A Saturday ride on the Fort Worth Trinity Trail

Fellow TNT alumnus and 2007 Florida Ironman finisher, Chris Richardson, showed me his 60-mile bike route along the Fort Worth Trinity Trails on Saturday morning.

We got out early enough to ride and finish just before the heat got into the triple digits.

We covered the distance in just under fours of saddle time.

We took a few breaks to change a flat, refill our bottles of hot water with slightly less hot water from the public fountains, and stretch out a bit.

We hit a few less traveled areas of the Trinity River trail system and traveled off the trail systems for a stint through the Ridglea Hills Country Club neighborhood.

This was a great training ride. The HH100 is just three weeks away!

Two Weeks to Buffalo Springs Lake

I swam my race distance, 2,000 meters, this morning.

Tomorrow, I'm planning on a brick workout with a long ride and short run -- before the 101 degree forecasted heat takes over the day.

Mike W. (who really needs a blog I can link to) and I are independently getting ourselves as mentally and physically ready as we can be for Lubbock. And reassuring each other "to just go have some fun" and not to stress what will no doubt be a very challenging event.

This will be the first long course Mike and I have done together. I cheered him on for his first Half Iron at the Texas Man in Denton. He was on hand for my first long course race at the Lone Star in Galveston. We did the Benbrook Sprint Triathlon together in May. I will no doubt be chasing Mike from the start at Buffalo Springs Lake. He's great to train with as he's a menace in the water, a terror on the bike, and pretty mean on the run too. Despite having a new born baby at home and missing many hours of training, I fully expect he'll have a strong finish in Lubbock.

Into the taper and race day planning

Under strict orders from our coaches, those on our way to Galveston this weekend have began to taper our training. The basic idea is to rest your body and avoid any taxing workouts in the final days leading up to your race. Pretty common sense stuff, but triathletes often fall into the "more is better" mode of thinking and need to be constantly reminded and cajoled to lay off.

This leaves me time to work on my race plan, hydration and nutrition specifically. Elevated exercise for more than a few hours requires your body fuel and replenish fluids along the way. Coach Todd from the Dallas Team gave us a clinic a few months ago which helped a lot. It's time to put pen to paper and have an actionable plan for race day.

Open water swim practice in cold Grapevine Lake

Our first open water swim practice had the Dallas and Fort Worth North Texas triathlon teams gather 9AM Saturday morning at Rockledge Park on Grapevine Lake.

Everyone wore a wetsuit, those going to Hawaii for Lavaman borrowing from TNT alumni and other fellow team members. I tried out my new sleeve-less wetsuit recently arrived in advance of our race at the Lone Star in Galveston.

The prevailing sentiment of the entire group was, "Holy crap, this water is cold!" And it was.

58 degrees Fahrenheit cold.

I don't know how far we swam. I was in the water for just over 30 minutes and opted not to take a second lap, though a few fellow "halfers" did. Most everyone overcame the shock of cold water on their face and did the distance very well. The whole point of the exercise to gain experience in the open water which is very different from pool swimming in a number of important ways, including:

1. You can't see the bottom or even your own hands in many cases.
2. You can't stand up if you're tired.
3. You can't stop and rest at the wall.
4. You're surrounded by dozens of other people.
5. Your surroundings are almost invariably unfamiliar.
6. You can't swim in a straight line without "sighting" - periodically looking up during your stroke and navigating.

For certain, my sighting needs help! My swim experience from Lone Star 2007 is proof of this. I have a hard time swimming in a straight line which is only exacerbated by cold and fatigue as my swim form breaks down and my stroke tends to cross my body. Knowing these things in practice will surely help me avoid them on race day. And practice will help me improve; we're back in the open water this next weekend for a practice triathlon.

Cowtown results, 50th percentile YEAH!

Check it.

599 out of 2031 total finishers.

443 out of 1068 male runners.

Age Grade = 50.6%

I am a perfectly average half-marathoner.

And that my friends, I am perfectly ok with...

Onward to the Lone Star Triathlon on March 28.

P.S. TNT was well represented. I wore my TEAM training jersey and had lots of "Go Team" shouts from spectators along the way. One marathoner was running in honor of his 2-year old daughter recently diagnosed with leukemia. The mission goes on. You can extend your offer of financial support with a donation here. Fundraising for this season closes March 15.

Looking ahead to the Cowtown

The Iron Man distance triathlon ends with a full marathon.

