What a way to finish the year...

I was mentally tired today when I woke up and didn't feel like working out. Which doesn't happen often. I felt a little burnt out. I forced myself out the door and did my weight training session. I focused on my legs and really gave them a good workout. Maybe too good.

When I got home I puttered around and finally pushed myself outside for my 55 minute tempo run. This is the first run in a long time that I did not want to do. Even after the first 100 meters I thought of turning around and going home, but I pushed through to finish the year strong.

About 12 minutes into the run my left lower hamstring started bothering me again. It was the same sensation that I got at the end of my long run on Tuesday. I almost turned around and went home. I kept running and about 5 minutes later it got really sore and I decided to stop.

I stretched a little and it didn't help. Then I started walking back home and it was still tender but workable. I was going to call Alice to pick me up but I didn't want to put her out. I need to ration my "come get me" calls.

I was also listening to IM Talk podcast and they had Bobby McGee on talking about the run walk theory. So I figured I'd walk and try and keep my cadence high. I finally got home and it wasn't easy. I was fighting the urge to call Alice and I was mentally spent by the time I got home.

The first thing I did when I got home was a light stretch of the hamstring, take a prescription anti inflammatory, ice my leg with a frozen bag of corn and ask Alice to grab me a beer. It wasn't the best way to finish the year, although it could have been much worse.

I got an email from John Barclay today. His Dad passed away early this morning from complications of his cancer treatments. It was unexpected. I felt so bad for him. I can't imagine what it must feel like to lose a parent. My deepest condolences go out to John and his family.

Weights - 50 minutes

Run - 18:10 / 3.93 km / 4:37 pace / 138 avg hr

Walk - 29:00 / 3.12 km / 6:46 pace

184.6 lbs 22.0% BMI

10

The pain train is chugging...

First thing I'd like to say is the movie "Blind Side" is awesome. I saw it last night and I highly recommend it. It's a real tear jerker and if it wasn't based on a true story you'd think it was fantasy. Reid came with Alice and I. He's amazing when it comes to observing movies. He sees things no one else sees. If there's an imperfection or a scene that wasn't edited perfectly, he'll catch it.

He also sees subtleties in the storyline. When he points them out afterwards, I'm always amazed and impressed. It's always stuff Alice and I never picked up. I have a feeling he's going to be involved in movies when he gets older. I always tell him he should become a writer and or director. I love great writing or moving making. As far as writers go, I think the writers of Family Guy are brilliant.

Reid also gets immersed in things and takes them to the extreme. First thing he got obsessed with when he was 3 years old was the movie "Small Soldiers". He then wanted every action figure and the entire house was full of Army stuff. Then it was Wrestling and the house was full of wrestling stuff. Then Hockey and now it's Quentin Tarantino. He has every movie and watches them over and over. His favorite's are Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds.

In early December, during one of my weekend beer buzzes, he showed me a replica wallet that Jules had in "Pulp fiction". Photo above. He wanted one and I needed a new wallet, so I ordered two. They just arrived yesterday. I told Reid he can't take it to school or show anyone. He knows the drill. Since he could speak, I've semi-jokingly told him not to tell people what goes on at home or they'll call "Child and Family Services" and they'll take him away. He knows his mom treats him way to well for him to try and upgrade to a better family.

I used my new wallet for the first time at the theatre yesterday. Every time I pulled it out to pay for something Reid would start to get all kiddy. He'd be looking to see if the cashier saw what was embroidered on my wallet. I actually like the wallet. It's good quality leather, holds my credit cards perfectly and fits nicely in my front pocket. I can hardly wait until I take a customer out for lunch and pull out my wallet to pay. I'm not going to point it out unless they mention it. It should be worth a laugh or two.

Training wise, I was dead tired all day today. It's understandable considering I was only 11 km short of doing a full marathon yesterday, and that was after an hour swim. I remember years ago if I ever did that distance I wouldn't train for at least a few days afterwards and I'd walk around the house bragging to the family. Those days are long gone. Taking time off after a long session are "days of training past". However, I'll still brag.

I have a neighbour who trained months for a marathon. I was well into Ironman training and no longer thought like a regular guy who just wanted to complete a marathon. He would tell me about his 2 hour long runs and that his wife would meet him at the half way point to bring him water. When he told me the story I thought three things. First, that's sweet his wife would do that, second, it's not THAT long, and third, why didn't he just bring money and buy a Gatorade at store along the way.

He ended up finishing his marathon in just over 5 hours. He was so proud of his accomplishment, as he should be, and had his medal with his finishers photo put into a glass frame and hung it proudly. By the way he memorialized his medal, he seemed more proud of that Marathon finish than I think I've been of my Ironman finishes. My medals are all tangled up in my dresser drawer. My daughter even lost two of my Ironman Canada medals years ago when she was a little kid. She probably gave them to a friend or left them in the sandbox. But at least I still have my Hawaii Ironman Medal, which is in the drawer with the others.

My neighbour then took about 2 months off to recover, eat and drink like a mad man and relish in his accomplishment. Him telling me about his journey and enjoying the time off brought me back in time and gave me insight to normal peoples reality. It must be nice to set a Big Hairy Ass Goal, accomplish it and relax guilt free for a couple months afterwards. For me, it's set the BHAG, hit it, take a week or three off doing active recovery, set another one and get back at it.

All day to day I was tired and an eating machine. Surprisingly my legs didn't feel sore, just a little tired. I wasn't looking forward to my ride tonight because I knew it was going to hurt if I did it right. Tonight was my tempo ride and I knew to keep my heart rate higher I would need to push the pace and after yesterday's long run I knew it would involve pain to get there.

When I got home I ate 5 bowls of cereal, 6 chocolates and then went to bed for a couple hours. I did this for two reasons. The first was to get some rest by sleeping and hoping I'd have energy and feel fresh when I woke up. The second reason was for motivation. As an PFG (Previous Fat Guy) I'm motivated to burn calories and if I over eat there is a 100% chance I'll do the workout.

I went harder than normal from the beginning and my average pace showed it. I truly think I have a genetic predisposition to do long distance triathlons and training. For me, the more I train, the better I feel and the faster I get. I have the ability to mask the pain and actually feel stronger as time goes on. That's what happened tonight. I kept getting stronger as the ride went on. Tonight's ride was the first in a long while where I was able to get my heart rate up close to my maximum. I even had to slow down to bring it down. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't easy. I went close to the red zone to get there.

Near the end, three thoughts got me through to finish strong. The first was that it's the end of the year and I wanted finish my training strong, and the second was that I was motivated to keep my average speed at or above 38.4 kph and the third was to pay the price now, rather than during the Ironman China race. I ended up having the fastest tempo ride I've ever had indoors or outdoors. However, in fairness, I don't know if I can compare indoor and outdoor riding speeds.

On a final note, I need to get a new bike seat. This is the second one I've bought and I need to try a third. After an hour it is hard to stay aero. I do it, but it hurts. My old bike didn't have that problem. I'm also so numb, you could kick me in the groin as hard as you could and I wouldn't feel a thing.

Tempo Bike - 1:30:00 / 57.75 km / 38.5 kph / 140 avg hr

Going a little long without glasses...

Slow day at work. I left early and got to the pool just after lunch time. My plan was to finish up my swim, go home and do today's run in the daylight. At the pool I met and shared the lane with a guy named Tyler Lord, who is a professional triathlete. This website is www.tylerlord.com. Before we got started, Tyler offered to look at my stroke and offer advice, which I gladly welcomed. As a foot note, Tyler finished his 2800 meter session much quicker than me.

