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Spring has made a pretty cautious and apprehensive approach this year, creating many really nice days followed by some absolutely awful ones. One of the awful ones happened to fall on the day of the Glass City Marathon (See race report here). But now, since Tiff ran Boston, we are ready for cycling to ramp right up. Last night, we, along with a group from cyclewerks went for our Wednesday night ride. I was mostly happy to just be off my trainer and to remember why I like to ride. Spending the winter months indoors takes most of the fun out of it. We did about 35 miles at a pretty good pace overall, following the usual course out Poe Rd. to Grand Rapids, OH, down River Rd. and back through Tontogany, OH to BG.

I’m hoping for many many more in the weeks to come, but the first one is always the sweetest…

It appears that the UCI(the major cycling regulatory body) & the ASO(the organization that runs the Paris-Nice race as well as Le Tour) are at odds. There are no signs of backing down, and the stakes keep getting larger and more heated.

Link to Press Release
UCI Press Release

CyclingNews is reporting that the ASO will go ahead with the race regardless of any action taken by the UCI (LINK)

I’ve concluded that in order to ride the trainer without going absolutely mad out of sheer boredom and the lack of going anywhere, one must watch other people doing the same or similar activities.

That said, yesterday was the Prologue of the Tour of California. Normally 1 hour is more than enough punishment, but we decided to go for it and ride the entire 2 hour coverage. The first hour of the show was going over the teams participating, focusing on the new teams. They walked through the expected leaders, and talked about where the sport is going and how the new anti-doping policies will change the sport for the better.

During the second hour they showed the actual riding, which was just over 2km time trial. These guys were blazing. Tiff had the idea to do a sort of interval alongside certain riders. At first I made a little fun of her, but as it turned out (as usual) she was on to something. I got a great ride and had a bit of fun watching professionals do their thing while also suffering myself…

Here are some articles/links of note regarding the Tour of California or cycling news in general.
Tour of California News
Tour Tracker (Live Coverage)

For those not in the know, Team Astana(basically a re-constituted Discovery Channel Team, yeah i know that’s an over-simplification) has been banned from this years Tour de France and Giro d’ Italia because of last year’s indiscretions regarding certain athletes and doping. Read this article for more. This ban would include Levi Leipheimer (3rd place in last year’s Tour) and Alberto Contador(Last year’s Tour winner).

Also, should you care or think that Levi and Alberto should ride this years Tour de France, you can join them in petitioning the governing body of the Tour de France. Here is the sign-up page for the petition.

Came across this article this morning, and thought, this is amazing, a high school kid built this and it looks completely ridable (except for the splinters and complete lack of tire traction). The impressive part to me is the ratcheting system he built for this, which allows for freewheeling. Seriously, if I were so inclined to do something like this, I would certainly have made it fixed.

Check out the whole article here

I love the kid’s shorts (i think i had those back in high school…probably still have them…)

So I decided yesterday to get some photographs of Tiff and I on our trainers. We did an hour while watching the Wisconsin Ironman on Versus. Tiff mentioned last week that riding while watching Ironman makes the time go by a bit better, as always, she is right…

Anyway, this whole trainer thing is what really gets me. It’s pretty much the same thing as a treadmill (in that it is incredibly boring). Each second feels like a minute, each minute feels like an hour, but we still ride these things because we know it’s good for us. Does it ever get any better? I certainly don’t know, but I hope so. If not, I guess I can rely on the future benefits and be happy I’m not riding in freezing rain, sleet or snow (I’m not as hardy as the USPS). The hardest part about riding on the trainer is that there are no breaks. When you’re on the road you slow down for stop signs, other cars; you coast a bit when riding with groups, you make turns…All these things make riding fun and interesting. You get none of this on a trainer. The only saving grace these things seem to have is that I can use it to ride thru the winter and stay in shape for the early season Tri…

Enough…Here’s the pictures

This past weekend Tiff and I had one of our longer training times. I still think I am nuts for doing these things, but I do love it so. So here’s the run-down:

Saturday
•5:00am Wake-Up (5am what, this is early)
•Run 11 Mile first loop, 9:36 min/mile (Feeling pretty good)
•Run 9 Mile 2nd loop, 9:28 min/mile(Uh-oh, barely finished with all my mental faculties in-tact)
•Tired the rest of the day

Sunday
•7:00am Wake-Up
•Meet up with fellow cyclists (Go Team CycleWerks!)
•Ride 100 Miles (5hrs, 45min…17.7mph avg) Hancock Horizontal Hundred
•Sit at home with sore legs

Monday
•Wake up 5:45am
•Decide to sleep in instead of swim

Recap:
Run: 19.86 Miles (3hrs, 10mins)
Bike: 102.33 Miles (5hrs, 45mins)
Total distance 122.19miles in 8hrs, 55mins

End Result: I feel much more confident in my abilities. Feel pretty good about Columbus Marathon (October) and IronmanUSA (July 08).

Next week is our last Triathlon of the season, and we are excited to finish strong this year.

Let me just say what I need to say, in graphic form.

