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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.

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…

As of yesterday evening, Tiff and I have officially signed up for the 2008 DeSoto American Triple-T (Memorial Day). We have signed up as a team for this event under the obvious name “Team House of Dixon”. The team part means that for two of the races we start and finish together (or our time reflects the slowest finisher…probably me), at least that’s how I understand it to work. This will definitely be a grueling weekend of races, but we’re both incredibly excited to try something like this. There’s even cash prizes for the top finishers, not that I expect we will be getting any.

A little about the race weekend.

Friday PM – Race 1 – Prologue
250m Swim, 5mi Bike, 1mi Run

Saturday AM – Race 2 – Individual Time Trial
1500m Swim, 24.8mi Bike, 6.55mi Run

Saturday PM – Race 3 – Team Triathlon
24.8mi Bike, 1500m Swim, 6.55mi Run

Sunday AM – Race 4 – Team Time Trial
1.2mi Swim, 55.5mi Bike, 13.1mi Run

You’ll notice that the Saturday PM race is in a different order, which is by design. I’m looking forward to both that race and the very short Prologue. This whole weekend of races sounds like a whole lot of pain/suffering, but also a lot of fun. My goal is to just finish this, but I’m hoping to really test myself in the same way Ironman USA(Lake Placid, NY) will.

It sounds like this race will be sold out by the end of the week, which means it will have only been open for 5 days…incredible!

The results are in from yesterday’s Olympic(International) Distance Tri. Of note: This was our last TRI of the season, so these are the times we go into the off-season with and hope to improve upon come next season. Here’s the Results:

Jeremy – 7th Age Group – not sure overall Male results
Swim 1500M – 27:35
T1 – 2:14
Bike 40K – 1:08:27 (21.7mph)
T2 – 1:25
Run10K – 46:28 (7:30min/mile)
Total Time – 2:26:09

Tiff – 2nd Age Group – 2nd Overall Female
Swim 1500M – 24:08
T1 – 2:09
Bike 40K – 1:13:09 (20.3mph)
T2 – 1:14
Run10K – 41:38 (6:43min/mile)
Total Time – 2:22:19

Here’s a link to the full results page.

Overall, given the cold weather, we’re both happy with our times and looking forward to some awesome off-season training.