Lara and I spent some time over the holidays working on our 2012 race schedules (her write-up is here). Now that we have most of our travel weekends laid out for us, we can fill in races and see what kind of training and racing schedule is available to us. This year will prove to be exciting for a couple of reasons.

Early Season

This year, Lara and I both signed up to do the Yuengling Shamrock Half Marathon in March. I was planning on making this race an early goal, but I’ve decided to simply focus more on my running and probably racing this with C2 in his jog stroller. I’ll be going off the Team Z schedule with a more run-focused training schedule, with a secondary weight-loss focus to try and get down to what I think is my ideal racing weight. Fun times!

‘A’ Races

Of course, the first monster on my schedule is Ironman Lake Placid. I’ve been signed up for this one since last July, and I’m looking forward to a very different challenge from Ironman Cozumel. Cozumel is dead flat, and Lake Placid is…not. Friends say that the only flat part of the course is the swim, and they would make that hilly if they could find a way. Still, it’s an iconic course, and I’m looking forward to putting in an even better effort (if not a better time due to the hills).

Another goal is to qualify for the 2013 USA Triathlon National Championships. I can do that by finishing in the top third of my age group at The Nation’s Triathlon in DC in 2012. I think that’s do-able, but my concern here will be that the race is about six weeks after IM Lake Placid, so there won’t be much downtime. I craved that after COZ, but am hoping that I can keep pushing through.

Finally, my goal from the last two years has been to qualify for the season end awards in the Virginia Triathlon Series. I need a minimum of five events (not relays) to qualify. Life has just gotten in the way the last two years, but this year I’m signed up for two events at Rumpus in Bumpass, Kinetic and Luray. That should do meet the requirements, so hopefully I’ll be fast for them. Luray is right after IM Lake Placid as well.

National Championships

There are two National Championships that don’t require qualification. I enjoy racing at these, even if I’m not yet as competitive as I would like.

Right now, I’m only signed up for the Long Course Duathlon National Championships in Maryland. Not treating this as an ‘A’ race, but a good training race where I’d like to do OK. The Duathlon format is Run-Bike-Run, so hopefully my focus on running this spring will pay off.

I’m considering the Aquabike National Championships in Richmond (the Deep Creek Gran Fondo and the Syracuse IM 70.3 are also that same weekend). Need to talk with Lara about that one, but the swim-bike format is interesting, and it would mean less travel time and less away-from-the-family time than the other two. But if anyone has other thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them. A 650m swim followed by an 18 mile bike seems pretty decent, and we love staying at the Richmond Westin.

Musselman Sprint

A week before Lake Placid is Musselman. We’ve planned to take that week off and head to upstate New York. This is a beautiful area, and Lara is signed up to do the Musselman Half Ironman (which I have completed my last two years). So, I’ll do the sprint that Lara has traditionally done and we’ll switch places. This is a great Team Z atmosphere, so looking forward to hanging with friends that weekend and revving up my legs for the full distance in a week.

Still Undecided

Not sure if we’re going to include the Mountains of Misery again this year. This is a 128 mile cycling challenge with over 13,000 feet of climbing. It would be good training for Lake Placid, and we really enjoyed staying at Mountain Lake the last time we did this. It’s our anniversary weekend, so it’s basically Lara’s call.

Savageman is another iconic race, and I am really hoping to do this one. Problem is, I have a University of Illinois Alumni Association Board of Directors meeting the day before. If I do this, it will be my last semi-serious race of the year.

In October, I am traveling to the Association of Corporate Counsel meeting in Orlando, FL, and there are a bunch of us who are looking to kick off the weekend with a race. A Disney running race is a possibility, but it looks like they moved the Wine and Dine race to another weekend. We’ll probably find something, but this will just be for fun as my season will be effectively over.

