Race Report: Westchester Triathlon - September 25th, 2011

So this was a total unexpected bolt-on event. My friend Jess, who I drafted onto our Reach the Beach running team, convinced me to sign-up for it at the last minute. And I'm really glad she did, for obvious reasons I'll talk about below.

I know some friends were thinking: 

Good God, man! isn't it enough? You've done five triathlons and a running relay already this season - you really need to do another???

Although there's no good answer to that, I can say very simply that since I'm all trained-up, and I love the excitement of the races themselves, why shouldn't I do it (as long as Karen will let me)?

Since the event was booked up solid and there were no spots left, I had to call on a few friends for a favor (thank you, Julie at Pacific Swim, Bike, Run and Liz at Team in Training CT!!).

This is a local event - it takes place about 20 minutes from home in Rye, New York. God bless the local events. The logistics are so easy, so the preparation stress is low. Pack the night before, throw the bike in the car, show-up at the crack of dawn and go like hell...

Race Report: Reach the Beach - September 14, 2011

Hard to do a race report for an event that lasts 24 hours. I could write a book. All the funny things that happen, and the strange little places we ran through, or pitched a tent in the middle of the night...

Team Rowayton Runners 2011 - at the beach!

The Reach the Beach running relay has got to be one of the craziest and most-fun things I've ever done: a team of 12 runs 200 miles over a 24 hour period. The race starts at Cannon Mountain, in the highlands of New Hampshire, and ends on the New Hampshire coastline at Hampton Beach. 


Each team member runs three or four segments - sometimes an 8-mile segment at 2:00 in the afternoon, sometimes a 3-mile segment at 3:30 in the morning. Everyone, and I mean every team member, of every one of 400+ teams - about 5,000 people, rides from staging area to staging area in vans. White vans. So many white vans.

Flying with a Bike

I went out to Colorado Springs last week to spend a cycling phantasmagoria long weekend with my brother Craig. Having never flown with the bike before, I needed to figure out how to handle that.

The BIKND Helium bike case.
Product review: real good possibly excellent,
but with a price.

So I got this kick-ass BIKND Helium bike case for flying with your bike. Great little item (okay, not so little). Easy to follow instructions on how to break down the bike, pack it and protect it. The thing actually has sides that inflate to protect the bike.

I did a little research, but ultimately, I just did what Nate told me to, and Nate said "get this". As usual, that worked out real well for me.

The whole adventure worked out pretty well despite the extra set of wheels (somehow, I picked up a great set of used Zipp 404's while I was in Colorado Springs, which is a major outdoor sports mecca) I had coming back putting the case over the 50lb limit - I just took my toolkit out of the bike case and repacked it into my - uh, sir, sir, may I have that bag back? the one that's on the conveyor belt

Race Report: NYC Triathlon, August 7th, 2011

NYC Triathlon

With 3130 competitors, one of the largest Triathlon events in the country
  Sunday August 7th, 2011
  Swim 1.5k in the Hudson River
  Bike 40k along the West Side Highway
  Run 10k in Central Park

Well, here it was. The "A" event of my season. All the training, planning, four previous events to increase my experience level, fund-raising for the American Cancer Society Team Determination, all done. Now within just a few hours on an early Sunday morning, it would all be over.

Honoring Friends and Loved Ones

During the race, I wore the tri-top colors of Team Determination, and carried ribbons of memory and honor pinned to my race belt. On these ribbons were the names of friends, family-of-friends, friends-of-friends and my own family. Cancer survivors and those struggling with cancer, as well as those who had succumbed to it. Honor and best wishes to them and thanks to the more than 60 people who donated so generously to support my entry in this event. We raised more than $5,300 to support the American Cancer Society.

From  my own family, I carried the names of my mother, Mary Lou Meese, who died of ovarian cancer, my father David H. Meese, who passed away earlier this year and survivied prostate cancer, and my beautiful wife, Karen, who is a breast cancer survivor, and with whom I celebrated our tenth anniversary this summer.

