Rock the Quarry (8/18/18)

After having been accepted for the USABA camp, I decided to add another Tri the weekend before camp. This was my way of ensuring that I didn’t go into the camp ‘cold’. Goshen fit tha bill, and after securing a guide (Michael), I signed up.

One of the biggest concerns going into the race was the tandem. I had practice scheduled for about 10 days after the crank had originally broken. And we were still going in circles in trying to get the part replaced. But James from Performance Bicycle found a solution that he thought would work. After riding on it for 17-18 miles, we were both confident that it would work.

Between traffic and losing an hour going east, we made it to packet pickup literally as they were closing the doors. During pick up, we were asked about where we’d like to start. We selected to start with Team Triumph at the beginning — thinking that it would be the normal ‘first in and swim’ that I’ve had at other races. So I was surprised when I saw in the time layout that they didn’t start the race until that wave was completely out of the water.

While that was a very neat experience, I’ll admit that it made me a little nervous. Simply because there were a few hundred people watching us swim — and waiting on us to get out of the water before they could start. But to run out of the water to that large cheering crowd awa amazing and well worth it. It also ended up being my best 500m swim of the season!

Even with the huge ‘head start’, we weren’t alone for long on the bike course. I was counting bikes, and I believe all of the top 10 passed us before we did the Triangle turn around.

And then the heat came out to play… ‘Perfect timing’ — right as our run started. Things went on pace with the first 1/2 of the 10K the previous weekend though and we finished with a respectable time.

I know that the main thought post-race is ‘I’m done, let me get food and then GTFOOH’ But since all of those people had stood and waited for me, I wanted to be around to cheer them in. We did that for a bit before going to grab food, collect things and leave.

Goshen was a tremendous amount of fun and one that will become part of my annual schedule!

10K Fail (BTN Big 10K) (8/12/18)

“I think I can, I think I can… I knew I could, I knew I could.” – The Little Engine That Could

Five years ago when I receive the e-mail from Rutgers about them joining the Big 10 and the subsequent 5K/10K race announcement, I thought ‘why not’. Having not run a mile in more than 20 years, it was a challenge. But one that I was able to overcome. A couple years later, I tried the 10K race and it was a disaster (especially since the last mile was mostly under McCormick in the dark).

But believing I would need to do a 10 mile run as part of a near-Half Ironman this fall, I was willing to give the 10K race another try. With the growing successes in the 5K distances this spring/summer, I was hopeful that the 10K distance would go okay.

After meeting up with Sarah and Keri, whom were my Achilles guides, we made it to the start. I wish I had known that Bill Murray was going to be the race marshal, as I would have brought a stuffed gopher to toss to him when he offered the bounty for any sheep and the like brought back post run…

As with training, the first mile was faster than it should have been. But unlike the training, I wasn’t feeling the burnout that I normally do after a mile that fast. I was still feeling good at the first water stop (1.5mi) and knowing the time was trying to push for a 35min 5K. I was so close to making it there, but the heat and the faster mile #1 cost me. I don’t have an official 5K split, but 3mi was 36:12. So I would guess 5K at 36:30-36:45 range.

While I had to walk a little bit around/after the 5K mark due to the heat, I was feeling good after the 3.65mi water stop. And with the breeze, shade and extra energy, I was able to do pretty decent until mile 5. At that point, I was a little ahead of the 12:35 pace that’s been overall 5K pace for me. And then the wheels fell off…

At mile 5, I believe I was at 62-63 minutes. During the last 1.2 miles, my left foot tendon started cramping really bad and I had to do run/walk the best I could. That last 1.2 mile took more than 20 minutes because of that, and I was in pain post-race. So much so that at one point when it went from my foot up to the leg I reflexively threw the water bottle that was in my hand from pain.

I’m extremely grateful to both Sarah and Keri for guiding and Achilles for helping me to find guides. While the overall 10K wasn’t great, the 5K part gives me great hope at continuing to decrease the run part of Triathlons. And that’s a big win.

A New Challenge (Blind SUP) (8/5/18)

“Get busy living or get busy dying.” – Stephen King

I’ve had a conversation with friends and others in the past where they’ve said ‘I’m surprised you did [X], I wouldn’t have thought you would given your vision.’ My response to them has essentially been along the lines of ‘I’d rather try, fall on my face and try again than have regrets about not having tried.’ There have been a lot of successes, which are evidenced all over the walls of my condo because of that attitude. I’m willing to try most anything at least once so long as I feel it’s reasonably safe.

In that vein, when one of my friends brought up Stand Up Paddleboarding, my immediate reaction was ‘absolutely, let’s try it.’ I had tried it once before without any knowledge/instruction and wanted to see how it would go this time with a guide.

