Swimming:
1. There will be big waves and lots of people
2. Lap 1 turn 1 will be severely bottlenecked
3. Items 1 + 2 = Physical Contact... just expect it and roll with it.
4. After turn 1, the sun will be low and directly in front of you. No worries, everyone else will be just as blinded and as as you are
5. There will probably be Jellyfish. I know from experience that they can't sting through wetsuits.
6. Starting the second lap, swim straight to the first turn bouy. The floating Ford sign is not a turn bouy.
7. Important! You will swallow some salt water. Salt water can make you feel nauseous and WILL dehydrate you more than swimming in freshwater. Drink more than you normally would in T1.
T1.
1. There will be rampant undesirable nudity in the tent. On this rare occasion it will likely be just as undesirable in the women's tent (I'm just guessing here)
2. You don't need you're own sunscreen, someone else will put some on you. Put on your clothes first!
Bike:
1. Has anyone told you it's really flat? Believe them.
2. Florida is generally a windy place. Expect the wind to shift throughout the ride so that it stays in your face, especially the last 12 miles. This may not happen this year, but I'd rather expect it and be pleasantly surprised when it doesn't happen rather than the opposite.
T2.
1. ...not as much nudity this time. Don't be disappointed.
2. You will likely never, in a single moment, be so simultaneously elated and dejected about getting to run a marathon
Run:
1. A marathon doesn't become less of an endurance challenge just because you've done a 114.4 mile warm-up. Respect it.
2. The park at the turn-around is really, really dark when the sun goes down. Embrace you're childhood: glow sticks and anything else that glows can be lots of fun!
3. Expect to seriously consider quitting. Don't unless they force you to. Even then, go down fighting(thanks for that tidbit Jordan).
4. Drunk people make great encourager's. Pray for lots of drunken spectators from miles 20 - 25.
Finish:
1. You will never be so proud of getting beat in a race by hundreds of other people.
2. Whether they're in front of you or behind you, you'll never be so proud of your friends who took on this challenge
T3 (A.K.A. the Medical Tent)
1. They make a mean cup of warm chicken broth. When you come to, don't hesitate to ask for 3 or 4 helpings.
2. Free hot blankets! They will bring you as many as you want.
3. Don't forget to request a golf-cart rides to your car. If you're family is small enough they will take them too.
4. A couple of liters of IV fluid speed the recovery process, but probably not as much as hydrating properly during the event.
Any other lessons learned from you veterans?
-Kevin
Monday, November 2, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
RACE DAY
Partly cloudy with a high of 76. Not a bad day. Of course, that can change in the next 5 minutes. As a matter of fact when I looked this morning they painted a somewhat different picture. The sun was covered up by clouds with showers and they gave it a 30% chance. So the forecast changed in just a few hours. The bottom line is this...it will be what it will be. Prophetic, I know.
So, who's anxious? This is me raising my hand. I am. I'm the kind of anxious I was as a kid driving up to the ball field before a game. Only worse and/or more. Butterflies. But I also know this about those butterflies, as soon as I hit the field and it was "game on"....the butterflies flew away. I'm confident that will happen a week from tomorrow as well!
I'm looking forward to one last weekend of strong training. We've got a three hour ride Saturday and a long run Sunday. I'm really trying to focus on being relaxed. I concentrated on that Friday during my swim workout. I'll focus on that during the ride tomorrow and the run Sunday because that is what I want to do come race day....race relaxed. If I'm able to race relaxed I believe everything else will take care of itself.
I remember thinking that a lot during IM Wisconsin, especially during the run. I also remember by doing that as best I could it helped me "think" my way around the course. By that I mean I tried to focus on my form or my cadence and certainly my nutrition (which, obviously, is critical!). Don't get me wrong it still hurt, a lot. But it kept me from concentrating on that constantly.
I realize I'm not saying anything everyone doesn't already know. I'm more just saying (or typing) it out loud to remind myself of it and talk (or type) my way through the days leading up to November 7th...because I'm a little anxious....
....are you?
Friday, October 16, 2009
P-A-R-T-Y!!
