Jays Ironman 08 Blog

While most people are backing off on their training for the year, I have started ramping it up. Keeping it in context, I am going from working out 1-2 times per week to 4-5. My next race is the San Dieguito Half Marathon in early February.

Yesterday, Saturday, I met up with the Breakaway Training group for the first time in months to join them on their Saturday ride. They were doing the 60-mile Elfin Forest loop. I didn’t see the need to ride for 3.5-4 hours so I I rode for 2 hours up the coast. I rode from UTC to La Costa and back which was just about 35 miles.

After the ride, I came home and absolutely crashed… yeah, its been a while. I suppose you could say that my endurance is a bit lacking. I figured the rest would be good because I knew that today, Sunday, I would be doing my favorite brick of all. The fiest island brick with Breakaway Training.

This morning I met up with the same group of people at Fiesta Island and did a tough brick workout. It consisted of 3 big loops (20K) at race pace, followed by a 20 min run, then 2 big loops in zone 4 and a 10 minute zone 4 run.

During the 20 minute run, Idecided to run the small loop which ended up making my run about 24 minutes. I thought it was a 2 mile loop but apparently it is more… I know I was running faster than a 10 min/mi pace.

So after a tough weekend of workouts, I have tomorrow off and I am really looking forward to it. My butt hurts from my bike.

So I have been spending a lot of time working lately and not a lot of time training. Some pretty big things have been happening in my life. First, I am changing jobs. No more property management. Instead I am going to be joining the team at the San Diego Running Institute. I still don’t know what I want to do in life but I know its not property management and I also know I want to do something in the endurance sports industry. So At the running institute I will be working on their website and online store as well and further developing my interpersonal skills with customers. Of course I will be continuing on with www.amateurendurance.com.

As for training, I have been doing 3-4 workouts per week… mostly swimming and running. Once I change jobs… I will have more time to train. I plan on doing 1 half marathon and 1 10k run this winter and then focus on doing Next year I am thinking of focusing on the Superseal, San Diego International, and Mission Bay Triathlons.

Of course things may change between no and then but I am very motivated at this point to losing some weight and being more competitive.

…and blogging more.

This is completely unrelated to anything realted to sports. But it is funny as hell. If you missed SNL last weekend here was he highlight.

This morning I got back from a weekend of beach camping up in Ventura. We left Friday around noon and headed up for a weekend of relaxing and a little surfing. We were unsure if there was going to be any surf but we were pleasantly surprised to find waist to chest high surf. Below are some pics from shezphoto.com

I have had a cold now for about 5 days and I just can’t shake this thing. Nevertheless it was a very fun weekend and it was awesome to see all my old college buddies again.

This evening I met up with my good buddy Dave. He is doing his first triathlon in October (Mission Bay). Dave  and I met up for a swim in the bay. We went over the basics of open water swimming and focused on getting him comfortable in the bay. He did very well. We swam from boat to boat practicing various drills. I saw a couple sting rays and it freaked me out. This is why I swim with my eyes closed… so I don’t have to see the creatures below.  

I am excited for Dave to do his first triathlon… I remember how I felt after finishing my first triathlon. I was stoked. I remember that my parents and Aunt were there to watch/support. It was a really cool experience for me and I hope that my buddy has a similar experience. 

I went out surfing last night on the recommendation of surfline.com and wetsand.com. These companies, like the weatherman, seemed to be horribly wrong about the conditions. They predicted waist to chest high waves with occasional head high sets. It was as flat as my sister’s back. j/k… I don’t have a sister, but If i did… you get the point. 

Tomorrow I leave for Ventura for a weekend of beach camping. Whoo-hoo. I am definitely bringing the surfboard!

Hope you al have a great weekend and we’ll chat when I get back. 

It has been exactly one month since I updated my blog! That’s just terrible! There are a lot of things that are new in my life though.

First, and most important, my training is going well. I am training for the Mission Bay Sprint Tri and I am looking to do around a 1:07:00. I have been running around the bay a lot and getting lots of practice running over the bridges. My cycling has been mostly on the flats. I try to get a solid 2 hours on the weekends and a shorter ride on Tuesdays. My swimming has all been in Mission Bay. The water in the bay is a nice 75ish degrees. Very comfortable!

