Newbz'z group is FULL!!!!!! (Page 24)

Sorry to hear about the change of plans.  Hope you can find a good substitute.  Its always good to back off from time to time to recover.  These hurricanes are messing with a lot of people's training, even here in the Midwest there is a lot of rain and wind.  Certainly a lot of peoples lives are having more than their training messed up.  I hope these hurricanes die out without causing too much damage.

Best wishes in your hunt for a new A race and hope you've had a good weekend anyway. 

Hey if anybody gets a chance, my son Max (White_Fang) completed his first duathlon on Saturday.

It was a lot of fun for him.  I'll get him swim lessons for next years competition.

The event company also did an absolutely horrible job in producing race results for the kids.  They treated me and my wife, and the rest of the parents very poorly.  What they did is very hard to believe, but I encourage anyone to read his race report and comment about it.

Edit:  Oops.  I posted this under his account.  I'll post below to make all clear.

The kid above is my son.  We've been extremely busy over the summer but managed to get Max trained for the race.  He did a pretty good job.  The first place kid was amazing.

The race company could not have been more unprofessional and rude.

From Max's point of view, he had fun and only knew that the race people goofed up.  He'll be happy to do more races next year, and I'll be happy to find a company that can treat customers with respect and do their best to provide quality results.

Thanks for you comments Greg.  My wife and I truly are reasonable parents but we had a big problem with the flat refusal to correct any mistakes.  (note that numerous other kids would also have been mis-awarded what they worked hard to earn).  We also had a big problem with congratulating Max on "winning", when everyone knew nobody said he won.  It was the old "let the babbies have there way" type of comment.  I will be forever flabbergasted to understand why that particular company is so loose with race results.

Max did have fun.  Yes, that was most important (heck the whole family had fun too).  And nothing took place to harm Max other than the man shaking his hand and making him feel stupid for being congratulated on "winning".  I do get a sense the feels weird about having a first place trophy displayed when he knows another kid really won.

It all could have been avoided if HFP had a culture of good results and good customer service.

Of course use this as a learning experience.  You have the speed so it is really a matter of your endurance.  If you have gotten in some reasonably long runs and rides, you will be golden.  Stuff happens and when it does, its about how you manage your way through it.  You never have control over the weather and sometimes even over your body.  I think the greatest reward is coming away knowing you gave it your best effort.  I think you will do really well.   Have a great race.

 Greg

Yeah, the weather was terrible yesterday.  There were trees down all over our neighborhood.  Who would think that Ike would affect areas so far away from where it hit land.  Sorry to hear about the knee.  Living to fight another day is a good choice, though you probably should have bagged it sooner.  I'll give you credit for even starting it.  Hopefully you and Chrisitana heal up OK and get back to the training soon.

 My training was going very well until I crashed (just laid down on my side as the wheels came out from under me-wet roads) last week and got the worst road rash I have ever had.  My shoulder has been very sore and every step hurts, though I have been able to get some training in, the pain from road rash on the hip gets tolerable after a few minutes running.  All in all I was fairly lucky, it could have been a lot worse.

Sorry to hear about everyones trouble.  I was at the Toyota Challenge with David and wished him luck before the race, little did we know then was would come later.  I did the same course in June and wasn't pleased with my time, then on Sunday I did a horrible 4:11 slower than June. 

On a good note I just sucked.  No knee trouble, no crash and road rash, no knocked down rack with an ankle injury. (actually I knocked down my own rack, and fussed around with putting it back together - it would not have been Christiana's rack though, plus I made sure I got it put back together.

Good luck with your training and healing.

I'll do some 5K or 10K races this fall.  I hope to do at least 3 by December.  Then keep it going from January to April with 4 or 5 more.

I agree with you on the survival mode.  I am starting to lose motivation.  There is less and less daylight, increasing demands of job as year approaches end, my kids are back in school and gymnastics season gearing up.  The weekend that this HIM in Clearwater is happening coincides with my son's Future Stars National Gymnastics competition at the Olympic Training center in Colorado - so I am going to miss that (he will have one more year to do that again).  I am questioning my spending so much time training relative to the other stuff that is going on.  Besides that, I am just tired of training! 

Sorry to chime in with a negative post, but I really need to regroup and push through the funk I am in.

Good luck working out your time.  We enter these things to "have fun" and somewhere along the line obligation kicks in because of our competitive natures.  The only thing I can suggest you consider is:

1) Duathlons.  You are already a really good runner and you could take greater advantage of that and ease up the trainging obligation of swimming.

2) Sprint Races:  More speed work and less extra long stuff helps to save some time.

I hope you find your balance.  Competition can be an ugly thing.  I only train 200-300 minutes per week and feel tired (mentally) of it all.  But then I think about how good I "could be" if I just trained more.  We end up feeling like we are training too much (from a family point of view) but not enough to be as good as we know we can get - that leaves us unhappy in both worlds.

Again, good luck Greg.

I think it is time to regroup. I have been targeting around 15hrs per week as my goal and I think I am getting a little tired. I can't wait till it is just training for fun without any formal obligations. I do like the relaxed part of off-season training, though I do tend to pick up a few pounds. The limited amount of light has made it harder for me to get my biking in. I bought a really nice light for my bike and am going to change things up a bit and start riding into work. The guys I usually ride with in the evenings through the week haven't been showing up much so I guess might as well do it on my own and save a little gas money in the process.  Just one more solid month of this!

Chris, that is kind of a stinky way to end a season-sorry to hear about that.  There are a lot of good running races in the fall.  I know its not the same as a triathlon, but man I love running in the fall.  Its marathon time!  I still have my Chicago entry but it happens only two weeks before the HIM, but boy am I tempted!  I really love that race.

Yeah my boys would love to go to Ohio State, actually their coach Mile Avery was in the gym (scouting one of the older kids) and working with them this past Saturday.  We've met Raj and the Hamms a few times, Men's gymnastics is a small world.  In fact we went to the olympic trials in PA this year.  It was fun. 

They have switched the levels around to make it more similar to the ladies.  My boys are both level 9.  There are competitive levels 4-10 and then elite.  My boys are 11 and 13 years of age.  You can only participate in future stars up until you are 12.  So it is my 11 year old going to Future stars Nationals this year.  He made the national team last year.  Those boys practice 21 hours per week.  Pretty crazy how much discipline kids can have at such a young age.  We get a lot of time together while we travel to the various meets around the country, so what I miss while they are practicing in many ways I get back in their meets.

How has your recovery been?