Today was the first day I got to try out my new Christmas presents. My Sable goggles and SwiMP3 player. The goggles worked great, actually better than great. They were awesome. The SwiMP3 didn't work. I spent about 10 minutes playing around with it before I even got started. Then I gave up and swam without them. Ugh!!!

Tyler gave me some great advice and pointers. Overall he thought my stroke and body position looked pretty good. Yes! The recommendations from the workshop are putting me on the right track. He did notice however, that my right arm is going to high in the air and that I'm not pulling hard enough through the catch. Which is true. I'm a little lame on the pull. He also gave me advice on some drills and workout sets I should do. I tried some after he left and my best 100 meters was 1:31, but it hurt.

When I got home I was getting tired and started watching TV. I decided to do my run later as I watched Judge Judy berate people. To get motivated, even though I'm on a diet, I started eating some Christmas chocolates. I had the urge and no will power. I know if I eat them I'll get a stronger resolve to run. I wasn't sure if I was going to do my scheduled 1:20 run or do Sunday's 2:35 long run that I had to abort due to my dehydrated legs. The chocolate pushed me over the edge and I decided to go long. I also wanted to see how my legs felt after a 2:35 long run.

It was a balmy -14 C and decided to do a loop rather than an out and back. The challenge with a loop is trying to predict you'll finish at the right time, not always easy. I ran through downtown Burlington and along Lakeshore Drive. After a while, my glasses fogged up so bad I couldn't see, so I took them off and put them in my pocket. Without my glasses I couldn't see very well and overshot Appleby Road and ended up running an additional 2 km's to Burloak. In doing so, it meant that it was going to take me longer than 2:35 to get home and traffic wise, it was a little more dangerous.

At the 2:19 mark I started to get thirsty. I rarely run with water or nutrition. At that moment there was a Shell gas station in front of me and I ran in and bought a 1 litre Gatorade. It was a good thing that at the last moment before leaving on my run I took $5 with me. I was starting to fade and the Gatorade helped. I chugged it in about 3 sips and the lady behind the counter looked amazed. To get home it ended up taking me fifteen minutes longer than I was scheduled to run.

Overall I felt pretty good. I ran slow and kept my heart rate low. My joints felt great and my muscles didn't start to get a little fatigued until after the 2:35 point, especially my hamstrings down near my knees. When I finished I stretched and that seemed to help. Overall the run felt good and I'm glad I did it. I just wished I was faster.

Now that I've finished my blog post, Alice, Reid and I are going to go to the late showing of the movie "Blind Side". Everyone keeps telling me it's really good.

Long Swim - 1:05:16 / 3000 meters

Long run - 2:50:29 / 31.21 km / 5:28 pace / 138 avg hr

Stopping was the right thing to do, I'm back...

I woke up early and didn't realize today was a holiday in Ontario. I looked outside and saw all my neighbours cars still in their driveways and that gave me a clue. I called work and no one answered. I sent emails to work and no response. I then checked the Fedex website and they were closed for the day, which means we must be closed for the day. To bad I didn't know that yesterday, I would have slept in today.

It was nice that I didn't have to go to work because I had over 4 hours of training scheduled for today and I was able to get it done by 6 pm. I even fit an errand in between when I returned my Garmin 305 to MEC. The heart rate monitor readings are inconsistent and I finally had enough frustration. MEC is great to deal with. The watch is probably 10 months old and they took it back and gave me a full refund.

My plan is to buy a Garmin 310XT from them. They didn't have any in stock. I'm hoping the new model will be more stable. I also like the fact that it is smaller, the battery lasts 15 hours and it is waterproof. Garmin promotes it as a watch for Triathletes. The only downside is that it's $500 plus taxes. I can get it online for about $50 cheaper but MEC's great to deal with if something goes wrong.

My legs felt much better today. My stopping immediately after they seized yesterday was the right thing to do. All last night I drank water and by the end of the night they were back to about 90%. The real test was today's bike ride and they held up well. Whew! Disaster averted. Although, understandably, my quads were a little sore when I did leg extensions during my weight lifting session.

I also had a perfect day of eating yesterday. I registered with Daily Burn, which is a free website that you can track your calories, exercise, goals, etc. They also have an iPhone App, "Food Scanner", that scans bar codes from food packages and allows you to log them as food you've eaten. Very cool App. It's the first App I've ever bought, it cost me $2.99.

I can officially confirm I was dehydrated. Since I've been drinking water my love handles have reappeared, caused by my Christmas feast. I had forgotten that I had traveled by plane last week and that definitely would have contributed to the dehydration as well. The real test to see if my legs are okay is going to be when I do my run tomorrow.

I also wanted to pass along a big THANK YOU to Jeff Kline. I was asking on Twitter if anyone had any suggestions for Power Workouts and Jeff (@coachprs) took the time to put some together and email them to me out of the goodness of his heart. Turns out that Jeff is in the process of putting out a bike training DVD. His website is http://prsfit.com/blog. Great dude. Thanks again Jeff and let me know when the DVD comes out.

Mod Bike - 3:15 / 115.40 km / 35.51 kph / 130 avg hr

Weights - 55 minutes

Having a bad day...

I haven't weighed myself, but by looking in the mirror and by touch, I don't think I gained any weight over the holidays. Which is strange because all I've been doing is eating and drinking.

I was looking forward to my long run today. I've had a couple days off to rest and I was getting a little antsy. I wanted to see how my rested legs would perform doing a 2 hour 35 minute run. Early into the run my muscles were a little stiff, especially one of my hamstrings. I knew if I kept running it should loosen up and it did. Within the first mile my Garmin heart rate monitor started acting up again and the heart rate readings were all over the map. Ugh... For the last few weeks it's been doing the same thing on every run. Today I finally decided that I'm taking it back and getting my money back. It is a real piece of Sh*t. This is my second one. The first one had the same problem.

Exactly 47 minutes into the run I start to go down an 11 % graded hill. About 10 meters into it my thighs started to seize up. I didn't get it, on a downhill my legs were starting to get into a world of hurt. I got to the bottom and stopped because of the pain. I couldn't believe it. I eat hills for lunch. I figured I'd walk a bit and see if that would help get them flushed and back to normal. I then started running again and they got worse.

I had a decision to make. Do I keep trying to run and do further damage, which will take days to repair, or do I call Alice to pick me up. I did the responsible thing and called Alice. Then I started walking back home. Even walking hurt. I stopped and tried to stretch and it helped a little. My legs felt exactly like when I finish a marathon. If I was in an Ironman I most definitely would have had to walk or crawl to the finish.

I couldn't believe the pain and wondered "why did this happen?". The only thing that came to mind was dehydration. Too much beer, not enough water. Even yesterday I only had one glass of water and a soft drink at the movie theatre. In total, I've probably only had three glasses of water in three days.The more I thought about it I realized that dehydration would also make me feel and look like I hadn't gained any weight.

