What A-Race

      One hour and twenty six minutes on the clock and I'm tired, exhausted searching for breathe and my calves were locking up. I tried to stretch them out but nothing would help. Time to push through or time to give up. That moment is what you train for, what you wait for, what you desire. The point where you test whether you can push yourself beyond where you have gone before.

     My A-race of the year was last Saturday. It was my biggest race, my entry into multi-sport, my first duathlon. I was looking forward to this race more than I have any other. I had been training (although not as well as I could) for this and the day before I had no nerves, no excitement, not much of anything. I was calm and ready, until night came. That night I had to pack up everything for the race. A few days earlier the weather had taken a drastic u-turn and instead of being 72 and sunny it was going to be 43 and rainy. I hadn't prepared for this, I hadn't even ridden in this. I didn't know what to take or what to wear. The stress started creeping in as I packed my transition bag, but no matter what the morning was coming.

     Early race morning my wife and I got up and start getting ready. We got dressed in our warm clothes and made sure we had everything. I started loading up the bike as my wife started to put on her shoes and she got a text from a friend. Her friend was asking why we weren't there yet and she said it was about to start. The questions starting running through our heads; "Did I read the time wrong?" "Are we an hour off?" "Can we still make it?". So we jumped in the car and drove off as fast as we could, and then we got another text confirming she was the one that was off on the time.....wow that was stressful, but we were on our way.

We arrived at the race and KC went and picked up our packets as I went and put my bike in transition. It was calming seeing a friend running my first ever transition. It was cold, but the rain was holding off. You could feel the excitement from everyone, the way it usually feels before a race. We put on our race numbers, aired up the tires and did a final check of everything. Just a few more minutes it was pre-race meeting and race time.

     After some waiting we were in the group and the gun had fired. We were off. The race was a sprint duathlon with a 5k race, 14 mile bike, and then another 1 mile run. There was also a 5k race going on at the same time. My wife was running the 5k, but this was the first time in a race we weren't running together. It was a strange feeling, but I kept on moving to beat my total time of 1:45:00.

The first mile of the run I felt like I wanted to reserve a lot of energy for the bike, and so I wasn't going all out. I got to the turn around and glanced at my clock, it was at 14 minutes and something. I did the math and figured I would come in from the 5k at around 29 minutes and something. That wasn't exactly what I wanted but maybe it would help reserve some energy. Soon after I saw my wife and she stopped to take a picture :) I started to pick it up a little, and as I came close to transition I looked at the clock and did a little double take. It was at 26:40 and I was ecstatic. It wasn't a PR but less than a minute off.

I ran into transition and switched my iPhone over to my bike. I took a long drink, put on my gloves and my helmet and took off. I wasn't feeling as confident about the bike portion. People had been talking about how the hills were pretty killer, and so I started going hesitantly to see what was ahead. I made notes in my head as I hit the first downhill, "This is not going to be fun to come back up". That first big downhill my chain came off and so it eliminated my speed going down as I had to stop. It was hard putting it back on with my gloves, but 20 seconds later and I was back up.

Five miles into the bike ride I was going harder. I wasn't hesitant anymore I was just pushing hard enjoying the ride, until I came to this massive winding hill. As I approached I saw three or for people walking up with their bikes. I went into it hard and soon switched to my low gears. I was going slow but in my head I kept repeating "do not get off this bike". I finally made it to the top and it was great finally seeing a little bit of flat straightish land. I kept riding hard and saw some friends cruise by on the other side of the road and knew the turn around must be coming up.

I hit the turn around and pushed hard. Up every hill and down the others I was cruising. I knew I had more to give and so I did. I passed some people and then came to the hill from early on. It was time to go back up, but I knew compared to that other one, this was nothing. I looked down at my clock and realized I had 20 minutes until my goal time. I didn't know exactly how far away I was, but it was really go time now. I hit the hill with no problem and made quick work of it. I started to come around a curve and saw the orange tape and my beautiful wife there all bundled up ready to take more pictures.

I rushed into transition threw off my gloves, left my phone on my bike and started running. I heard my wife's name over the speakers, and 2nd place following it. So I raised up my hands to cheer. In transition I took off, against my better judgement, without stretching my calves. I had done only one brick workout (going straight from a bike to a run) in training for this and that was the one thing I learned, but I felt good....for a minute. Then my calves started locking up, and I couldn't stretch them out. So I decided, "what the heck, only a mile, run it out in the pain". By the half mile mark I was feeling good again and a sprinted back to the finish. As I approached, there it was 1:34:15.

Crossing the finish line I grabbed some water, took off my timing chip and hugged my wife. What A race! All in all it was amazing. My calves were sore for a couple days, but I finished 3rd in my age and received my first race medal.

So proud of my wife

My Friend Corey and I

My wife got me a pre-race present, with a bike picture frame with my girls pictures in it,
and a biking magazine. She's the best.

My bike in transition

Looking Around

This morning I decided to go for a run. It had been a long while since I had been running, or working out. Really since the 10k. I was sick and then work was busy, and I haven't been eating well, and well those are all my excuses. So My wife and I went on a 7 day diet to correct this and this morning it was time to run again.