In other news, AmateurEndurance.com is doing well. I am enjoying watching its progression. Over the past two months it has been very well received. I switch from working 8/5 to working 10/4 so I now have an extra day for training. Whoo-hoo!

I finally got fed up with Microsoft windows and made the switch over to Mac. I made an investment into the future of Endurance Media, Inc. yesterday and purchased an shiny new MacBook Pro. I am sure it will take a little getting used to but I feel like I am already moving my way up the learning curve. One thing I like already is that the software for the mac is cheaper than it is for the PC.

That is what has been new with me lately.

Holy Makerel! It has been over two weeks since my last post! Well, I haven’t been training much lately. Mostly because I am having to allocate more time to work and AmateurEndurance.com. I just kind of squeeze in the workouts when I can. I did however have a good weekend of workouts this week.

Saturday I did a meduim-length bike ride from Mission Beach up to Del Mar. The route is a lot of uphill on the way out and downhill with head wind on the way back. Going out we heading east around Mission Bay and North around UCSD and then up the 101 to Del Mar. We made a quick stop at Starbucks to refill the water bottles and made our way back to Mission Beach. The majority of the route back to Mission Beach is downhill. However, there just so happened to be a moderate head wind out of the south west that made things a bit less fun. The whole ride was about 40 miles and took 3 hours and 15 minutes.

Sunday I did some cross training. I went surfing and it was a workout for me. The waves were small but paddling around for an hour or so was enough to make my shoulders sore.

I am definitly more tired than most weekends.

Well, it has been 9 days since my last race and I think I am ready to start training again. I just got my new training plan in my inbox from Felipe @ Breakaway Training. I am still up in the air about my next race. I am thinking SOMA. The problem is that it may be more money than I want to spend. $180 for the race + $200 for the hotel + $200 for gas. I could do 4 local races for that kind of $$.

I definitely am going to do Mission Bay Sprint. Maybe I will do the Silver Strand Half Marathon.

My training is still going well. It took me longer than I thought to recover form the last 15K so I have been slow to jump back in. We will have to see how tomorrow’s run goes.

Yesterday I decided to do something productive on the 4th of July. Paul, Carrie, Daver, Lalita, David T, and I did the Coronado 15k. This particular event is a Kathy Loper event which usually means “great quality”. This race was an exception however. There were a few issues that need to be addressed for next year.

1. They did not have enough t-shirts. I go to pick mine up and they ran out. Why would you not have enough t-shirts?
2. They ran out of water at the finish line. I finished middle of the pack and they had already ran out of water. I had to walk around looking for anything, water, gatorade, FRS, anything. Finally found some folks with some powerade. Not having enough water for a 9.3-mile race/run is simply not acceptable.
3. This one isn’t a huge deal for me but the course was 1/4 mile long. Cant get a PR on a 15k when the course is 1/4 mile too long.

I had an ok race. My splits were all over the place… no consistancy. Below are my splits.

Mile 1: 8:56
Mile 2: 9:11
Mile 3: 9:14
Mile 4: 8:52
Mile 5: 8:53
Mile 6: 9:31
Mile 7: 9:23
Mile 8: 11:12 (had to walk a little)
Mile 9: 9:54
.55 Mile: 5:44

Total time 1:30:56. It was a lot of fun and a great way to get ready for the celebration that was to follow.

4 days after the San Diego International Triathlon and my smooth legs are no more. So I figure, I better take advantage of my last few days of little to no hair on my legs and train hard. We all know how slow hairy legs can make you.

Wednesday I met up with Paul and Carrie and we did a 40-minute run down to Shelter Island and back. These runs are very therapeutic for me. It gives me a chance to tell crazy work stories and vent. I can’t tell you how far we ran, but I can tell you I told three stories. That’s how long it was!

This morning my alarm didn’t go off and I was woken up by Paul asking if I forgot to set my alarm. The night before Paul had given Nikee a bunch of shit for wanting to bail, so there was no way in hell I could bail. So I threw my bike on the car and halled hiney down to paint loma to do our Thursday morning ride. It was a pretty good ride today, I was able to hang on longer than last time!

Then tonight I went for a run around the bay with my neighbor. I definitely pushed it too hard. It was my fastest loop around the bay in a while. I was driven to go faster by the power of the shaved legs… or something like that. Either way, it was a dumb move as I am running a 15k tomorrow morning.

But such is life. I took my recovery drink and now I rest until tomorrow.