t minus 30 hours

its thursday and i have my race on sat. went out to the site today to registar and to have the pre race dinner. tomorrow i pick up my triathlon suit from the place putting the Bury + Partners logo on it and then head out to the site. not sure if i have a hotel room or will be camping i find that out tomorrow as well.

i am as ready as i am going to be at this point. should have trained more but everyone should have trained more. the big thing for tomorrow is to be out of the water in 1.5 hours. if i can get out of the water in an hour and fifteen minutes i will be exctatic.

thats really all there is, dont have anything profound to say, to nervouis and focused to say anything. saterday night i will or i wont be an Ironman, either check back and see how i did or check out the back of my neck for a tattoo then you will know.

bobby
Ironman?

o yeah its only a couple days away and im scared!

hear it is the 10th of September and i have 6 days until the Nations triathlon. its going to be a great race in downtown DC. its a mile swim 19 mile bike ride and 6 mile run. I'm hoping for 2.5 hour race. i figure ill finish around 3 hours. then i have two weeks to pray for a healthy race two weeks after when i attack and battle my Ironman. i have been training and i haven't been training. i do not feel prepared at all. i have three weeks right now and I'm basically scared shit less. this is a big monster that i am about to face. not only physically but emotionally as well. this has been six months of preparation and procrastination along with a life accomplishment that i need to meet. with the way things have been going i really need to succeed at this one accomplishment seeing as i have failed at so many other in the past year.

my writing is flat right now and i don't know how to get it back. i have no desire to write but at the same time want to do nothing but. i just cant get the brain to put the information down on the page. i don't think its writers block i think its lack of everything. im reading Stephen Kings dark tower series its my first time reading king and fantasy. i like it, its believable and different from the Bukowski and Palahniuk that i am used to reading. after i am finished with my triathlons season i am going to re read all the Palahniuk and read house of leaves again to get my brain back in that side of thinking, im not good enough to write big fantasy things but i think i am good enough to write in a dirtier truer style.

rock climbing is going well. im finishing 5.9 on first trys and first attempts. meaning that walking up to a 5.9 route that i have not done i can complete it the first time i try. im working 5.10 routes and have completed all the v2 boulder problems in the gym and half the v3's. i am now stuck on the more technical and balanced oriented v3's and can not seem to start any of the v4's and i don't know why. im enjoying the climbing it is a great stress reliever. like skiing when you are climbing you can think of nothing but the rock in front of you. where you will put your feet and how to shift your body turn your hip, if you let your mind wounder then you end up hanging by the rope looking at the wall thinking, hmm that should not have happened.

looking for places to go outside and in October i am going to be taking a class on how to make top rope anchors so that my friends and i can go out and climb when ever we want to and have a good time doing it. great falls is only a 20 min drive away and they have 200 routes there all outside, this could be a great fall!

i was going to try and come home for thanksgiving but its 500 bucks, i just cant afford that. which is sad because i have never missed a thanksgiving. i guess there is always a first for everything. as much as i am upset about missing it i realize there is nothing really to come home for other then to see my mom and to spend a day with friends. but if the last time i was home proved anything. i only need to be home for about two days before the fact that i am not apart of the lives of the people i know back home anymore to set in. i dont know when i will be home again, and well im not to worried about it. not that i dont want to see you guys just well, it aint the same no more.



other then that life is good, all the money that has to have gone to tech has now gone to tech i have finished paying for the apartment and the tuition that i owed after having my student loan taken away from me.
work is going well got handed an entire grading project for a 50 acre site that i didnt realize was going to be all me for the grading. its been hard challenging and a lot of fun. makes it fun to come to work. this next week we have four projects that my team is going to be starting. meaning that for the next two-three months i will be working tons of overtime which is great so i can put more money away for going back to school in December
that's it for me,

also! listen to when the levee breaks covered by a perfect circle its slow and spectacular.

Triathlon Fun

How you doing sports fans!? The reason I have not written anything is that well there was nothing really to write. Training is going badly but I am still training. Because of work and various other things, like me turning my alarm off in my sleep when I need to get up and train have put a huge hamper on my ability to get all my workouts in.

Also my cross training has more become my cross injury. The first three games of soccer I pulled my quad, strained a ligament in my knee, and got kicked in my leg so hard that it hurt to put pressure on my right foot for two days. All these things add up to not training. However, I pushed through and manage to get some workouts in while at the same time finding a way to rest my body.

