A Decision, et. al.

Thanks for your advice and ideas everybody - I really appreciate your insights, and especially knowing "what you would do". As it is, I have been given clearance to race. Whahoo! Amy's two cents were similar to Bill's - the word dumbass may have even made another appearance. Ultimately, with advice in mind but through my own process, I've decided to go with the Sprint. Of course, big pieces of me wanted to do the Oly - hell, big pieces of me wanted to do the Half Iron, and I'm in no way ready for that - but I've been trying to assert some better training strategies lately that I'll take with me into Ironman training, and one of those is the mantra just because I can, doesn't mean I should. I was looking over my Garmin on Saturday after my workouts, and back to late April and May, when I had my last two runs before I got hurt. I ran 12 miles one Saturday, then 16 miles then next weekend, with nothing in between. And it ended in injury. Just because I could, doesn't mean I should have. And, I'm applying that philosophy to a lot of my base training that I've been doing the last few months - I'm doing a lot of speed and interval work, but I'm drawing a line, too. In the past I've had a tendency to race some of my training, instead of training to race. Pointless and fruitless. So anyway, with all that in mind, I think I would be physically and mentally prepared for the Olympic distance, and might even have done it well, but in the spirit of staying disciplined I decided to exercise some restraint and - dare I say - common sense, and do the mileage and intensity I've been training for. So - back to back Sprint weekends baby! Lake Geneva triathlon on the 8th, and then the Devil's Challenge on the 15th. The Lake Geneva has a shade longer bike - 17 miles compared to 15 - and I guess some kind of "famous killer hill" (so says the website for the race) on the run. I could not be looking forward to it more.

Some encouraging results this weekend - I have a secret dream (don't tell anybody about this), to crack a 7:00/mile average pace on the run in a Sprint triathlon, sometime, someday, some way. I seriously don't know if it's possible. I've been working the last few weeks on pacing myself through some shorter simulations - not the full 3 miles - to make it happen, but I've hit a wall each time. Saturday I had a 3x brick workout, where I was out 15 minutes as hard as possible on my bike, then a 1 mile run hard as I can. Rest 5 minutes, and repeat. The bike was so-so - I stayed right around 20mph for each interval, but it's hard to get into a serious rhythm in only 15 minutes, especially when you turn around at 7:30. But on the run, the first one I ran in 7:11 (and, thanks to the Mexican Fiesta the night before, felt friggin' horrible the whole time), the second one - now obviously getting more physically fatigued but feeling much better than the first go - I rocked a 6:59, and the 3rd run I was able to pull out 6:54. That's extremly fast for me. That puts my average of the three in the...what...7:05, 7:06 ballpark? Encouraging. This is my last week of hard training though before I mini-taper for the next 2 weeks' worth of races, so we'll see what happens.

Also this of note: My buddy Mike came to town this weekend, and we spent much of it putting together the baby's room and especially all the furniture. Good times, everything's really coming together. But, last night, I was putting together a bookshelf and had a piece lying on the ground, and there were - you know if you've ever put together furniture, there are those cam bolts, and then there are those screws that stick out that go into the cam bolts? No matter if you don't know what I mean, but there were these screws sticking out of a board that was lying on the ground - not the sharp ends sticking out (though these kinds of scews don't have sharp ends), but the drive ends sticking out - anyway, and I was (stupid alert) in bare feet and carefully stepped around stuff to retrieve a tool of some kind, and in my careful stepping I kind of slid my foot atop one of the screws and sliced my left foot, just underneath the big toe, on the ball of my foot. HURT. LIKE. HELL. So I have it dramatically bandaged up today, mostly for cushioning so that I can walk normally, as last night I was limping like a dandy and putting weight on the side of my foot and all things that if done with consistency would be begging for some kind of further stupid injury. The cut itself isn't terribly deep but it is painful, and probably it's good that I'm not running today. I think it'll be okay, I think (hope) it won't slow me down too much with the right protection on it. Though I can tell you that if I were doing Ironman in two weeks I'd be freaking out.

Okay, to work I get. My final $.02 chapter is coming up, as soon as I can manufacture the necessary time to get it done. Stay tuned, and thanks again everybody!