New motivation..

Alice, Alyssa and Reid were looking forward to going back home to Winnipeg for my brothers wedding. He's now postponed the wedding and they were disappointed and thought we should go anyway. I didn't really want to go, but when I mentioned if we did go back mid July I could do the Morden Half Ironman. They jumped at it and happily said "sure no problem, that would work out great". I've never heard them be so excited about me wanting to do a race. 

The Morden Tinman, which is now called the Cornman (I much preferred the name Tinman), was the first triathlon I ever did. It was in 1986 and I was 19 years old. I think I've done that race 5 - 7 times, I've lost count, but the last one I did was exactly 10 years ago in 1999 at 33 years old, I was out of shape and it was my slowest at 6:21. 

During yesterday's training I had a spring in my step due to this new found motivation to train hard and do well. Winnipeg is a fairly small triathlon community and is nowhere close to as large as Ontario. I would have a really good chance to place in the top 3 overall based on last years results. The Cornman only allows 100 competitors, it is a small race. It would be special to do it and see how the coarse would feel racing it in a well trained state. It would be a home coming of sorts. Plus Davis Sohor is doing his first HIM there and it would be fun to be in the field with him, like I was with his Dad back in 1986.

I tried to get up at 6:30 am to run before work but I was too tired and my legs were pretty sore. Actually all day they were sore but I knew I'd have to run through the pain because those are the workouts that really help you improve. 

At noon I took my bike to Endurosport to have it fitted again. I explained all the problems; sore upper back, lack of handle bar control, blister on heel of hand and the ball of foot pain. For about 1.5 hours, Scott Malone, an ex-professional triathlete fitted me. He was really good and made some major changes, specifically with the handlebars; raising and widening them and we kept the seat higher and far back. He raised the bars so much that he had to replace all the cables so I had a full turning radius. The other guy that fitted me had me in a much more aggressive position that was more suited for Olympic distance racing. Bike fitting is somewhat of an art and I expect I may have to go back for more adjustments. I'm looking forward to tomorrows ride to test it. He also rewired my speedometer for no cost and now it seems to be working well, which saved me $60 if I had to replace it.

After dinner I did my tempo run and felt much better than last week when I had my killer salad stomach problem. It was 13 C and the first time this year I ran in only a t-shirt and shorts. Afterwards I hit the pool. It had been a week since I last swam and as surprisingly I didn't slow down that much, maybe a couple of seconds per 100 meters. As I was swimming, a guy didn't realize we were not swimming in circles and swam head first in me. I didn't feel it too much at the time and I could tell it hurt him, he couldn't stop rubbing his head. My Dad's always told me that me and my brother are "hard headed". It felt good to get in the pool and for the first time my arms got lactic acid build up and I pushed through it. For those brief moments it started to put me in a zen like state, similar to running, except on the run the sensation goes on for virtually the entire run because I don't let up.

One of the highlights of the day was receiving the April Issue of Graphic Monthly Canada and seeing myself on the cover. I was surprised and flattered that they asked me to do it and joked to them that everyone else must have turned them down. 

Tempo Run - 50:50 / 6.87 miles / 7:22 pace / 139 avg HR

Swim - 1:08:28 / 3000 meters