…And there it is, the elevation chart for our 12mi run on Sunday morning. Yeah, We don’t really see hills like this normally. I would like to point out the beginning and end of this run. The elevation appears to go from just over 700ft to just under 1300ft. For those non-math thinkers out there that is an elevation change of just under 600ft in around 1 1/2 miles. Crazy yes, but I loved it. The funny thing about that chart is this: the little bumps there were actually still more hills than we have anywhere near home, so it served as a great hill workout.

We also did some bike rides on a hill that is even more steep than that one, but google maps elevation was experiencing some difficulties, so i’ll have to put that one up later.

I don’t have any photos from the run or bike rides (I wish I did…the scenery was beautiful).

Northwest Ohio is flat. How flat you ask? Well, the run we did yesterday morning (Aug. 30) the elevation change was less than 20 feet. It’s really flat here, which is good for Tempo bike rides or running, but the only hill workouts we can do here are overpasses. We do one overpass that is 1/2mi one-way, and repeat the loop about 6-10 times (boring).

As the subject of this post indicates, we are going to the hills. Camping actually, in Red River Gorge, KY. We have gone the last couple of years and I absolutely love the bike rides we get there. It’s really a training highlight for me.

Here’s the elevation chart for a ride I’m hoping to do this weekend…

Pretty cool if you ask me.

…

Buckeye Challenge

As Promised, Here is a gallery to the bulk of the Buckeye Challenge 07 Photos. Check them out…Gotta go, keep training…more races.

Having successfully completed my first 1/2 Ironman distance triathlon, I now am confronted with the wonderful task of putting my experience into words. I’m not sure where to start so I guess I’ll just work through it chronologically.

Around 7:50am or shortly thereafter those who were interested came together for a pre-race prayer. This is always a good start to any race, and I find myself looking forward to this at all HPF races. Then at 8:00am the wave starts begin. Being that I am competing in the 1/2IM distance, my wave is close to the end, so I wait until around 8:30 to start…

“Dadadadadada…Charge” comes over the mini-megaphone to start my wave, and I’m off.

1st lap of the swim, I get jostled a bit, but fall into a groove early. The swim feels really good, and I find myself actually enjoying it. 2nd lap, still feeling good, I make the last turn for the final stretch of the swim and decide to pick it up a bit. I finish the swim in 30:12, wow that was fast (about 10mins faster than I had planned)…more about that later. I get my wetsuit off and make my way to the transition and my waiting bike and gear.

Using my best funny, cycling shoe induced, running style I exit the transition area and start pedaling, still feeling great. My plan is to play it safe and not go overboard on the bike, so I start of with a manageable pace between 19-21mph. Around mile 9 there is the biggest hill of the course and let me say, coming from Northwest Ohio, this is a killer hill. My pace slows as I ascend, my breathing quickens, my legs burn…I made it…with a smile on my face loving every second of it. The second loop starts and I am still taking it a bit easy, and I decide to keep around the same pace to save energy for the run. As I finish I look down at my bike computer to see an average pace of just under 20mph(19.8 to be precise)…I’ll take it because I now know I am hot on the trail of destroying my pre-race prediction of 6hrs 5mins. I leave my bike and put on my running shoes for the final stage (the 13.1 mi run).

The first 3 miles felt pretty good, although a bit slow. Then my muscles speak up and they are not happy. I slow to what Tiff calls a Slog or Slow Jog pace, and try to keep making forward progress. My mind and body are now beginning to work as one to slow me down. I decided earlier to walk through all of the water stops, which I did, and I’m glad for it, because I needed all the water, sports drink, and Hammer Gels I could get. After those first 3 miles I sort of walk/jogged the rest of the 10 miles. The best part is, I still knew I could beat my prediction time. As I rounded the corner exiting the trail and seeing for the 3rd time (the run was a 3 loop course), the finish line, I dug down deep and found a little bit of energy left for just a little itty-bitty baby kick to end the race. I finished in what felt like a blistering pace, but was probably little more than a slow jog…but I finished…I felt pain everywhere, tired, but also joy and happiness. I stood at the finish line and received my finisher medal knowing I had just finished the biggest, longest race of my life.

Now I before I get to my finish time I should go back to the swim just briefly. I mentioned I finished about 10 minutes earlier than expected. Well, in talking to others at the end of the race, Tiff, myself, and others were also 10 minutes faster than they had thought, so I may have to add around 10minutes to my time for the full Half-Ironman Distance. Although this is a little discouraging that the race may have been short, it succeeded in really giving me a boost as I went on to the bike.

On to my finish time…my prediction as you may remember was 6hrs 5mins…The official finish time was…5:36:19. This is 28min 41sec faster than my prediction…WOW!!! I had no idea I was capable of that kind of pace. I had an absolutely wonderful experience, and I can’t wait for my next race…

I’m hoping Tiff will write at least a little report of her own to tell you about her amazing day/Race PR, so I’ll leave that out for now…Also, Pictures are to be rolling in soon, and I’ll get those up as soon as possible…

I’ll be uploading more race photos later on.