I started off with my normal short walk to warm up, followed by a little stretch and then off I went. When I'm running from my house I always run the same route. Walk down my street, start running as I take a left, turn the corner by the lake, run down to the stop sign and keep going until I know I am halfway through my run, and then come back. This morning was the same, but as I rounded the first corner by the lake I had to stop. . . . .not because I hadn't been running, or I was mostly out of shape, but because I saw this

This stopped me in my tracks. I had to pause my run and take my phone out of my arm strap and take a picture. The moon and the stars were as clear as anything and the sun was rising up over the lake. I started to run again and this scene reminded me about what my daughter had done at the dinner table a while back. 

It was a few weeks ago, but after dinner that night I made sure to take out my phone and write a note. It was one of those moments. We had just made dinner and sat the girls down at the table as we took our spots. Before we started to eat, Kairi (our oldest) said that she wanted to pray, so we all bowed our heads, and she paused for a moment. She then starts to pray, "Dear God, I pray for . . . mommy, and daddy, and Braycee, and . . . our food, and the window, and . . . the flowers . . .amen!"

There aren't any bad prayers, God simply says "come to me and talk", but I had never heard someone pray for a window. My 3 year old, though, connected me with something that day. During her prayer I realized that she was simply just looking around the room and praying for what she was seeing. We all had our eyes closed but she did not, she was simply seeing the work of God.

So this morning as I stopped and looked at the amazing picture in the morning sky, I simply looked around. I thanked God for who He was and what He has put in this world, in my life. I thanked Him for my wife, my family, where I live. I thanked Him that yesterday a good friend went through surgery and it went great. For another family, who got to go home from the hospital and a big scare. I thanked Him that I could sell my guitar, and was going to be able to buy a bike this weekend. I just thanked Him for what He had put in my life.

I know this isn't really about my training or triathlons or anything of the sort, but maybe its really about everything. Sometimes we need a 3 year old to remind us of what is really important. So this morning as the sun, the moon and the stars aligned I spent my morning connecting with God.

The difference a day makes

Lately I've been having a hard time "finding my stride", if you will. After the 10k run I was feeling great. I felt like I could keep going strong and conquer anything, but lately I have been feeling like I haven't been able to do a darn thing.

 Right after the race I got a sinus infection. Usually this is a very frequent occurrence, but since having sinus surgery last december this is only my second. Sinus infections usually wipe me out for one or two days, and then I can start getting rid of all the junk that it produces, which has been the norm here as well. The only problem is after running a 10k and feeling like you can do anything, well you usually try. The Monday after my race I decided I was going to go for a good run (running usually clears up the sinuses anyway), and so I set out. My wife told me, "don't go far", because she knew I still needed to recover from my 10k, so I decided to set my personal best for the 5k.

It wasn't the recovery she thought I needed, but I again felt like I could do anything. I started running, mile one is just getting real good and warmed up and I hit a PR of 7'43". I kept going hard, at mile 2 I was at a 8'21", a significant loss, but I was struggling now. I found it really hard to breathe. All of the junk in my throat and nose wouldn't let me get deep breathes. It was painful, I wasn't very happy but I knew my limits and I had to walk. It was only about a 20 second walk but it gave me enough energy to finish the 5k. The last mile was at a 9'07". Those weren't exactly the splits I was going for, and not exactly the nice run I wanted, but I finished with a time of 25:59.....beating my PR by more than 2 minutes. Needless to say I was in pain, but very happy.


 I knew the rest of the week I needed to really take it easy, especially if I couldn't breathe, but on friday I felt great and decided that I should go for a nice run. No expectations or anything. This is when my attitude went from "I can do anything" to "I can do nothing." I set out for the run, half a mile in I was great. At .75 miles here it was again, I still couldn't breathe. I ran until I finished mile 1 with a decent pace of 8'38", but I had to stop, I had to walk, I had to breath. My next mile was a mixture of very short runs with long walks in between. I just couldn't do it. That day I ran 2.52 miles at a 26:12, slower than my 5k. Now I am not saying those paces are necessarily bad, I mean I would have loved that pace when I was running 2 years ago, but I know what I can do now, and it was way more than this.

 So ever since that run I haven't felt like doing anything, or let me rephrase that, I haven't felt like I am able to do anything. There has been no drive, no passion, no want. But even with all of that you have to find your motivation somewhere, and I did, in my wife. My wife is not a morning person in the slightest, but for the past couple weeks she has been waking up at 4:30 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays to work out with a group of girls. Not only that but during our girls nap times she has been doing another hour long workout. I came home from work on Monday and she was finishing up her afternoon workout and I thought to myself, "what have I done today?" At that point her actions motivated me. I am training, I have a goal and if I ever want to get there I have to take the next steps.

So this morning I woke up early and did an insanity workout, and it just about killed me. I will be doing insanity until I feel I can run again (really soon) and until I get a new bike (I'll blog about this soon too). I have to do something, and this is definitely a good something for me to do. Today I find myself motivated again. I am ready to train, ready to take the next step towards my goal, so here we go, Ironman Me!.