Welcome to TRI-CHOTOMY.



I'm just an averge age grouper blogging about Triathlon Training and this complex puzzle of juggling life, having fun and the Tri(als) and Tri(bulations) of "My Reality Show". With the Miami Ironman 70.3 race now in the books I've set a new goal, competing and completing Ironman Louisville 2011 in August. Twice the distance, twice the pain, twice the fun. As a warm up race and I never would have believed hearing myself say this, I'll be doing Ironman 70.3 Rhode Island in July. Once again I'll be sharing these experiences with my great friends Chris and Justin and look forward to the next several months of training and racing with them.

I'll share my training, race and gear experiences and hope you'll comment and even offer advice from your experiences.

Remember,

"Pain is Temporary, Quitting Lasts Forever".

"Life shouldn't be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, cliff bar in one hand, Gatorade in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"

"You can sleep when you're dead!"




Saturday, September 4, 2010

Miserable day and a state of flux

Typically Saturday is my brick day and Sunday is my long run day. This weekend I reversed the order because I was moving Katie up to Barrie for the start of another school year. I figured I'd get my run in this morning and go pack up Katie's stuff into the truck in the afternoon and drive her up. Well early on I really wasn't sure if I'd even get out to run. It was rainy and didn't seem like it would clear up and even if it did I wasn't even sure what kind of distance I'd get in. Around 11:00 it seemed like the weather would co-operate so I got my gear on and being cooler I decided Kona would love to go running. Now usually when I run I have a planned route and an idea of what kind of pace I want to follow but today was pretty much a state of flux. We started out heading up 9th Line. At the 1/2 km mark it started to rain. Crap. Not hard but hard enough that we turned on to Tiers Gate to head back home. Flux #1. Heading back along Larkin the rain stopped so I decided to continue my run. Must have just been a quick shower. Flux #2. So we cut over to 9th Line again and this time we headed south thinking we'd do the Highway 7 / Markham Rd. / 16th Ave loop. All the way down to Hwy 7 I kept checking the sky and it didn't look bad, some clouds but also blue sky. Then we turned onto Hwy 7 and yikes .... I looked west and big black storm clouds loomed. On top of that we headed right into a 35 km/hr wind. And on top of that my Garmin started screaming at me that it was full and had no more room to add laps. I've got it set up that each km is a lap and this was km 2 on the run. Right at that point the skies opened up in a torrential rain and because of the wind it wasn't falling, it was flying at us horizontally like little bullets. I stopped under a tree to see if I could get the Garmin to shut up but realized that I'd have to delete previous data and I wasn't sure if I'd saved it yet so I let it go and decided to put up with the beeping and buzzing. Right at that point another runner passed us just as we started to run again. With this rain I changed my plans and decided to head up Wooten Way to home. Flux #3. We were getting pelted with rain and I was following this other runner and she was booting along at about a 4:30 pace so I kept up figuring it's only 1.5 km to home. A couple of minutes later the rain totally stopped and lo and behold, blue sky above. So as we came up to Fincham Ave instead of turning for home we turned the opposite direction to get a few more km in. Flux #4. We followed Fincham around to 16th Ave and were going to head back along 16th but ... you guessed it ... flux #5. We crossed 16th and headed north up into the community of Greensborough. Up to Bur Oak, back over to 9th Line and south towards home. Until we reached 16th and encountered flux #5. I was feeling good so turned left on 16th. We ran for about 1.75 km and turned into Cornell for a bit and back towards 9th Line again. A quick calculation indicated we'd finish up at about 13.5 kms. Not bad, I'd be happy with that. Except that when we got back to 9th Line and turned south towards home flux #6 was waiting and we ran right past Fincham. To add a couple more kms of course. We cut in and ran back to Wooten Way and once again turned for home. I was now looking at about a 16 km run and surely would be very happy with that. But running along Fincham, finally only a half km from home, flux #7 smacked into us. Over to 9th Line, north to 16th, west to Mint Leaf Gate, south to Larkin and along Larkin towards home. No more states of flux were encountered and the final distance ended up at 19 kms. I felt good the whole way and averaged a 5:10 pace which was very satisfying. I could have kept going too but Kona hadn't been out on many runs with me with all the hot weather we'd had this summer and I'd been pretty much dragging her along since about km 11 and figured I'd put her through enough. And finally I could off the freaking Garmin after 17 km of it sqeaking, beeping, squawking and buzzing at me.

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