Penn State's mentor group - CLOSED! (Page 107)

phxphotog - 2010-09-15 7:31 PM Can't wait to read your race report Greg. I'll do it tonight. I don't know if I ever told Fred congrats in IMWI. It should be a great race for you. A little sad that you didn't choose IMAZ but I understand.

The company that was doing the 1/2 IM that I was training for in Oct is now adding one in early April. I know have something to work toward. They don't have an exact date yet but I'm in. I really didn't want to wait until Oct of 2011 to do my 1st HIM. I think I'm still going to wait until 2012 to do my 1st IM though. I'm so excited that I will be able to do a 70.3 in my city and train on the course. I also have 6 months to really dial in my training. The winter here is our training season so it will work out great for getting in all my hours outside.

Makes me want to workout again. Yeah!!!!!

PennState - 2010-09-15 7:19 PM

Josh, I lean pretty far forward on decents. At LP I was way forward without any braking at all on the Keene decent.

It is scary at first, but it's the way to go!

PS: It's only scary if you 'care'

kenj - 2010-09-16 2:30 PM

Good luck this weekend Sara, Josh and Fred!!

Anyone else racing this weekend?

Kath2163 - 2010-09-17 1:00 AM

Yep. I am doing a sprint tri this weekend though I am not very motivated to do it. 

WittyCityGirl - 2010-09-17 6:35 PM Thanks guys! I'm looking forward to this race because it's my husband's first HIM. He's training for IMLP next year.  It's been really something to witness him going from HATING the thought of that first 20-something mile tour of Scranton to his first sprint (he swam vertically the whole swim!) to now working toward the full IM distance. =)

Jon (husband) is bib # 647 and I am bib # 1014.

It won't be pretty for me. I have barely trained. I have been going to physical therapy and now the PT seems to think I have bad tendonitis in my hip flexors.  She did some acupuncture on Thursday.  I still get twinges in my left side, but I think if I hang at an RPE of 2-3 then I won't suffer through the race.  I have a few weeks until my "retarded" marathon (physical therapists words, not mine, I was a little annoyed that she referred to it as that!) and then I will limit myself to aquajogging when I can until I'm all healed again.

Good luck everyone else!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

phxphotog - 2010-09-19 4:22 PM Hope everyone's races went great this weekend. I went out today and did some mountain climbing on the bike with a group of people. We all were split off into little groups of 2-3 people but it was still fun to ride with others. We climbed South Mountain here in Phoenix and it's the worlds largest city park and is a great place to bike, run and hike. The first trip up the mountain, I made it about 2/3 of the way to the top and decided that I may have had enough. My bike ability and that fact that I have to drag 190 pounds with me up the hill wasn't feeling all that great. I descended, met up with some people and decided that I would give it one more try.

I made it about a couple hundred yards from the top and the park ranger was turning everyone around because some drunk teenagers had wrecked their car and the police were investigating and arresting the kids. Oh, well. I can say that I made it to the top I guess.

The third time out I did another route which is like a canyon ride where you descend out and climb coming back. My poor legs had about had it at this point and I was done for the day. I got in 25 miles and climbed 2315 feet, so I was happy about that.

I have 2 more miles of running to go to hit 15 for the week and that was my goal so I'll do that tonight.

I can't believe that it is still this hot here. It's been record heat the last two days and it will be 110 degrees here today. I started my ride at 5:50a this morning and when I got done around 9am it was already 95 degrees out. It's like Africa hot here.

Don't look at the HR when I was descending because it wasn't in the 200's, obviously.

Kath2163 - 2010-09-17 7:40 PM  Hi All,

I have a few questions for all of you Ironmen, anyone who has been at the start line of an Ironman and anyone who has signed up for one.

Disclaimer: I'm not an Ironman ;-) currently just a want-a-be ;-)

1.)  When did you decide that you wanted to do an Ironman?  Was it your goal from the start or did the interest evolve as you became more involved in triathlons?

Decided I wanted to do one back in high school around '97.  It sounded pretty extreme in my head back then when 5ks and 8ks were all I knew. It took a long time before I finally decided it was time to go for it.  But now 5ks are sprint work and I marathons have become more run of the mill. 

2.) How did you decide which race to do?

Based completely on, and in the order of, 1) General time of year [I wanted something in the second half of the year to have time to train] 2) Within a drivable distance [I didn't want the hassel of flying with my bike]

That basically left Louisville and Arizona as my choices. I went with Arizona because I wanted the extra time to train and the driving distance was shorter.

3.)  It seems that these races are hard to get into.  I keep reading about people volunteering and signing up the next day. Do volunteers have the opportunity to sign up before it is open to the rest of the population?

Yes, after the participants.  The other option is what I did... sat around online refreshing the screen waiting for registration to open.  IMAZ sold out online in ~25minutes.

4.)  Do/did you train alone or with a group? Did/do you have a coach?

I'm about 50-50 mix on alone or with a group.  But the groups I train with are not triathletes, I train with groups that consist of pure runners or pure cyclists.  Swimming is almost always alone.  No coach.

I think about these questions (especially when I read about all of your adventures and watch people cross the finish line of an Ironman race) and figured I would ask.  Hope you don't mind.

Have a great weekend!