So after spending a while in Lake Michigan doing swim practice, we headed over to the SUP place. They do rentals, training and classes from Ohio Street Beach at a reasonable cost. I was given some basic instructions from the company and this most important one from Natalie: ‘Even if you fall, don’t let go of the paddle.’

We spent an hour on Lake Michigan on the SUPs. During that time, I lost sight of her a few times, managed to almost go into boat traffic and fell several times. But I kept with it and it kept getting easier / more natural throughout that hour. Before the end of the hour, I came close to getting it all to come together. Hopefully I can get fully up and paddling next time.

And for those of you who have never done SUP, I would strongly suggest giving it a try. It’s a lot of fun and a good workout. 🙂

Black Flagged (Naperville Sprint) (8/4/18)

“Time is very precious to me. I don’t know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people too.” – Jimmy V

While he was talking about his battle with cancer, this seemed an apt quote to start this blog with — Just replace say and said with do and did, and it’ll all tie together. For me, the time clock has been and always will be related to my vision. As I’ve said before, I was told that I’d be completely blind by 30. Coming close to 40 and still having a decent amount of vision sometimes makes me ask the question of ‘when will it run out?’

But the overwhelming majority of the time, I’m able to shove that question back. It’s in line with what I was telling a neighbor earlier today. I can either be disappointed with what I don’t have or make the most of what I do. And I clearly choose the latter.

However, earlier this week, I wasn’t able to do that. I had Naperville on the schedule for tomorrow, and we were doing pre-race fit/practice Tuesday night. As we were going to work on turns, I put on the flat peddals instead of the clips. And as we continued to ride, I was getting more comfortable without the ‘safety blanket’ of the clip there. But as we made one of the final turns towards home, my left side pedal fell out. Initially, I thought it had just come unscrewed. But when Natalie looked at it, she confirmed that the threading was stripped.

At that point, while I was disappointed that it had happened, I was confident that we’d be okay. In my head, I thought ‘it’s just a standard crank; every bike shop should have it.’ But that thought was soon prooved wrong on Wednesday when every bike store, including CoMotion licensed dealers said they had to order it and I wouldn’t get it until after the race.

At this point, I started looking at plans B, C, D and E (as usual). While I really wanted to race, what it ultimately came down to was safety. I’ve got so much left in this season (Triathlon and Running along with other sports) that racing just wasn’t worth the potential risk caused by rushing a fit or being uncomfortable on a quickly borrowed bike. So I scratched it before end of day Wednesday.

What I struggled with most of the day was losing a race and the ever-present uncertainty of length of vision. Long story short, the underlying theme of the interal thoughts as I tried to salvage the race was ‘How many more of these will I get before the vision disappears?’

Not a fun day to say the least, but I did have friends helping me throughout. Even still, it took until after football practice before I finally got perspective. What caused it was the parallel of being upset about missing football games (medical) in the moment that it had happened and seeing things in the larger scheme when I had come back.

If you’ve gotten this far, you may be saying ‘that’s all well and good, but what’s the point?’ Well, there are a few:

1) Regardless of what the endeavor is, you’ve got to keep perspective. And quickly get it back when you lose it. Something’s going to hit the fan periodically; how you deal with it determines success.

2) Being proactive as possible will protect you from yourself. After this happened, I committed to purchasing extra parts. It won’t stop a crank or derailer from wearing out or breaking. But having extras, especially on remote races, will help ensure that it’s a quick fix.

3) It’s okay to keep thoughts like I mentioned at the top in your mind. Just don’t let them control you. Beat the chimp; every time.

I am grateful that I was given a deferral for 2019. That also helped with the entire process, knowing that the race wasn’t fully ‘lost’.

Finally, for those of you wondering why I would share something like this, the answer is simple. When I started the blog, I promised to share openly throughout the journey– warts and all. This definitely falls into the ‘warts’ category…

Hill Hell (Ripon Medical Center Tri) – (7/22/18)

Last year, the timing between when I did a Triathlon and vacation just happened to work out so that I did the former right before the latter. As doing so made me feel less guilty about a week full of beer last year, I wanted to try for the same this year. So this year, Ripon fit in nicely.

Going in, I knew that this was going to be a challenging course. Dave made it very clear that there were a lot of hills. But that didn’t phase me for a couple reasons — one being that hill work makes you stronger and the other being that if you can succeed in a hilly course, you can crush the normal ones. So I was up for and excited to race Ripon.

The race is held around this amazing conference center in Ripon. You swim in the on-site lake, and are on parts of the compound for some of the bike and entire run. There’s an amazing view during the run — but I’ll get to that later.

