On the blog front, I’m playing with a cleaner look to the site, and eliminating some of the extra widgets.  More work to come.

Swim: 14:01
T1: 2:47
Bike: 50:57
T2: 1:18
Run: 25:58

1:35:01

8/26 A/G, 48/289 O/A

Signed up at the last minute simply to “do a race” and shake of the last of the grad school rust. Goals were to go hard, stay on the gas the entire race and see what happened. And thats what I did. I feel pretty darn good about the results, given minimal run speed work, no planned speed work on the bike, and limited swimming. I was confident that I could have a good race, as this past week I had some nice snap in my bike & run, with a breakthrough brick on Wed.

The race: Well run event. Competitor Group has taken over the SBR series and this was the inaugural year. Well organized setup, plenty of parking, nice venue, plenty of helpful volunteers. They lose points for not having the bathrooms open right away, but that may have been the state park employees. Live band, huge breakfast burritos, and free Red Hook beer after the race (but none for me).

Swim – I was in the third, and smallest wave (nice!). I opted for no wetsuit as the water was warm, and it was only an 800m swim. Course was out and back, but the challenge was all the lake grass. The first two waves chopped up the stuff so it was like swimming in Miso Soup. I had to slow up a couple of times to pull the crap out of my goggles, and untangle my hands and arms.

T1 was faffing about with my Garmin and socks. Next time I race a sprint, I leave both at home.

Bike – the course was a long out-&-back, then a short out-&-back. Up a hill, then down a hill. Lather, rinse, repeat. My race plan said “if you are not in pain, you aren’t moving fast enough” so I pushed and pushed. I flew by a ton of people, and only got passed by two or three. I’ve been trying to improve my descending as well, and that really helped on this course.

T2 faffing with the Garmin cost me here too… WTF is wrong with me?

Run – out on a “trail” that used to be a paved path, but was pretty degraded. Started climbing almost right out of the gate, and kept going mostly up until the turnaround. Splits reflect the course: 9:04, 8:29, 7:52.

I got chicked around 2 miles by a 45-49 AG woman (she blistered the uphills), but held off all others in my A/G until less than 400m from the finish where I got passed by two guys flying past me. At that point I was calling down to Scotty for more power, but the silly engineer was out on a break or something ’cause he never returned my call.

Lessons learned: Poor transitions cost me at least two A/G spots. That’s a lesson that stings a bit, but it’s easily fixable. My run needs improvement but it’s come a long way in just a couple of months of effort.

One more thing. It really feels great to write a race report again.

As you can probably tell, now that my school work is complete, I’m looking for things to do with all of my new found “free time”.

So the resolutions went on hiatus while I sorted out schedules and fought off bronchitis.  But I think I’m back on track starting this week.  I’ve created a 2xday/6 day week workout routine and a homework schedule that should keep me on track.  I’ve managed to hit at least one workout this week, and hit two workouts today.  It’s tough getting back on the fitness wagon, since I’m essentially starting over.  I need to continually remind myself that I’ll need time to get back to the shape I want.  Patience isn’t my strong suit, but I do have experience on my side.  I’m keeping my eyes on the prize!

I’m also cleaning up my diet and cleaning out the fridge and pantry.  I’ve given up the O’Doul’s since all it was doing was adding 70 empty calories to my diet.  I’ve got better things to do with 70 calories.  Giving up the chocolate, cheese and other goodies will be harder, but I’m not buying the stuff any longer.  Keeping the stuff out of the house is key to resisting temptation.  It plays on my inertia, since I’m too lazy to run out and buy more crap food when I’m craving something .  I’m trying to get dinner finished by 7:00 or 7:30 and not eating for the rest of the evening.  I’m finding that a cup of herbal tea with a touch of honey is just the ticket when I’m peckish at night.

I’m now creating metrics that I can maintain and publish.  I’m measuring weight and body fat percentage on the Tanita.  I’ll be running monthly 5k’s for time, and tracking key CrossFit lifts and tests.  At first I’ll just drop them on the ol’ blog but I’ll be looking at various training tools (Training Peaks, Daily Mile, Buckeye Outdoors etc) to see if one fits most of my needs.

1. I will hit 80% of my planned workouts – I can strive to hit 100%, I know that life is dynamic and stuff happens, so I’m not going to worry about missing 20%.  I’ve reactivated my YMCA membership, and will continue CrossFit, just so I have plenty of options for training.
2. I’m sticking to my paleo diet 80% of the time.  - Giving up cheese is going to be harder than giving up alcohol.
3. I will blog at least 3x per month.  I’m not sure what I’m going to write about, but I know that I need to write more.
4. I will do the GTD weekly review at least 3 times each month.

All of these fit into my main goal of “more life, less TV”

The MAFW picnic rides were cancelled today due to rain.  I was really looking forward to my first brick workout in a long, long time and was pretty disappointed when the rides were cancelled.  On the way home I suddenly realized that Ironman Wisconsin was going on today, so I decided to do an “indoor brick” on the CompuTrainer and the treadmill.  When I pulled the tri bike off the hooks in the basement I noticed that it still has the IMWI and Tri-Bike Transport stickers on the frame, both tires were completely flat and the bike was covered in a thick layer of dust.  I don’t think I’ve been on that bike since the race.  So I pumped up the tires, and loaded up the IMWI course on the CompuTrainer.  I also noticed that the workout room had cobwebs hanging from the corners and most of the light fixtures.  I supposed that was fitting as my workout room and my body appear to be in the same shape.

I rode for an hour at a nice aerobic pace, then hopped on the treadmill for a planned 20 min run.  After about 13 minutes the achilles started to ached so I cut the run short (15 min).  It’s a long way from being Iron Fit, but I’ve dusted off the cobwebs, literally and figuratively.

I’m also hoping that my shock/fork will come back from Push Industries soon. Conditions were excellent this week for winter MTB. I don’t want to pass up more great opportunities for off-road, off-season riding.

School started back up yesterday. Two management classes this semester. Leadership in Technical Teams, and Strategic Planning. Both instructors are very engaging and are leaders in their field, the texts look pretty good and our classes are now split up into two smaller groups. Our team was adjusted a bit. There are three original team members and one new Spring 2010 student joined our group. So now we have two women and two men in our group, and appears to be a solid group.