I’m also not sure if we’ll be heading out to the Seagull Century in Salisbury, Maryland. I enjoy this flat, scenic ride (Lara’s first ride over 40 miles), and I may hitch a trailer to the bike and take C2. But since my season should be over by then, it depends on whether I can get the neighbors or my wife interested in this one.

So, take October light and start base building for 2013 in November. Should be interesting, as Lara is hoping she can do her first Iron distance race then. So, looking forward to 2012 and all the challenges it will bring.

I had planned to write a final Ironman Cozumel report on the debacle called Tri Sport Express. Even had a post written and everything. But I’m not going to rehash everything here.

The short story is that they were (very) late in delivering the bikes to Cozumel, messing up everyone’s plans and races and almost not allowing us to start. Add nonexistent communication, a perception of being less than truthful about logistics and experience and damaged equipment, and there are a lot of angry people out there.

But it’s also provided a lot of internal drama as well. Not sure why, but at this point it’s jumped the shark as far as I’m concerned.

My motivation in writing anything at all was to ensure others never had this experience happen to them. But there’s enough written at Slowtwitch that hopefully people will be better informed on TSE, or any companies run by the same people.

And hopefully people will get compensated for the physical damage that was done.

Well, I’m really excited about my race season this year. After completing my first two half-Ironman distance races last year (Musselman in NY and Timberman in NH), this year the aim is to build the entire year towards doing the Ironman in Cozumel Mexico next Thanksgiving weekend. Talk about giving thanks!

I was hoping to take out a USA Cycling license this year and at least do some time trials, but it seems that there aren’t too many in this area.  Maybe 2012!

This year’s training is already under way, with spinning in the Coffee Garage, and running building towards the National Marathon in March. After that, some decisions still need to be made. But here’s my preliminary race schedule:

March 26: Nation’s Marathon

April 16/17: Rumpass in Bumpass (Sprint and International)

Memorial Day weekend—TBD, but as our anniversary, this weekend is always us doing something special

June—here it gets difficult, because we have awesome options every single weekend, but it might get to be too much

June 4/5: General Smallwood MTS

June 12: Eagleman, this one’s a definite go

June 19: Cubs play the Yankees on my second Father’s Day weekend…here, the triathlon will be beer, deep dish pizza and Garrett’s popcorn

June 25: two Gran Fondos, the hilly Diabolical Double, or the 200 mile true Double Century

July 15: the µMussel (I’m looking for a Green Machine, or possibly a tricycle)

July 17: Musselman Half Iron (I’ll be sure to remember the inhaler this time)

July 30/31: Culpepper…not a Team Z race, but because I need a fifth to qualify for VTS

August 13/14: Luray (don’t try and pronounce it, unless you grew up in Virginny)

October 8/9: Waterman’s MTS series…..maybe, we’ll see

November 27: Ironman, Cozumel

This blog, and the perpetually under construction website it’s a part of, was set up as part of my political ambitions. I left those behind in the winter of 2009, and this has been dormant since then. My life has changed dramatically since then, and I’ve been thinking about getting the blog, at least, more active. So, I thought I would kick things off with an enhanced version of an article I was asked to write for the company I work for…hope you all enjoy, and good to be back to share some thoughts…

For many people, the competition of the sports fields when we were young was replaced by other demands as we age. But all too often, as our responsibilities increase, we set aside rigorous physical activity for demands of career, family and civic engagement.

In my case, I stopped riding my bike and started riding a desk. In my youth, I was a highly ranked cyclist, training at the Olympic Training Center and winning races all across the Midwest. But at a time when only one or two riders from every year would make a decent living racing bikes, I opted to pursue a career in the law. As I focused on my career, my health slowly suffered and my bike gathered dust. 

About two years ago, I had to end my immediate political ambitions. About 24 hours after my decision, my wife Lara—who was studying for her MBA at the time and could not afford many distractions—told me that I needed something new to occupy my time because I was annoying her with nothing to occupy my time. After thinking about it for a couple of days, I decided I would tackle a triathlon for the first time in my life.

