Dreaming of the Morden Tinman...

We got to bed pretty early, especially for a Saturday night. Since 3 pm yesterday afternoon we were at our neighbor Gilles surprise birthday party for a barbecue and beers. By the time we got home it was around 7 pm and whenever you start drinking in the afternoon you tend to get tired early.

The one bad thing about having too many beers is that you lose your self control for food. At the party I didn't snack on any food and just had the chicken, steak and salad. I was so proud of myself. When I got home I found the Fathers Day Dairy Queen ice cream cake hidden at the bottom of the fridge. Of course I couldn't resist and Alice agreed to let me eat it. I ate about 2/3 of the cake and I blew my eating plan for the day. Too much beer, equals too little willpower. 

I got a whopping 10 hours of sleep. I needed it. Even with that I woke up and my legs and buttocks was a little sore. I'm not sure if it was from the 4 hour ride or getting back to doing weights on Friday. It was probably both.

Last night I had the weirdest dream. As you may know, my next race is in Morden Manitoba on July 11th, it's the oldest Half Ironman in Canada. It used to be called the Morden Tinman and now they changed the name to the Morden Cornman because that weekend is the town's Corn and Apple festival. I much preferred the name Tinman. It's a very small race by Ontario standards and they cap the race at 100 athletes. 

I'm really excited about this race for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that it is the first ever triathlon I did in my life and it is the race that I met my good friend, Rich Sohor, when we both ran off the not so well marked course together. I'm really excited to go back and do it again after 20 plus years and see if I can beat the times I set when I was in my late teens and early 20's. 

The second reason I'm excited to do it is that it is going to be Davis Sohor's first half Ironman ever. Davis is Rich's 21 year old son. Rich and I ran our first ever Half Ironman together and now Davis and I are going to do the same. I have a picture of Sharon Sohor pregnant with Davis as she watched Rich finish the race.

Alice is also looking forward to watch it and revisit it from a spectator perspective. Because there is only 100 athletes it is much easier to find me and they can drive the bike course in the car, take video and pictures, and cheer me on. One of my good friends, Gord Brauer, is also going to come out and watch and of course we will have a post race party afterwards. It will be a real homecoming event.

So last night I had a dream about being at Morden for the triathlon. It was a disaster. I got out of the water and when I got to the bike I realized I didn't have my contacts in. Then I couldn't find any of my gear, not even my prescription sunglasses. I couldn't find my bib. It turns out that I did no pre-race preparation and none of gear was set up properly. I even had to find my bike because it wasn't in the rack. I must have spent at least 10 minutes in the transition area looking for my stuff as other people, who were much less capable, were passing me and getting out on the road well ahead of me.

I ended up just having shoes and a helmet, but no water or food, and decided to race anyways. Then, just as I was getting momentum I came across a series of obstacles and got lost on the course because I wasn't prepared. I kept having to ask people to help me and my glasses were limiting my full vision. It was very frustrating because I wanted to make sure I had one of the best races of my life and here I was behind almost everyone. 

Then I woke up. Needless to say I got the message that I need to take this race seriously and be prepared. I'm definitely going to drive the course the night before, I'm going to check and double check my gear and I'm going to try and eat as well as I can for the next three weeks to get my weight down as low as possible. I'm starting to get some love handles again and being 4 - 5 lbs down will be helpful on race day. It's going to be hard to eat and limit my drinking because the weekend before we are going to one of the neighbors cottages.

Today is fathers day and we finally got some nice weather. It was 24 C and sunny when I went for my long run. It was the first long run I've done in almost 3 weeks and it felt good to do one. It was an okay run, the sun was hot and I was sweating a lot. I did the number one side road hills and had to walk at least 6 times to keep my heart rate down. For the last 2.5 miles it was impossible to keep it under 140 bpm. I think part of it was because I didn't drink or eat for the entire run.

For fathers day, Alyssa and Reid gave me some barbecue gloves and a devise that allows you to cook wieners without burning them, they hate burnt wieners. We went to a Frankie Tomatto's for dinner, Alyssa's choice. We made it a fathers day and Alyssa's finishing school with great marks celebration dinner. At the dinner we gave Alyssa a card that told her we deposited some money in her bank account as a gift. The restaurant was an awesome choice.

Long Run - 2:04:56 / 15.42 miles / 8.02 pace / 143 avg hr