I'm very lucky in a lot of ways, but one of them is that I'm able to build most of my life around things that I enjoy.  My work-life is interesting, engaging, and exciting.  My personal life is filled with great people, and my personal time is filled with, well, mostly pain and suffering.  But in a good way, for some reason I like that stuff. But everything is relative and there are always going to be aspects of things you do - even things you generally enjoy - that get old or entail doing some groundwork that isn't that...

Just finished a two hour run in some really nasty conditions.  It snowed hard here in the Seattle area for most of the day yesterday.  It's amazing how different a little bit of altitude makes.  My house is about 150' above sea level, and I got about 5" near my house.   Overnight the temperatures went up in to the high-30s and it's been raining hard ever since.  I waited until noon hoping that it would melt off, and near my house it looked like it had.  My normal route starts off going up even higher and away from...

This year I decided that I was going to continue to commute to work by bike, at least a couple times a week, as long as it was safe to do so.  This meant finally buckling down and investing in all the necessary paraphernalia that allows it.  Over the summer, when training allowed, I was riding into work about twice a week.  I really enjoyed it.  It's only 25 minutes each way, and I can usually factor it into my training a bit.   Any time on the bike is good time on the bike.  Especially riding home after work, it's...

I've really come to appreciate a lot of the things that Gordo Byrn has to say. Gordo is a pro triathlete (3rd at IMC last hear) and finance guy who has become a real thought leader in the sport. His book, Going Long, is more-or-less The Bible of long course training. There are certainly other protocols out there, but ones similar to his are very common. The protocol I'm following is nearly textbook Gordo. I often wonder if other methods would have worked for me - e.g. more higher intensity work and...

I've got my first real Long Day on the schedule for Saturday (tomorrow). Typical thing - 45 min swim, 5 hr bike, 1 hr run. I knew these were coming but kept thinking to myself "well it won't be so bad, at least the weather will be nice.". See, it's been warm and dry here in the Seattle area for quite a while. We've had some showers this week but that's about it. Um, not so much. Looked at...

My run volume has been increasing and I've been enjoying it. I've noticed my normal run pace has picked up substantially over the last few weeks. I hate to even commit this to works (out of fear for jinxing myself) but I'm feeling very healthy lately. A lot of the aches and pains that nagged me during my IMAZ prep seem to have worked themselves out. My feeling is that I'm finally reaping some of the benefits of enhanced durability and deeper fitness that allows me to train...

Six weeks have passed since IMAZ and over the last two or so I've gotten back into a steady training cadence again. It really was interesting seeing what the body did in the weeks after Ironman. I've heard people say that they "didn't feel right for a months after an Ironman" and was always skeptical about that or couldn't figure out exactly what it meant. Now I do. It's a subtle thing - but essentially your body will just refuse to do...

I've gotten enough miles with my PowerTap now to get a good feel for it, so I wrote up my experiences over at Triorganic forums.

Thinking back on race day, I've been thinking about things that worked really well or things that were "lesson's learned". I posted this over on the Triorganic Forums, thought I'd repost here. If you've got more tips to add, please post them over as a reply on Triorganic. General:1. Simplicity trumps everything for race nutrition plans. The simpler it is, the more likely you'll stick to it. For example, consider having all your bike calories in a...

Todd was key in getting me hooked up with the Polar, so I sat down and wrote this head-to-head comparison of Garmin's Forerunner 305 and Polar's S625X.

I love gizmos, especially gizmos that help me see when I am (or am not) making improvements. I now have two ways to measure power on the bike, my CompuTrainer stationary system that's in my basement, and the new PowerTap hub that I recently picked up. The two work together nicely - CompuTrainer inside, PowerTap outside, and they both output data that I can load into CyclingPeaks, which is software that proceses it. Actually I'd like to give kudos to the CyclingPeaks folks here. My long (5hr) Saturday rights are a little...

So I've technically officially started my training. I'm going to try to keep a running tally of training hours on here, we'll see how it goes. Still haven't closed on a coach, hopefully later this week. I've also got a TODO to fix this website so that it works with blog readers properly (I think the RSS isn't quite right). Anyway, last year I spent lots of time on the Computrainer. This winter holds as least as much of that time,...

Interesting article about humans, evolution, and running. Bascially the article goes through the evidence that humans are designed to be long distance runners, based on two major pieces of evidence: 1) We've got all these structures that have nothing to do with walking, like big tendons, big knees, and, uh, big booo-tay. 2) We don't have body hair and we do have sweat glands, which makes us efficient at dissipating heat....

