Any given weekend

This is one of my favorite statements, any given weekend. I use in in two specific contexts. The time I use it most is when I am talking to others about racing. On any given weekend you just don't know who might show up and who will show up with their best game. You may reasonably believe you will win, place, finish etc... but on any given weekend things may not go your way or they may totally go your way.

The other context I use the phrase is as in "You never know what people are doing on any given weekend" I have been amazed at the time and energy people put into triathlon and three years ago I would have been completely oblivious to all the goings on that now take up a good third of my life. Well, this morning on my long run I was with friends and we ran into yet more friends. While we stopped to talk the topic of an "Ultrarunning cult in New Mexico" came up. I was stunned, not that there may be a cult in New Mexico but that I had not heard of this thing.

I promptly came home and did my research and this is what I found, Devine Madness. Originally based in Boulder, CO and now located in Reserve, NM.

Any given weekend...

Holy Acceleration Batman!

When we last visited our humble, sort of, Clyde he was touting the virtues of the wondrous LifeForm program. This week yet another spectacular find has been unearthed. In the bowels of the program is stored several years of data specific to our hapless hero. In April of 2005, just a couple weeks before my first triathlon I apparently went for a 3.1 mile run. It took me 34 minutes and my average HR was 172. Earlier that same week I swam 400 meters and it took me 20 minutes; God only knows what my HR was. I recall those dark days of grim struggle when the pool would be lined with terrified onlookers and mothers would hide their children’s eyes lest they catch a glimpse of my spastic floundering and gasping red face.

Lets see, this week, just for ease of comparison, I did an 18 mile run in 2:51 at an average HR of 143 and swam 1500 meters in 30 minutes. Now the onlookers are gone and the mothers tell their children, “Oh don’t worry sweetie, when you grow up you’ll swim much faster than that” Well, it ain’t much but at least I have graduated from imparting fear and concern to warranting a gentle mocking.



Now, while my teammates, the Outlaw types, have seen the following video, you others have not. I leave you with my Soma 2006 video creation in celebration of my mockworthiness.

Hi Ho Hi Ho it’s back to Life Form I go

During my first year in triathlon and endurance athletics I went from 268 down to 212 in about 12 months exactly. During my second year of triathlon and endurance athletics I went from 212 to about 219 in about 10 months. Hmmm, what’s going on here?

This season I have been much more active, which I believe has given me the feeling that I have a license to eat. I NEVER have that particular license. I have a driver’s license, a marriage license and even a license to practice psychology but never, never, never a license to eat. My weight loss/gain always goes in two year cycles where I will focus on weight loss for about a year and get down to some lower weight and then gradually my eating and weight creep back upward.

Now here is the upshot, in a typical two year cycle I will drop to a low that is not as low as the previous low and I will jump back up to a high that is higher than my previous all time high. In this two year cycle I dropped to an all time low and went back up to a weight that is below my last low.

Does that make sense to you out there? My new high is below my pre-triathlon low…Amazing! Now I’m not trying to say I am elated about this situation, I’ve got some weight to lose but man have I got a lot less to drop. The really nice thing about my current situation is that I probably need to change very little beyond just getting back on track with monitoring my food intake.

So what will be my secret weapon? Life Form of course. This is a cool little program that Wife found a few years back that you can enter a ton of information into with respect to diet, excercise, nutritional values, body measurements, medical information etc...and it has always worked well for me because it exactly tracks my calorie intake versus output and this is the thing that always amazes me...if I don't pay attention all the time my intake will typically drift up to be 1,000 or more calories per day than I am burning. I think I must have a defective "Hey, you're full stupid!" Mechanism.

Anyhow, check out the Life Form web site if you get the chance, it's pretty cool.

2006: A Clyde-O-Riffic Season!

What can I say, 2006 has been one hell of a season! When I look back now at the early part of the year I feel almost like I’m looking back fondly on my childhood. This is my second season of triathlon and despite all the little goals I set for myself I had four major goals:

Finish an Ultramarathon
Finish a half-iron triathlon
Finish a full iron triathlon
Win the Clydesdale Champion award for the Southwest Challenge Series

I am mightily pleased to say that I met each and every one of these goals! This is not to say that I would call the season a complete success. Below you will see five races with an asterisk next to them. I actually ran these races on a hip with a stress fracture in two places. I think the injury took place at the Rio Rancho Duathlon, which is probably the toughest short race you will ever run. I spent a couple weeks with some fluctuating pain and kept hoping it was something that would go away but it just kept getting worse and I kept getting slower. I got to the point where if I tried to stand on my right leg it would just buckle beneath me. The Buffman & Squeaky Olympic Triathlon was an exercise in agony but I was able to grimace my way through it to a 3rd place finish in the masters Clyde division.