I'm glad it happened so early into the run. It ruled out a fitness problem. And it wasn't a lack of rest problem. I'm also glad I called Alice. Anymore running would have caused major damage. When she picked me up I got in the drivers seat and it was jammed. I couldn't move it back. Ugh....Then when I got home I was boiling some water for pasta and tried out an electric salt dispenser I got for Christmas and as I put it over the pot and pushed the grind button, the entire unit came apart and dropped into the boiling water. Ugh... Then I went to throw the TV remote on the couch and it hit Reid's new iTouch. Ugh... Good thing it didn't break. Among other little things like dropping my fork, I've had some bad luck today.

Leading up to today and now especially after today's run, I've made the commitment to "knuckle down" for the next 76 days leading up to Ironman China. I'm going to start counting calories, limit the beer consumption, eat healthy and make sure I get good sleep and rest. I can't afford to have another training day like today. Heck, I don't want another day like today, period.

Long Run - 50:21 / 9.57 km / 5:15 pace

I got a feeling...

I think 2010 is going to be a turning point in my life. I can feel it. I can tell I'm on the verge of going into a new head space. After these past two days of Christmas celebration I also feel a much greater resolve to start living more healthy.

It was a rough day for me, as I didn't get to bed until 3:30 am last night. I was hanging out with the family and playing pool with Reid and Alyssa's boyfriend Nazaire. Reid's actually getting much better at playing pool. He made some pretty impressive shots and even beat me and Nazaire once or twice.

I intentionally did no training today. I was scheduled to do a long ride but decided to take my coach's and Johan's advice and take the day off to rest my legs. Like Johan said, I've got lots of long rides coming up, better to rest now. I've now officially got 76 days until China and I need to get into a strict diet and rest routine if I'm going to have a shot at qualifying for Hawaii.

Tonight, Alice, Reid and I went to the movie Avatar. I normally don't like those kind of movies but I liked this one. Alice and Reid hated it. Alice was falling asleep during it and Reid kept counting down the time until we could leave. I thought it was so good I clapped at the end. The story line was okay, but what really got me was the special effects and how they came up with some of the animals. The entire time I was thinking "I can't believe one man had this movie in his head and was able to bring it to the screen". James Cameron is amazing.

Rest Day - No Training.

It was fun and relaxing...

This is a Christmas of firsts. This is the first time we spent Christmas in Ontario and didn't go back to Winnipeg. It's the first time it was just the four of us having Christmas together. It was the first time Reid didn't wake us up to open presents. It was the first time my mother woke up before us, ever. The funny part was she called to wish us a Merry Christmas, which is what woke us up.

We opened presents in the morning and then had a Christmas breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast and pancakes. Beautifully unhealthy. Reid got DJ Hero as a gift and for the rest of the day Alyssa and him were downstairs playing it. Alice was doing the food prep and I was snoozing on the sofa for a few hours. It was bliss.

Last night and all day today we have been watching Christmas or feel good family movies. The house smelt great as the turkey cooked and I can't ever recall having such a relaxing Christmas. Even the dinner with just the four of us was fun. All of us agree, no regrets, this has been one of the best Christmases.

In the past two days I've eaten more food than I can ever remember eating and I don't care. I made up my mind that I wasn't going to restrict myself from anything and carry no guilt along the way. Christmas only comes once a year, so you may as well enjoy it.

I made my famous mashed potatoes and Alice cooked the most juiciest turkey I've ever had. It was also a first for me having to cut the Turkey. That's usually my Dad's job. I guess the electric carving knife has now been passed. Alice also wore her new shirt, it made her look like "Snow White" with it's nice puffy shoulders.

The day off from training was nice as well. The only downside is that my pants are getting tight and my fingers and toes are bloated like sausages. Other than that, which can be cured with a week of Ironman training, it's been all good. Alyssa said that her legs are sore from standing and playing DJ Hero all day. At least someone got some exercise.

The nice part was that because we didn't go back to Winnipeg, my parents decided to go to Jacksonville for Christmas at my sisters. My Dad has always wanted to have a Christmas with no snow or cold weather. He got his wish this year.

No Training - Christmas Rest Day.

Diet 0/10

22

Christmas Gift Wrap Prank - Watch more Funny Videos

A first time for everything...

I got back from Vancouver late last night and by the time I fell asleep it was 2:40 am. I scheduled the day off work and my plan was to sleep in and catch up on my sleep. I woke up thinking I slept in and it was only 8:30 am and I was tired. Maybe it was jet lag from 10 hours of flying within a 30 hour period.

I was debating taking today off and not doing my tempo run in order to give my body a rest. Exercise gets rid of jet lag so I opted to go for a run. I knew it would help reset my clock. I was really nervous about how I'd feel. I still have bad blisters and had no blister pads. I ended up using the next best thing, hockey tape.

I switched my watch over to record my pace in kilometers and I don't yet know what that means in terms of speed. I was running blind. For the first third of the run I was around a 4:22 pace and ended up with a 4:43 pace while keeping my heart rate under 143 bpm.

I was ecstatic when I got home and converted to miles and realized that is a 7:37 pace, even though it felt much slower. Something doesn't make sense, Monday I did a moderate run and had one of my worst runs of the year at a 5:25 pace and then two day's later I'm running a 4:43 pace at roughly the same effort.

I got an email from Mark Allen today. He was reading my blog and wanted to know if anyone got back to me about my bonk on the bike. I was impressed that "out of the blue" he reached out to me. Frankly, I was also impressed that he takes the time to read my blog. It just shows MAO is more than a computer generated plan. His timing was good and I asked him this question:

Mark, I just realized I had an important training question.

For the past few bike rides I've had a tough time getting my heart rate up to my MAHR as my legs have no more power to do so. My times are faster than in the past but the legs just don't have anymore power than what I'm using. My running however is very good and I have no trouble getting the heart rate up.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing. One thought I had was that I need to push through the pain and it will give me gain. Someone else told me I should take some time off.

What are your thoughts?

B

Hi Bryan,

What you have is basically a good problem to have. It means that you are faster at the same heart rate (a good thing) and that now you are limited by your ability to generate power rather than by your physiology. There are two ways to get through this type of experience. One is to push through it. However, that is not necessarily the best and can potentially set you up for getting overtrained. A second is to indeed back off a bit for a few days and see if the added rest shifts how your legs feel. If you do this and then you feel better, that was the answer to what was going on, which is that you are starting to get a bit overtrained and just needed to recover. This happens often when you start to get quite aerobically fit because each session if you are pushing toward the upper part of your HR zones you are taxing your body. So a little extra rest on occasion is usually all it takes.

A third solution is going to be longer term and that is to focus on the leg weights to continue to build lean muscle in the legs that can then be used to develop your power in the pedal stroke. Again, this is a longer term thing that will help out.

Then the final thing would be to look at the bike drill videos, specifically the one about Power. There are tips there to help you generate power in a way that doesn't load the legs up. Check that out if you have not seen it yet.

I hope that helps,

MARK ALLEN :: Co-Founder : Head Coach

Great advice that I'm going to follow. This may be the beginning of me making some big gains on the bike. I hope so.

It feels a little strange today. It's the first time, since we've moved from Winnipeg 5 years ago, that we are not going back to Winnipeg for Christmas. It's just the four of us this year. With us not going back, Christmas has just crept up on us. It doesn't even feel like Christmas. Normally we've been in Winnipeg for the week and have visited family and friends and partied all week long.

I also need to find a new tradition. Every year I order Chinese food for the entire family. This year the kids don't want Chinese food and I'm not sure what the new tradition should be. I've got two more hours to figure it out. For the rest of the night were going to play games and I'm going to take Reid's money by beating him at pool.