Party for the 'All In' group scheduled for October 24th. Details coming very soon. T-shirts will be coming very soon also!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Excellence
To participate in this sport of triathlon you have to have a certain level of these 5 characteristics Joe Friel talks about in this post below. As I think about our "All In" group it's certainly true. I've pasted this from Friel's blog because I think it's appetizing food for thought. Take a look.
Excellence
Excellence is not for everyone. It’s far too difficult for the great majority of those who participate in sport. In fact, those who seek excellence are often ridiculed because they are different from their peers. And so it isn’t easy to seek excellence either. Humans are social animals; we don’t like being outcasts. It’s much easier to go along with the crowd than to stand out in a crowd. But there are athletes who pull it off, and with great aplomb. Have you ever noticed how young, pro athletes often try to give the impression that nothing about their training or dedication to the sport is unusual? They’ve learned to give the appearance of being “just like everyone else,” even though their performance in competition tells us otherwise. Going out of their way to be laid-back is how they cope with the dilemma and help prevent others from branding them as strange. And that’s a good strategy which I would recommend to anyone who truly seeks excellence: Try not to give the air of someone who is seeking excellence. Appear ordinary in every way you can.
What brought all of this up was a question someone asked me over dinner tonight. We were at a surprise party for an athlete I coach who had just won his age category at his state’s time trial championship. It was clear to my dinner-table neighbor that this state champ had altered his course in the past year and was becoming excellent at cycling. So my new friend wanted to know what I looked for in a person who wanted to hire me as a coach. How would I know if a person could be successful? I started to tell him all of what follows but we were interrupted by party goings-on. Here’s the long list of what I think are the best predictors of excellence in sport, in their order of importance, in case he gets a chance to read this post.
• Motivation. This one is more important than all of the others combined. If the athlete isn’t motivated excellence is highly unlikely. In fact, the other predictors won’t even exist without motivation. This goes well beyond giving lip service to goals. The truly motivated athlete is on a mission and has a hard time keeping himself or herself in check. This person really needs a coach to pull on the reins to prevent overtraining, injury, illness and burnout. If the coach has to use a whip then it’s a losing cause no matter how talented the athlete is. The coach will never give the athlete motivation. It must come from within. When I’m interviewing athletes I ask lots of questions to find out how truly motivated they are. For example, I ask how often they train with other athletes versus alone. The low-motivation athlete will need companionship frequently. If you are motivated then all of the following predictors of excellence will fall into place eventually.
• Discipline. This is very simple. The disciplined athlete will make daily sacrifices and make due with hardships in order to excel. This person doesn’t miss workouts short of a disaster. Weather is an insignificant factor. The disciplined athlete knows that the small stuff is important. He or she doesn’t get sloppy with diet, recovery, equipment or anything else that has to do with goals. Discipline is not easy. Others can accept motivation, but they have a hard time dealing with people who are disciplined. You’ve got to make light of or even hide your discipline is you want to be accepted by your peers. Good luck here.
• Confidence. Some people seem to live life completely with an unwavering belief in themselves and their actions. These folks are indeed rare. I’ve met very few athletes who didn’t have some concerns about how well suited they were for whatever the task at hand may be. There’s a sliding scale of confidence. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. To move closer to the high-confidence end all we typically need is some success. Success breeds confidence. While it’s hard to come by you can create your own. For the athletes I’ve coached whose confidence was decidedly on the low end I’ve suggested a daily confidence-booster. When they go to bed and after the lights are out, I tell them to go back in their memories and find anything in their day’s workout or related activities that was successful at any level. This could be a very small success such as feeling strong going up a certain hill during the workout today, or eating fruit instead of a cookie for a snack. I tell them to then relive that small success over and over until they fall asleep. Occasionally there are big successes. These become “anchors” which they relive often and store away in a vault to be pulled out whenever they feel low confidence coming on, like at the starting line of a race. Thinking of one’s successes breeds success. Success breeds confidence.
