Summer Is Here

You know it's summer when training starts to get really tough and the weather becomes brutally hot. Case in point, this past weekend when my training partner, Zimm, decided to enter us into this little race out in Wilmington. Despite the fact that it fell at the end of my longest training volume week of the year, happened to be 90 degrees on the roads, stiff winds working against us, humid, and Mother's Day, made this a difficult task to pull off.

I went down the day before and enjoyed the beach with my beautiful wife and 2 boys that morning before heading over to the hotel around 2pm on Saturday. After a short, and failed, attempt at napping with the boys, we decided to head back to the beach where they ran around some more and enjoyed the sand and surprisingly warm water. We had a good meal at Mellow Mushroom (altough not as good of service as Patrick Costello provides at the Durham location) and then headed back to watch a movie with the kids at the hotel.

A sleepless night with Eli in my bed and Braden in Carrie's and then up early on Sunday morning to race did not start off Mother's Day quite as I had planned... Nonetheless, Carrie was an awesome fan and brought the boys to watch me roll around for about 90 mins in the ridiculous heat, wind, and humidity. We wrapped up the day with another trip back to the beach before heading home.

RACE RECAP: The race was a duathlon with a 3.2 mile run, 16 mile bike, and then 2 mile run. I finished 9th overall out of 150 people and was 2nd in my age group. I had the 4th fastest bike overall (1st in age group and top bike with a non-tri or disc wheel bike) and was pleased with how I finished. I knew I could do better (I lost some time in transitions digging for a water bottle out of my backpack due to dehydration after the bike) but happy to have my lungs back and working again. Zimm Sr. and Jr. each had good races as well and seemed excited to back and training again.

Little River 10 Miler

Saturday morning was a cold, but clear, day as David "Kenny" Olson and I woke up and started our breakfast routine in the kitchen. Kenny was able to stay overnight with Andrea and the kids and came downstairs with Isaac and Maya to get the morning rolling. He opted for a PB and honey open faced sandwich with banana slices and I had my usual oatmeal with raisins and agave nectar (substitute for honey in the Engine 2 Diet). I was still afraid that I wasn't going to have enough energy to complete the race after my first full week on the diet, but I seemed to be alright.

Morven met us at the house and we went over and picked up Rachel on the way. I was using this as a training race for the Tobacco Road 1/2 and decided to go with the heavier, but more comfortable, shoes, gloves, ear coverage, and soccer pants with the 28 degree starting temp. I also decided to use my backpack to carry 1.5 liters of water with me (which I didn't come close to using so instead it just added weight on the uphills haha). It was a tough 10 mile trail race with lots of cutbacks putting stress on the knees and ankles as well as up/downs that got you pretty tired on the front end. I got into a comfortable groove and took my time through the first 7 miles. I popped a Honey Stinger Energy Gel with Kola Nut and when the lady told me I had 2.5 miles to go and was at 1:11:30, I knew that I needed to rally to make it under 1:30 even. I closed the last 2.5 miles is under 17 mins and finished in 80th place out of about 300 racers. Our ActivEdge team did great with David Olson and David Tallon finishing in the top 25 with 1:17's, Rachel Kroll Bordogna winning her age group and placing 4th overall female (14 secs separating 2nd-4th), and Morven and Roger crossing sub 1:40's.

All said and done, a good training day for me and fantastic day for the team. The "unofficial" results have us 2nd breaking last years record by almost 30 mins collective but there was a paid professional team from FSSeries Racing that took 1st and set an even better record with an average time of 1:15:30 per racer. I'd like to add that our team was easily the top finishing team that had a female as well... the top team was all males in addition to being paid pros.

I loved the race and thought the course was nice. I was overdressed to really get going and was sweating with the first uphill. I know now that there is plenty of water on the course as well and should leave the weight loading pack behind (water weight is roughly 1 Liter = 1 Kg or 2.2 lbs, in addition to the pack at 3 lbs, I added over 6 lbs). I hope to return next year and make a run at those pros from FSSeries after I get stronger with hills.