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One day less than 2 weeks after Ironman USA, Tiff and I traveled to Benton Harbor, MI for the Whirlpool Steelhead 70.3 Triathlon (Half-Iron Distance).  The weather was shaping up to be pretty nice, if maybe a little hot. The course has been described as fast and includes a 1.2mi swim in Lake Michigan, a 56mi bike over rolling hills & a 13.1mi run over slightly less rolling hills. Now normally the part I am looking forward to least is the swim (it is my weakest event), so when we walked down to the swim start (a 1mi walk north of the transition area) and were told that because of the choppy waters they would be cancelling the swim, one would think I would be happy about this…I wasn’t. Why? It is no longer a Triathlon…what ended up happening is a Duathlon with a 2mi run instead of the swim. There was a part of me that was looking forward to my first large Lake swim in a race.

Enough of that…on to the results.

Tiffany and I both finished strong and near where we wanted to be (time-wise). My legs were still a bit soft from Ironman, so my performance suffered a little. My one main goal was to not walk except through water stops (I absolutely cannot drink/eat anything while running), and I was successful there.

Tiffany Overall Time: 4:41:41

Jeremy Overall Time: 4:57:16

Click here to view all results

All said and done, this was a pretty good race, and I would certainly do it again. Next up…Vermillion, OH

All I’ve got so far is the photos to show. My plan is to do a proper race report in the near future…So for now, enjoy some photos from the weekend and race itself.

Final Preparations have begun! We have officially entered the Ironman taper. No more long training weekends or tune-up races; all that remains is the day itself when we find out what exactly we are made of. For those that do not know, the race comprises of the following events/distances:

Swim: 2.4 miles

Bike: 112 miles

Run: 26.2 miles

Yes it is a very long way (140.6 total miles), yes it’s going to hurt, and no, none of us are planning to win.

I’m mainly writing this post for our friends and family who are interested in what we are doing, so below you’ll find links to the official Ironman webpages where they’ve provided an athlete tracker, and even some live video.

Official Ironman USA (Lake Placid, NY) Website

IronmanLive Webpage (The day of the event (7/20) they will post the live “Athlete Tracker” and live video of the event to watch.)

For tracking an athlete, follow the “Real Time Athlete Tracking Instructions” from the link above. Use the following names/bib numbers to track us.

Jeremy Dixon: Bib# 233

Tiffany Dixon: Bib# 1990

Dale Brown: Bib# 183

I’m hoping to post on this blog while we are there (starting this thursday, july 17) with updates and photos, so check back towards the end of the week and throughout the weekend.

Wow, even typing it takes a while. I’m not trying to say that I didn’t enjoy my Independence Day weekend, just that it was very full. We kicked it off Friday morning with a 65 mile bike ride during which we met up with a group from the toledo area and rode to Grand Rapids, OH for breakfast before finishing the ride. Then, later that afternoon, we went to Toledo for a wedding…Congrats Jon and Missy…and back to Bowling Green for the reception over at Stone Ridge GC (Speaking of weddings, I wrote a post over at my work blog about weddings…read it if you like here).

On to Saturday where we woke up and ran a short/easy 4 miles (after which I took a long nap…happy day!!!) About noon I started packing for Sunday’s race while also preparing for our second wedding of the weekend. There is a certain trick to packing bikes and wetsuits while dressing for a wedding (the key is the order in which you do things…I know I’m a bit slow sometimes). Our plans were to leave the reception early and get to a friend’s house mid to late evening and spend the rest of the day with them, which we did…

Sunday Morning…5:30 wake-up and 6:00 out the door, we arrived at the park just before 7am. I’ll cut this short because there are a few things I want to hit on before i lose everybody with the length of this post…

1. I successfully completed my first triathlon on my new bike setup (converted to a Time Trial setup) Yay!!!

2. Tiffany won her age group…again…but I think she enjoyed this race a bit more because she was trying to take this one a bit easier and enjoy the race…Must be nice to take it easy and still win…but I’ll never know that.

Anyway, we go from that incredibly busy weekend and now we’re officially on our taper for IRONMAN… I’ve only been tapering for two days now and already I’m starting to feel anxious about it…

So if you happen to be in Lake Placid for the race…congrats and hope you enjoy it…

I’m going to keep this really short because a lot is going on right now, and everything so far this year has been prep for Ironman.

Maumee Bay is a fun race for us because it is so close and it has some of our favorite elements.

Firstly the swim is very wide open which means you can see the entire course from anywhere on it. It’s nice to have a feel for where you are and how far is left. Also of note is the beach start that is actually a beach…complete with sand and no rocks to send waves of pain shooting through your legs as you enter or exit the water.

The bike course is basically a big box, so if you are into the wind you know that a tailwind isn’t far away.

The run is, in my opinion, very well designed. It’s a pretty flat open area right up next to Lake Erie, so the fact that they were able to squeeze in some shaded areas along the way was very appreciated. The sprint run course has absolutely no coverage (mostly because it is so short and doesn’t get into the trees at all).