Triathlon has an interesting history. It’s the youngest of the Olympic sports, and has a strong tie to the military. Details are sketchy on the first swim/bike/run triathlon, which was thought to have occurred in San Diego in 1974. But a couple years later, a debate broke out about which athlete was the most fit. Reportedly, US Navy Commander John Collins suggested settling the debate by combining the three toughest endurance events on Oahu at that time: the 2.4 mile Waikiki Roughwater Swim, the 115 mile Around-Oahu Bike Race (shortened to 112 miles) and the Honolulu Marathon. Of course—they didn’t realize that Around-Oahu was a two-day event, but that’s not an unreasonable distance for one-day bike races (and fairly short compared to many European Classics).

Thus, the Ironman was born. Of course, this was—and is—considered a supreme athletic test to manage all three distances in the space of a single day. So, as the sport grew from a foothold of ultra-endurance fanatics, shorter races were introduced in the International (or Olympic) distance of .9mile/1.5 kilometer swim, 25mi/40k bike and 6.2mi/10k run and shorter distances called ‘sprints.’ But don’t let the name fool you—the sprints have swims of around a half-mile, biking for up to 20 miles and runs that are generally between 5 and 8 kilometers.

I wasn’t planning on starting with an Ironman, of course. But the decision to do any length of triathlon was especially daunting. After all, if you drop out of the run or bike, you walk. But if you drop out of the swim…you drown, or have to be rescued. And I have never been a very strong swimmer. But I was determined, and found a coach to help me understand swim mechanics. Let me tell you, it pretty humiliating to have a coach swimming alongside you critiquing every freestyle stroke. Especially when she’s eight months pregnant. And doing the backstroke. But better than drowning. I think.

My first triathlon, I did want to quit in the swim. Did I mention that the swim start is a mass start in open water, so you have waves, people kicking and hitting you, and even some swimmers crawling over you and pushing you under to make their way forward? In my first tri, I got kicked a couple times, hit in the face with waves on two consecutive attempts to breathe, and started to panic. They told us that if this happened, to pull off the brightly covered swim cap we were each given and wave it in the air to attract the attention of a lifeguard. Of course, I don’t think they had ever tried to do this while drowning, and it proved quite impossible. So, I flipped onto my back, got my composure back, and finished the race. Ever since then, it hasn’t been quite downhill, but I have gotten comfortable doing long open-water swims without a wet-suit, and my times have been dropping.

This year, I competed in about ten different events. This year, I stepped up my goals and completed two half-Ironmans (1.2mi swim/56 mi bike/13.1 mi run) as well as the Duathlon (run/bike/run) Nationals, top-20 age group placings in two sprint races, and a 128 mile bike event with over 13,000 vertical feet of climbing over four mountain passes outside of Blacksburg, Va. It’s become incorporated into our family, with C-squared starting to go to races at two months old, and Lara and I trading off race days so one of us can watch C-squared one day and race the next. Next year, the goal is an Ironman distance race—probably November in Mexico. And now I’m getting back to the personal motto I had when I was younger: Mens sana in corpore sano (sound mind in a sound body).

Learning to swim was a challenge, but I still stand in awe of what Lara has accomplished in the sport. She did the Chicago International Triathlon, the largest in the world, when she was four months pregnant, and her first race after giving birth was three months afterwards. This year, she took third in the Luray International Distance race, and has proven to be a very tough competitor. Her personal motto is Why Not Try? I love that because of the different layers involved in three simple little words, and the action underlying it.

For us, making healthier decisions and a commitment to an athletic lifestyle has not always been easy, but definitely worth it. My weight has dropped from a high of 240 to 185 today, and the doctor says that I have completely changed around all of the areas of concern that he had. It’s given us a chance to really reconnect with something that makes us happy, relieves stress and allows us to see the world through new eyes. And most important, it’s setting a good example for our child. Which in the end was the most important demand of all.