swimming

For the last few months I have not been able to run much due to some stupid foot issues. So, I thought a swim focus would be a good idea. I am not a fast swimmer at all and I blame that on never swimming as a kid. So, I figured I would try to talk the local youth swim team into letting me swim with them. The reasoning in my mind is that all of the really fast swimmers were swimmers as kids and if I ever want to be a "really fast" swimmer I need to start from the beginning.
The coaches of the youth team were nice enough to say yes when I asked to join their team. What I was not prepared for was to only make the silver team(10-11 year olds). I figured ok, I'll give this a try, out swim these little kids, and get moved up. HA. Let me tell you these kids are FAST. They out swim me day after day, I have been swimming with them for about four months now and still am not in the fast lane. They often swim 5000 yards a day and can do 20X100 on 1:20 without thinking about it. It has been a great experience I have dropped lots of time, learned two new strokes, and gain a great amount of respect from these kids. I have gotten to know my lanemates and learned to respect them as athletes as much as I do my other training partners. Today was the last day of practise before xmas and it hit me that most of my training partners in the pool who continue to whoop my butt still believe in santa. Good grief!

Winterizing

So the end of the triathlon season has arrived for us. With that brings a few changes on our routines. One big change is that we will be seeing a lot of our trainers. UGGGG... I get so bored on the trainer, nothing new to look at, no cool breeze, it's just not as fun as being outside on my bike. I wouldn't say that riding my bike is my favorite discipline in the first place, so when I get stuck inside doing it I am even less excited. So the other day when I got home Jose decided to winterize my bike in order to get me a little more excited about riding it!



Yes, I like pink!

Thanks Jose.

details

The weekend started out with us finding out that too many birds pooped in the pond where the swim is held for our triathlon. This caused the tri to become a du. Since my foot is still on the fritz, I decided not to race however Jose had already signed up and wanted to race. Unfortunately for the dog, this meant he was denied his first race. This must have really upset him, because while Jose was out racing and I was out training he had a field day in the house. First he ate the pumpkin bread my mom had made from scratch, then he chewed up several Halloween decorations, and when I got home and asked him about it, he rolled his lip at me. Needless to say he ended up in the doghouse.


Jose and John Prerace

When I got out of the pool, I found a phone full of text message updates from Ryan about Jose's race. It was so exciting to read through them and "follow" the race rather than just hear the results. Jose posted his first OA, by over three minutes!!!! However, that was not his big race for the weekend. It was this:


That's right, a burger eating contest. He and Alex decided to go to Five guys and eat two 5 patty cheeseburgers, fries, and a soda. They both did it, and said it wasn't that bad. I am sure glad it wasn't my stomach that all that food went into, I wouldn't have been hungry for a week.

WEEKEND!

This weekend was filled with lots of exciting stuff! Some exciting race results, a burger eating contest, floor shopping, a mischevious dog, some really cool team news, and we started planning or 2010 race season. I will post details tonight!

Training Partners

Everyone knows that a good training partner is priceless. I have been blessed with some great ones. In Macon I had a few amazing triathletes who had more years of experience with this sport than years I have been alive. They were kind enough to mentor me and share lots of great advice. I also have Jose, who is always ready to push me to the limits and give me a good butt kicking. The H2A team has been kind enough to let me join them and get my butt kicked in the pool by a bunch of 10 year olds(more on that another day). Recently HHI has had a growth spurt in young new triathletes with some great natural talent, who have also kept me company on many long ride. My list goes on and on, but there has been one training partner for the last three years that just really stands out. Poor guy can just not figure out how to ride a bike so he as been bugging me to do a relay with him. Which I must say I have thought really hard about as he is a good runner and with my current run fitness I could use a good runner. I told him I just didn't think he was quite ready yet. So he shows up at my door looking like this.



I explained to him that although he has a great nose to show him the way, the course routes can be difficult and he may get lost. He has been training hard lately and really wants to race so the next day he shows up at my door dressed like this



He then tells me that he would swim for me. I still just don't think he is ready to race. I feel really bad for him, so I told him I would let him enter the costume contest for this weekend's Halloween race in Savannah. I am trying to help him think of a good costume. Any suggestions?

Commiting

Life is all about committing. Since I am a poor communicator and often leave those around me in the dark about what is going on in my life I am committing to keeping a blog to keep everyone up to date. I have some high expectations for the next couple years in my life, from sport, to family, and career, and I look forward to sharing my adventures to all those interested. I will post about some of those expectations another day.

Sometimes in life you need you need a little extra help to follow through with your commitments, as my friend Josh knows. Friday night I got an email from Josh saying he was looking for some people to ride 100 with him on Saturday. I am never one to turn down a long ride with good friends so I ditched my standard Saturday Run, Swim, Bike routine and showed up. The ride started out a mess, two flats, several drops, a killer headwind, among other challenges. At mile 70 we took our second store stop, where it started to rain. UGGG! Josh however had made the commitment to finish this loop strong, but he knew he need a little pick up. Man goes into the store and walks out with a paper brown bag, inside a SPARKS!

For those of you that didn't part enough in college, Sparks, is a malt liquor energy drink. Craziest thing I have ever seen, Josh downs about 2/3 of is drink and mans up to finish that century strong! Two more flats later, more rain, enough wind to annoy me, and some really crappy roads due to a short cut to avoid more rain, we made it home!
I hope that over the next year I am able to find the drive to follow through with my commitments sans to many sparks..... we'll see.