• Focus. This could also be called purpose; the athlete knows where he or she wants to go in the sport. Daily training is a purposeful activity that will lead to excellence. Each workout (and accompanying recovery) is a small building block that eventually results in excellence. But you have to take it one step at a time, which brings us to the last predictor, patience.
• Patience. According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Outliers it takes about 10,000 hours for a person to become a master of anything. I had never tried to quantify it in terms of hours, but experience told me that performing at the highest level in sport takes something on the order of 10 years of serious training regardless of when you started in life. So I think Gladwell is probably right. There are certainly exceptions, or at least it appears that way on the surface. But when an athlete comes along who seems to go to the top right away we often find on closer examination that he or she had been developing outside of the recognized success pathways. Patience also has another level that goes beyond this long-term approach to success. This is a more immediate, daily component associated with the ability to pace appropriately early in workouts and races. Athletes who seem unable to learn this skill are less likely to be successful than those who master it.
Notice that I didn’t say anything about innate talent, physiology, skills, or even experience in the sport. All of these things can be developed and learned if the other predictors are there. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have the capacity to develop each of these mental abilities. As mentioned earlier, the challenge for most of us in seeking excellence is learning how to do it without appearing to be doing so. Watch how most of the pros do it and try to emulate their apparently laissez-faire attitude. Good examples are Chrissie Wellington in triathlon and David Zabriskie in road cycling. In their own unique ways they give the impression of being unconcerned about excellence. But no one achieves their levels of accomplishment without being highly motivated, disciplined, focused and patient.
Excellence
Excellence is not for everyone. It’s far too difficult for the great majority of those who participate in sport. In fact, those who seek excellence are often ridiculed because they are different from their peers. And so it isn’t easy to seek excellence either. Humans are social animals; we don’t like being outcasts. It’s much easier to go along with the crowd than to stand out in a crowd. But there are athletes who pull it off, and with great aplomb. Have you ever noticed how young, pro athletes often try to give the impression that nothing about their training or dedication to the sport is unusual? They’ve learned to give the appearance of being “just like everyone else,” even though their performance in competition tells us otherwise. Going out of their way to be laid-back is how they cope with the dilemma and help prevent others from branding them as strange. And that’s a good strategy which I would recommend to anyone who truly seeks excellence: Try not to give the air of someone who is seeking excellence. Appear ordinary in every way you can.
What brought all of this up was a question someone asked me over dinner tonight. We were at a surprise party for an athlete I coach who had just won his age category at his state’s time trial championship. It was clear to my dinner-table neighbor that this state champ had altered his course in the past year and was becoming excellent at cycling. So my new friend wanted to know what I looked for in a person who wanted to hire me as a coach. How would I know if a person could be successful? I started to tell him all of what follows but we were interrupted by party goings-on. Here’s the long list of what I think are the best predictors of excellence in sport, in their order of importance, in case he gets a chance to read this post.
• Motivation. This one is more important than all of the others combined. If the athlete isn’t motivated excellence is highly unlikely. In fact, the other predictors won’t even exist without motivation. This goes well beyond giving lip service to goals. The truly motivated athlete is on a mission and has a hard time keeping himself or herself in check. This person really needs a coach to pull on the reins to prevent overtraining, injury, illness and burnout. If the coach has to use a whip then it’s a losing cause no matter how talented the athlete is. The coach will never give the athlete motivation. It must come from within. When I’m interviewing athletes I ask lots of questions to find out how truly motivated they are. For example, I ask how often they train with other athletes versus alone. The low-motivation athlete will need companionship frequently. If you are motivated then all of the following predictors of excellence will fall into place eventually.
• Discipline. This is very simple. The disciplined athlete will make daily sacrifices and make due with hardships in order to excel. This person doesn’t miss workouts short of a disaster. Weather is an insignificant factor. The disciplined athlete knows that the small stuff is important. He or she doesn’t get sloppy with diet, recovery, equipment or anything else that has to do with goals. Discipline is not easy. Others can accept motivation, but they have a hard time dealing with people who are disciplined. You’ve got to make light of or even hide your discipline is you want to be accepted by your peers. Good luck here.