After my body healed I slammed back into the workouts, I now keep my bike in my car. Right after work I hit the trail for a min of 20 miles. Not much but it is time in the saddle to work on drills and cadence stuff, I am going to be spending the rest of my weekends doing long rides getting that endurance that I lost, back.

Waking up in time to go swim in the mornings is getting harder and harder. Not sure what I am going to do about that I figure that I just need to go to sleep at 10 at night so that I can get up at five in the morning. I am going to try and implement this over the next couple of days and see if it works. I am not able to function on the four hours of sleep I used to back in school, I need at least six and I am noticing that if I get seven the day is just that much better. I hate getting old!

As for the run, well back, to cross training injuries, I just joined a rock climbing gym about two weeks ago. I have been doing a lot of climbing, which is great. You have to think a lot and push your body the entire time you climb. When I ride and run, I have all this time to think about everything because even though you have to focus when you get in the zone you can get bored and end up thinking the entire time. When I climb, I have to pay so much attention to where my feet go what my next two handholds will be. I do not have the chance to think about anything but climbing. It is like being on a mini vacation for 5 min.

There are also shorter runs called bouldering that are 3-6 hand holds in a row low to the ground. They are short but very challenging. I got addicted to one bouldering problem the other day, with huge weight changes and then an off balance pull to jump to a final handhold near the top. I had completed the problem earlier that day but had come back to the gym to do it again. I tried it 5 times and blew out a couple of calices on my fingers, and still had not reached the grab I needed. My last try of the night I saw on my hand another calices that was ready to be ripped off but hoped that it would wait until after I made the grab.

I worked my way through the problem and got to the place before the jump. Hanging sideway with my feet even with my head and my arms on a completely different wall then where they need to end up I made my final leap for the ever-elusive handhold and with a puff of chalk I grabbed it with all the strength I had left. As my body swung away from the wall that last calices blew. The skin that was holding me on the wall slid away from my finger and I fell to the floor and landed on the mat sideways bruising my hip making it hard to walk now.

The moral of this story is that I will be riding and swimming a lot until my hip feels better and I can run again.

That is all there is folks. Just me beating up my body repeatedly and being angry when it fails on me.

In other news.

I got a raise about 3 weeks ago, I am building a huge bookshelf to put in my room, I am doing the Nations triathlon on Sep 16th, the run actually takes you around the Washington monument the capital building and the Lincoln memorial its going to be great.

That’s it for now talk to you later.

More like how bob does NOT train blog!

As I am sure some of you have noticed, I have not posted anything in a month. Well there is good reason for this. I haven’t trained in a month! I have been running every once in a while and I get on my bike when I can but for the past month I have not trained at all. This basically takes all that prep work I did and throws it out the window. There are several semi decent reasons for this lack of training.

AC – we went to Atlantic City a couple of weeks ago and in order to pay for it I worked mass overtime and did not go home until after dark every night.

Wedding/Move - the next weekend we moved into our new apartment and my buddy Austin got married. So between the bachelor party, the wedding and trying to set up an apartment I did not train. (Although carrying 10, 120 pound boxes up three flights of stairs I would almost argue cross training)

House sitting while getting settled in – I am house sitting this week for my parents while at the same time trying to create some structure and organization of my apartment so I am running back and forth between my place and my parents.

So what does this equate to, well bob being a big fat slacker! (yes I did just refer to myself in the third!) I now have 4 months before my race, and right now I see my idea of finishing around 12 hours flying out the window very very quickly. This month is going to be a proverbial / actual boot camp of training/ideological review of this upcoming race.

Just a small change of subject………………


I have decided that after getting my degree I am going to move to Australia for a minimum of 5 years.

Why?

Why the hell not?

They have great weather, great triathlon community, 2 Ironman competitions a year, and New Zealand is right across the way and they have some of the best skiing in the world! The only downside, GREAT WHITE SHARKS! GREAT BIG GREAT WHITE SHARKS! Hey no place is perfect right?

where have i been?

I have not written because well, I have not been training. I have been running and doing various other things but I have not been training because I have been sick. Not the cough hack and wheeze sick but just my body is run down and I have no energy sick. I feel like I have a weight on my shoulder and I do know what that weight is. It bugs me that I don’t.

I move into my new apartment this up coming weekend, and we have a pool in the complex. I am hoping that all I have to do is walk down the sidewalk to go do a swim workout will help prompt me to go workout when at the end of it before going to work I will be able to take a shower in my own shower before going to work. Or go swim after I get home from work.

Nothing else to talk about really,

I will have a review for a friend’s band up, my trip to Atlantic City, and the infamous master’s trip.

