Down goes Frazier!

In an effort to entertain all of those who read this and to laugh at myself a bit, I thought I would share an anecdote from my ride this weekend.  Our normal 100 mile ride to prepare for Louisville is a 56 mile out and back where we add a second loop of about 40 miles to get us right at 100 miles.  The ride is all on two lane roads that are considered rural and considering we leave at 6am, we see very few cars, especially on the first loop.  Along the route, there are a few 2 way stops where our road crosses a more heavily traveled rural highway.  Some of the intersection have limited sight lines, but you can usually hear the cars coming b/c of the light traffic.  Well, this weekend while on the second loop of our ride, my brother and I came up to one of these very intersections. I looked right (very easy to see traffic looking this way) and noted we were clear.  To the left, sighting cars is limited to about 30-40 yards.  From what I could see, there was nothing coming.  I also didn't hear anything. So as I started to pedal out into the intersection, I suddenly hear "CAR LEFT" in a somewhat dire tone.  I quickly grabbed the front brake...so hard in fact that my rear wheel came off the ground.  I managed to get my left foot unclipped, but by the time I did, my balance was a bit off and I began to do the dreaded biker pogo.  You know the move....you start hopping on one foot try to find any way possible to regain your balance and stop the impending tumble.  After a couple of hops, I was feeling confident that I had averted disaster.  That feeling quickly turned to despair on the third and fourth hop.  The fifth and sixth hop became quicker than the previous ones, and I am pretty sure that by the 7th and eighth hop, I was on my way to the asphalt. TIMBER! Of course I had manged to fall on the most jagged and rough section of gravel that I could manage to find. Sliced my knee open, bruised my knee and hand, and I have a sore shoulder to boot.  I am sure, the incident was humorous to the cars that got to witness the extravaganza. Next time I will come to a complete stop, and double check the traffic situation so I won't become the human pogo stick again:)

See you at the races!

Training update...

It is HOT! The heat indexes the past couple of weeks has routinely been in the triple digits and Excessive Heat Warnings have been routine.  Since I am profoundly against dreadmills (would rather barrel roll 5 miles than run on a treadmill for 5 miles), it has been a sufferfest. I am now 7 weeks out from Louisville 140.6 and am feeling overall pretty good.  I will be doing my second 100 miler this weekend and will be getting in a 2-2.5 hour run this week as well. It has been 2 years since I last did a 140.6 , so my memory may be a little fuzzy, but my legs are feeling way better at this point of the game than they did in 2009.  Must be the Recovery Pump and the First Endurance Multi V:)  I do need to get my diet straight in these last few weeks, but other than that, everything seems on track. 

For those others training out in this crazy heat, stay hydrated and safe.  See you guys at the races!

Training unplugged...

This year I am going back to the 140.6 distance at Louisville this year in August.  I did this race 2 years ago and am ready to tackle the course again. This year, though, I will be making a few changes in the training schedule.  Some of the minor ones are swimming only 2 days a week, increasing my run days (not necessarily more long runs, but more runs in general), and only doing 2-3 rides of 100 miles or more (but increasing the rides in the 80 mile range). Hopefully these changes will keep me fresh for the race while not leading to burnout like I had a couple of years ago. 

The bigger change though, is I am training without using a computer, stopwatch or heart rate monitor.  I am going unplugged.  And so far, I like it a lot.  I wanted to go out and train for the race and enjoy it without being tied down to how fast my workout was, or what HR zone I stayed in  or how my cadence compared to other rides.  I just want to go out and swim, bike and run.  If I feel like I can push it some days, I do.  If other days I feel slow, I slow down. So far this season, I seem to be benefiting from it. I have been able to run and bike faster than I have in previous years. I think alot of that comes from the fact that I am enjoying it more and not having those "disappointed days" where I didn't measure up to some metric that I felt like I missed or didn't quite hit.  I am doing it for fun and doing it with a smile on my face.  For those of us that aren't podium material, the race and training should be something we enjoy.  And this year I am enjoying it more than ever!

Keep moving forward and keep smiling! See you at the races.