Look what I got in the mail, a mere 2 months late!

That's one happy guy right there!

That's right, my Timberman medal finally came! I opened it and carried it around with me until Rach got home, but I refused to put it on until she put it on me as she would have on race day. She was less than thrilled to play along with my homemade ceremony, but she was more than willing to take pictures of me acting like a fool. (She seems very excited whenever this happens).

Now that I'm officially a 70.3 finisher, I've obviously become far more distinguished, and therefore, going forward will only been seen in photos that reflect that change in status.

Winston, my good man, bring me my Chinchilla skin workout shorts

Finally, after wearing it around for a while, speaking in a British accent and making my wife roll her eyes at me multiple times, I hung that sucker up on the wall.

The nail is no longer empty

So knowing me and how fired up I get by this kind of stuff, you can only imagine how hyper I was to go work out. I went out and did the 3rd day of week 5 of my Couch ot 5k. It called for a five minute warm-up followed 20 minutes of consecutive running. 

I did a 1/2 mile in 6 minutes and had to take a short break to catch my breath. I rested for about a minute before I ran the remaining 14 minutes. The fact that I could do so much with just a little rest is a good sign, and it's clearly progress over what I've done before. But it wasn't what was called for, so I'm going to repeat week 5 of the plan. I don't consider it a failure in any way, just that I need to keep working. I wound up doing about 1 1/2 miles in 20 minutes which isnt to shabby for me. 

Rach had her spin class last night, and instead of staying home, I drove her to FitRec and got in the pool. My first "Chlorination" as a reader referred to it the other day, since the day before Club Nationals. It's amazing how fast it feels like swim fitness goes away. I didn't have nearly the stamina I did just a few weeks ago, but my speed was actually a bit better. I wound up doing around 1200 yards over an hours time, taking it real easy with breaks and building up to 250 yards in a row. A couple of weeks worth of work ought to get me back to where I was.

A (semi) serious moment

I haven't been wanting to make too much of this, but lately I've been forgetting things. Today, I walked into a meeting of several of my co-workers, and I had to take a few small notes. One of those notes was to add my boss to the invite list for a meeting I'm having next week. As I stood there and looked at him for 30 seconds, I couldn't remember my boss' name. I literally had to look at everyone else in the room and think through their names before I could remember his.

And this isn't the first time this type of thing has happened of late. It's not like any of them are serious things, like I don't forget who or where I am. But I've been far more forgetful over the past few weeks of little things that I've never had problems with before. Maybe it's just the first signs that I'm getting older and a bit slower on recalling things. But these are all simple things that I shouldn't be having problems with. It could be a lot of things; stress, too much caffeine, poor sleep quality, or perhaps even the after effects of the header I took during the Landmine Classic.

The sleep apnea is the most likely culprit, as memory problems along with headaches are primary symptoms of the disorder. If that's the case, at least I'm already getting treatment, and I know what and how to help with that treatment. My current mask isn't working well, so I ordered a replacement mask this week that arrived today. This model is the best one I've ever had, and they simply were out of stock on them when I got my replacement machine. A mask that fits well goes a long way to helping get a good nights sleep.

If it is the apnea, that also helps explain in part why I've been having food and exercise motivation issues. When my apnea is affecting me, my motivation to workout is way down, and my food cravings go way up as my body fights to power through the lack of sleep. I tend to take the lazy way out on eating during these times as well, which only adds to my desire for junk. It sounds like a bit of an excuse, but when I've had problems in the past with this, these are the things I see happening.

It's funny in a way that there's a bit of a "catch 22" to all of this. To be less affected by my apnea, the best answer is to lose weight. But when my apnea is causing me problems, all I want to do is be lazy and eat. I guess the way to look at it is that it makes it that much more of a goal to overcome these extra challenges to lose the weight I want need to.

Notes:

 - I played a little NHL Slapshot to try and get in a little workout in the house, but I wound up not even breaking a sweat. I had meant to cardio it up with some Wii Boxing, but I couldn't find the darn Wii Sports disc. I wasn't motivated enough to hit the gym and swim, and it was too dark for the bike. I need to buy some damn lights next week.

- This morning I read a blog entry from my friend Mandy, who got up at 4:30 AM today to run. If she can do that, I can certainly run sometime this evening, and I will.

