Portland Marathon

Yesterday I got the opportunity to run with my friend Sean during his marathon for moral support. I met him at around mile 18 and ran two miles to where his wife and daughter were waiting to cheer him on. We then quickly got into a car and raced to the finish line six miles away, so we could cheer him on at the finish. It was really a fun day, and I am glad I “participated” in Sean’s 2nd Portland Marathon.

A few things stood out to me during the festivities.

1. There was way more people than I expected participating. There were over 8,000 runners. That is 8,000 people deciding it would be fun to run 26.2 miles.

2. The atmosphere was great. Within the two miles of the course I ran with Sean there was a high school cheerleading team, a group of belly dancers, and hundreds of people cheering these runners on. I was astounded at the support for strangers from the community.

3. Running 26.2 miles really affects people in different ways. There were numerous people that were smiling at the finish and looked like they could run more, people that could barely walk away from the finish line, and people that had to be helped across the finish line. I don’t think I could ever run that distance, but it was really touching to see the runners at the finish line. One person in particular fell down within 100 yds of the finish line and couldn’t force his body to stand up. Two runners provided assistance to him, and he was able to cross the finish line being supported by what appeared to be complete strangers.

If I read the webpage correct, they are going to have a half marathon next year. If this is the case, I will definitely participate in this.

In case you are curious, Sean finished in 4:02:05 a pace of 9:14/mile finishing 2430 out of 8103. Now I really know that I slowed him down during our training runs.

Aluminmum Results

Today I ran the Aluminum Man Triathlon. Being sick, I wasn't real sure what to expect. My goal time was 1:45 and I completed it in 1:44:18. For the most part I am satisfied with my performance, but I still see room for improvement. My swim was much faster, finishing in just over 14 min (4 min faster than my previous best). The bike was just under 53 min. I am not unhappy with this time, but I feel I really can improve this time with better equipment and more ride training. The run is where this race fell apart. Getting off my bike, my lower back really stiffened up, and I really just struggled. My time was just under 33 min, a full two min slower than my previous worst. I found my self having to walk sections, to try and control the pain. This was the most uncomfortable I have been in all three of my triathlons. Another issue I had on the bike and run was medicine. Prior to the race, so I could breath during the swim, I took some sudaphed. It worked wonders for the swim, but really was not good for the bike or run. It just really dried my mouth out. I felt like I was at the dentist with gauze in my mouth I was so dry. I guess next time I will suffer with the swim, so I can not be so dried out for the rest. A better option would be to not get sick two days before a race.

Not only did I meet my goal with the Triathlon today, but Michigan beat Notre Dame. This makes me happy! It is funny, because friend Brad was talking a lot of trash last weekend, and Now he won't field my phone calls. He can only avoid me for so long.

I get to fly my Bengals flag tomorrow. Adrienne told me I could fly it on game day. That will be fun.

Triathlon Goals

Tomorrow is my third sprint triathlon for the season. I ran my self down traveling and now I have a head cold. I am not sure how tomorrow will go, but I thought I would post my goals. Hopefully I get in the zone and perform really well. My goals for this race are to continue to improve over my pace from the Portland Tri. I would like to see the following times: Swim 18 min, Bike 48 min, Run 29 min. This would give me a total time of approx 1:45. If I can hit this I will be satisfied. I will post the results tomorrow after they are posted online.

Weekend Getaway

This past weekend was my man weekend getaway to Michigan. This year marked the 8th year that Scott, Jeff and I have made a trip to the Big House to watch Michigan play. It is for me the one big “guys” trip I take every year. Now that I am out on the west coast, it is a much bigger trip, which makes it that much more fun. Michigan won on opening weekend, and the world somehow feels normal again.

This trip also combines to be a trip home to see family and friends in Toledo. My parents were not in town for the weekend, but we did get to spend a couple of hours together in the Detroit airport as they were on their way to London. I stayed with my sister all four nights, and other than the train noise in the morning, slept well. It is interesting how the sounds that you are around all the time become less obtrusive. The post office by my apartment is like that. When I first moved in I heard it every night, but now I don’t even notice it. The trains are that way for them. On my last morning I cooked crepes for my nephew before he had to go to school. I think he liked it, and I do enjoy cooking breakfast, so it was a win win.