The Half Iron Man distance (for which I'm training) ends with a half marathon.

I've never run a full or half marathon distance either in a race or a training run.

That's about to change!

For mostly psychological reasons, I decided to opt out of our team's weekend brick workout and instead to run the Cowtown Half Marathon this Saturday, February 23, 2008.

Bricks are great training - they combine cycling and running elements in race like conditions. They're great at conditioning your legs and heart.

What I need is a specific kind of mental conditioning. I need to know what it feels like to run 13.1 miles.

Plus, the Cowtown promises to be a fun event - bigger this year than ever before.

You've probably noticed the pervasive and deep links between amateur endurance sports events and charitable and social causes. The Cowtown is affiliated with the University of North Texas Health Sciences Center and serves to promote health awareness in the community. Pretty cool.

Who makes swim goggles for those with big noses?

I had a lot trouble finding a pair of swim goggles that fit my head. That was my predicament a year ago at the beginning of Season One (Winter 2006/07). I have a prominent nose. Swim goggle manufacturers seem not to take my kind into account when designing their products.

Alas, I did find a solution in a particular pair which looked not at all like those performance eye goggles that the Olympic swimmers wear but looked rather much more like a kid's scuba mask appropriate for the back-yard kiddie pool pretend dives. But they stayed on my face, kept the water out, and did not attempt to crush my nose as many others seemed designed to do. I came to like these goggles (made by TYR and named Hydrovision). It all ended when they quit working this past week. Two workouts, viciously cut short due to unexpected equipment failure. The seals leaked and my eyes were repeatedly splashed by chlorinated H2O. From Coach Tarp, expert on all triathlon, I learned of a local sage of goggle fitting arts. Located at the local run shop, a masters swimmer can be found, working the odd mix of retail hours, who provides for the local endurance athletes in training. Perhaps she has the answers I seek.

In my haste to return to the pool I took another course and visited the local chain sports warehouse. On a narrow aisle, I see the left overs which survived into the off-season. I read descriptions looking for a marketing term that is code for "big nose" and I think I actually found it. It's called the "Technoflex," another TYR goggle. So who makes goggles for those with big noses. TYR does. Thanks TYR! As I have a prominent nose.

Though I still think I'll visit the goggle sage... I'll let you know what I find.

For your consideration: A new season with TNT

I'm sharing my thoughts about committing to a new season of training and fundraising with the North Texas Team In Training. For anyone reading this blog, I'd love to hear your thoughts, perspectives, stories or advice on making this commitment. Be forewarned: Should I commit, it won't be long before I'm back asking for your support!

Serious consideration...

TNT is a big commitment for every participant. It supports a great cause. It demands the support those closest to me and it involves my asking nearly everyone I know to lend their financial support.

Connecting everyone to the cause...

The cause is always there, in the background, during every Saturday morning training and during the exciting moments in which we cheer fellow teammates across the finish line. TNT walks the line of educating without preaching and of exposing the issues without forcing the issue. I want to be able to do the same. I want to learn more about how this disease comes about and how medical science, patients, non-profits and the rest of us each play our various roles to combat and win battles against these cancers. I hope to provide some level of amplification for the message coming from patients, medical science and the non-profit groups like LLS in support these groups.

Connecting supporters to the journey...

Is there something compelling for all of us about dozens of regular folks embarking on endurance sports training in support of cancer research and patient care? I think there is.

I'm trying to envision effective ways uncover and report on the stories and the underlying personal narratives that push forward these long seasons and huge efforts - and not my own primarily - so that everyone involved gets a bit more out of this wonderfully crazy concept of "saving lives one mile at a time."

Selfish reasons...

I want to train and complete a Half IronMan distance race. I would go back to the LoneStar Triathlon in Galveston.

I have a borderline obsessive interest in new media (Web logs or blogs, podcasting, and other social media) and I want to use fundraising and training with TNT as an excuse to experiment in and produce these new media, not just consume them as I've been doing.

December 2007 will mark our third year in Fort Worth. We're still relative newbies in this town and in North Texas and TNT gives us a great way to participate with and contribute to the local community.

While I don't have a personal story of a loved one or immediate family member with a blood cancer, LLS leads an important front against caner in general; and the odds suggest that either I or someone close to me will battle cancer in my lifetime and I want to get a head start in that fight!

What do you think?

A little help from my friends...