- Finally, a shout out to The Big Tuna, who has lost 30 pounds since July. He has done a lot more with his weight loss than I have this year, and in a lot less time. But there's still plenty of time left. My goal for the rest of the year is to get to where he is now. He's a little down about his first mountain bike ride ending in a DNF right now. Oh, but did I mention his attempt was at a 60 mile ride? He did 20 of it in his first organized ride, so to me that's ANYTHING but a DNF.

My wife, the gym rat

It probably won't surprise any of you who have met or know Rachelle, that she's a bit of a gym rat. She can't always find the motivation to go, but when she actually is in the gym, she's in her element. She knows how almost all the machines work, and she can use them. Sure, she doesn't have "massive guns" (though she'll disagree with that), but she can do multiple reps on all the machines she uses and looks very natural among all the body builders. 

I on the other hand am anything but a natural with working out. While most people look at me and see a big dude who might have some physical skills, what I see is the 12 year old skinny kid who could not bench press his own weight. In fact in high school, my uncle John promised me all of his old baseball cards, but not until I could do just that; bench my weight. When motivated by baseball (or hockey) cards, there isn't much I won't/can't do. It took me all summer and part of the next year, but I could eventually lift my own weight... exactly *cough* twice *cough*

The off-season workout plan called for a gym session last night. Rach did a bike session while I got my run in (more on that in a minute), and then we went to the machines. Some of them I had used before, like the rowing machine and the leg left. My favorite is the leg press, where I can do 2 x 12 reps at over 300 lbs. We also did some stuff that I am not very good at like a standing pull-down and some other stuff I don't even know the names of. 

Lifting isn't absolutely essentially to compete at triathlon, but building some lean muscle is essential to losing weight as the more lean muscle you have, the faster your body burns calories. And any workout that involves my core is something I need to be doing as 56 miles on the bike really tests your stomach and back, let alone 112. I'm not sure how I was able to get through the Timberman ride without doing more abdominal work, but I doubt I'd get through the full Iron distance without it.

So about that run... 

I'm in week 5 of the my Couch to 5k. Day one had 15 minutes of running in 5 minute segments with 3 minutes of rest between each. I was expecting the same for day 2, but boy did I get more than I bargained for. It appears that week 5 is when things start to become more challenging. Last nights run consisted of two 8 minute runs with a 5 minute cooldown in between. And that's not all; Fridays run, the last day of week 5, is a 20 minute run, with no breaks.

Now don't take this as me complaining, but wow was that a big effort last night. And surprisingly I was able to do it. I don't know how fast I was going at the end, but I was definitely faster than race walking pace. I ran at the gym, and the track there is really weirdly distanced. 7 laps of the track is a mile which is weird enough; but from which lane is it a mile and which are longer or shorter than a mile? i shouldn't need a PhD in Mathematics to figure out how far I'm walking on a track. 

Last night, It wasn't something that I cared too much to think about, and just focused on getting through it. I was struggling with just a couple minutes left in the second set, so I'm going to have to really dig deep on Friday. I'm excited in a way though, because this is how I am building up the stamina to run a complete 5k. I'm going to get a good test of where I am on the 30th for our Halloween 5k.

Notes:

- I made it to the gym last night in part because of Rachelle's motivation to go, but I also took time to read my Timberman race report before I left worked yesterday. Nothing I've experienced in my life has been the kind of challenge that race was. When I read it, I am reminded of what I am capable of.

- Speaking of Timberman, the medal is supposedly in a box at a shipping place at this time. It's supposed to be mailed by Friday and finally arriving sometime in the next 10 days after that.

Blah

Ever have one of those days where things are just blah? It was a beautiful sunshiney day yesterday, pretty nice weather for a fall day in Boston. And yet I was just completely in the dumps. The run went great on Sunday, and Rach and I had a really fun Sunday evening. But I woke up yesterday just totally bummed out.

I also noticed my sense of humor has been MIA from my posts for quite a while as well. I spent some time thinking about it last night before sleep, and this morning before I got myself going. I think there are some obvious reasons behind it.

- I am affected by the turning of the seasons. Sorta like a tree losing it's leaves or a dog growing in it's winter coat. Well, ok more like the dog I guess, because thankfully I'm not losing any hair up top, and shaving these days almost requires a chisel. When did my beard get the texture of brambles?

- The lack of true off-season training. While the road races help keep me motivated to run, the broken spoke on the Fuji is keeping me off the road bike. I can't even tell you the last time I swam. I have the mountain bike, but it gets dark so fast now, I barely have any time to ride it on weekdays unless I get up at the crack of dawn. And lately, that just ain't been happening. Rachelle has a plan, and we've done some of it, but not regularly, and not enough.