Merry Christmas to all my blog and Ironman buddies from Training Payne.

Tempo Run - 55:05 / 11.66 km / 4:43 kph / 143 avg hr

184.2 lbs 21 % BMI

Diet 0/10

16

No Pressure...

Last night on the drive from the airport to the hotel, I calculated my calorie consumption for the day. I knew it was going to be a lot because I couldn't stop eating all day. I think for a snack I had 3 or 4 bowls of cereal. It all added up to just under 4000 calories for the day. No wonder I'm not losing weight.

I think I'm going to take Johan Stemmets lead and start counting daily calories. The strange part about yesterday was that I ate healthy food and I swear I lost some weight from last night to this morning. My tummy looked flatter. Maybe my body was just craving food.

I was thinking that if I ever wanted to do Ultra triathlons I'd have to get my weight under control. I wouldn't do an Ultra unless I was in the 161 - 165 lb range. I was looking at pictures of the guys that do them and they are ultra thin.

There is a three hour time difference between Toronto and Vancouver and it works in my favour, 6 am in Vancouver is 9 am in Toronto. Needless to say, getting up early to fit in my tempo bike ride was easy. When I got to the workout room there was no one in it during my entire workout. It was great.

A strange thing is happening to me on the bike that has never happened before. I'm having difficulty pushing hard enough to get my heart rate up. For example today I was supposed to be at around 140 - 143 bpm and I had difficulty getting it to 138 bpm. I'm cycling stronger than ever before and my speeds are much higher, but my legs aren't strong enough to push hard enough to get the heart rate up without major hurt.

I think this may be a turning point for my cycling. I think if I can push through the pain I'll have a major improvement this year, especially if I can combine it with a 13 lb weight loss. The only thing that holds me back is the suffering. It hurts really bad. I'm taking it a little easier right now but I think from week 7 to 14 I'm going to push consistently into the pain and suffering zone.

I've got one 4 hour meeting today and hope it goes well. My room number is 313 and 13 is my favourite number. Whenever I have something that has a number 13 associated to it, it seems to go well. I'll be back in Toronto at midnight tonight, just in time for Christmas eve. Providing Air Canada isn't delayed like normal. One positive is that I was able to fit in yesterday's and today's training even with the travel.

Tempo Bike - 1:30 / 47.23 km / 31.49 kph / 138 avg hr

Cold and slippery...

I didn't know if I was going to fit today's training in. I'm travelling to Vancouver this afternoon and need to leave for the airport by 3:30. I had an important meeting at 10 am this morning and somehow had to do a run and swim in between. Thanks to Reid I was able to get it done.

He got sick at 6:30 in the morning and was "throwing up", which woke us up. Alice had to do a little clean up because he didn't get it all in the toilet. The upside was that I was awake and decided to do my run. I normally don't train in the morning. Especially running. I like to warm up during the day.

It was cold out, - 19 C and there was a light layer of fluffy, slippery snow on the ground. To add to the danger, I wore my old shoes that have no tread left on the bottoms. I didn't want to use my new shoes because my blisters were far from healed.

I ran disgustingly slow. Especially in the beginning. I didn't want to get injured and this is my moderate run which is supposed to be an easy run regardless. All in all, the run wasn't too bad, except for the last 40 minutes when I had to go to the bathroom bad, and it wasn't #1. I did end up making it home, just in time. It felt good to get that run out of the way, it took a lot of time pressure off.

At lunch time I did my swim and just focused on stroke technique and keeping my heart rate in the zone. Now that I'm counting my strokes I find the swim goes by much faster. I still find it hard to keep perfect form. It takes a while to get into the groove. I've got to video tape myself to see how different my stroke looks.

It felt good to finish and have some time to get packed, answer emails, update the blog and get to the airport without being rushed. Now the challenge will be do get my tempo bike ride in tomorrow. I hope the hotel they booked me in has a gym.

Mod Run - 1:30:02 / 16.41 km / 5:28 pace / 134 avg hr

Long Swim - 1:02:44 / 3000 meters / 125 avg hr

Trying Metric...

My nature is to be efficient. I want to be able to get to where I'm going with the least amount of steps. Today I decided to reduce the amount of steps it takes to enter training distances in my log. It should save me a couple of minutes each day. Normally I record in miles, even though my speedometer on my bike is in km's. After every workout I manually calculate km's to miles and then log it into my "map my run" training log.

It's an extra step I know, but I've always felt comfortable in miles. When they did the conversion from Imperial to Metric, I was in elementary school. They originally taught us Imperial and then a couple years later they had to re-teach us metric, so I know both very well.

When I was running 20 years ago, everything was a minute per mile pace and I am very comfortable with that system, even now. Biking I've converted to metric after watching the Tour and wanting to relate to the racing times. On the bike I now prefer kph. For running, I'm reluctant to change, but I will. I'm going to change my Garmin to metric and try to learn what km per minute means in terms of effort.

This week of training is going to be interesting. I just found out I need to go to Vancouver for a couple of days on business with one of my business partners. Unfortunately his father just passed away this past weekend after a lengthy illness. I can tell it's tough on him and was surprised he was feeling okay to come. His fathers service isn't until the New Year. I'm sure it will be sombre. I feel for him.

It's a 5 hour flight each way. I'm leaving tomorrow and returning Wednesday. Lots of air time. To bad I couldn't bring my bike and do my long ride in the air and kill two birds with one stone. To make it all work, I took Alice, the kids and Alyssa's boyfriend out for Alice's birthday dinner a day early. We went to the Olive Press, great Italian food. Her real birthday is tomorrow. When we got home we had ice cream cake and I went to the basement to do a bike ride. An hour and a half into the ride I was mentally toast and irritable.

I can tell already that these indoor bike rides are going to be hell. Somehow I managed to persevere and finish. I did find a blog from Rich Roll, he is a guy who does Ultra Ironman's and it was an interesting read. It killed about 20 minutes. I'm intrigued by Ultra's and one day plan on doing one or more. I think they are a great way to get your family involved first hand with them being the crew.

Weights - 45:00 / End 1

Mod Bike Ride - 2:50:00 / 93.29 km / 32.93 kph / 125 avg hr

Diet 3/10

3

Making it up...

Call me Rip Van Winkle. I slept most of yesterday away and got up at 9 am this morning. I totalled 21 hours of sleep since Saturday morning.

I was really looking forward to getting on the road for my long run today. I wanted to see how I felt and this would be the longest run I've done in a long time. I wanted to see how my body would react.

My blisters were getting a little better so I decided to try the new shoes again. I wore blister pads and for most of the run they were okay, but for the last 45 minutes there were hurting a little. My body was still feeling the effects of Friday night and I had to run slower to keep my heart rate down. Afterwards my legs were feeling not bad. The quads were a little sore going down stairs, but my knee tendons felt fine.

After stretching and showering Alice and I watched Reid's hockey game. They won 5-2 and I think are now in second place. There is good camaraderie on his team. A couple weeks ago they had a pizza party and afterwards Reid was telling me some of the kids had to go outside for a smoke. The guys on his team are 13 and 14 years old. I was laughing because Reid told me one kids said he really has to start cutting down. Not quit, but cut down. Too funny. In this day and age I didn't think kids that young smoked anymore.