Signed up for Ironman Canada. Looks like 2007 is going to be the Ironyear for me. Arizona in April, Canada in August. Oh boy. I was on the phone with my mom, who really wants me to do IMC for a few reasons (it’s fairly close to Spokane, etc.). Anyway, I was resisting the idea and as a way to get her to stop pressuring me, I used the secret weapon. She, can be a little...

I remember when I was a kid and was at the pool for summer camp or whatever, there were two thigs about the pool that I noticed. First, there were all these grown ups swimming back and forth (laps) for some reason I couldn't understand. Second, they wore nose plugs, which was equally perplexing. What was so bad about getting water in your nose? Wussies! Well none of this was clear until about a year ago. The ProClub...

Okay, clearly there's over four months left in 2006, but my racing season is over. I might do a night-or-two at Seward but that's not a big deal, it'll just be for fun. I've been hard at it since November and it's truely time for a break. This morning was the Beaver Lake Triathlon, which is always a lot of fun, and probably my favorite of the sprints. This was my third time. It was an OK race for me. My swim continues to improve,...

I just signed up for Ironman Arizona. Gulp. Ironman North America has an RSS (blog) feed where they post updates and stuff. I subscribed to it after I found out IM Couer d'Alene had sold out - they'd sent a "limited spots available" update about 3 days before they closed registration. IMAZ's "Limited Spots Available" post went up today. Last night Todd (friend who's doing Canada in 2 weeks) talked me into realizing...

Today, we did the 2006 Salmon Swim, a charity swim benefiting the Puget Sound Blood Center and a women's center I don't remember the name of. Six of us decided to do it: Deb and I, Polita (who I work with) and her husband Owen, and Todd and Karolina. We were supposed to be to the park at around 7. As luck would have it, we woke up this morning to clouds and drizzle. For the first time in well over a month. Oh well, you really can't get any wetter. ...

Wow, it's like clockwork. Last year, we went to France, saw the Tour, got in a bunch of miles, then got back home, into August, and I started having trouble getting my workouts in. After Lake Stevens, I was pretty motivated, but took some recovery time and now I'm having to kind of drag myself out of bed. This morning I was going to do some speedwork on the track and then bike-commute into work. Not so much. I'll do the...

Last night, I rode down to Auburn with Jim (our team prez and a neighbor of mine) to do the Pacific Raceways race - a weekly training race series at the car-racing track down there. The course is basically down and back the 1/2 mile or so dragstrip. At either end there's a wide connecting road so the course kind of looks like a dumbell or something. The race was kind of boring - a full hour but it was...

Remember how hot it was last week? Yeah, it's been hot and summery for about a month. Today I headed over to Silverdale to do the Whaling Days Crit. After a few days off after Lake Stevens, I had a good race at Seward (the weekly training crit), and was looking forward to todays race. The forecast called for "few showers". So we drive the 90 minutes over to Silverdale (for a 30 minute crit), but that's where Deb's from so it seemed like a...

Two years and one week ago, on this blog I wrote an entry about my first experience with triathlon at the 2004 Seafair Tri in Seattle. I remember all the anxiety and anticipation of that race, how I felt when I finished, and now huge the whole thing seemed. Little did I know that experience would change my life at a fairly fundemental level. After that race I kept training, kept racing, and started accumulating bikes like crazy. I started racing bikes again, and training, racing, and lycra have again taken a...

So I rode the bike up to a buddy's place in Mount Vernon yesterday. Pretty ride, nice weather, been wanting to do it for a while. I went straight up Hwy 9 to Arlington - it's got a nice 4-6ft shoulder the whole way - then cut over to the Old 99 which mostly parallels the I-5 for the last 20 miles, which was also nice and absolutely free of traffic. Which was nice because I was a hurting dude by then, so I needed my space, and wanted to keep...

So I'm still learning about how my body reacts to training. A bunch of us Zoka's signed up for a group training program in November and have been basically training our asses off since then. It was going well for me until mid-Feb when I came down with a little cough. That turned into a fever that lasted 6 days. Now, I haven't been sick for more than two days in about 10 years. As I was starting to get over that, I got a sinus...

One more this year. BLT went well, as did Kirkland, so my last race was the Black Diamond Tri down in Enumclaw. This one is an Olympic distance race which is twice the distances of the sprint races that are common in town, or roughly a 1/4 Ironman distance (~1mile swim, 25mile bike, 6mile run). Fortunately the weather looked good so I have yet to do a race in inclement conditions. The day kicked off with a troubling start. Enumclaw is about an hour south...