- Triathlons seem really far away right now, and that's anything but true. Last year, we started training just a bit more than 8 months out from the race, and I was barely able to finish in the time allowed. Our first big race this year is 2 1/2 months sooner, so 8 1/2 months out is... well, any time now. Yes, we have the base of fitness from last year, and I think we've been doing just enough to maintain most of that, but we need to start doing more pretty soon.

- I'm not sleeping enough. I was doing well for a while, going to bed early and getting up early, but lately that simply hasn't been happening. I'm going to try to adjust my sleep schedule to take advantage of the end of daylight savings time when it hits so that I can take advantage of more morning sunlight for running and riding.

I guess it could be worse, I could be Randy Quaid.

Race Report: Paddy's Road Race

It's nice when a race comes off mostly how you want it, especially when the end result at least shows a little of the effort you've been putting in. I've actually had a good bit of luck since the starting gun of Timberman after a fairly challenging start to the season. Yesterday was an adventure in forgotten things, but the race turned out pretty well anyways.

Relying on technology in races is one of those double edged swords that can come back to bite you. It was at this race last year in fact that in the pouring rain, my old iPod nano gave it's life in trying to provide motivational music to get me through the cold and rain. Thankfully, nothing broke this year, but I did forget both my watch and my phone, so I had no way of knowing how fast I was going to be running.

It's a well organized 3 mile race through an area of town (Newton) not too far from where I work. They advertises it as a mostly flat course, but it's really made of tiny little rollers, so you're constantly going up and down. They also provide signs so that runners know to line up by ability, not just with their friends. If you've never done a road race, you'd be amazed at how much nicer a race goes when a majority of the racers are properly grouped. Heck, I can't even imagine how the fast people feel in races where people start wherever they want.

I couldn't hear the starting gun, but when the pack in front of you starts running, it's time to go. I was far enough back that it seemed to take quite a while to cross the starting line. From there it was just running at as hard a pace I could sustain for as long as I could sustain it. When I felt like I was at the red line for a while, I'd stop and walk. Unlike in previous races when I'd stop and walk, I wasn't walking at full race-walk pace.

Instead, I used that time to cool down before running again. It's part of the realization that came as part of my couch to 5k, that I can run longer and faster if I rest a little bit between. I was surprised when I got to the first mile, thinking it might be a ways off yet. As I passed they read off 13:52 as the clock time, but I knew I had started some amount of time after. That meant I was sub 14, which is about where I usually am. Bummer.

Trying not to think about it, I pushed on, and found that much like the first mile, the second mile came faster than I expected. As they read the time, I was now at 27:40 minutes, so my second mile was a little under 14, so again, about where I expected to be based on last year. I was working too hard to get bummed out this time, and the group around me and I had a nice moment when we saw one of the early finishers running back our way to do a cool down. I said to them "The early finishers should not be allowed to do that, they should be required to run somewhere else and show off for those people" which got quite a few laughs.

The last mile of this course is one of those courses where there are two turns that deceive you into thinking the  race is almost over. There's a building a few minutes into the last mile that looks eerily similar to a building right near the finish, and it tricked me again this year as well. I realized my mistake just a minute later, when I saw the next turn of the course. I hadn't sprinted for long but was bummed to slow down, knowing I couldn't sustain that pace.

I went back to a brisk walk to save up what I could for the turn onto the last road on the course. I had decided I was running the whole last road, even though it was a pretty long distance including the turn back down into the finish line. I made the turn and put everything I had into that last 1/3rd of a mile. I was pretty well spent already, but knowing the line was coming I pushed through to the finish.

My burning legs were happy when I crossed the line. The clock read 40:30 when I finished, but knowing it had taken a while to get to the starting line, I hoped for the best. Because this race is so well run, I didn't have to wait long for my result; 39:23. 23 seconds faster than last year.

I know that doesn't seem like much, but considering much of my walking was used to recover, between runs instead of pushing for the best possible time. I feel like I've made good progress so far, but I can't wait until I have the stamina to run 3 full miles.

Notes:

- When I say Paddy's is a well run race, I mean it: fruit, hot dogs, and an amazing chicken pot pie soup that is the best post race food I've had in a long time. Oh, and did I mention the free beer? We didn't partake this year because we'd already had hot dogs and soup, but free beer is the best reason to race, ever.

- We've got a Halloween race picked out, and we'll be racing again in just under two weeks. That gives me 5 more runs to get ready. It's a race we haven't done before, but it's right in our neighborhood.