Emily, a Fall Triathlon team participant, had a very nasty spill on her bike a couple of weeks back. The short version which I heard, (since I was not there on the day), was that upon coming down a steep hill in downtown Fort Worth (which our team regularly uses to add a bit of hill work when riding on the Trinity Trail), Emily realized too late that her brakes were not properly clamped. She rode at full speed straight into a street curb at the bottom of the hill. Her bike stopped and she flew 15 feet or more.

Thankfully, she got up, and although shaken, was not hurt seriously in any way.

Her bike took the brunt of the impact and it endured: a broken front fork, a broken seat post, a broke handlebar, and bent rims.

I should also mention that Emily is a college student. Bike repairs are not a budgeted item as you'd expect.

Well, Tim, one of our mentors and my former teammate from the Winter Team, organized an effort to help Emily fund her unexpected and sizable repair bill. Cut to the end, here's Emily's note to the team upon picking up her bike:

Hey TEAM!

I am still in shock today after picking up my bike and learning that I owed only 1 cent!! ARE YOU KIDDING? It was completely unexpected and I don't know if words could really express my gratitude to everyone. That is by far the nicest and most thoughtful thing that anybody has ever done for me. I feel really lucky to be on a team with such AMAZING and SNEAKY people.

I wish I could say I went to group training and events all the time to train, but for me it's always been just an excuse to see and hang out with all of you. It's rare to be truly grateful for things, but I am so very grateful for my TNT TEAM!! So Thank you Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love you guys!!!! Expect HUGE hugs when I see you!!

Best part, I get to ride at GOAT NECK this weekend!!! WHOOHOO!

A very happy, not quite so broke college student anymore,

EMILY

P.S. I'm thinking that the bicycles inc. men are not used to a girl crying in their store....awkward...

Raining and training

It's been raining in Texas in June seemingly all month.

In Fort Worth, the sewers are overflowing. Rarely does the weather occupy such a constant stream of news in North Texas.

For most of this week, many on our team took training indoors. Tomorrow morning, fingers crossed, we'll be able to pull off our regular Saturday morning outdoor training. This week's schedule has us riding 30 and 50 minutes for the Sprint and Olympic teams while the Half Ironman team completes its second Double Brick of the month. A brick combines two elements such as a run and a bike; a double brick, well, you guessed it - multiply that fun by two!

I hope to train with the Half Ironman team and do my best to keep up. They're a top notch group, with Mike Williams, endurance athlete in training, among them. Mike's done a great job of fundraising thus far - if you can help him hit his goal and support LLS, we'd all sure appreciate it!

Rosedale Ride in Austin

When traveling away from home, I've a hard time keeping to my training schedule. While blazing down I-35 from Fort Worth to Austin Friday evening with dog, bike, & Deirdre safely contained in the Element, I phoned my friend and fellow traithlete Jeremiah, hoping to arrange a Saturday morning ride.

Serendipitously, Jeremiah returned my voice mail to let me know he was doing the Rosedale Ride, an choose-your-distance ride organized by the Rosedale Foundation to benefit the Rosedale School, part of the Austin ISD and a school for children with multiple disabilities.

I chose the 32-mile loop. Miah did the 45-mile track (yes, he's a total stud!)

We enjoyed a beautiful morning ride out with several hundred other riders, some also doing 24-mile and 63-mile loops. Volunteers, including many teachers from the school were also out in force, encouraging riders of all ages and riding ability.

The start/finish was at Applied Materials' campus in Austin, which has its own running track which loops a pond in the center of the main buildings. So I was even able to complete my scheduled "brick" workout, which calls for finishing one training exercise and transitioning straight to another - on this day I went straight from the bike to a 20-minute run.

Catching up with a dear friend, supporting a great cause, enjoying a wonderful central Texas spring morning, and ticking off a scheduled training a week before the big event... I don't think it could have worked out any better!

Total Immersion Swimming

I have been meaning for some time now to write a post about Total Immersion Swimming.

It's a book.

It's a DVD.

They have classes in your area with certified instructors.

Starting out in triathlon training, I found swimming very frustrating. I just knew I was doing it wrong, and even worse, I knew I was not getting better quick enough, if at all.

So I asked around, finally, and bought a book "Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way To Swim Better, Faster, and Easier."

The title does not lie, and this system does not disappoint.

Ask me about if you'd like to know more; I can't say enough good things about my experience with TI.