After setting up transition and making sure that my electronics were protected from the rain, we got ready to race. A week or two prior, one of my friends had told me about a draining workout that they had had to do. It was essentially that the person in front was trying to break away and they were trying to keep in their draft. That essentially happened throughout most of the swim for me from a couple of people that were behind me. I’m still waiting for the Thank You basket from them for the free ‘tow’ at times…

It had been raining throughout the night and was misting/raining through the morning/race. Knowing that, and knowing the hill layout, we made the decision pre-race to go a little slower on the bike. While I would have liked to keep the 20mph I’ve gotten to, I realized that that wasn’t reasonable given the conditions and took Dave’s advice. So after a few minutes in T1, we headed out on the bike. And he wasn’t wrong about the hills… I would estimate about 6 1/2 miles of hills (up/down) and maybe 2.8 miles total of flats. The worst was the initial 1 mile uphill, where it went up for about 1/2 mile and then leveled out. At this point, I thought we were out of the first hill; instead, it went up again for about another 1/2 mile. There was a spot during the bike portion where the hills were so bad that I said ‘down one more’ and Dave’s response was ‘we’re in the lowest gear’. I am glad that we only had to do one loop on that course.

Just like the bike, the run started with a ‘nice’ uphill. This one was a 1/2 mile up instead of a full mile. After an hour of hills on the bike in the hills, I didn’t have the legs to do that much uphill running. So I did have to walk a big chunk of that first 1/2 mile. But once we got over the hump, I was able to run more and the first mile wasn’t too bad given that. As we approached the first aid station, the volunteers mentioned that they had Heed. There’s a good reason Heed has been in my bottles for the past two seasons, and I was extremely grateful to see this lifeline at the stations. After recharging there, we had… you guessed it… more hills. But because of being able to continually recharge (4x – 1, ~1.4, ~1.75, 2), I was able to make it through a VERY hilly run. And even with that first 1/2 mile challenge, the 5K time was only about 45s-1m off from where it usually is.

Remember the view I mentioned to you early on? On the run, that first 1/2 mile is up (or down) a hill/bridge. There’s an amazing scenic overlook about halfway up the hill. It’s a great extra push as you’re making that final push to the finish line.

Even though the bike was longer than normal and the overall time was the longest this season, I still felt really good post race. I know that I couldn’t have completed Ripon last season and that all the work I’ve done since the beginning of the year helped me to have a successful race. And I’m grateful that Dave was there to guide for me.

Two final notes:

1) Post-race as we were loading the bike, this older gentleman came up with one of his daughters (who had raced) and started asking me about how I race and all the normal PT stuff. As we spoke, he shared some amazing stories with us about his family. I hope to run into Tim and his family in 2019 and have a chance to talk more with him.

2) Ripon has been added to my parmanent Tri schedule. It’s a fun, challenging race; and it will only make me stronger in the long run. When I’m able to hit 1:30 times there, I know I’ll be able to hit the benchmarks I need to on ‘normal’ courses.

6 Months Later (7/16/18)

6 months ago, I was introduced to Chris Holley of Evolution Multisport at a Triathlon camp when I needed a pilot/guide for the week. I’ve been struggling with weight for more than 25 years, so I was interested to hear more about his success. As we talked both during and after camp, he provided helpful information.

I’ll be honest, in the beginning, it was hard. There were several times in the first couple weeks that I just said ‘screw it’ and went back to how I had been eating prior to camp. What stopped me from doing so was his encouragement and slowly starting to see a few early signs. So I didn’t give in to falling back into what was ‘comfortable’, even though it meant giveng up some foods I really liked.

Since that point, I’ve seen his help and advice pay off. I’ve seen all of my race times go down, the runs are getting easier, and yesterday I was able to do 12 x 400 repeats with only 90 second rests. That is after struggling to do single 400s in January as part of bike/run bricks. And the weight has come off and stayed off.

I am grateful that I was introduced to Chris. I would strongly suggest working with him if you want to get better, faster and fit!

I See You (Endure It 10K) (7/15/18)

Earlier this summer, I saw an interesting new race concept get posted. It was a Team 10K, where team members swap off at each 400. After seeing the success I had at camp with doing sub 2:30 4x 400 repeats, I decided to give it a go.

So team I See You was formed with Owen as the other half and Eric and Chris as the respective guides. Even though I knew the rest periods would be short (90s – 1:45 max), I was still excited to do it. And I believed I could negative split like I had at camp.

However, the breaks were not long enough to allow for the negative splitting. For the most part, by the time I was able to get liquids and catch my breath, Owen/Eric were 3/4s of the way around. Even still, all except two were below my best 5K pace. I did negative split the final one.