After BLT went pretty well, I signed up for Kirkland, another sprint-distance race that's not only very popular, but very close to home. It's a late-season race that still starts at the regular 7am time so it makes for a dark, early morning. It's pitch-dark until about 6:30. Lake Washington is still relatively warm through September, but the air really isn't. It was very low 50s at start time. You know it's cold when you put your foot into lake water and say "wow, that's...

2005 was good and bad for me. Bad was the weird lower-leg injury that stopped me from running from March through July, but good in that it got me back into racing bikes which has been great. I did a bunch of racing on the bike this year, with okay results given it was my first year and I missed a lot of key early season training. In late July I was able to start running a little bit, and slowly worked up to...

Last month I broke down and bought a Garmin Forerunner 301. I'd been resisting getting one of these things hoping a more compact one would come onto the market. My buddy Fred has a 201, and I liked that but it was a big bulky. Well one day I looked and the price had dropped below two bills so, well, I got one. I'm glad I did. I'll post a more thourough review of the unit soon. But what's most cool about it is that it interfaces with MotionBased, which is a...

I was very surprised to see Seattle Mariner Ryan Franklin was tagged for using steriods. MLB is trying to pretend it's serious about dealing with this problem, but that doesn't match up with the penalty: a 10-day suspension. It's too bad because I've always been a Franklin fan. Case in point: Tyler Hamilton, one of America's top cyclists, former Lance Armstrong team mate, and possible Tour de France contender was given a 2-year suspension for a first time blood doping/EPO result, in a case where...

Posted a whole bunch here under "Photos". Will do a full trip write up soon.

So my triathlon season this year is on hold. It's been a rough spring. I started having a weird knee issue on the bike earlier this spring (thought it was IT band but it wasn't) and in the process of trying to fix it, I basically managed to cause some other, much more serious problems. The knee issue was one caused generally by bike fit -- for some reason the Sidi shoes I had were encouraging my right foot to roll outwards, which started giving me major pain around...

http://xtri.com/article.asp?id=1472 The author meanders a bit -- it turns out the article isn't about what you think it's about after the first page or so but nonetheless it brings up some great issues. There's a quote I particularly like: "Typically, I finish in either the top 25% or 33% of my age group, but I conveniently ignore how many men in my age group could have conceivably kicked my ass if...

I always forget how crazy the weather is here in the Northwest in spring time. Wednesday was a perfect example (today is about the same). I've been one-injury-after-another-guy all spring (long story, I'll blog about it eventually), but I'm getting better so Wednesday I came into work early so I could leave early and get on the bike for a while. Tuesday had been gorgeous but I didn't make it out. All day Wednesday had been a recurring pattern: one our of mostly sunny, nice weather, followed by one hour of monsoon-like rain. It's nice...

One of the nice things about triathlons is that it's made up of three separate competitive events that you can also do separately. I get tired of training all the time and it's really racing that keeps me focused an motivated. After a 12 year haitus from bike racing, I did a 10-mile time trial just outside of Seattle last weekend. Fantastic weather (it was pushing 70 down there!) and a huge turn out (well over 200 riders) made it a lot of fun. I did it mostly...

Justin Maguire is one of the elite triathletes around here, who happens to work for MS as well. He's got a great website and just posted this info about his core workout, complete with animated GIFs. Good stuff.

Probably the coolest gift I got this year was this thing called SportZJam, a very thoughful gift from my girlfriend. I wasn't sure what to make of it when I first got it, but basically it lets you listen to music while you swim. I'm not a great swimmer and it doesn't help that it's mind-numbingly boring. With running or cycling, there is at least stuff to look at if not an MP3 player to spice it up a bit. There are a few other waterproof setups on the market (Swimman, and SwiMP3 mostly) but they're all pretty pricey and...

Yes, I'm now hooked enough on this triathlon thing that I'm calling it a race season. The whole thing has gotten kind of out of control. The decision to do my first on in July was made in early June so it happened pretty fast. But since then I've ended up with all kinds of stuff: A Wetsuit A racing suit ...

Someone pointed this out to me yesterday, sad story. All3Sports is a reputable place so don't be concerned about that if you don't recognize it.

About 2 years ago I ran a half marathon. It was cool but really rough on my knees which started giving me trouble as race time approached. So I started thinking about what else I could do and triathlons were clearly a good option. Much more managable running distances, plus a chance to compete on the bike (I raced for years) but then again there was the swimming. Now I can jump in a pool or off a boat and putter around, no problem. But my little secret is that I'd never...