I have the triathlon coming this weekend. I am somewhat regretting signing up now, as I had a very lazy and gluttonous eating weekend. I had good intentions, and I had planned to go running but didn’t i never made it out. I am not expecting good results going in, so it will be interesting. I am going to get a couple of light workouts in this week leading up to Saturday’s race, but I don’t think I will really push hard until race day. With this distance matching Hagg Lake, Hopefully I can beat that time.

My friends Sean and Melissa got married this past weekend, and I thought I would take a moment to wish them the best.

Aluminum Man

I finally decided to sign up and compete in the Aluminum Man Sprint Triathlon. The race is Sept 12th, in the Dalles, OR. It looks like it will be a really fun course with some great scenery. Adrienne and I are going to make a trip out of it and spend that night in Hood River. I will post results after the race.

Last night at the gym we did a 5 sets for each partner each set was 200m row- 20-24K swing-run a lap partner workout. I was partnered with Eric and we finished in 20:13. I am not sure why, but I enjoy this format. It is one of the workouts where I can really push myself.

Tonight we are going out for Sean's bachelor party. We thought of several options for this party, and we settled on a Taco Cart tour. It should be a fun low key night.

If you would like to see pictures from the Cupcake contest, click on the Recreate Fitness link to the right. In the blog they have pictures and a slide show.

A Fight Gone Bad and Running weekend

Yesterday at the gym, we did the Fight Gone Bad workout. This workout is three five minutes rounds of one minute at the following Box Jump, Barbell Push Press, Row for cal, Wall Ball, and Sumo Deadlift Hi Pull. You total your number of reps/calories for the three rounds. I got a score of 304 which was much better than my 274 from February. It is always nice to see improvement.

After the workout, I think I took a step back as I competed in a cupcake eating contest. The rules were run one lap, eat 5 cupcakes each, and run another lap. There were three teams and Brian and I finished a distant second. The first place team had a competitive eater, so in my mind we finished 1st in the novice division.

This morning I got up and went for a run with Sean and Jason. Sean is working toward the Portland marathon and Jason wanted to punish himself. I have decided to run with Sean whenever possible so he has a training buddy for the Marathon. I have no plans of running a marathon, but if I can help him get ready I will. Originally the plan was to do a 12 mile run, but as it turns out the run.com web page had an inaccurate route distance and we actually ran got in 8.5 miles. Personally I thought the distance was just right. I can tell you my legs would have preferred even less distance, as they are very sore today. I will say that doing a long run (for me this was a long run) is mentally a challenge. There were several times where I just wanted to quit and walk but I knew I shouldn't. At roughly the 7.5 mile mark I caved and started walking. Sean ran back and I pushed to do a couple of 1 min walk/run intervals. After only a couple of intervals, I got a second wind and finished the run out much stronger. Pushing my limits doing something I don't really like is good for me. Even thought I don't really enjoy running, when ever I do something physically I have never done before it is satisfying.

Softball and Burgers

Last night I had my first fall league softball game. The weather was gorgeous, but our playing was not. We couldn't string any hits together, and our defense was as bad as it has been this season. Hopefully it was just rust and we come out and play better at our next game. I know it is all just for fun, but I can't help but to be really frustrated and mad when we lose. I guess with certain aspects of my life my competitiveness will never go away.

After the game I went to meet the Recreate Burger Crew for our Thursday Burger outing. It turned out to be just me and Todd at the 5th Quadrant a small brew pub in the NE. The burger was actually very tasty. This burger is a bit different than our recent selections, as this is a more classic American burger. It didn't have any fried onion strips or pimento cheese. I had a bacon cheddar burger cooked medium rare. I found the toasted buttery bun to be better than your typical sesame seed bun. The peppered bacon was good. The meat had a sweet smokey flavor, but was a bit to greasy for me. Overall I thought this to be an average pub hamburger. I think if I went back I would try the bacon chicken sandwich.

Saturday is fight gone bad workout day at the gym. I don't remember what my score was last time we did this workout, but I do recall Nathan setting a goal for me. I guess I should figure that out before the workout so I know what I am shooting for. After the workout I am taking part in a cupcake eating race and a BBQ. The race consists of running a lap around the building, then eating 10 cupcakes between you and your partner, then running another lap. I don't remember the last time I ate 5 cupcakes in one sitting, and I know I have never ate cupcakes like that and then ran. It should be fun.

