Critical Eye

So the Doc is reading the Square Lake Report Monday night when she looks over at me and says "Do you think people really want to read all this stuff?" Ok, I'll admit the race report was long winded - I gave you a shorter version at the beginning. My answer to her, that I'll now share with you was . . . "maybe they do, but not everything I write is necessarily for you, the audience, some of it is for me."

While I try to interject some humor where I can, I really want to be able to use the entries as a reference. To look back on mistakes I made or the occassional triumph and see if I can fix it or for the triumph duplicate it, that's a big reason for this.

For, though a "presidential campaign isn't supposed to be a jouney of self discovery" (I'm sure Mindy will stop reading now that I've quoted Palin) what else is signing up for an Ironman, putting in the long and often lonely training hours, toeing the sand with 2500 other nutjobs for 14 hours of pushing yourself, but a journey of self discovery.

Recent Discoveries

Eventually the aches in my quads and knee from Sunday's race will go away, any fitness gains will also fade, but hopefully the lessons learned under the crucible of race day will be remembered and applied to future endeavors.

So you're saying - enough preamble Rich what are these self discoveries and lessons learned on Sunday?

Drumroll . . . . (I'd have a real drumroll here for your listening pleasure but it got unbelievably complicated so you'll have to just imagine your own.)

• Get some arm warmers (taken care of thanks to Capt Brian) , and probably some leg warmers too.
• Do some run training on a similar profile to the race course (hilly, flat etc.)
• Don't go into a half iron man (HIM) with your only run over 7.5 miles some 2 1/2 months prior to the race.
• Nutrition, nutrition, nutrition - know how many bottle stops there are going to be on the bike, don't rely on just the big aero bottle. Put a cage and extra bottle on your seat tube. That way you're not trying to get and dump one bottle into your aero bottle and then grab another to fill it up (unsuccessfully). Continue to take in fuel on the run - 4 oz of gatorade every 2 miles (or even one mile) is NOT going to get you there. Bring some gels/beans/blocks.
• If you don't get what you need at a bottle stop - pullover and STOP - 30 seconds to grab that second bottle could save you, oh . . . 14 minutes on the back of the out and back run.
• Electronics - make sure you've got your time alarm set to help you stick to your nutrition plan.
• Don't gain 5-10 pounds in the weeks leading up to the race - they won't help.

You might think that I had a bad day, but really most everything went well. I stayed within myself on the bike hitting my time goal and keeping my legs relatively fresh. With better nutrition and better run training I think MJs PR would have been in play. Maybe next year.