Jon's Jibber-jabber

Pre Race This past weekend I raced TriRock Clearwater. I planned the race because my wife, who works for Team Challenge of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, had to work the event with her team. I had been assisting with coaching the National Capital Region team and so it made sense to tag along and do the race. I signed up for the sprint as this was theoretically a vacation and I didn’t want to deal with the longer distance. I had also never done a true ocean swim before. I know that technically Clearwater is not on the ocean but on the gulf. However, it’s still a large body of salt water with waves, rip currents, marine life, etc so it’s an ocean swim. We did a practice swim with the team  on Saturday morning . I was working with one of our newer swimmers in the water getting used to the swells and waves. We were about 200m or so off shore when I saw a fin in front of us. Being me, I grabbed her and we swam back toward shore. I was 100% sure we’d be attacked by a shark.  Fish (and p

Pre-Race Earlier this year, my wife and I signed up for this race.  My wife grew up in the area around Hammerman beach at Gunpowder Falls State Park so it was a good local event.  Unfortunately, due to being busy at work (I work in infectious disease epidemiology -- so just look at the news and you'll see why), I was not been able to train much in September.  This week I focused on just doing swims.  I'm still riding off of the Ironman fitness from the summer so I've been doing maintenance work but not really focusing on any training to build speed or specifics for the Olympic distance.   I went to pick up my packet on Friday.   The water at the swim course was choppy with whitecaps on the river.  We were expecting storms overnight and rain in the morning.  The forecast also called for coastal flooding and storm suge from the bay so I was nervous about what conditions would longer into the morning.   Race Day We left home at 5am and arrived around 6am to transition.  We arr

This post took longer than I wanted to get this review up.  Two Sundays ago, I participated in the 5th Annual Ft Ritchie Triathlon.  This is a local triathlon nestled in the Cactoctin Mountains of Maryland between Frederick and Hagerstown.  It is very close to Camp David, the presidential retreat also in the same mountain area.  The grounds used to be an Army institution but it was closed in the mid 90s and the community has been trying to revitalize the grounds ever since.  It is a great venue for triathlon since it has a limited access lake, very little traffic, a huge field for parking and a community center complete with showers for after. A portion of Lake Royer at the Fort Last year, I did the Olympic distance race as my second triathlon ever.  This year, I opted for the Sprint distance as I would be only four weeks after my full Iron-distance and didn't want to commit if I didn't recover properly.  That being said, it was also my first Sprint distance race.  I

One week post-Ironman and I am feeling good.  Physically, I felt good all week.  Looking back I keep thinking "that was it?".  I set myself up for much more physical strain and a longer recovery than I experienced. Perhaps it was that I took recovery seriously this time: getting a post race massage, watching what I ate to ensure recovery, taking off of work, using active recovery swims and runs during the week, etc.  Whatever it is, my recovery is going well.  This is an area in which I historically struggled. Now, I reset.  I have my first sprint distance triathlon coming up in four weeks.  Ft Ritchie is a very hilly course with a long category 3 climb in both the sprint and olympic distance but realistically it's only a dozen miles on the bike.  I have never done this distance and I am looking forward to the short but intense sessions of training.  The temptation is there to do another IM.  IM Maryland is only an hour from my house in September and I keep fighting t

This past Sunday I completed my first Ironman-distance race, the inaugural Challenge Atlantic City.  I had heard great reviews about Challenge Family events.  They are a huge series outside of the United States and this was their first event in the US.  I consider them probably the only major competitor to WTC in terms of Iron and half-Iron distance races. This was an inaugural event so one has to enter with the expectation of a few glitches.  The key was "a few glitches."  I was not impressed with this race at all, nor was I impressed with Atlantic City.   To be completely honest, AC itself is a disaster. Maybe it is from doing too many races in Disney or Florida but AC is not a very nice city.  Even the casino and Boardwalk area looks as if it hasn't been updated in years.  They still permit smoking inside the casinos so the entire public areas of the casinos smell like smoke.  Stained carpets, falling apart rooms and outdated decor were the theme of the day.  The s

