reach, but I’ll let you know.

The other reason people tend to hate this race is the weather. Late September in northern Wisconsin can mean only one thing, cold harsh and unpredictable. And that is exactly what it has been the last two years that we’ve been going to this race.

Now the reasons why people love this race (in a weird triathlete sort of way) is for exactly the same reasons that I just gave you.

The hills challenge you to always have them in mind no matter what other race you are training for because they are there just waiting. And the weather forces you to be prepared no matter what.

The biggest thing someone needs to keep in mind when it comes to this race is that you are NOT racing against the other triathletes, you are racing against yourself!

If it is your first year doing the race then all you are really doing is establishing your baseline. If you’ve already run the race, then you are trying to beat that baseline and create a new PR that year.

That’s all, nothing more, nothing less. If you get more out of it, like winning your division, then that’s great. But if you don’t, then no big deal.

I believe this is the one race that can really keep you grounded and remind you that the sport of triathlon is not about winning, but about improving yourself.

And that, more than anything else, is what makes this race a great one to participate in.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

This race is now right up there with our all time favorites and we will definitely be going back there next year to do it again.

It was very well organized with what seemed like more volunteers than there were triathletes. And every single one of them was friendly and willing to help. And all the volunteers made it easy to know where you where going at all times while on the course. Something that was extremely helpful since we never got a chance to check out the course ahead of time.

We even got a great announcement as we crossed the finish line (hand in hand, because how else would we finish) about the fact that we were there celebrating our 12th wedding anniversary. Very cool.

I can’t say enough great things about the race, so I’ll just post a great big Thank You to everyone up there that was involved and we’ll see you next year. 13 | 2

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

Well at least that is what my beautiful bride Shelly and I are planning on doing next weekend.

And for those of you wondering what the 12 | 1 means in the title, well that’s an easy one as well.

The 12 represents which anniversary this is and the 1 is for our first annual anniversary triathlon. Yes, we plan on not only doing this again, but making it a yearly event. If all goes according to plan I’m hoping that we’ll have shirts that will reflect that as well for next weekend.

So, if you happen to be at the Waupaca Area Triathlon next weekend and you see 2 people biking or running together wearing shirts that have that on the front; say hi to us.

I was also able to get a hold of one of the race officials and Shelly and I will be starting in the same swim wave. The beauty of that is that neither one of us will have to wait for the other one so that we can start on the bike portion of the race.

As far as the swim goes; we are both pretty evenly match there, so we should be getting out of the water at about the same time.

Overall, we aren’t too worried about time for this race and we are looking at it as more of a training session. Especially for me since my bike and run are a lot faster than Shelly’s. With that in mind, I’ll let her set the pace for those two portions of the race.

And, knowing Shelly like I do, once we get out there in the mix of things and in the middle of the whole race; her adrenaline is going to kick in and she’ll be going at a full pace rather than a training pace. And I’m okay with that.

Later,
John W.
A Clydesdale in training

The Clydesdale division was tuff and bigger this time around with 16 of us all total.

And the top 9 (including yours truly) all came in with a time in the 1:20’s. And there was only 8 minutes and change separating all of us.

Unfortunately, I was the ninth one with a time of 1:29:48

But, and this is the most important part, I came in under 1:30 which was one of my major goals!

The lesson I learned; one which I tell people all the time based on all the studying that I’ve done (and I might add I know better) is to never, I repeat Never change anything I race day!

If you haven’t done it during training, then you have no business doing it on race day, period!

My bright decision was to save time in transition (of which I saved a whole whopping 4 seconds) was to eat my nutrition on the ride instead of during the transition.

Well as I was running my bike out I tore open the package of Gu and sucked that down with no problem and headed out on the bike course. Once I on the course I opened my package of peanut butter (Justin’s Nut Butter – great stuff) and sucked half of it into my mouth.

It took me 5+ miles down the road before I was able to swallow that first bit and get it all out of my mouth so that I could breathe normal. That amounts to one third of the total ride that I wasn’t at my peak!

My next big decision was to go with the Shot Blocks instead of the Sports Beans on the bike. Something else that I’ve never tried to eat other then one block that Shelly gave me during an easy ride that we were doing.

Well, I started to chew it and I inhaled a small piece of it into my throat. Several minutes later and after sounding a lot like one of my cats with a hairball, I was finally able to get it out of there.

The price of that little mistake meant that my bike was only 4 minutes faster than last year even with the new bike.

Okay, so even with all that said, it was still an awesome race and I can’t complain with time since I managed to meet my overall goal of coming in under the 1:30 mark.

At least now when I tell people don’t change anything on race day I can tell them I know what I mean since I’m speaking from experience.

Live and learn, there’s always next year.

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