Tiff and I had great races, and are looking forward to our last tune-up race before the big IM. So if you’re going to be at Ceasar Creek this weekend (of July 4th) we’ll see you there.

Another one in the books… With an overall time of 2:29:26, I secured the second position in my age group…Yay! If you don’t already know this about me, I am usually the person who takes 4th place in my age group, so it is a happy day when I place within the top 3.

The race itself was well run and more organized than I would have expected. The layout of the park was such that two transition areas were needed, so logistics become a bigger issue. We first setup T2 with our run gear and then rode our bikes (with wetsuits & swim gear in bags) up to T1. Honestly I half expected to get to one of the transitions and not have gear, so the fact that everything was there was wonderful.

A couple of notes about my efforts: I had a pretty good swim, and my bike ride turned out pretty good despite some wind gusts, but my run was decidedly awful. I’m not sure if I expended too much on the bike or I had my HammerGel at the wrong time, but I had no energy left during the run. I was simply in survival mode, which shouldn’t happen during an Olympic distance tri…In any event, I had a good finish time and am now looking forward to the Maumee Bay Tri this next weekend. The courses for these two are fairly similar, so I should be able to find out if I was just having a bad run day or what…Link to results here.

This week I was in Chicago for work, and Tiffany went with me the weekend before to do a Century Ride we found in Wisconsin for Sunday. It turns out that the weather didn’t necessarily cooperate for us and we were only able to get 76mi in (still respectable). What finally made our minds up was when we saw a tree down across the entire street we were riding on… We turned around at this point, and not too soon because shortly after the winds really picked up (i’m guessing 40-50mph gusts). These winds were so strong and unpredictable that I actually saw Tiffany’s wheel slide underneath her a couple of times. She finally had enough of this and we walked about a mile until the SAG wagon (mini cooper) picked us up.

All in all it was a ride I won’t quickly forget, and I’m still glad I did…

I’ll make this post short as this is a busy week for my family. It’s Jeff’s (my brother) wedding weekend.

So Triple-T or more formally, the American Triple-T (America’s Original Triathlon Tour) is a very serious race for serious people. As far as I’m concerned they could rename this race…The hardest, most challenging, potentially hazardous race in America. If you’re inclined to ask why I would say something like this, well…

* There are 4 races you complete in 3 days that total the distance of a full Ironman (2.4mi swim, 112mi bike, 26.2mi run).
* You complete 2 Olympic distance races in one day, with 3-4 hrs break in between.
* The last day is a Half-Ironman distance race, which is difficult on its own.
* The water temperature for the swim was in the low 50s…think brain freeze for 35min.
* The bike courses were very very challenging for us flat-landers (extended uphill climbing at 4mph and some serious technical descending with switchback turns and speeds approaching 45mph.
* The run course was on a packed dirt/gravel fire trail complete with washout areas. Not only that, but there was really no flat parts there either. The course started out uphill for 2-2.5 miles then crested a hill and down for 1/2 to 1 mile. You then turned around and did it in reverse. The last race (1/2IM) we did the course twice.

We did have fun…maybe the weird painful kind of fun, but it was fun. Going in we wanted to treat this as a training race series for Ironman, and it certainly did that.

If you care to look, race results are here.

Lots of time was spent racing so pictures were at a minimum, but here’s what I have…

Like the proverbial elephant in my backseat, the Triple-T looms ever closer. Not that I’m nervous or anything, but so far I’m convinced that packing/preparing for this race series is going to be more difficult than Ironman. Here’s why…The Triple-T is 2 olympic distance triathlons, 1 half-ironman distance tri and one prologue. Out of fear I’m packing pretty much all my racing gear: So far I’ve got 3 Pairs of Tri-Shorts, 2 Pair Low Mileage Shoes (Yankz included), 6 Pair Socks, 2 Bike Helmets, 2 Pair of Sunglasses, and that’s just the duplicate stuff…

That said, I’m really looking forward to this weekend and all the races we’ll be doing, so check back next week for the race report…

It’s not often that ideas go straight to the top of my “can’t live without it” list. One day last summer I was struggling with finding a website that would give me accurate wind velocity, direction and other related weather data as I prepared to go cycling. I came across this site, which not only addresses these seemingly simple needs, but does it in a way that is so user friendly. Being a site for aviators to check weather data for their flights, this site makes a perfect jump to being a site for cyclists. Before every ride I check the wind speed and direction to decide what course to ride, so if i want to punish myself early and finish with the wind at my back, I can. Better yet, I am able to determine if/when the winds will shift and decide even more specifically which directions to go and when…

I know, this certainly puts me atop the nerd cyclist list, but you try it for a while and see if you can stop, I bet you can’t…Just pick a state and an airport near you and you will be rewarded with the most up to date, visually easy to understand weather related data on the internet.