I will say this:  I hate training.   There, now, I've said it.  I hear and read about others who love training.   Some venture to assert that training is much more fun than racing.  I came across a blog somewhere about this recently and it got me thinking.  My conclusion can very quickly: I am not one of those people.  In fact, I am the polar opposite.  I love racing.  If I could race every weekend of the year, I would.  I'm sure racing every weekend would eventually become boring or physically too stressful, but I am a person who likes to stack my season with races and have a very tight race to training ratio.  Typically, I avoid long training blocks. Here are my reasons for hating on training. 1.   It is boring .   That is B O R I N G, capitalized and emphasized.  This is especially true for long course triathlon.  This may sound strange coming from me because I am an introvert by nature.   If you ask my friends or my wife, they will tell you that I often prefer to spend

Last week, I posted about the mental games played through training.   Now less than a month away from my big A race, I have reached the peak of physical training as well.   This coming week is my peak week and my final big push before the race.  This will be a tough week physically.  My volume is the highest of any week so far and my endurance sessions (on the weekend) will be nearly as long as the event itself.   In addition, I still have to balance work and life activities.    This week, I also started a Twitter account.   I'm using it primarily for triathlon and athletic type details as not to invade it with my other personal life.  From time to time, it might cross over but I'm trying not to turn my Facebook into Twitter and vice-versa.  We will see how this goes.  Usually, I am excited about these things and post frequently in the beginning and then it all goes downhill until I forget I even have an account.  I'm hoping I can be more diligent about it.   I had to us

Yesterday was exactly one month from my first full iron distance race.  This occurred to me while swimming with my team during the evening.  Where has the time gone?  I have done my training plan, yet I don't feel like I've been doing this for 16+ weeks.  I am sure the long winter with cold temps well into April did not help but it feels like we skipped over spring and went straight into summer. As I look ahead to my final training push before race taper, mentally I cannot wrap my head around how fast this event has come up.  When I signed up last September (before embarking on a 7 day Disney cruise), Challenge AC seemed so far away.   I had all the time in the world to prepare.  Now, it seems like I am scrambling to ensure that I get those final sessions in before I have to start to pull back.  Mathematically, I can see that I have put in a large amount of training miles.   I have logged hundreds of running miles, thousands of biking miles and pushing close to 100k yards in

Being relatively new to triathlon (in my second season of competition), I have taken up the habit of listening.  My wife would tell you this is not one of my best qualities but I'm not talking about domestic listening here.  I mean that I have been talking to others and reading other points of view to pick up tips about the sport.  Absorbing knowledge like a sponge has helped me become a smarter triathlete, if not a better one. One of the things that I frequently observe is the tendency for many who compete in triathlon to identify themselves with an individual sport.  Often, triathletes will say they are a cyclist or a runner or a swimmer primarily.  Many, indeed, have migrated to triathlon from competition in one of the three sports.  As you would have it, I came to triathlon by way of running.  For my first few triathlons, I remember myself talking about running and my previous road races.   Some say that runners have an advantage as they are in familiar territory during

A few weeks ago I purchased a set of Zerolite Comp Clinchers by Vuelta to replace my stock AlexRims on my road bike.  I only use my road bike for short rides or when I am going to be in heavy traffic.  My 2011 aluminum Fuji isn't suited to go fast or simulate race conditions but it works well for recreational and training purposes.  I wanted to try something a little deeper and with better hubs than stock.  Vuelta Zerolites have popped up in searches several times as I was going through the online bike component sector. First, I will start with look.  The Zerolites are not to shabby in the appeal department.  They are designed pretty well.  The lettering seems to be solid on the wheels even through some wet rides.  The spokes are also black, giving the wheels a matte look when riding.   They look very similar to other wheels in the 30mm range. Aerodynamics are a non-issue as it's obvious that these aren't going to give you the advantages of deeper true aero rims

This past Saturday I started my race season with the Kinetic Half Iron distance triathlon presented by Setup Events.   I had scheduled this triathlon about midway through my training for Challenge Atlantic City as a "check in" to see which elements were working and which areas would need focus for the rest of training.  I am glad that I scheduled this race, since it gave me a good sense of my strengths and weaknesses.  It also provided the opportunity to practice some of my tactics in a race situation that is at least a long course event.  This was my first Setup Events managed race.  Setup Events runs a few triathlon series (the Virginia Tri Series, Maryland Tri Series, North Carolina Tri Seris, and others) and also manages the famous Beach to Battleship Triathlon, which is on my bucket-list of triathlons.  I have heard good things about them from others in the area and those observations held true for this race.  The  team did a good job with a vast majority of the manageme