When we got home from Reid's game I took Reid and Alyssa Christmas and Birthday shopping for Alice. We hit about 4 or 5 places and with male shopping precision we were able to get all the gifts within 90 minutes. Alyssa couldn't believe I shop so quick. It helped knowing what Alice wanted before leaving.

Finally, I ended up taking Alice and Alyssa out for dinner to the Tin Cup, a upscale sports bar with a great atmosphere and great food. I went for the pasta. I figured I may as well carbo load especially if I decided to finish the final 2 hours of Saturday's long ride tonight. Until I got home from the restaurant I was undecided if I was going to do the ride. Ten minutes after I got home I decided to finish the ride. Mentally, I'd feel guilty if I didn't do it.

It was a much better and stronger ride than yesterday, by far. Tonight I was able to push a higher gear. I also set up a fan and it really helped cool me off and although I was sweating, I wasn't dripping sweat. All in all it was a productive day, both training and family wise. It's nice to catch up on all fronts.

Long Run - 2:15:11 / 16.13 miles / 8:22 pace / 142 avg hr

Long Bike Part 2 - 2:00:05 / 69.40 km / 34.6 kph / 130 avg hr

Diet 8/10

Bart came over to party...

I was a mess I was today. I ended up having 22 beers last night. I know, because I keep the bottle caps. All I could think of was doing my 4.5 hour long bike ride this afternoon. The Hawaii Ironman was on TV and I wanted to coincide the end of my ride with the end of the program. It didn't workout out. I wasn't able to wake up and get on the bike until after 3 pm. I was hurting.

I did get on the bike and at first didn't feel too bad. It wasn't until later that I realized I had a delayed hangover coming on. I checked the tweets from last night and realized "Bad Bart" came out. "Bad Bart" is my alter ego who, on very few occasions, comes out to play when I've had too much to drink. It looked like Bart was his aggressive self and tweeting a lot of "F" bombs and getting mad at the world. Not good. One tweet this morning said I'm the dark side of twitter, another said I need to re-evaluate where I'm going and a third asked me if I felt good about "verbally abusing" a girl. As I read and deleted them I was laughing and saying "Bad Bart, Bad Bart".

I don't really care. It was the #tweetxmas party and at every Christmas party someone has too much to drink and makes a fool of themselves. My drinking rule has been that nothing counts when someone is drunk, whether it's me or others. Heck, the person's drunk, they're not really in control of themselves. It's also a great way to find out who your true friends are, they're the ones that forgive and forget. Alice went to bed at 3:30 am and I stayed up until 5:30 am. She couldn't drag me to bed, which is a bummer because nothing good happens after 2:00 am. All in all, I had fun. And for any of those people that are "superior" and "wound up" too tight, not realizing I was being a stupid drunk. To bad. Get over it. Sa la Vie.

Enough about the party, I met Alyssa's new boyfriend last night. I didn't know what to expect because he is older than her by 10 years. Regardless, I wasn't too concerned because Alyssa's a young adult and very level headed and responsible. After meeting him I was pleasantly surprised. He seems like a very nice and sincere guy who looks much younger than his age. He's working a day job while trying to be a model and or actor. I couldn't remember exactly, I was a little hazy. He had one good story he told me, similar to the movie "Road Trip". I told him it was good enough to be a movie. I'm looking forward to meeting him again when I haven't had a lot of beers.

My ride was scheduled for 4.5 hours and time went incredibly slow. At the 2.5 hour mark it felt like the 5 hour mark of last weeks ride and I started to feel really sick. The hangover was starting. I had to get off the bike. I pushed it just to get to that point and watching that last minute count down felt like it took 5 minutes. I've never had time on the bike go so slow. Even getting on the bike was tough. For the first 5 minutes I was like "what am I doing, all those beers is sabotaging my training. The plan was to drink only 10. What happened? Now I'm paying for it. Suck it up. Suck it up".

I got off the bike at the perfect time. I was major ill. I had a quick slower to warm up. The only problem about riding indoors is you get soaked in sweat from head to toe. That's the only thing I don't like about riding indoors. After the shower I felt the hangover bonk coming on and my body was craving greasy food. Even though it's not part of my diet plan I went to a greasy burger joint and picked up a burger, onion rings, fries and gravy. It hit the spot.

My plan was to eat, then sleep for a couple of hours and then get up and complete the remaining 2 hours of my ride. After a two hour sleep I felt no better. Then I figured that I'll finish it Sunday, depending how I feel after my long run or swap it with Monday's session. Or just leaving it at 2.5 hours, after all it's early in the training and those missed 2 hours aren't critical. Either way, I'll know what I'm going to do once I see how I feel after tomorrows long run.

Long Bike - 2:30:08 / 74.09 km / 29.6 kph / 125 avg hr

4/10

Triathlon my second biggest expense...

This is going to be a short blog entry tonight. I've got my Twitter Christmas party and I need to wash my hair. I'd like to say it starts at 7 pm EST but it started earlier. The boys from South Africa, Tri-stemmet and Trijackel started when I woke up. I'm taking over the evening shift and they will probably take over again, once I go to bed. Global party, you gotta love it.

Today was the best swim session I've ever had and it was not based on speed, but on stroke. I focused on taking the least amount of strokes to get across 25 meters. I'm normally at 21 strokes. I watched a video about swimming from a nobody. Some kid marine name JimmyDShea. For some reason his video got through to me. It was one of those ah ha moments. I ended up doing most all of my laps with 17 strokes from one end to the other. My best was 14 strokes and I did 15 strokes a couple of times.

I finally think I understand technique. For most of the swim I was using my hips to thrust from. It felt so effortless and I was passing people in all the lanes beside me. However, they were slow and with any stroke I would have passed them. Just to be clear. Ha ha.

After the swim I had a meeting at work and then left early. I had my friend, Gord Brauer, from Winnipeg coming to visit and I couldn't wait to catch up and have beers with him. I met Gord at the Morden Tinman Triathlon over 20 years ago. He was behind me in the registration line and we started chatting.

Gord's claim to fame is that he says he is God's gift to women in the bedroom. Gord hasn't had a girlfriend in a while and at 46 years old has never been married. It was good to hear that Gord now has a regular girl friend and he's now getting laid regularly. I told Gord he had to leave because I was having a Twitter Party. Just kidding, he had a Toronto Raptor's NBA game to go to.

For the rest of the night it's the Twitter Christmas Party and Jamie's coming by to pick my brain on some Internet stuff. I also think my daughter may be bringing her boyfriend by to meet Alice and I for the first time. I hope I'm not too drunk when he gets here.

Oh, and one last thing. I calculated that I spent $10,802.27 on triathlons last year. Not including travel. Which works out to .96 cents per km or $1.54 per mile of training. The only household expense we spend more on was groceries.

Swim - 1:07:23 / 3050 meters.

22

Can hardly wait until Drink day ...

I can hardly wait until tomorrow. I've made Friday nights my official "beer and eat anything day". In a way it's kinda cool because all week I'm waiting in anticipation of cracking that first of many beers after a long week of work and training. It feels like I'm back in High School, doing school work during the week and partying on Friday night. I can't believe it's taken me this long to come up with this simple routine.

For this Friday, my plan is to leave work early and Gord Brauer, an old buddy from Winnipeg is coming to visit in the afternoon. Then at 7 pm it's the online Twitter Christmas party. I'll be sitting a the home bar with Alice, having cocktails, watching Tiger get beat up on TV, listening to 70's music and twittering. I can hardly wait.

