Really been two years? Oh my!

Wow. Has it really almost been almost two years since my last post. I sure have been lazy in this effort. I have not even done another Tri since this one. I feel bad with all the support I had to do this one. I feel like I have let everyone down. Look forward now for me to post some updates on what has happened in the last two years. No it will not be about the 20 lbs I have gained but about some of the happenings of my racing life and family life. Thanks to everyone if they are still following.

The Race Results

Okay Race Results are in.  Thanks everyone for all of your support and donations.  According to what I know we raised just shy of $200 for this race. So according to all the comments I have been getting, you really want to know how I did.  The race was a 400m swim, 10mile bike, and a 5k run.  The official times are as follows

Overall          Swim           Swim       Bike+Transition       Bike           Run           Run           Overall
 Place              Time            Place               Time                 Place           Time          Place            Time       

                      Min:Sec                                                       Min:Sec                                                               Min:Sec                                              Hr:Min:Sec
150               9:26              200                39:55                 157              26:01           157              1:15:22

There was a total of 442 participants in the race.  I was so excited to do as well as I did.  According to my results of the last sprint tri I did, I should have finished the race around 1 hour 17 minutes.  I had a friend do this race the year before and he did it in 1 hour 15 min and 48 sec.  So, being me, I had to beat his time. So I set a goal for 1 hour 15 minutes.  I was surprised to see how close I got.
My biggest fear was the swim.  I knew that would be my slow part since the pool I was training at closed three weeks before the race.  Here I am getting ready to start and swimming.  The water was heated and felt nice to get in after standing in line forever.

The bike time may look slow but the time included both my transition times, which are really slow.  I need to work on transitioning fast a lot more. Here I am coming in from the 10 mile bike ride.  The guy in front of me is the only person who past me on the bike and he passed me right at the very end where it is only single file and I could not pass him again.

My run was below and 8.5 min/mile which I was surprised by since I never ran that fast during trianing.  Maybe it was the energy gels.




I had previously posted about those before and how much I loved a certain kind.  Well the night before the race I realized that I was out of gels.  I tried to run to REI to get more but by the time I got there it was closed.  So I ended up a Sports Authority.  Let me say for a sport store I am disipointed in how small a selection they have.  I ended up getting GU's Strawberry Banana.  I had never tried that before but it looked the best to choose from.  I planned to take a gel at each transistion which I did and it helped a million.  The Strawberry Banana was actually pretty good.  I got lucky.  It is always a bad idea to try something new on race day, but luckly this time it worked.
Here I am with my brother at the finish line.  My brothers work sponsered me in the race and I owe a big thank you to them for doing so.

 And last of all here is me with my motivation and support crew.  She was waiting at the finish line cheering me on to completion.  Just seeing her here how can you not love her.  I am proud to be her father and am greatful to be doing all of this for her.

Big Day

Okay so it is 11 o'clock at night and yes I know I should have been in bed 6 hours ago, but I thought I would post a quick comment.  This is not my first Tri but man I am so nervous for tomorrow morning. The big day of my first race for 'cause I Tri has finally come.  I am ready, but so not ready.  Anyone else ever feel that way?  Anyways got to go hit the sack.  I got a 4am wake up call to be ready for.

Energy switch

It seems like most of my training is about biking.  Well probably because right now that is what I love doing the most.  This weekend I went with two friends on a 22 mile bike ride.  It was a really flat course and we were able to maintain an average speed of about 20mph.  I thought we did pretty good.
Let me also tell you I am now sold on energy gels.  The last several rides I have ditched the energy drink and used only energy gels about every 10 miles.  They work great.  This last ride I tried the Hammer Apple-Cinnamon energy gel.  The flavor was great.  The best I have had from any energy gel.  To me it tasted like eating some apple pie.  Like I said it was the best flavor I have had so far.  I still need to find another flavor I like so I can switch out between the two.

Another Picture

Yes, so I have not posted very many pictures yet.  So here is another of me and Brinley.  This is just after a fun ride around our neighborhood on my mountain bike.

I think it would be a blast to take Brinley along on the race with me. But in all reality I think it would be scary on my Road bike with her. Plus I don't think the race will allow me. But I am considering running with her in a jogger. That is if I am in enough shape and the race allows me to at least do that.

Pink Speedo?

Okay, so last night I got a call from my Brother-in-law. He stated that he would match the highest donation....if and only if....I run the my next entire race in a PINK SPEEDO. I respectfully declined. Just think of my white chicken legs, why would you even consider? Crazy kid. Creative, but crazy. Just so the rest of you know, I will not be wearing a pink Speedo nor will I consider any color of Speedo for the race, no matter how much you are willing to donate.

First post of Training

Nothing eventful happened today. Just got up on a beautiful day and went and rode a fun 20 mile loop with a friend. I like this loop a lot. It is the hilliest loop you can probably find in the whole valley. At about 12 miles around the loop there is a massive hill nicknamed by bikers "Heartbreak Hill". It really is not that massive. It is about 3 miles long climbing about 650ft. I survived, but thank goodness for a granny gear.