And if anyone has any video of me flying up the West Side Highway on the bike at 37mph Sunday morning, I'd like to see it! It must have looked wild with all those ribbons flying around!


Let's get this out of the way - the results

Overall time: 2:34:34
Place: 9th in division (out of 97), 413 overall (out of 3130)

Race Report: Massachusetts State Triathlon (Olympic)

Sunday July 17th, 2011
Dennison Lake State ParkWinchedon, Mass
Olympic Distance: 1.5k Swim, 40K Bike, 10k Run (.9 mile swim/24 mile bike/6.2 mile run). About 380 competitors. Race start time: a leisurely 8:00am.

Oh well, I guess it had to happen. Not a great race for me.
Beautiful day, sunny with a few scattered clouds, if perhaps a little warm. It wasn't any hotter than Stamford 3 weeks before. In any case, I didn't really feel the heat until the run.

I had a decent swim although I really had to shuck and weave through a lot more traffic this time, guys in my own wave and the pink-capped women in the wave that started 5 minutes before. This wasn't all bad because

Race Report: Stamford KIC IT Triathlon (Olympic) June 26th, 2011

10:pm, Saturday, June 25^th. Went to bed in the guest room so I wouldn’t wake Karen in the morning. Everything all packed.

Note the bare feet on top of the shoes coming into T2

3:00am, Sunday morning. Awake and drink a fruit smoothie that I had set up in a bucket of ice. Delicious and glycogen-orific. Go back to bed.

4:30am, Out of bed, make an iced coffee in a to-go mug. Drive 10 minutes to Stamford.
The swim waves were scheduled to start at 6:30am, so I arrived in downtown Stamford at...

5:00am. This event has a strange two-transition area setup: T1 was down at Cummings beach, and T2 was up in the middle of town at Columbus Park. That was disconcerting because it added a set of logistics to the race that I hadn't had to deal with before,

Prepping for the First Olympic Triathlon

Preparing for the First Olympic Triathlon: 
The Stamford KIC IT on June 26^th, 2011

I don’t believe stepping up to an Olympic distance Triathlon is going to be incremental. The longest event I've done before now is a Sprint Tri with 1/2 mile swim, 10 mile bike and a 3.1 mile run. This would more than double that with a 0.9 mile swim, 24.8 miles on the bike, and 6.2 miles running.

But at least I had the good sense, or the good luck, to pick an event that takes place in Stamford, Connecticut, 10 minutes from home. That removed the travel/hotel part of the logistics. And I was able to prepare in ways that I wouldn't have been able to if the course had been three hours away.

Picked up the race packet Friday afternoon. Race number 392. I like it. Lot's of numeric integrity there. Two times nine is eighteen, which divided by three is six, making the sequence 2, 3, 6, 9. Okay, so I’m stretching things a little, but

Race Report: Escape the Cape Sprint Triathlon

So this race was my chance to redeem myself from the miserable swim that sunk my performance at the NE Season Opener.

Finish line

Escape the Cape Tri - Onset, MA - Sat June 4th

Gorgeous 73F dry, sunny, breezy New England Day in a truly quaint village at the top of buzzards bay. The swim was in the town's beautiful little harbor - a straight line swim from point to point, 1/3 mile with a light breeze and current against us. Then a 10 mile bike followed by the 5k (3.1 mile) run.

Pre-swam the course for about 250 yards to get used to the sightlines, water temps and visibility. Swam hard to warm up the breathing gear (this was one of my lessons learned from the last event...

Laundry

I swear I have never done so much laundry in my life as I have in the last eight months since I took up Triathlon training.

When you're working out once or twice a day, every day of the week, you gotta keep up. I often come home from a workout, stand in front of the washer and strip naked, feeding my stuff right in.