On the Gift front, I guess I better get my butt in gear and pick up Alice's Birthday and Christmas presents. Her birthday is next Tuesday. I already picked up MY Christmas presents and then gave them to Alice and she wrapped them last night. I can hardly wait to open my presents. I hope I got Sable goggles and a Swim MP3 player. Haha.

As strange as it sounds, since moving to Ontario we have never put presents under the tree. Until this year, we've always travelled back to Winnipeg for Christmas and had the presents boxed and shipped. This year we decided not to go back to Winnipeg and for the first time, we put the presents under the tree. Every day Reid sits beside the tree trying to figure out what his presents are. At 13 years old, it's the first time he's been able to do this and it's adding to the Christmas experience.

Last night he was even on the phone to a friend of his and was giving his friend the dimensions and weight of each of the presents and they were collectively trying to figure out what they were. Reid figured out what one of the presents was and when I asked him how he knows what it is, he pulled up the item up on the Internet and showed me a slight ridge on the top of the box and he could ever so slightly feel the ridge through the paper. To watch him get all excited and try and guess what he's getting for Christmas is worth not going back to Winnipeg this year.

At lunch time I did some weight training and then went to the Apple store to pick up my computer. My hard drive broke and they replaced it. The only hitch was that when I got home and went to back up the old data on the new hard drive, I found out that I didn't set up the back up system correctly and realized the last time I backed up the system was Nov 8, 2008. Doh!

For the rest of the night I was on the phone with Apple and had to re-load all the software I bought since Nov 8th, 2008. While it was loading, I went for my Tempo run. What a difference a couple days make. On Tuesday I thought I lost my running speed and then today I have one of the best tempo runs I've had in a long time. It was very tough for me to get my heart rate up to the 143 bpm maximum. Two day's ago my legs were flat and sore, today they felt fresh and energized.

The only thing I can think of that I'm doing differently is taking some fish and flaxseed oils and whey protein after the workout, which is around 9 - 10 pm. I've heard that taking whey protein before bed helps the body generate healing growth hormone while you sleep. I'm not sure if that's it, but something is working. For the past two day's I've felt great. Come to think of it, I've also had an apple as a snack on Tuesday and Wednesday night.

Weights - 30:00

Tempo Run - 55:18 / 6.92 miles / 7:58 pace / 140 avg hr

Diet 6.5/10

Drumroll please...

I finally mustered up the courage to step on the scale this morning. It's been just over a week of Ironman training and I figured that would help to lessen the blow. I ended up weighing 185.2 lbs with a 22.2 BMI. Whew!!! It's absolutely terrible, but at least I'm not 186 lbs or above. I'm sure I was over 186 lbs last week.

There's nothing more depressing and motivating than stepping on the scale and seeing your weight up higher than normal. Last year I was in the 180 - 183 lb range for the racing season and when I did the Louisville Ironman in 2008, I got down to 178 lbs. Although, in 2008 I did get help from having my tonsils out and not being able to eat for a couple weeks.

The one thing I've learnt is that exercise alone will not cause significant weight loss. Even if your training 20 hours plus a week. The only guaranteed way to lose weight is through diet. Eating healthy is harder for me than doing excessive training. My goal is to get down to 172 lbs or less, which means I need to lose 13 lbs in the next 13 weeks.

I feel more motivated than ever. I want to be 100% ready for China and qualify for Hawaii and I know the less I weigh the better my chances. Also, for vanity reasons, I don't want to train hard and not look great in the mirror. If I'm going to train hard for 14 weeks, I may as well try not to sabotage myself with poor eating.

Yesterday I went for an interview with a new Doctor. The existing one I have, which I've been seeing for a couple months, I don't feel comfortable with. He's new to the country and I found communication between the two of us was poor. I didn't get the warm fuzzes when he was asking me the meanings of phrases and talking to me in an aggressive middle eastern tone. Most importantly, I'm looking for a Doctor who is well connected if I every require a specialist referral.

I liked the new Doctor I interviewed with. He's very young, just out of school and very eager. He joined a group that is very well connected and he's one of the only doctors I know that delivers babies (not that I think I'm going to become pregnant anytime soon) and admits and visits patients in the hospital. I liked the fact he believes in preventative medicine and we are going to do regular yearly physicals with a whole battery of blood work tests.

I also talked to him about immunizations for Ironman China. Not only is he doing the regular ones, but he asked where in China I'll be going and will do some research to see what other immunizations may be required. While I was there I decided to get the H1N1 vaccine shot. Better safe than sorry. Later that night I could hardly lift my arm, my shoulder felt like I was hit with a baseball bat. The nurse told me that would happen and would last a day or two. It felt worse than after John Barclay and I arm wrestled.

Tonight's training was a tempo ride. I wasn't looking forward to it because I knew it would hurt. I put it off until after I had dinner and an hour long nap. In order to keep my heart rate near the 143 maximum, I need to push it pretty hard, which I did, and I have the sweat to show for it. Right now my cycling feels very strong. Although it's tough to be 100% sure because I'm riding indoors.

Tempo Bike - 1:30:11 / 52.59 km / 34.9 kph / 136 avg hr

Diet 6.75/10

Twitter Online Christmas party...

On Friday, December 18, starting at 7 pm EST. David Kerr (@djkerr73) and I (@brybrarobry) are hosting a twitter online Christmas Party. Everyone is welcome to attend. BYOB and food. We have categorized it under #tweetxmas. We've never heard of a Twitter Christmas Party before and this may be the first. We don't know what to expect. This will be the one night of the year that you will be able to drink and tweet with drunken abandon.

The one thing we do know for sure is that drinking and driving shouldn't be a problem. To make it more fun, you may want to have a camera in hand. We can take pictures of ourselves enjoying our Christmas Cheer and post them. Another idea may be to post some Christmas songs or You Tube videos.

You may also want to give gifts. I'm thinking of giving cars, houses, boats and many more very expensive gifts. Of course they are only a link, but it's the thought that counts. Or we may want to line up a few shots and salute each other. Who knows? Maybe you have some better ideas or come up with some more as the party progresses. All I know is ideas flow as the booze flows.

If your interested joining the party, post your Twitter name and RSVP at #tweetxmas. From there you may want to make a list of all the participants to follow that night. For every tweet you make that night, you may also want to include #tweetxmas. Please feel free to Re Tweet this link to all your friends and get them into the Christmas spirit.

There has been some questions about nudity. Some people want to know if it's okay to sit on the photo copier, etc. Nudity will be allowed, but the rule is you have to be female and hot. If your not hot, you can post, but please wait until after midnight. By that time we should be able to drink you hot.

Now, back to today's training. I did my long swim session at lunch time. Swimming is tough. It's so easy to lose your technique. I did about 400 meters of drills which seemed to help. My main workout was 4 x 600 meters. My best was at a 1:48.5 pace per 100 for the entire 600 meters. I was happy with that, but still have lots of work to do in the pool. I'm really committed to trying to become a better swimmer. I'm still only doing 6 km per week, but as it gets closer to China, I'll up the mileage. But for now, two workouts a week seem to be working for me, I'm getting better and it's preventing burnout.

Between 4 pm - 7:30 pm I can't stop eating, I'm an eating monster. I did a moderate run tonight with a full stomach, lots of meat pie and cereal. I put on a second skin bandage over my blistered heel and was out the door. After 250 meters I my foot hurt so bad I had to turn around and go back home. I had a decision to make, do I not run and let my blister heal or do I run with my old shoes. I chose the later.

