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inspire me (4)

Monday - November 10

Swim

1h 00m
3000.00 yards
02m /100 yards

Happy Birthday to the United States Marine Corps!

For 233 years the members of the USMC have been putting their lives on the line to protect the freedoms that we enjoy as Americans.

As Ronald Reagan said it well in 1985: "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem."

So to those of you, like Ron and Rivi, who have served our country:

THANK YOU!

4:00pm - Dang it! I'm trying to get back to eating right and I've almost hit my daily calorie limit already. Some sadist brought in chocolate covered caramel corn and put it right by my desk. I MUST RESIST.

It appears that I strained my lower trapezius (between the shoulder blade and the spine) while swimming today. It's really bothering me if I move around.

I am finally feeling like I am getting back to normal, at least when it comes to swimming. I was a little more fatigued today than I would have been pre-race but I was able to do almost all of the workout (I ditched one 200 pull).

Today's swim:
WU - 50 swim (I was late)
MS - 4x200 (swim, kick, drill, swim)
        400 swim @80%
        2x200 swim
        4x100 swim fast on 2:00
        8x50 moderate on 1:00
        2x25 all out (:17,:17)
        3x200 pull (I only did 2)
CD - 100 swim

inspire me (0)

Sunday - November 9

Bike

2h 00m 07s
30.31 miles
15.14 Mi/hr

Data taken from Lawyerchick

Henry's service was very nice. I hope he realized just how many lives he affected in a positive way.

You'll still see Lou (Henry's wife) and the Try-a-Tri crew at races next year.

Nice ride on the SCT with Neal, Leslie, Meredith, and Justin. My muscles felt good enough to ride a long way but my left knee was bothering me some. I pushed it pretty good on the way back in to Mavell Road.

Meredith showed off her sweet new bike.

inspire me (0)

Saturday - November 8

Run

22m 58s
2.24 miles
10m 15s /Mi

Maybe I wasn't quite ready to run. My left achillies is really unhappy about it.

I went for a quick run while my girls were in Russian school. I was getting very stressed about not working out so it was nice to run even for a little bit. My legs were beat and my IT band wasn't happy but everything was good once I stopped and stretched.

inspire me (13)

Friday - November 7

Swim

20m
800.00 yards
02m 30s /100 yards

I find it interesting that I was not all that hungry the day after the race but have been constantly famished ever since. While I have not gone crazy food-wise I have still probably averaged 3000 cal/day this week. That's only a little less than I was averaging in the last two months of training.

For some reason I woke up this morning with a terrible headache. I went to Masters today anyway because I thought that it might go away. It didn't. 12x50 fast made it clear that a workout was not in the cards today.

My BP is still running high, even with the increased medications. It appears that the stress of the upcoming race was not responsible for my BP last week. Last night when it was 164/92 my wife told me to go out for a long run. She was only kind of kidding. I guess I'll get to see the Cardiologist again early next week.

It has been nice at work that so many people were aware that I was going to do an Ironman and appreciated the difficulty of it. I am especially proud that since I signed up for IMFL three people that I work with have run half marathons and two more are going to do the ING half with me. One is even talking about doing triathlons.

inspire me (8)

Thursday - November 6

The IMFL pictures are up. Like Jonathan, the swim picture is not me. It appears I was smiling for most of the running pictures. That means that I was good at picking out the official photographers.

http://www.asiorders.com/go.asp?43471756

I decided to modify my recovery plan and will take today completely off. I'll swim tomorrow morning and go for an easy ride on Saturday afternoon. My muscles feel pretty good today (I got down the stairs without holding onto the railing) but I am a little worried about my joints.

inspire me (3)

Wednesday - November 5

Swim

40m
1900.00 yards
02m 07s /100 yards

Went to Masters and did an easy swim. There were very few people there probably because they were up late last night watching election results. My muscles felt alright but I ran out of gas around 1600 yards.

inspire me (7)

Tuesday - November 4

More thoughts on the race:

1. I definitely did not get enough calories before the race. I ate an uncrustable at about 3:00am and another one at about 4:30am. That's not enough, especially for a big guy.
2. I did not practice transitions and I paid for it at T-1. I was in a daze after the swim so I'm not sure how much practicing would have helped but I would have learned to put the Garmin on the bike before the race instead of having it in my T-1 bag.
3. I didn't get nearly enough nutrition on the bike (again) and should have hydrated more. On the bike my total caloric intake was around 1300, which works out to about 200 cal/hr. In training I found that I could easily handle over 300 cal/hour on the bike and I should have done it in FL. One of the reasons my BP got so low on the run is that I was very dehydrated. That started on the bike where I drank less than 4 bottles in 6.5 hours.
4. I guess I learned why they say slow is fast on the swim. My turnover was extremely slow but my pace was great. I'm going to crush the swim in my next sprint.
5. Volunteers at most of the races I have done are good but the ones at IMFL were amazing. I heard Mike Reilly say that there were over 3000 volunteers and I believe him. Even late in the run they were very helpful and almost all of them were smiling and being supportive. I'm going to volunteer at at least one IM next year.

On thing I liked about the IMFL swim was that I didn't come up behind many breastroke kickers. In triathlons that have wave starts at some point I will catch up to the slow swimmers in the wave in front of me doing a breaststroke kick. Sometimes it's hard to get around 2-3 of the guys doing it. In Florida those guys generally started in the back and I got in front of the rest pretty quickly. I was surprised by the number of people that were kicking like crazy but they were generally doing a flutter kick which posed a bit less danger to my head.

I'm still sore but am walking much better.

The people in my office decorated my cube and had a big "Congratulations" sign up. I guess they didn't all think I was crazy.

I usually get very annoyed by robo-calls during election season but we've been getting one that cracks me up every time. We've been getting an automated call from NARAL about 5 times a day. It's the standard "This is the most important election in the history of this country!" message. The funny part about it is that the recorded speaker has a STRONG New York accent. Almost as strong as "The Nanny". I would have thought that for GA zip codes they would get someone with a southern, or at least neutral, accent to make the call. The voice even annoys my wife. And it's not like the person who recorded the message is famous. Just funny.