Even if you have six sets of workout clothes for each sport (which I don't, although I have to admit I have incrementally "added" to my collection of compression shorts, technical T's, "really nice" running socks, running tights, warming sleeves and so forth) you simply can not leave a pile of sweaty stuff on the bedroom floor. Whether you're married or not, that will come back to bite you. And I know you wouldn't dream

Vitamins at odds with exercise?

Go figure. Just when you think you're doing everything right, you find out that the vitamins you're taking may be actually negating some of the positive effect of your workouts. XU69EG84GDWM

In this article in the New York Times, a study indicates that antioxidant supplements Vitamin C & E may actually defeat

Somebody's Hero

Every once in a while I wonder what motivators could possibly have driven me to, what most others consider, the extremes I've adopted as my new lifestyle.

NE Season Opener - Finish Line

One thing I'm very clear about is that I would never, ever, have undertaken this kind of training regimen without some very strong "pull" motivators. There are both push (stick) and pull (carrot) motivators in the mix, but for me, the ones that pull are stronger.

The push motivators are obvious: "gee I'd like to lose some weight" or "I really should get to the gym and get in better shape". You sense right away how little emotional energy those generate, and how non-specific they are. I've had these for years. They are the lazy fat slobs of the world of motivators. They opine. They gesticulate. They may even whine. But they don't kick ass.

They become a box you need to check - a nag. You usually don't put any specific goals around them,

Race Report: NE Season Opener Sprint - May 8th, 2011

Well, that was interesting! 

It turned out to be a beautiful day with sun breaking through puffy, scattered clouds by start time - which event organizers pushed back to 9:00am so the air temperatures could rise. It ended up being 50F by the start. 

The event was spectacularly well organized with a great sound system and D.J. spinning tunes so you could hear it all across the lake. It had sold out weeks in advance with 370 Triathletes and another 330 for the Duathlon. Copious instructions, route maps, race packs, email bulletins and updates were sent out to all competitors during the weeks before, so even though I had never done this event before, I felt pretty comfortable with all the logistics. Kudos to Tim Richmond and his team at Max Performance.

I arrived in the area early enough Saturday to drive the bike course before dark. That turned out to be a good thing to do. I had already studied the course,

NE Season Opener: projecting finish times and final prep

Projected Finish Times

Even as I started to figure out what events I would do this season, I began to wonder how I would do. At that distance though, I had no idea and I just kept telling myself, it's a warm-up event, it will be a lot of fun, just keep training and the times will take care of themselves.

Now that the Northeast Season Opener is less than a week away, I've got a recent running Time Trial behind me, and a I'll do an updated bike time trial this week, I've dialed in the expected timings a little.

For what's called the "Sprint" triathlon, the "typical" distances are 1/2 mile swim, 10 mile bike, 3.1 mile run. Strangely, there are no real standards,

Plans for the 2011 Event Season

And now for a momentary interruption in the ongoing chapter story: It's April and the season is approaching - I've been very busy planning so here are some thoughts that occurred to me about that in a quick lunchtime post.

As much as I enjoy the workouts, and as many benefits I've gotten already from the training, ultimately it's about the events. In the Northeast, the event season starts in May and

Part 7: Training, Getting Started

I was introduced to one new workout concept that just bowled me over: the recovery run. It goes like this: you run your ass off one day. Wake up the next morning all creaky and sore, and go right out for another run! And afterward, you feel much better! To me, it defied the basic laws of the universe. But then it was explained to me: the easy run you do the day afterward essentially massages the muscles enough to circulate more blood to them than if you were just sitting around. This helps them to rejuvenate more quickly. It really works.

The new workout schedule kept me pretty busy. It was a lot of work – even outside the workouts, scheduling them into my already busy days. With this much time being spent on workouts, I had to get one in early-morning (5:30 or 6:30am) just about every day to keep up. Michael had me doing different things every day,

Part 6: Training, Really

Holy crap - this was going to be my new workout plan? 

