And I thought I was doing so well

I went out to the West Orange Trail today. I love that place. It is 19 miles from the Buddhist Temple to Killarney Station. I saw when I went out there today, the flyover over 436 is finished. I'll have to ride back that way. The problem is you have to ride through a REALLY bad section of Apopka to get to the very start of the trail. I mean so bad there used to be the outline of a body from a murder victim on the trail kind of bad. I don't need to go to the trailhead that much.

I did my first brick of the season. I didn't run the whole way. I was tired after about 15 minutes, it was 85 degrees, winds gusting to 20 pmh and I didn't have any fluids. I really need to get a new bladder for my camelback. I did run/walk for 57 minutes though which is the longest I've done that in that kind of heat. I am definitely going to have to train for that if I want to do the half-iron.

I did run/walk a little more than five miles and then immediately did an out and back for a 38 mile ride. When I started the ride, I measured how far the run was and it came back as 6.12 miles. I knew that wasn't right, so I started looking for markings from trailhead to trailhead. At the end of the ride my mileage read 44.44 miles and I knew the ride was about 38. I figured when the battery died back in April on my computer, the thing wasn't set for my wheel size. I was bummed. I thought I had done a 60 mile ride a couple of weeks ago and it turned out to be only 51 miles. As soon as I was done I went straight to Locomotion and got that adjusted.

I felt fine today, no soreness or anything. I really need to make up my training calendar this week to get ready for Maine and see if Clermont is even remotely possible in October. I just keep telling myself you aren't going to win it, just finish it.

Well That Was Different

I've run in the rain before. I don't run in thunderstorms with lightning because that will get you killed, but I'll run in a gentle drizzle. All night it rained. I don't know how much, but I'm thinking about two inches. It gave us a gentle soaking which we needed. There shouldn't be a huge amount of runoff like we get with the torrential downpours.

After I got out there though, the rain increased. It was really pouring. I felt like a hardcore athlete. At one point it was raining so hard I was having a hard time seeing. I need to get a baseball cap to keep the rain out of my eyes. I had my iPod wrapped in a shopping bag. I ran in a t-shirt and shorts which when I got home were dripping like I had jumped in the shower.

I did a different route as well. I mapped it on mapmyrun and it was 3.15 miles. I didn't run all of that, but I'm getting closer to running the whole thing. Tomorrow early am I'm going to head out to the West Orange Trail and do a brick. I'll just shoot for the 25 minutes without stopping and then ride out to the Killarney Station. I think it's about a 40 mile round trip. I'll shoot for 18 mile per hour average.

I'm still riding my Marin hybrid. Since I shattered my wrist last Thanksgiving, it has healed, but I'm still not ready to use my Felt with the aero bars. It hurts to rest my weight on my forearm for longer than a couple of minutes. And after that fall, I'm not eager to take a spill with the clip-on pedals. My surgeon considers my wrist his work of art and would not be happy if I screwed it up.

June 1, and already Tropical Storm Barry

I work in construction and the weather plays a major role in our schedule. I am generally pretty up on what is supposed to happen. I knew we had the potential for a storm, but it was downplayed by my local station on the early morning broadcast. So when I finally got home tonight after work, I was surprised to see the storm had intensified and was now named.

Tropical Storm Barry is supposed to be fairly mild through Orlando with some nice rain and some minor winds, but nothing worse that our standard summer thunderstorms, maybe just last a little longer. Gosh I hope so. We so need the rain.

I'm In

This summer I am heading to New Hampshire for a partial family reunion. I only made the decision to go last week and started looking at races up there. Initially I wanted to do the sprint tri called the Timberman which is apparently a local favorite. Unfortunately it was already full. I continued to search and found the Tri-Maine triathlon called the Urban-Epic.

This will be a HUGE step for me in my triathlon history. There are a number of firsts. It is an international or Olympic distance which is a 1.5K swim, a 40K bike ride and a 10K run. I have no problem with the bike. I've ridden that distance countless times, though I'll be doing this on a borrowed bike. I am in week seven of the couch to 5K running program currently and have been on week seven for two weeks now. This is just me getting back into running. I've run many 10K, but not in the last few years. I haven't even begun training for the swim. The other thing which is HUGE. I mean breathtakingly huge, is swimming in the ocean.

I can't tell you how scary that is for me. I've been in the US Army, I've been through combat training, I'll jump out of airplanes, I'll repel off mountains, I've owned several snakes, will save spiders (from my Mother and my cats) and move them to safer quarters outside, l love rodents of all types, have owned and loved many a rat and I truly can't think of anything that I am physically afraid of. Except the water. I have no problem swimming in pools. I am a good swimmer. I don't look like I'm drowning while I swim. My technique is good, my strokes well-placed, but that is in in the safety of a pool. Where nothing is out to eat me.

I live in Central Florida. Just north of Orlando. We have alligators (which is also our state reptile), cottonmouth water moccasins, lots of other water snakes which aren't venomous, but still very scary to see swimming along, turtles of all sorts including the snapping turtle and chicken turtle, both of which have a nasty bite capable of removing a finger and rogue monitor 4-foot lizards. And we have these little ameobas that swim up your nose into your brain and can kill you within a week. And that's only the freshwater hazards.

The closest beach to me is Cocoa Beach, about an hour away. That is the shark attack capital of the world. No, I mean it. More people have been bitten at Cocoa Beach than anywhere else in the whole world. Now, no one's been killed, but I don't want to be bitten or eaten. I also saw Jaws when I was nine. It was 1975 and we were at the New Jersey shore. I can say I have been back in the ocean over my knees exactly never since then.

These fears may be irrational and illogical, but they sure as heck are real. Now I have done races in fresh water and as long as I was with a bunch of other swimmers, the fear was manageable. I figured I just had to not be the last person in the water. The critters in the fresh water would have been scared off by the mass of swimmers, but this Maine tri is different. From the Epic-Tri website:

"The Urban/EPIC will start from the decks of a Cianbro barge anchored in the middle of Casco Bay. Athletes will be brought to the barge on two Casco Bay Lines Ferries. They will then jump from the barge and finish 1 mile away at East End Beach, completing one of the most spectacular swims in the world."

And all this fun in water that averages a warm 60 degrees. OK, so the final first in all this is the thing that is going to make me look like a tasty seal. In 60 degree water you need a wetsuit. Now, I don't own a wetsuit. In Florida you may have one race a year that even allows a wetsuit, but generally the water just isn't cold enough to allow a wetsuit under USTA rules. But in Maine, a wetsuit is required so I don't develop hypothermia. The really big downside of wearing a wetsuit is that you look like a seal to any passing wildlife like sharks or whales. A big tasty seal snack. I feel sick just thinking about it. Onward!