SBR Utopia ~~~~ Permanently OPEN!! (Page 71)

I've only done one short run while here.  I had expected to get out for an hour today but I can't get out of the office.  Off all day tomorrow though.

Got back from Kona yesterday.  Columbus Day is a holiday for me, so this marks the last day of my 2 week vacation.  Back to the real world, and seriously need to go on a 4 month diet...LOL.

Kona was awesome...brought back lots of memories that makes me want to do another IM, but also memories of why I probably don't...at least in the near future.  The pros and top AGers were unbelievable to watch as they ran through the aid stations...I just couldn't fathom how fast they were really moving.  At mile 1, I thought Carfrae had no chance...at mile 9...I thought it would be very unlikely. 

All my friends finished.  One of them unofficial, but he got over the line while Mike Reilly was still there and got a hero's welcome from the crowd as if he won.  The turned off the lights right after him.  He's finished Kona before, so the medal/shirt/official finisher thing wasn't so important to him.  The mayor of the Big Island was also one of the last finishers.  Hats off to him.  Last time I did Honu in 2012, he took over 9 hours, but they kept the finish line open for him.  He's a pretty big guy, and he barely made the bike cutoff...but he kept moving and finished with about 5 minutes to spare.

I got to ride up Kaloko Drive.  OMFG...that is the nastiest hill you could ever dream of.

Volunteering for bike check in was just like I remembered it as an athlete.  I highly recommend it if you're in Kona.  I met so many people, and you can just feel their excitement.  Even got to check in the 2013 champ Fredrick van Lierde.  Super nice guy.

Now I want to go back again.  Super cool on the FVL check-in!

I knew exactly what road/hill you meant before looking it up, I cannot imagine trying to ride up that road - I had a hard time driving up it!

Holiday season is coming up, and I'm going to try and keep myself accountable using you folks.  I'm up to a plump 169 pounds and feel rather disgusting.  Slow and steady does it.  Not trying to start a weight loss challenge...just works better for me when I write things down even if none of you are paying attention or care.  

x2 on my fitness pal - that is the tool I used early this year when I dropped a lot of weight. There is a lot of in accurate data in it if you eat mostly self prepared/scratch meals, but you just have to use some common sense when selecting versions of food from its database. I used it for a month without making any changes to my eating at all just to get a handle on the changes I would need to make. I found it very interesting the kind of "diet" it pushed me to when I simply reduced calories without starving myself to death. If you try it and stick with it I will be interested to see what conclusions you draw.

I have been enjoying a planned unstructured and bad-food-filled month due to a lot of work-related travel, so I feel your pain: "disgusting" is exactly the way I feel. I am on my last layover on the way home from Kosovo (good lord, folks in the Balkans know how to eat!) and I will be very surprised if I am not up 10 pounds in a month. Hopefully I will feel up to finally getting back in to a routine tomorrow if not too jet-lagged. MyFitnessPal calorie counting will start back up officially on Monday. Whatever I weigh I don't plan on getting back down to what I think is my optimum race weight, but I would like to stay within about 5% of it though the holidays per the "Racing Weight" book.

Awesome Marc - can't wait to see it! Fred, I knew you had the build going on and been meaning to ask how it was going and more importantly how in the world you were able to maintain training during it? We are hopefully going to finally begin ours in January, and I think it is going to consume an enormous amount of our time. Maybe just because I am in the design/build business I suppose. I am pretty sure JT and I are going to be our contractor's worst nightmare - but I think he is charging us the standard 20% "architect-as-owner" surcharge to cover that contingency. Heh.

Awesome! I was just sitting here thinking I needed one more website to log all my data.... :^)

Since I don't know any swimmers that swim with a watch (that seems to be a strangeness reserved exclusively for triathletes) I will bet they will eventually add really crappy tools to track cycling, you know, so they really do become the "Strava" of swimming. Ha-ha!

on that note, for those of you are hat swim masters: does your group allow you to wear a watch? One of mine does (and again it is just a coue of triathletes that do) but the other does not - always wondered what was normal?

Installed on my phone and I'll give it a try.  Seems a lot easier to use than previous calorie counting apps or websites so this may help.  We'll see how it goes.  