Tuesday Thoughts

I went back to the gym today after taking Monday off to recover. My legs were very sore on Monday. I had to get up several times at the office and just walk around, as they wanted to tighten up. I went for a light bike ride yesterday evening just to get moving. I think that was a good idea, as today I felt much better.

The workout at the gym was a partner workout of :30/:30 consisting of the following: Wallball, Ball Slam, swings/ring plank, and finally mountain climbers. We stayed at each station for six :30 working intervals and then moved to the next. The mountain climbers made my quads really burn. I felt slow today during the workout, but it did feel good to move.

I found another Triathlon to do this fall. It is called the Aluminum Man Triathlon in the Dalles, Oregon 80 miles east of Portland. The name makes me smile, as it is a play on the Iron Man. I am not sure yet if I will do it, but I am leaning towards doing one more this year. For this one you swim in the Columbia river and then the run course is also along the Columbia. It sounds very scenic and fun.

Portland Triathlon Results

I ran the Portland Tri this morning. It was fun but extremely hard.

The swim felt great. This was definitely my weakest portion of the Hagg lake triathlon. I sucked it up and joined LA Fitness so I could have access to the pool to train. It paid off, and made me feel like it is money well spent. Not only was I able to reduce my swim time (see below for results and analysis) I found I actually quite enjoy being in the pool. It is one of those exercises that I feel refreshed when I am done.

The bike was difficult. Both Sean (my training buddy) and I underestimated the biking portion. We had ridden on several occasions the portion of the bike route we had access to, and it didn't seem that difficult. However on race day, they had the necessary streets closed and we were exposed to the entire course. It was like a smack in the face. The course started out with a nice steady climb and then just past the 2 mile mark turned to a very steep climb 15% grade. Once I reached the top of this section my legs were spent. Then it was a mostly down hill back to the river front and on to lap two.

The run was mentally challenging. The bike took a lot out of me, and my legs didn't want to move any more. I had to convince my legs that it was going to be okay. This section felt like it took forever, and was painful every step. I managed to put one foot in front of the other and make it though. I wasn't really smiling at the end this time though.

Below are my results for the Portland Tri and Hagg Lake Tri. Since I am a big math geek, I have included some analysis to compare the results. Please note, that the pace results below are based solely on distance vs. time, and don't account for environmental factors such as swimming up stream in a river.

I tried like hell to get a table put in blogger to present my data nicely, but after two hours of trying, I give up. So in a text format here is a rundown of my results:

Hagg Lake vs. Portland

Swim: 0:20:40 vs 0:18:35
Pace: 1.45 mph vs 1.48 mph
T1: 0:04:17 vs 0:03:52
Bike: 0:51:26 vs 1:03:46
Pace: 14.58 mph vs 15.47 mph
T2: 0:02:27 vs 0:01:27
Run: 0:31:26 vs 0:29:35
Pace: 5.91 mph vs 6.28 mph

Some further analysis, to compare my results to the other competitors reveals the following.

Hagg Lake within my age group (30-34 Males), I finished 27th out of 31 competitors or I beat 12.9%. Overall I finished 241st out of 303 competitors or I beat 20.46%.

Portland within my age group (30-34 Males), I finished 14th out of 18 competitors or I beat 22.2%. Overall I finished 160th out of 274 competitors or I beat 41.64%.

Even though I didn't reach all of the goals I set for my self, I am proud and satisfied of my performance.

With my second sprint triathlon under my belt, I am convinced that I really do find this sport very satisfying. My long range plans are to complete an Olympic triathlon next year (twice the distance as the sprint). With a solid winters worth of training, I am excited to see where my times can go.

If you would like to see pictures from this race, please visit my flickr page. The link is on the right.

Portland Triathlon

As many of you already know, I am running my second sprint triathlon of the summer tomorrow bright and early. I thought I would take a couple of minutes to post my goals. Since this tri has slightly different distances than my last one, I decided to make individual event goals as well as an overall time goal. So with that in mind, I have the following goals for tomorrow.

Swim 18 min to complete 750 meters in the Willamette River (Hagg lake was 800 meter swim that I completed in 20:40)

Bike 60 min to complete 16.4 miles (Hagg Lake was 12.5 miles that I completed in 51:26)

Run 28 min to complete 3.1 miles along the Willamette River (Hagg Lake was 3.1 miles completed in 31:26)

With transitions figured in, I am hoping to complete this in under 1 hr and 50min.

I will post my results as soon as they are posted, hopefully tomorrow.