A Great Place To Stumble Into

Morning Workout
BIKE
3 hours (including 30 minute time trial up the side of a mountain)
Heart Rate Zone: VO2 Max (Zone 5+) for time trial. My heart rate averaged 174 bpm and peaked at 182, if you really need to know. Which you probably don’t.

Random Comments: This was our 2nd Time Trial Up The Hill day. As you probably don’t remember and I don’t blame you, this day comes around every 6 weeks as a test of our training progress. What with my thriving achilles injury this time around, I didn’t know if I should actually do the ride and add more stress to my calf. But realizing that riding doesn’t stress my calves nearly as much as running, and realizing that I really love these fitness tests, and knowing that this was only a short little 30 minute climb anyway, well naturally I figured I should do it. I mean, how bad could it really be anyway? If you know me, which at about this point I’m supposing you do, you are probably expecting me to say that I completely destroyed my achilles on that climb and it was, in fact, a really bad idea to do it. Well apparently you don’t know me as well as you thought you did, little buckaroo. My achilles felt fine, thank you very much. My quads and lungs, on the other hand, might have sung a different tune, perhaps one that includes quite a bit more gasping and shriekings of pain. Which I suppose is the purpose of the time trial anyway – the gasping and pain. Regardless, I went about exactly 150 feet further than I did last time, which kind of pissed me off. I mean, in six weeks of training, all I improved was 150 feet in 30 minutes - a distance that might very well be attributed to a 30 second burst of tailwind somewhere up the climb. That blows - and I ain't just talkin' about the wind. Cat, on the other hand, went a quarter of a mile further than what she did last time. That is a nice example of “amazing”.
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Star Spotting Of The Day: Deep Roy, who is that little person that played the Oompa Loompas in the Johnny Depp remake of Willy Wonka

Location: The corner of Fairfax and Wilshire Boulevards

What He Was Doing: Driving his Volvo through Hollywierd. I first glanced over at the car because I sensed that the driver was seated a bit close to the steering wheel. When I turned to look, I found out I was right. If the little fella sat any closer to the steering wheel he'd be on the hood of the car reaching back. When I realized that he was sitting there because he was a midget….er… a little person, I felt like an ass. Then I turned away and really didn’t much care about it anymore.
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OK, here’s my prediction for the events to take place at Ironman USA on July 23, 2006 as it relates to the performances of Catherine (aka “the Girlfriend”) and moi (aka me, aka yo, aka whatever the Chinese, German and Sanskrit words are for “me”).

The Swim: I will be out of the water 10 to 20 minutes ahead of Catherine. I’m giving myself a one hour twenty minute time on the swim and assuming Cat will zip out in one thirty-ish. At this point, I think that’s a pretty fair estimate. Unless, of course, she learns to keep her legs buoyant, at which point she’ll kick my butt and leave me gurgling in the background.

The Bike: There’s a lot of climbing on the Lake Placid course. A lot of climbing. In fact, there’s the elevation gain chart if you really want to know. I believe Lake Placid has more hills than any other Ironman in North America. Which makes it a shame that my quads are so weak and I’m such a bad climber. Cat has much stronger climbing legs than I do. It’s like a different category of climbing legs on her compared to my little chicken legs. Which explains my predition that she’ll pick up about 10 minutes on me during the bike ride, maybe more. Then again, I’m faster on the downhills and straight-aways, so why don't we stick with the 10 minute prediction for now. Which leads us right to…

The Run: My gut says that we will be running a large part of the marathon together. From the get-go, I’m guessing there will be a ten minute difference between us. Depending on what happens to each of us on the bike (both nutritional dilemmas and circumstances-beyond-our-control dilemmas), I’m predicting that Cat will either be 10 minutes ahead of me or 10 minutes behind me as we step our first foot onto that marathon course. At this point in our training, our heart rates are right around the same zone at the same pace when we run. Which means that we’d be pretty good at pacing each other through the marathon. The catch here is that my heart rate usually sky rockets after bike rides, so there’s a pretty good chance Cat will just breeze by me and be all cooled down and eating pizza by the time I stumble across the finish line. Or maybe she'd be standing there waiting for me with open arms. Which, honestly, would be a great place to stumble into.