I first read that as VISA based on how many projects you've undertaken...

I'm happy to say that I got in two very short runs on the weekend - the first ones in 4 weeks following Muskoka.  I got hurt 2 weeks before the race, and stopped running afterwards.  Started to see a Physio a few weeks ago and got the go ahead for a couple of short runs.  Saw her again this morning and there's still tightness that needs to be worked out, but I'm cautiously optimistic that I should be able to slowly re-introduce the runs.  I reckon 4 weeks off means about 8 weeks to get back to where I was - that sound about right?

For a full week after 70.3 WC, I did nothing active (short of walking!) and ate everything I wanted (I was still in Canada for a few days, so splurged on poutine, French food, and candy we can't get in the US).  I was giving myself from Sunday after the race through the following Sunday to splurge and be lazy....by the last day, my stomach had been hurting for a day (and continued into Monday) and all I wanted to do was stop eating junk and drinking wine!  But it was delicious and so worth it (but I remember why I don't do it on a normal basis)!

I'm sure I'm up a few pounds from where I raced (and was up a few pounds from SG anyways), but will not worry about being too restrictive till next year.  Certainly making an effort to not get crazy fat.  I also log my food and workouts on MFP.

Glad to hear you're making progress with that injury!

As a random side note, I was consider Muskoka 70.3 for next year....and then I found out that they moved it to early July.  It was going to fit perfectly in my schedule as an early September race, but July is a no go.  Bummer!

There is no shade on that run - I don't see myself doing this race again as long as it stays in July.  The heat and humidity would destroy me.  I would predict there will be no PR's on that course after the date change.  I am thinking about a flat HIM in June of next year (same folks that just put on Barrelman that Arend did), so I hope for less polar vortex this winter so I can long rides in earlier in the season next year.

Brings up a question - do you ride in aero on the trainer?  I don't like the position, even though mostly comfortable on the road, but for my first flat 56mile ride I think I need to spend more time getting used to it.

Yeah, I think if I can stick with it for a few weeks, it will get a lot easier to input everything.  I also eat the same breakfast (oatmeal with raisins...I cut out the honey and boiled eggs...I had high cholesterol my last blood test) everyday so that does help.  I love the fact that I can get all my workout from my edge 510, bluetooth to my phone and garmin connect and auto sync to Strava and MFP.  If I was still doing everything manually, I don't think I take the extra steps to enter more data into MFP.

We have a boss' day potluck tomorrow at work...so that will be my first test.  Last night I was going to get something to snack on after dinner, but was too lazy to figure out how many calories were in it so I didn't eat it...LOL...maybe that's the secret!!!

Neil - I don't, but then again I almost never even put my TT bike on the trainer - when on the trainer I am almost always exclusively on the roadie. I will ride in the drops when on the trainer maybe 50% of the time and almost all of the time when I am on the road. FWIW I actually do the bulk of my riding on my road bike. During the late spring and summer I will start riding my TT bike more often when my training gets more race-specific, but even then it is probably only once per week on average, with the rest of my riding on the road bike. If I seemed to suffer any issues when switching back and forth from one to the other I would probably change my tune, but up to now it has always worked for me without any acclimation problems. Also FWIW when in the drops on the roadie my positions/angles are actually very similar to the TT bike, but simply rotated around the bottom bracket.

I have my tri bike on the trainer all winter but do a lot of the hard work out of the aerobars.  They are there more so that I have something to get into to recover on.  

I don't find a lack of time on the aerobars over the winter to be a detriment.  I can pretty much get myself used to the position again in a few rides outside.  

As for the weight thing, I'm travelling at the moment and last night I ate at a place called "Fatburger".

This is my limited experience on the trainer as well.  I also do most of my training on my road bike just like Rusty with very little acclimation problems when switching back and forth.  

A friend of mine who was the last "unofficial finisher" before Mike Reilly shut it down and the lights went out.  The crowd at Kona for these late finishers was unreal.  At 9:30 pm, I saw a lot of people with finisher shirts and their bikes walking away from transition and the finish line.  At 11 pm, I saw a lot of those same people walking back to the finish line.  THOUSANDS of people there at midnight.

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Awesome Jason!