The picture here is me at the Buffman & Squeaky.

I finally got an accurate diagnosis after my family doc referred me to a Sports Medicine Orthopedic Surgeon and I received the proper care and advice and was soon on the mend. I missed out on the Buffalo Springs half-iron but was able to switch my registration to the Aquabike, which I loved!

This has also been my first year blogging and I have enjoyed that quite a bit as well. I’ve been able to meet some great people from across the country, some I have even been able to meet in person. I think maybe next year one of my goals will be to travel and try and meet as many fellow blogging triathletes as possible.

Before giving you the layout of my 2006 season I just want to note that there is actually quite a bit of variability in the distances of the Sprint triathlons I’ve done. Living in New Mexico the triathlon community is plagued by a dearth of water so we swim where we can. The swim splits range from 300 yards to 1200 meters, the bike splits range from 10.2 miles to 30K and almost all runs were 5K except the Bottomless, which has a run of 4K. Also, the Southwest Challenge Series season kicks off with the Polar Bear in the December of the preceding year, hence my December race at the beginning of the list.

So here it is:
December: Saturday 10th Polar Bear Sprint Triathlon, Las Cruses, NM - 1:23:12
January Sunday 15th Ghost Town 38.5 Ultramarathon Hillsboro, NM - 8:41:14
February 11th John Stermer Memorial (run/bike) Duathlon, Las Cruses, NM - 1:17:02
February 19th Lost Dutchman Marathon, Apache Junction, AZ 4:47:19 (PR)
March 12th Stealth (run/bike) Duathlon, Alamogordo, NM - 1:26:06
April: Sunday 2nd MVTC Sprint Triathlon, Las Cruses, NM - 1:16:56
April: Sunday 9th Rio Rancho Short Course Duathlon, Rio Rancho, NM - 1:37:02
*April: Saturday 15th Wind Run Swim Biathlon, Las Cruses, NM - 43:04
*April: Saturday 22nd Amarillo Sprint Triathlon, Amarillo, TX - 1:03:51
*April: Sunday 30th Atomic Man Long Course Duathlon, Los Alamos, NM - 2:57:48
*May: Sunday 14th Jay Benson Sprint Triathlon, Albuquerque, NM - 1:15:06
*May: Sunday 21st Buffman & Squeaky Olympic Triathlon, Lubbock, TX - 3:14:01
June: Sunday 25th Buffalo Springs Lake half-iron Aquabike, Lubbock, TX - 3:26:38
July: Saturday 1st Grady Williams Olympic Triathlon, Farmington, NM - 2:56:10
July: Saturday 8th Bottomless Sprint Triathlon, Roswell, NM - 1:02:06
July: Sunday 16th Mountain Man Sprint Triathlon, Flagstaff, AZ - 1:17:58
July: Sunday 23rd Deschutes Dash Sprint Triathlon, Bend, OR - 1:27:11
July: Sunday 30th Las Vegas Olympic Triathlon, Las Vegas, NM - 2:58:00
August: Saturday 5th Tall City Sprint Triathlon, Midland, TX - 1:14:16
August: Saturday 12th Socorro Chili Harvest Sprint Triathlon, Socorro, NM - 1:13:00
September: Saturday 16th Cotton Country Sprint Triathlon, Levelland, TX - 1:09:26
September: Saturday 23rd RedMan Iron Distance Triathlon, Oklahoma City, OK - 14:27:15
October: Sunday 1st Stealth Sprint Triathlon, Alamogordo, NM - 1:28:20
October: Sunday 29th Soma Half-Iron, Tempe, AZ - 5:55:22
.

WOW! I can’t believe it, that’s my 2006 season, the whole enchilada…

So what have I learned?

I’m stronger than I would have imagined…other people are stronger than they imagine…that includes YOU.

Give me enough time and there is probably no feat of endurance that I can not accomplish.

Involve your family in endurance sport if you can do it without hounding them into it, it builds bonds as strong as the people who participate in them.

The people who participate in endurance sports are fantastic!

For me, endurance athletics is primarily a social endeavor. I love all the exercise and I will try my hardest to chase people down every time I’m out on the course but ultimately it’s not the time I achieve, it’s the time that I have…the journey and not the outcome.

I can hardly wait for my 2007 season!

Fortitude Vincimus my friends! Through endurance we conquer!