Ironman Canada 2008 Well here we are again.  Ironman number four is 10 days away.  Wow, that was quick. Since I last wrote, I've gotten a few weeks of solid training in as things have continued to come around.  It's pretty clear to me, at least in this case, that an Ironman full recovery for me is between 5 and 6 weeks.  It wasn't until the last week or so that I really felt like I was going well.   The geek in me really wants to understand what the physiology behind this is.  How is it possible that...

I really need to find a good resource to explain why recovery from an Ironman is so dramatic and takes as long as it does.  I'm still struggling to wrap my head around how it can be that different from long training days where you're doing 2/3 of the volume (with much less running, of course). Here's what I'm talking about. It's been over three weeks from the event.  Since then: The first 7 days after the race were pretty much completely off from training.  Towards the end of this week a wave of delayed fatigue tends to hit...

"Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness one of the greatest spectacles in all of sport!" These are the muddled words I hear over the loudspeaker while standing on the beach with 2100 other athletes minutes before the start of Ironman Coeur d'Alene (IMCDA) 2008.  And I kind of seize on that word "spectacle", because spectacles are great for the person watching.  They're not always so great for the people in said spectacle.  Oh well, let's get on with this thing. Just like at Ironman Canada last year, there was no real warning for the athletes.  At some point the...

I'll write more later when I've got more time and energy.  I figure most of you reading this saw the results from Sunday, I'm 10 minutes closer and that's nothing to sneeze at.  But just a quick thought that came across when I was writing to another friend about the race... This race seemed much harder than my first two.  I think part of it is because the "Wow!" factor wears off and you're out there trying to compete for minutes and seconds against very capable competition.  Because you're actually racing - against yourself and your limits and your fellow athletes...

What a difference a week makes.  When the long-range forecasts started reaching this weekend, things looked bad.  Cloudy and showers.  I wasn't so concerned with the weather on race day.  I train in crappy weather most of the time anyway, but I did want it to be nice for hanging out and relaxing during race week.  Given this area hasn't had more than two consecutive days of nice weather since early May, I didn't have my hopes up.  Fortunately, the forecasts were wrong.  Today it's sunny and mid-70s.  Shazam. So here's how Ironman week usually goes.  You show...

Confession.  I consider quitting Ironman at least two or three times a week, sometimes more.  Almost all of that consideration occurs between 5:45 and 6:00 in the morning.  I've embraced the fact that I have very little capacity for positive self-talk in those first 10 minutes or so of the morning.  We all have our personal prioritization around basic needs: sleeping, eating, resting, getting our groove on, etc.  And if there's one thing for certain, it's that as I get older, sleep gets higher and higher on that list. Early in the morning, particularly with my habit of staying...

It was cloudy, rainy, cool, and generally shitty today again here in the Northwest.  Seattle isn't known for it's great weather, but many of us put up with months and months on end of dreary drizzle for the incredible summers we, uh, sometimes have here.  Except we didn't really get one last year, then had an especially cold and wet winter, snow in April, and mid-50s and raining since then.  I counted 5 days over 70 so far this year, and 4 of those came in a chunk.   Normally the good weather doesn't really break until July 5th, but this...

  There's always those joke lists that start out with "you might be a redneck if..." or "you might be a yuppie if..." In the spirit of not taking any of this too seriously, I'm quite confident that any sort "you might be over-committed to a hobby if..." would hit a little close to home.  You might be over committed to a hobby if...9 days of nothing but hard training in the desert is your idea of a vacation.  With Ironman Coeur d'Alene (someday I hope to spell that right on the first try!) just 5...

  There's a quote that I just love.  I think I've used it here before, it's from Gordo's blog and worth calling out again: ...we all overestimate what we can achieve in the short-term and underestimate what we can achieve in the long-term. As I think back on many aspects of my life - education, work, relationships, athletics - this resonates deeply.  And it's a lesson that's easy to forget in day-to-day activities with the natural desire for things to happen quickly. I suspect all of us can think back of so many examples of this.  Given effective habits and a good dose of discipline,...

Over the last week, I've gotten several emails to the effect of "Wow, great job at Ironman Arizona!  You crushed it and you're going to Kona!"  Yes! Yes!  Tell me more!  Unfortunately, there's a back story here. See, there are three guys by the name Shawn Burke currently doing Ironman.   That's results for three different people there. Two of us did Ironman Canada last year.   All of us are getting faster.   One of us has his ticket punched for Kona.  One of us has the domain name shawnburke.com, and that's the only one I know. Ironman turns...

When someone finds out that I'm one of those crazy Ironman people, they often react by listing off all the reasons why such an endeavor would be "impossible" for them.   I think for most people, it's a mixture of being faced with something that seems completely out of the bounds of normal, and a way to try to be complimentary.  It certainly doesn't bother me, but it's an interesting thing how frequent the reaction is. Of course, the main assertion is "I could never do the swim", and I was definitely someone who originally had the same anxiety.  But people...

One of the things that my coach wanted me to get done this season was some metabolic testing to determine exactly where I was at, in terms of metabolic efficiency.  Endurance sports performance is very much about one's ability to use fat -- versus carbohydrates -- as an energy source.  There is some debate about how best to train this, but the idea is basically that the more efficiently your body can use fat as a fuel, the faster you'll go for longer.  Note this has only a very little to do with diet and weight management, it's about how...

Wow, 2008 already.  New Year turned out pretty well, we did a short ski trip up to Sun Peaks with some friends.  We had a great time.  Funny, it was weird driving past the signs for the turn off to Penticton; I've got such great memories from IMC and am looking forward to getting back there next year.  It was easy to imagine we could turn off and it would be sunny, calm, and green there just like it was in August. My coach Scott sent out an email to all of his 2008 athletes setting some context and asking...

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...

As part of my winter running focus, and run up to the Carlsbad Marathon in January, I decided to take a spin through the Seattle Half Marathon this morning.  The race kind of snuck on me - so here's my confession: I never managed to get registered for this race but showed up and ran it anyway.  I did so self-supported though; I didn't take any support out on the course and just carried some gels with me.   I signed up last year, and I'll get off my arse and sign up when the time comes next year.  I...

I often think back to the sports I did in junior high and high school, and the things our coaches had us do.  I had some great coaches back in the day - Mr. Jones as my Cross Country coach in junior high - Mr. Brown as a track coach in high school, and later Les Schroll as my cycling coach.  All of them played a big part in helping me grow as a person and as an athlete. But one thing that I think about is some of the things that were conventional wisdom back then, and stated as...

    After IMC, Deb and I were having that inevitable "now what?" feeling.  Most of the prior 12 months had been focused on Ironman, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else.  I made the observation that I, for the rest of my life, was likely to look back on the year fondly as my "Epic Year".  Not sure where I came up with that naming, but it seemed to fit. In any case, reflecting back, it's been an amazing year in totality, and a reflection of what a lucky guy I am to be able to do the things I do: Trips...