Overall, my run sucked! I can't remember the last time I've run so slow. Last year this time I was running 30 - 40 seconds faster per mile. I'm wondering if it's because I've really only had 2.5 - 3 weeks of rest. Last year I did half the training for around 5 months. I guess it really doesn't matter, I have to train for China, so I am where I am. Next year I'll focus on taking taking it easier for 4 - 5 months. Today, even running so slow, I could feel the lactic acid in the quads.

All I can do is to try and eat well, lose some weight and keep up with my sleep. I got a suggestion on my blog about wearing compression tights to bed in order to help my legs recover. I think I'm going to try it. It sure would be nice to be able to get up and go to the washroom or walk down the stairs without shuffling.

Long Swim - 1:03:35 / 3000 meter.

Mod Run - 1:20:45 / 9:22 miles / 8:45 pace / 135 avg hr

Diet 6.5/10

Interesting shape for Christmas lights. Next year on my house?

Books Delivered...

Another Monday of Ironman training, weights and then a moderate bike. I find the week flies by when I'm training. I know what training session I'm doing every day. The only thing that changes is the length of time for each workout. It took me about 18 months to come up with the ideal routine that fits my lifestyle.

My training routine is as follows:

Monday - Weights / mod bike

Tuesday - Long swim / mod run

Wednesday - Tempo (speed) Bike

Thursday - Weights / Tempo (speed) Run

Friday - Tempo (speed) Swim

Saturday - Long Ride & any brick runs

Sunday - Long Run / optional mod swim

Today I was pleasantly surprised to see my book, "From Louisville to Clearwater" had arrived. It looks like my making of a book is becoming a yearly tradition. What I do is take all my blog entries, including the photo's, and make a book from them. Then I order 3 copies. One for each of my kids and one for my Mom. The book looked great. It's 440 pages, all color, and the size of a college text book. All for only $95 per book.

The amazing thing is that it's fairly easy to create a book from a blog. I used Blurb and they have some software called Slurp that automatically takes all the entries and flows them into a book format. From there you can choose page layout templates and adjust the page design. The first year it took a few months to lay it out, this year it only took me 20 hours.

I did weights at lunch and rode my bike after dinner. My legs were telling me they didn't want to ride today. After all, they just came off a 5 hour 15 minute ride on Saturday and a 2 hour run on Sunday. Now I was asking them to do 2.5 hours tonight. I could feel my legs were flat during weight training.

The one thing I've learnt is "not to think about training, just do it". Rather than listen to my tired legs, I changed into my cycling clothes, got my water bottles filled, set up my computer and got on my bike and just started riding. My legs were tired and flat, but I pushed through. For me, the first 90 minutes are the hardest.

For some reason, after 90 minutes my legs get stronger and I mentally get into a zone. For the first 90 minutes I was working to keep it near 30 kph. Then the last hour I'm cranking it around 33 - 34 kph at 90-95 rpm and feeling strong. Tonight, before the ride, I ate a lot of food. Alice made chicken for dinner and I snacked on a couple bowls of Raisin Bran, one bowl before dinner and one bowl after dinner.

In order to help get my body into fat burning mode, this morning I started taking fish oils and flax seed oils. Tomorrow I need to pick up some Borage Oil. Borage Oil is something Mark Allen recommended to me when my fat burning system isn't working. It helps kick start it.

Three things can shut down your fat burning system. The first is alcohol, the second is refined sugar and the third is training anaerobic. For me the first two are my problems. When I drink or eat poorly, it takes a couple days to get my fat burning working again. That's why I'm going to get the Borage Oil, I want to focus on keeping my fat burning system working and I'm hoping the Borage Oil can get it back on track as quickly as possible. Especially after drinking and eating poorly.

Weights - 30:00

Mod Bike - 2:30:06 / 77.23 /30.8 kph / 128 avg hr

I made it through the first week of Ironman China training...

I put 208 miles (336 km's) in the training log for the first week. It was nice to get this first week behind me. To be honest I was a little concerned at the beginning of the week. The main question was "do I have what it takes to get through this first week of Ironman training?". After all it has been over a year since I did Ironman training.

What freaked me out the most was Doru's comment about his calculations that my first week would be approximately 19 hours of training. I've never looked at it that way. I'm normally a rear view mirror guy. I like counting the hours after I do them. I like taking it day by day. If you do the days, the weeks take care of themselves. When I heard 19 hours, that seemed like a lot. It was intimidating. Was I going to be able to do it?

The first couple day's of the week I was dead tired. Every day after dinner and before a training session, I had a nap. A couple of people said I looked tired and pale. Although it did feel good to be back into a training routine. It also got me off the computer and back into a Zen like state.

Some of the first weeks highlights were:

- a couple of good swim sessions where I started improving my technique.

- a pair of new runners arriving.

- a blister starting from running.

- a slight bonk after Wednesday's 90 minute ride.

- having to eat after 8 pm. My workouts are later and my body craved food.

- being light headed for the first 4 days of the week when I'd stand up from sitting.

- Having a relatively good week of eating and keeping to my plan of only one day of drinking.

- Setting an indoor record for the amount of time on the trainer at 5:15 and over 100 miles.

- Finishing the week without missing a workout and my legs feeling relatively fresh

One of the areas I need to focus on is my diet. I need to lose weight. I haven't weighed myself but I'm definitely not under 180 lbs. I can see it in the mirror and my pants are a little tight. My runs have been slower and I'm not sure if it is from overworked legs or carrying heavier weight. When I took my jersey off for the last hour of my bike ride I saw too many bulges.

I also need to focus on getting my fat burning system working more efficiently. I'm going to be much more diligent in making sure I keep my heart rate lower. I've got to look at these first 6 weeks as base building and just get through the workouts with a low heart rate and easy pace.

The toughest part has been getting up in the morning. I feel like an old man. My legs are so stiff until I get moving, which takes about 30 minutes. Walking down the stairs is comedy. One stair at a time gripping on to the hand rails. I can't remember the last time I woke up with normal feeling legs.

This morning I woke up after a beautiful 9.5 hour sleep and didn't know what day it was, which confirms I had a great sleep. I finally realized it was Sunday because I hadn't yet done my long run. I was so excited that I hadn't done my long run. I felt doing a long run was more enjoyable than having to go to work. How sick is that?

Today's run was much slower than past long runs. It's been about 3 weeks since my last long run. My heart rate maximum has been increased by the coaches to 143 bpm from 140 bpm. I was hoping I'd go faster because I can take my heart rate higher. When I went slower at a higher heart rate it was a little depressing. I decided to do my hilly run route. Why do easy mileage? I don't want any regrets when racing in China. By the 9 mile point my blister was really bothering me.

Before I left the house I put a blister bandage on the heel of my foot and took extra bandages with me just in case I needed them. Which I did. I put on a second one and it helped a bit. I ran through the pain. I had the option to call Alice to pick me up but decided against it. I figured I'd rather get the blister, let it heal and get it over with. It was a "suck it up" moment.

Long Run - 1:59:04 / 14.16 miles / 8:24 pace / 141 avg hr

First ever Century ride indoors on a trainer...

Yesterday, I decided to make it my "eat and drink anything day". My plan is to do 6 days of good eating and one day of eat and drink anything. I think it makes sense to make my "eat and drinking anything day" on Friday's. It gives me a chance to carbo load for my Saturday long bike rides.