More than 10 hours of workouts in the first week. 5 hours of cycling, 3-1/2 hours of running, and more than 3 hours of swimming. Was this guy crazy? He had me scheduled for two workouts a day on some days. What had I gotten myself into?

But I was still excited. I figured that since I had shared my workout logs for the previous three months with him, he knew what I should be able to do, so I shouldn't get into too much trouble.

After the first two weeks, I could not believe I was keeping up with the schedule, for the most part, without any injuries or major complaints. Sure, I dropped a few, like you would if someone suddenly put you up on stage and started tossing you flaming clubs to juggle. I jumped in and got started,

Part 5: The Trainer

After a lengthy phone conversation in which we covered what my goals were, what my previous training consisted of, how Michael works with his athletes (Wow, was I going to be referred to as an "athlete"? This was getting really wild.) and other things, I hired Michael to be my virtual coach.

He would lay out a workout schedule for me each week. I would report after each workout using Michael's coaching web site. We would chat by phone once a week or so.

He suggested a few pieces of equipment, one of which was a workout "watch" with embedded GPS that could be used for running and cycling. All the "data" including heart rate, bicycle cadence, speed, route and altitude are recorded and uploaded to the website after each workout so he would be able to analyze it. Pretty slick.

After looking at my previous three months of workout logs, Michael observed that

Part 4: "Preparation" vs. "Training"

So, the first event was really fun. Afterwards, I thought if I was going to do any more, in the interest of survival and dignity, I should really "get in better shape". Even the way I thought about training at that point was rudimentary.

"Preparation"
For the next two months, I swam, biked and ran regularly, each about once a week. Toward the middle of November, I was pretty impressed with my level of activity. I was swimming a mile in a little more than 30 minutes. I was cycling, usually solo, anywhere from 10 to 30 miles with average speeds into the 17mph range. I had built up my run from two to four miles at about a 10 minute mile pace. During that eight weeks, I swam 8 miles, biked 280, and ran 40.

But I began to wonder if my methods and volume of "training" was going to make me any faster. Perhaps because I had begun to realize

Part 3: Event Day

We arrive at Compo Beach in Westport, Connecticut at 6:20am. Lots of early morning action. Fellow competitors pulling gear out of the backs of their cars. Everyone stretching and suiting up. Sign-in at the registration tent. The atmosphere was calm with a pervasive background buzz.

I had to mount a new tire right before the race because I had blown the one the night before - bad luck. With the organizers shouting instructions over a loudspeaker, we strapped on our timing chips, set up our bikes in the transition area, zipped up our wet suits and began a parade with 200 other competitors down the beach to the swim start. Spectators joined the 7:30am parade toward the sun rising over the Sound,

Part 2: The First Triathlon

Right around that time, September, 2010, I agreed to a bet with Matt and another friend, Nick, to compete in a Mini Triathlon in Westport, Connecticut. I would never have agreed to this, except I learned that it was only a 1/2 mile swim, a 5.5 mile bike ride and a 2.2 mile run. I figured even I could complete that event, and I had already prepared for the Lighthouse Race, so what the hell. I also figured that most triathletes hate the swimming part, and since that would be my strongest part, I might be able to gain some advantage there.

With two weeks to go, I had plenty of time to grab the bike out of the garage, dust it off, maybe get the local bike shop to give it a once-over. Hell, I even had time to go for a few rides. I had always loved to ride

The Backstory: Part 1

For every challenge, there's a back story. Here's mine...


Part 1: Slippery Slope

It's all about fun, so I hope to have some laughs along the way, but since I haven't taken on the challenge of the Triathlon lightly, I thought I would share how I came to take it on and what I've been doing to prepare.

First of all, I have to say, competitive personal sports was never my thing. I swam competitively in high school, and I was a lifeguard in college, but that's about it. I was not a runner, or a cyclist, not a football player or anything else. Over the years, I've made a weak to moderate effort to stay in shape by going to the gym and swimming regularly, but I frowned on running as a fast path to knee surgery, and at 6'3" and 220 pounds,