Ewww...

So I uploaded my pics from San Francisco, and had forgotten that I took a picture of a menu while dining at Francisco's on the Wharf.

I don't consider myself to be racist (or am I a self-hating Italian???) but...who in the hell would eat this? Does this look good to anyone? Does anyone out there tend to be eating a bowl of ice cream, decide it's missing something, get up and get out the old salt shaker and bottle of oil???

Fiesta workout

Tonight Breakaway was at Fiesta Island. Since I am racing Saturday it was a light workout; 2 loops on bike + 10 min run + 2 loops on bike + 10 minute run. About 1:20 total. It felt good to get on the bike again.

Still slacking

Spent part of the week in San Francisco and part of the week putting in extra hours at work so I could go to San Francisco. Did the Alcatraz tour and walked across the Golden Gate Bridge so needless to say I did a LOT of walking, but other than that I only worked out 1/2 hour last week! Hopefully this will work as an extreme taper and I will kick butt at the Wildflower long course next Saturday.
I really need to start doing what Felipe and Luke tell me to do...

Slacking

Decided to take the day off today, to recover from my ironman attempt and also recover from yesterday's ride.
Of course my "day off" consisted of laundry, bills, cleaning up the house, etc etc. Gonna try to hit the pool tomorrow.

Ouch

Rode with the Team in Training ACE group today. We went from Kit Carson Park in Escondido to the Palomar Observatory. Over 10k feet of climb, assuming my Garmin is accurate. It was tough!!

Here's the Garmin data http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5440311

IMAZ Race Report-April 2008-Did Not Finish

Well, as most of you know by now, I did NOT complete my first Ironman on 4/13/08. There was a nice little heat wave that passed through Tempe that day. I watched the weather reports as the predicted weather shot up from 78 on April 5th to 92 on April 13th. Overall the heat and the wind proved to be too much for me.

RACE MORNING
I think I was able to squeak out a good solid 90 minutes of sleep the night before the race (I really need to learn how to get more sleep the night before a race). I started off race morning with a nice 1000+ calorie breakfast at the hotel at 4:30am. Then it was off to the race start; I was staying at the Courtyard Marriott which is only ½ mile from the starting line, which was nice. After getting body marked and chatting with some friends (Scott, Marty, and Colleen), it was time to jump in the water. For those of you who need a refresher on how tasty that Tempe Town Lake water is, see the picture below. Notice you can barely see the hands of the swimmers, even if they are just below the surface of the water.

THE SWIM
At 6:45am the cannon went off to signal the pro’s swim start, and the rest of us paddled to the start line. People nervously joked about various things but I felt pretty calm. At 7:00 the cannon fired and we were off! I started slow and tried to glide through the water to maintain efficiency. There were a few times that I got kicked or punched but nothing too serious. This was my first open-water swim since SOMA (last October) and I kept drifting off to the right, even though I’ve learned to breathe bilaterally. I guess that’s something else to work on.

I swam for about a mile before I stopped to check my bearings and see what time it was. About 40 minutes had elapsed, so I knew I could slow down a bit (my best estimate was that I could break 1:30 if everything went right). I completed my zig-zag swim and came out of the water in 1:27:06, much better than I had hoped.

TRANSITION 1
At this event, instead of having all our bike and run stuff set up next to our bikes, we had to run to an area to grab bags that contained our bike equipment, run into a tent, change, and then run to our bikes. I was taking my time and it shows on my T1 time: 11:40! I guess I was a bit more leisurely than I thought.

THE BIKE
So I hop on my trusty bike and the wind is so bad (or I am so drained of energy) that I immediately think I have a flat tire. I checked a couple times, and even asked a few people that passed me if my back tire was flat. So I’m riding into this insane 25-30mpg headwind and it SUCKS! At one point this 5’ by 5’ piece of fiberglass or particle board comes flying across the road and hits the girl in front of me; I had to swerve to avoid getting hit too. How she stayed upright is beyond me.
By mile 5 I am realizing I’m in trouble. I check my heart rate, realize that it’s a bit high and slow down a bit. I keep waiting for my second wind, but it never comes. After about 19 miles I reach the turnaround point-yee haw! With the wind at my back I can relax a little bit and pick up my speed. My heart rate comes down significantly (see chart) but by the end of the first loop I am exhausted.

Happy Paul-------------------------->

Time to finish the loop = 2:31. Even if I maintained my “slowed” pace for the next 3 loops, which I didn’t think I could, the bike portion would have taken me over 7.5 hours which is significantly slower than I am able to do.
(note: the wind was so bad that it took me 101 minutes to go out the 19 miles, but only 50 minutes to get back)
So I start the second loop, and by the time I reach the mile 50 aid station I need to stop and rest for a bit. I drank, ate, took salt tabs and poured water on myself to try to cool down. Nothing worked, I had no energy. I was torn between wanting to get a ride back to the transition area in the SAG vehicle and being a wimp for not even finishing 2 loops. So after sitting at the aid station for about 30 minutes I decided I would finish the 2nd loop and reassess the situation then.
As I pedaled on, I looked at the blank vacant stares of the other cyclists sitting at the other aid stations or who pulled over to the side of the road. This was a BAD day!!
So I finish the 2nd loop and I feel like all the energy has been sucked out of my body. My legs and stomach felt fine, but I felt like I was going to pass out. I ride to the finish line and drop out of the race.

<-------------------------Sad Paul

So how bad was the wind and the heat? It turns out this was the 3rd toughest Ironman in history per the attrition rate: 17.7% of the starters didn’t finish. Ironman.com had the following statistics:
Of the 2035 athletes who started the swim, 2033 finished in time to start the bike. Of those, 1,874 managed to get through the hot and windy bike course. 1,830 of those started the run. 1,689 of those athletes finished.



SO WHAT HAPPENED?
I think it was a combination of the following factors:

• Heat and wind
• 90 minutes sleep the night before
• Inaccurate sweat rate…I drank about 160oz of fluid through the bike, however in talking with Marty I found I should have drank about 48oz per hour, which means I should have drank about 240oz.
• I was using a new aero helmet that might not be ventilated enough (right now 100 triathletes who are reading this blog are yelling “Hey Jackass! Nothing new on race day!!”)
• Going too fast on the swim and bike (doubtful, since my HR was below 130 for most of the bike ride)
  So there it is. I’m signed up for the November 2008 Ironman so stay tuned!!

Oh and gratz to Marty, who placed 40th overall with a scorchingly fast 9:48 and will be going to Kona in October for the triathlon World Championship!!