Yesterday was "pizza and beer" carbo loading. I was a good boy, I only had 8 beers and most of one large Domino's thin crust vege pizza. I also had some wings and Christmas chocolates. All with no guilt.

I was and wasn't looking forward to today's scheduled 5 hour and 15 minute bike ride. My hope was that it wouldn't feel too bad. However, I was worried that it would be unbearable mentally. I wanted to get up early to get it over with, but opted to wake up when I felt fully rested using no alarm.

I got up at 8:30 am and had a decent sized breakfast. I prepared everything for my ride. I had my computer set up, TV on, newspaper and Sirius satellite radio. It was mentally hard from the beginning, I felt irritable. I took a picture of myself at the 1 hour and 20 minutes, at which point I felt like I was on the bike for 4 hours. I started asking myself "why am I doing this again". All the pain of doing an Ironman came back to me. Although I wasn't going to allow myself to quit.

I was getting frustrated about my speedometer again. I changed the battery and it worked well for about an hour and then started screwing up again. I changed the tension on the roller to the middle and for some reason it started giving accurate readings. Later on in the ride I had the problem again and accidentally realized it was because the sensors were getting wet from the sweat. When I wiped it dry, it started to work perfectly.

A key turning point of the ride was when I started watching Lance on YouTube. It was inspiring and instantly my cadence and speed improved. For the next two hours my brain got in the zone and time seemed to be moving quicker. At the three hour mark I was getting hungry, so I got off the bike for 5 minutes and ate a bowl of Special K. Which lately seems to be my Special friend.

From the 4.5 hour point to finish, time was moving slow. My legs were working and my heart rate was starting to fall below 130 bpm. I wanted to keep it around 134 bpm and forced myself to increase the pace and resistance. Johan Stemmet was twittering me encouragement and at the 30 minute to go point, sent me a tweet. He said "half a hour to go, Push, Push, Push", it was exactly what I said to myself 30 seconds earlier.

With 15 minutes to go I got a comment on my blog from Judymac in France. The first paragraph said:

Hi Bryan, I just want to thank you, you have been a real inspiration to me. Each Sunday I sit down and watch your Training Payne video and sing along. The rest of the week is Triathlon training :)

It's funny, she said I inspired her and her comment couldn't have come at a better time. It inspired me to finish the last 15 minutes mentally and physically strong. It was a godsend. It's funny she mentioned about my video. At the 2 hour point of the ride I watched my Vlog from Monday, which had see saying my number one goal is to "qualify in China for Hawaii". Watching that helped me mentally.

My ride was scheduled for 5:15 and it turned out it was just enough time to do just over 100 miles. It was my first Century ride of the year and my first Century ever indoors on a trainer. It was also my longest ever ride indoors by 75 minutes. Afterwards I felt great. I was shocked. I had a hot shower and asked Alice if she had any errands we needed to run. I was ready to go!

Lastly, I was sweating a LOT on this ride. Two pairs of socks, two towels and my jersey were completely soaked. When I picked them up to put them in the wash, they felt like they weighed 10 lbs. Before I stared my ride, I was going to set up a fan and open the patio door slightly to allow the cold air in, but decided against it. I figured not having them would be better to help me acclimatize for China.

Today, what got me through the ride the most, was listening to Howard Stern. Only 13 more weeks of indoor long rides until China.

Long Bike - 5:15:00 / 162.22 km / 30.9 kph / 130 avg hr

Pulsing in the water....

I decided to wear my heart rate monitor during my swim today. I haven't worn a heart rate monitor during swim training for over a year. The reason is because I could never get my heart rate up over my aerobic threshold during any swims and figured it wasn't worth bothering to wear.

The only time I could get my heart rate up in the water was during a triathlon, and even then it would only get to the low 140's. I'd ask good swimmers if they could get their heart rates up when swimming and all of them told me "Yes" and that it wasn't uncommon for them to get up into the 170's. I was blown away and wondered why I could never do the same.

After implementing what I learnt at Saturday's swim clinic during Monday's swim, I decided I was going to wear my heart rate monitor for today's tempo swim and see if my heart rate would be the same or higher than it was previously. I was blown away, it was MUCH higher.

First off, my stroke is better and I'm going much faster. I did 6 x 100 meters and my fastest was 1:32 and my slowest was 1:34. The only problem was that I was not supposed to exceed 143 bpm and to do those times my heart rate was in the 150's. I've never even come close to having it that high in the pool, it blew me away.

I thought I did the entire session and looked at my watch and noticed that the finish time didn't jive. I recalled the laps and realized I didn't do two of the 100 meters at a hard pace. So I went back and did them. The last 100 meters was at the 2850 meter point of my swim and I still did it in 1:38, but my heart rate shot up to 168 bpm. I don't even get it that high on the bike and rarely when I run. To keep it at the 143 or lower, I'm going to have to swim much slower.

I noticed as the swim went on and especially on the hard effort sets, I started to lose my form. I'm certain that by reducing my effort to keep my heart rate in the zone I'll be able to focus on keeping my form for the entire workout. I can now confidently say I'm starting to improve my swim technique, the increased heart rate, sore upper body and faster times prove it.

I remember when I belonged to the Burlington Masters Club, the coach said something along the lines that getting faster requires you to go outside of your comfort zone. It was a statement that resonated with me because up until now, I never saw myself pushing it in the water. To me, swimming was a necessary evil and in races I just wanted feel confident in the water and finish without being too tired. Now that has all changed.

I'm doing two things I've never done before. I'm extending my arms far in front of me, which in the past, I've been afraid to do. I didn't think my body had the flexibility or strength to do it and I was mentally afraid of the pain. The second thing is I'm now prepared to go hard, into the "pain" zone.

Even during the swim, part of my arms were getting sore during the pulling drills. One of the guys in the lane beside me commented that I'm a fast swimmer. I replied " I am today!". I felt like a real swimmer. I loved Monday's swim, but this one felt even better!!!

I've never felt so good about a swim workout before. I felt like I did more than just putting in my swim time. It was challenging workout and I felt I was making some progress. My arms and lats were even a little sore. I'm also starting to understand why long swims can be beneficial.

Something I think about is my PFG buddy Carlos working on his bike speed. He is an awesome swimmer and cycling is something he wants to improve on. He would say it's hard for him to get his heart rate up on the bike and I'd say I have no problem.

Then I'd say I have a hard time getting my heart rate up in the pool and he'd say he has no problem. I think the difference is that I've learnt how to go into the "pain" zone on the bike, but not in the swim and he's learnt how to go into the "pain" zone in the swim and not the bike. It's obvious that I need to break that mental barrier and learn to love "hurting" in the water.

I've done it on the bike with the wind. I used to hate the wind, but then kept telling myself "I love the wind, the wind is my friend, I love the wind, the wind is my friend". Every time I'd ride into a wind, I'd say this over and over and then eventually, after a few years, I started to believe it. Now I can enjoy cycling directly into a head wind. My buddy Dale Dersken, who was an awesome cyclist in Winnipeg, taught me that technique.

It also reminds me of a something I heard from Steve Forbes young daughter. Her father was running for President and she was asked if she liked campaigning and her answer was, "like my Daddy says, either you like it, or you learn to like it". Words to live by.

Tempo Swim - 1:08:33 / 3000 meters

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