• Confidence. Some people seem to live life completely with an unwavering belief in themselves and their actions. These folks are indeed rare. I’ve met very few athletes who didn’t have some concerns about how well suited they were for whatever the task at hand may be. There’s a sliding scale of confidence. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. To move closer to the high-confidence end all we typically need is some success. Success breeds confidence. While it’s hard to come by you can create your own. For the athletes I’ve coached whose confidence was decidedly on the low end I’ve suggested a daily confidence-booster. When they go to bed and after the lights are out, I tell them to go back in their memories and find anything in their day’s workout or related activities that was successful at any level. This could be a very small success such as feeling strong going up a certain hill during the workout today, or eating fruit instead of a cookie for a snack. I tell them to then relive that small success over and over until they fall asleep. Occasionally there are big successes. These become “anchors” which they relive often and store away in a vault to be pulled out whenever they feel low confidence coming on, like at the starting line of a race. Thinking of one’s successes breeds success. Success breeds confidence.
• Focus. This could also be called purpose; the athlete knows where he or she wants to go in the sport. Daily training is a purposeful activity that will lead to excellence. Each workout (and accompanying recovery) is a small building block that eventually results in excellence. But you have to take it one step at a time, which brings us to the last predictor, patience.
• Patience. According to Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Outliers it takes about 10,000 hours for a person to become a master of anything. I had never tried to quantify it in terms of hours, but experience told me that performing at the highest level in sport takes something on the order of 10 years of serious training regardless of when you started in life. So I think Gladwell is probably right. There are certainly exceptions, or at least it appears that way on the surface. But when an athlete comes along who seems to go to the top right away we often find on closer examination that he or she had been developing outside of the recognized success pathways. Patience also has another level that goes beyond this long-term approach to success. This is a more immediate, daily component associated with the ability to pace appropriately early in workouts and races. Athletes who seem unable to learn this skill are less likely to be successful than those who master it.
Notice that I didn’t say anything about innate talent, physiology, skills, or even experience in the sport. All of these things can be developed and learned if the other predictors are there. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have the capacity to develop each of these mental abilities. As mentioned earlier, the challenge for most of us in seeking excellence is learning how to do it without appearing to be doing so. Watch how most of the pros do it and try to emulate their apparently laissez-faire attitude. Good examples are Chrissie Wellington in triathlon and David Zabriskie in road cycling. In their own unique ways they give the impression of being unconcerned about excellence. But no one achieves their levels of accomplishment without being highly motivated, disciplined, focused and patient.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
What the.....!!
Does this look normal? Is it suppossed to be this way?
Dang! My saddle broke today. The bizarre thing is I didn't notice it until after my ride when I was putting it back in my car. It's such a clean break too, which seems weird.
I have to get a new saddle now....pronto.
Heather, how do you like your Adamo?
Monday, September 14, 2009
8 Weeks!
OK, athletes, the final push is here!
8 weeks of training remain. 6 weeks of hard training plus 2 weeks taper(assuming you're doing a 2-week taper. You can do your own math if that's different).
How do you feel to this point? Do you feel ready? Semi-ready? OMG, NOOOO!!!
If you're in the "feel ready" category, congratulations! Keep up the good work. If you're in the "semi" category, keep plugging ahead. You're going to get there. If you're in the "OMG, NOOOOO!" category, I suggest you're probably more ready than you think. Don't sweat it. Ironman is a daunting task and it makes everyone a little nervous.
I honestly think I could go out and do it tomorrow. Now, of course, I'm glad I don't have to and I'm grateful for 6 more weeks of hard training. But, I do think I could cover the distance.
My plan for the next 8 weeks is to train hard and recover when I'm suppossed to. I'm going to ramp up my hydration, lock down my training diet and buy a new pair of running shoes (motivation, right?). This last push is called the peak phase for a reason. I like to think about it this way: we've trained hard for 16 weeks to get our bodies ready to train really hard during this peak phase. We are not yet in the best shape we can be....these next several weeks will get us there!
Good luck to everyone. Stay focused. Train hard. All In!
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