While it was hot and while it was a grind, I had a tremendous amount of fun. Also the consistent grind kept me from losing focus, as I had maybe 15-20 seconds to think about running the next lap before it actually happened. I look forward to doing it again next year!

I Don’t See You (Glo Run Chicago) (7/14/18)

Over the last few weeks, I had talked to a few different people about the trust aspect of doing Triathlons. The synposis of the conversation being ‘you can’t do it unless you have total faith and trust in your guides’.

Since I have a decent amount of vision during the day, I can lend some extra advice if I see something or ask about something I’m seeing. But in the dark, I have to have complete faith in my guides. Some may say it’s silly to race when I can’t see anything. But to me, it’s fun and a challenge I accept now. But it may also be a long-term reality for all races, whether it’s daylight or not.

For night races, I run with two guides so that each can watch one side. With the path being narrow, Rob suggested that one go in front and the other by my side. That turned out to be a tremendously helpful suggestion. With Jen keeping her headlamp on the back of his bright yellow shirt, and her guiding, it went really well.

For those of you who have been continually following my blog, you know that running is not my strong suit. But because of the work I’ve been putting in, I was able to run the entire 5K. I stopped for about 20 – 30 seconds to get water at the aid station, but that was it. And in a sprint towards/through the finish, I was told I surprised one of the camera guys (who had to scramble out of the way). I’m looking forward to seeing those finishing photos!

Thanks to Jen and Rob for all of their help!

Lake Zurich Tri (7/8/18)

My plan after PT Nationals was to hit it hard and crush the next race (Lake Zurich). But with work and other chaos, I unfortunately got little training in during the two week period. But with the success to this point, I wasn’t worried about the race.

After getting transition set up, we got in the water for a brief practice swim. The drift came up then, but we at least worked out all of the signals to try and correct it.

The swim went about as expected — the drift added much more distance than it should have. I can accept it adding 30 – 60 seconds, but in this race it was at least 8 minutes. Something that needs to be addressed in order for me to keep moving forward; and quickly.

Last year, the bike course was an out and back, with a couple of harry corners. This year, even though they changed it to a loop, one of those corners still existed. We had to contend with a moving truck on the course that didn’t realize it was a bad idea to pull out as we were on an uphill. But it still went well overall. Especially since this year I was much more confident on the downhils. Last year, we coasted on almost all of them; this year, we pedalled through almost all.

And then there was run… With the loop bike course, the run was reversed. This meant running up two large hills early on into the run instead of running up them at about 2 and 2 3/8 miles in. It was still a decent run, even considering that I couldn’t really see the course the last 800 – 1000 yeards. Running through planters and shadows would have been impossible without Lee’s help.

While there were some hiccups, I did improve on 2017’s time by 9 minutes. I also got to see one of my friends win their AG (25-29).

IMO, one very big improvement from 2017 to 2018 was putting Mr. Mic (Dave Kappas) on the PA. Night and day difference, IMO.

2018 PT Nationals (6/24/18)

Even though I didn’t make the National wave as intended, I felt a lot better going into PT Nationals this year than I did last. A big part of that was because of the nutrition changes and the byproducts/results from them.

While the swim felt really long, Saturday’s practice went really well. Especially the run, during which the pace seemed faster but I was still able to hang in for a good while. Dave showed up after practice finished and we did our final race prep after the course preview.

After watching teammates get in and start the National wave on Sunday, it was our turn (PC Open). Last year, I was accidentally at the front of the starting pack, and paid for it (going out too fast to attempt to avoid being run into). So this year, I positioned us further back.

While it seemed longer than 750, the swim went well. I did have some of the normal ‘drift’ issues, but felt I was in the right time range (20-22 min) getting out of the water. After a few minutes in T1, we were out on the bike for a scenic ride. This scenery included a mooing cow, which we mooed at coming back on the bike. The bike saddle change between last year and this helped immensely. Even with an unintended early dismount, it was a great bike.

So then it was onto the hardest part for me — the run. The goal was to replicate what had been done at PT Camp two weeks prior and end up with a roughtly 38min 5K. While it was a decent run, it didn’t turn out as I had intended or hoped. The main reason being that without intending to, I did mile #1 in 11 min (including a 1min walk). That was way too fast, and I paid for it during miles 2 and 3.

Even though it didn’t go exactly as planned, I did shave about 4 minutes off from 207, and I did win the PC Open Mens VI division!

I will continue to work on fixing these issues. This is only the halfway point of my summer season, so there’s a long way to go in the 2018 season!