The Ghoulie Mentor Group - Full (Page 10)

Hey team.  Thought I'd do a quick post.  Lots of activity since I checked in last.

A note to MarlaS - I also had trouble clicking out of my pedals until my sister sprayed them with some sort of lube.  Now even a year later they are great.  I'm not sure what she used (knowing her probably Pam! )

To Anne - I also have a Felt (love it!).  It's different model my is a Z45 from 2009.

As far as my weekend - for the first time I am volunteering at a marathon & 1/2 marathon in Dearborn.  I have a 16 miler scheduled for Sunday hopefully the weather will be a bit warmer.  I also may be meeting with a new swim coach this weekend.  I'll keep ya posted.

Good luck to everyone racing this weekend.

Name: Shawn

Story: Age 33, living in the far eastern side of Queens, NY.  I’m one town over from Long Island.

About 12 years ago, I was a baseball player in college and blew out my rotator cuff and had a pretty good tear in my labrum.  Since I am terribly stubborn and did not want to visit a doctor, it took me 9 years to have surgery so I stopped playing baseball and even hockey, which I grew up playing.  Since then, I have had some trysts with tennis (sidearm serving can be fun but terribly erratic!), hiking, being a gym rat and, more often than not, a couch potato.  Two years ago, I thought about swimming to help strengthen my shoulder after surgery.  Swimming led to using the exercise bike, which led me to think that if I added running, I could really challenge myself by doing triathlons. 

Running is and always has been my nemesis.  Even when I was in fantastic shape and could go for several miles at a time, I could never go fast.  I don’t think I’ve been under 200 lbs since I was 18 and that was long before all of my muscles got soft and congregated to my belly, so that extra heft doesn’t help either.

Last season, I finished two super-sprints and an hurricane-induced duathlon.  I had one sprint washed out by runoff, one missed due to injury, and two due to me feeling like I was out of shape.  Yeah, I tend to be a headcase…

Family Status: Live with two cats and my wife of 5 months, though we’ve all been together for 10 years so the honeymoon period was over long ago. 

Current training:   I am “following” the beginner sprint program, which is pretty balanced with 3-4 biking, 3 running and 3 swimming sessions, along with 2 weight sessions each week.  In reality, this spring has been a mess both mentally and physically when it comes to my training so my training has been sporadic and without purpose to date.

In fairness, I commute nearly 90 minutes each way into the city for work, so my training becomes my homelife during the week, when things are going correctly.

This year's races:  My first race is a super-sprint in two weeks.  After last year, I vowed ( and promised my wife) to not miss a race this year so I will be aiming to simply survive it.  After that, I’m just going to be lazy and copy and paste my race log:

I am not going to lie, I am VERY nervous about being ready for the NYC Olympic race in July!

Weight Loss:  I’m now 6’1” and 260, so weight loss is a huge goal of mine.  My long term goal is to get back down to 200 for the first time in well over a decade.

Why I Will Make a Good Ghoulie Mentee:  I try to be a good teammate, I thrive off of enthusiasm and, as I admitted earlier, I am a sucker for inspires!  I have been part of two mentor groups now and I very much enjoyed participating in them.  On the other hand, I have learned a lot of “what not to do” in my training and how to deal with injuries so I think I can add some of that to the discussion.  I really try to give as much back as I get out of these groups so I hope to be getting to know everyone better and invading your training logs in the near future!

Before I forget...

GOOD LUCK ROBIN!!!!!

GOOD LUCK MIKE!!!!!

O?kay, I'm off to lunch before sparring with my new boss over the direction of our department?...?

Thanks for the good advice. They lubed it at the store, but only bc I asked & they got so dirty after riding around a baseball diamond (easier falling there than the parking lot).

I just hung up with Steve in tech support at speedplay - very helpful! He took me through things I should check, step by step, and told me if that didn't work to take them back to the store & have their guys call. Found the horseshoe shaped thingy installed upside down, and the outer screws were overtightened. So, just fixed that, and will give it a whirl later....out of traffic, of course!

Marla