Expect that in the next week or so.

Bob

The Other page

Not only do I have this wonderful page but I have another as well, there is a link to it on the side bar but sense my side bar seems to be freaking out and I am not sure why this is the link

http://bobsrambling.blogspot.com/

Basically it is just as it says, me rambling, things that have nothing to do with my Ironman Training!

Bob

LOTS OF FUN!

It has been 15 days and I have done 13 workouts, I should have done 18 workouts! I am still figuring out this timing and scheduling of workouts to fit into my life. I am doing well getting my runs in because that is simple I can do those in the dark when I need to. Biking is a little tougher but still doable and I usually get my big rides in on the weekends however those seem to be the only rides that I am doing. I think I need to invest in a stationary trainer because that way I can workout at anytime and not worry about getting hit with a car, maybe if I hit it big in Atlantic City this weekend ill go buy one. Swimming, this is a whole other story. I have not been swimming, which is a problem because this is by far my weakest side of the race. Right now I swim at the YMCA and I just can not get myself to get up in the mornings. O I get up, and then I shut off the alarm and fall right back asleep. I think it’s the entire process of getting my clothes ready for the day and then having to get ready at the Y, I could go after work but I have been working late and have been really hungry so I just go home and eat dinner then run instead. I still have 4.5 months left so I need to really buckle down and get this squared away. Because it does not matter how much I talk about my training, if I don’t have the miles in come race day I will not performer to my expectations and then I will be very MAD!

by the by

hey leave some comments or something, help me out!

FIRE!

Ok,

Week two is now over and I have hardly done anything this week. Yes this is disappointing and no this is not discouraging me at all. Life has been hectic and I know that in order to properly train for an Ironman you need to be able to commit the time energy and have the drive to do it. I am getting there.

I have stopped listening to the 4 podcasts about triathlons. It was too much, for a while it was psyching me up and getting me all ready for training and racing. Two of those podcasts deal with Ironman specifically. I sat and listening and tried to soak in as much advice as I possibly could and learn from them. But it was not working, now mind you these area great people and have great shows but it was not doing it for me anymore and I know why.

When it comes to triathletes you will not meet anyone nicer. By far we are the friendliest most understanding and motivated people around. WE TRY TO PERFECT 3 SPORTS FOR CHRIMINY SAKES! But! In this massive humble nature there is a cockiness, there is a feeling of, “I do three sports and I do them well”. There is a side of a triathlete that does look at everyone and says “you are lazy, I am better then you”. Now this is just pure ego and is a very small percentage of that person, but it is there and if it is not there then that triathlete is not a competing triathlete they are just there to stay healthy and have fun. I want to be a competing triathlete!

Anyone who knows me knows I want everyone to do a triathlon and that I will help anyone and everyone I can to start running, biking or swimming. So much so that as of late I have killed my cockiness. I have killed that part of me that strives and takes pride in my abilities as a triathlete. I have over humbled myself. I realized I brainwashed myself through the podcasts I was listening too. It was not their fault but I was getting bombarded by nothing but humbleness from these triathletes on their podcasts and this is to be expected, the cockiness only comes out and is spoken when its race day the rest of the time it is a small fire that motivates.

When listening to these podcasts and several other people talk about how hard Ironman races are and how humbling they are, that you don’t race an Ironman you survive it. I started to give in. My fire started to die, I started to beleave that I would not make my time goals.

I call BULLSHIT!

I did not sign up to just survive doing something, to just make it though and be happy with that accomplishment. Its like saying its an honor just to be nominated! I HATE THOSE PEOPLE, yeah its great to get to the top but YOU KNOW YOU WANTED THE WIN. That’s like playing not to lose, GUESS WHAT YOU USUALLY LOSE WHEN YOU DO THAT!

I have time goals; I expect that when I step into that water on September 30^th that I will be done with the race within the next 12 hours. To some of you this means nothing to others this seems insane, ill add to it. I actually expect to finish before 11 hours, 12 hours is my ill try this again time. If I do not finish under 12 hours I am going back to Olympic distances.

This is what motivates me, not I want to survive, no, I WANT TO GO TO KONA! If after this race I finish under 12 hours my next goal will be to qualify for KONA which is the world championship for Ironman, this is the race many of you know this is the race in Hawaii. To get there I have to finish in the top of my age group at another Ironman, and that Ironman will be Ironman New Zealand or Ironman Australia! This is the rekindling of my cockiness, my motivation, my fire! Let’s see how hot this burns!

Bob

TRIATHLETE