Prelude to the 2009 Vineman 70.3

It's Roger's fault that I got sucked into this adventure. His involvement isn't surprising, of course, but it does need to be explicitly stated.

In 2007, Roger called to say he was running a couple of short triathlons. Being the competitive guy I am, I thought it would be fun to race him. I didn't think the swim or bike would be a problem, but I decided to test run my ankles before committing to a race. I ended my test run 12 minutes after starting, less than a mile from a house, trying not to vomit on the side of the road. However, my ankles felt fine, so I committed to running the sprint. Actually, I ran two that year so I could justify the training. One race hardly seemed worth the effort.

You can read my play by play of the 2007 Mission Bay Triathlon in an earlier post.

I really enjoyed both of the races and added more races for 2008. I signed up for a 10k in May, an olympic triathlon in July, the Malibu sprint Triathlon and the Camp Pendleton mud run.

As it turned out, I overslept for the 10k, injured myself before the olympic and was out of the country for Malibu. We did manage to make the Mud Run.

Even though I hadn't run any triathlons in 2008, I went ahead and signed up for the Vineman 70.3 with a lot of misgivings. The swim I knew I could do. I had never ridden a bike 56 miles. I had never run a half marathon. I wasn't worried about the swim or bike, but my running needed a lot of work. To force myself to train, I signed up for the Carlsbad Half Marathon in January to give myself a goal. I did virtually no swimming or biking in the last half of 2008 and just worked on my running. Of course, I ended up sick and in bed for the two days before the 1/2 marathon (hmmm, why would I bring this up?). I went. I finished. I felt horrible.

I kept my training up for February and March, out of the country again for April. At the end of April, I realized how close the race was and decided I should probably begin swim and bike training. I signed up for the Southern California Aquatics Master's team and begin swimming several morning a week. I have since fallen in love with this workout. I also dusted off the mountain bike I own and began riding 30-40 mile weekend rides. My running began to suffer as limited time and my concentration on swimming and biking took over.

I decided to throw in a last minute olympic triathlon in May to test myself. It went really bad. The swim was fine, I crashed in the bike race, and walked out the run with blood covering my entire left leg.

I added in brick workouts (bike/run) on Sundays. Usually a 43 mile ride and a 5 mile run. I kept working on my nutrition, but always seemed to mess it up and started having stomach problems on the run (foreshadowing, a valid literary technique). With 7 weeks to go before the race, I committed to buying a road bike and spent 2 weeks obsessing over what I should get. I ended up with the Windsor Falkirk from Bikes Direct. I really do like this bike even though I only had 5 weeks to prepare with it.

I kept swimming, biking and runn.... well swimming and biking at least. The San Fernando Valley gets really hot and I don't enjoy running in the heat (foreshadowing again, did you catch it?).

I was actually feeling pretty good about the race as it approached, but my nerves really centered around the swim again. I just don't like the idea of swimming in strange places. Roger and I planned out are weekend, booked our hotel and decided to leave on Friday morning before the race. We wanted to spend Saturday preparing and looking around so we knew how to get places and could scope out the different portions of the race.

I was really looking forward to two weeks of tapering. I hadn't slept enough while training and was getting bone weary and needed the rest. On the first day of tapering, I got sick (see the pattern). Luckily, it was 13 days before the race and it was only a basic head cold. However, it did take me out for 4 days. The week before, I did little workouts to remind my legs how to move and keep my breathing correct. I also started waking up really early to be prepared for race morning. I was definitely nervous as I got all of my supplies together and waited for the weekend.

Click here for Part 2