New Year, New Beginnings...

Today, December 1st, is the start of my 2010 Triathlon Season. It seems like the perfect time. It's only 9 days after my birthday and the 2009 triathlon season pretty much ends by the end of November.

Yesterday I wasted no time in taking my blog entries and making a book out of them using Blurb.com. Last year it took me weeks and weeks of work to layout my book, easily 100 hours plus. It was the first one I ever did.

This year I prepared my blog entries slightly different so I could better use the layout automation software. I started yesterday and finished tonight. It only took 20 hours to complete the book and I can probably get it down to 12 hours next year with a few more adjustments. Not bad for laying out 440 pages and over 700 photos.

However, throughout the year, the writing probably took me, on average, an hour a post. I figured to complete the entire book, which would include writing, photography and layout, it took me at least 400 hours total. I will say that those last 20 hours of doing the layout was the hardest. I became so irritable at the end because the page layout software was going so slow due to the volume of images. But I'm now done and can relax and mentally prepare for next season's training, which starts next Monday. Hurray!!!!

2009 / 2010 Goals...

I loved Mike's blog entry about his BHAG's (Big Hairy Ass Goals) and what's more natural than setting goals at the beginning of the year. So here are my goals for this year.

Triathlon & Running

1. Finish Ironman China & Ironman Lake Placid

2. Qualify for and finish the Hawaii Ironman. (I'm old school, can't get used to the word Kona).

3. Get my weight down to 172 lbs or less at the start line for all Ironman races this year.

4. Do NYC marathon in less that 3:07:57, which would beat a PB I set in my 20's and qualify me for Boston

Physical Health - This is a tough one. This list is BHAG's for me.

1. Limit drinking to just 30 beers per month. (Last year I averaged 118 per month). This was a hard number to determine, I wanted to say 20, but gave myself a buffer. 30 is still a BHAG for me. Baby steps, baby steps.

2. For 6 days a week - no deep fried foods, no fast food, no junk food, no chocolate, no beer and no eating anything past 8 pm.

3. Get to bed before 2 am on weekends

Mental Health

1. Training is number one priority over everything else, except family.

2. Limit non work related Internet searching, blogging & twittering to 1 hour per day. (Unless I'm training indoors on bike at the same time). Alice and the kids bug me about the time I spend on the computer, so I'll spend more time chillin with them and watching TV.

3. If I ever start feeling burnt out, I'm going to reduce activities to the bare minimum, just focus on training, core work functions and a short blog entry.

It looks like I'm going to start this year off with a slight injury, thanks to John Barclay's arm wrestling match with me. I feel like I have "frozen shoulder" and there is discomfort when I make a swim stroke motion. Aw, the joy's of excessive beer drinking, acting like a teenager (John's words) and feeling like superman!

I'll be able to test the shoulder out this week when John and I go to a swim clinic at McMasters. Best part is it's a full day workshop and only $100. I'm looking forward to it because they're going to video tape us underwater and then review it with us and give pointers. I sure hope my shoulder is okay to perform my normal, under-performing swim stroke.

Once a month I want to share some stats about my blog. Last month I had 2542 hits, with 755 unique visitors and it's growing at 61% per month. Just from gut feel, I think the followers are primarily 90% male, between 30 - 50 years old, still kids at heart, previous fat guys or working on being becoming previous fat guys, family guys, like beer, are either in sales, business, teaching, IT, are Ironman or aspiring to be an Ironman, and all round good guys. Feel free to post a comment about "who you are", I'd like to see if I'm right.

For the women, which I don't think their is very many, all I can figure out is that they're not "girlie girl" types or they wouldn't be coming back. Top 5 visits come from, in order from highest; Canada, US, UK, South Africa and Croatia. In Canada, the most visits come from Winnipeg, closely followed by Oakville.

I just finished my 2008/2009 Training Payne book, it's called "From Louisville to Clearwater". I calculated my training totals since I began in April 2007. I've often told people I do not have a natural talent for triathlons. If you do well, people often think you have natural talent. In my case, the numbers support my "I just train a lot" theory. The totals surprised me.

Easy Run - 33:44 / 3.68 miles / 9:10 pace /123 avg hr

Since April 2007 my totals to date are as follows:

Swim - 661.62 km

Bike - 22,605.46 km

Run - 5,521.73 km

Totals 28,788.76 km

Calories burnt 1,172,403

Beers -3859.75

Training Payne...

By Brybrarobry

Book Preview