Glenwood Springs

Once again, Brenda and I are testing our relationship with a trip, a working vacation to Glenwood Springs and Silverthorne. Well, in theory, it is a working vacation. Brenda worked today, I didn't. I tried but the password given to me for the laptop computer was wrong. I finally received the right password at 5:00 p.m. today. Hopefully, I will get some work done tomorrow.

On the plus side, I did get in some good workouts today. I did 50 good minutes on the elliptical. I also did weights for a little over an hour. Additionally, I played Brenda's Wii Fit for over three hours while waiting to receive the correct password. Maybe not a workout, but a lot of fun. I also found out that you stop getting workout credits on Wii Fit after three hours. Finally, I spent almost an hour in the Glenwood Springs Hot Springs pool and not one minute of the time involved swimming laps!!!!

Why Tri?

At some point, someone asks the question: why do you do triathlons (or how did you get started doing triathlons)? The short answer: I started doing them because I wanted to see if I could do one, and I keep doing them because I enjoy doing them (although during the run I sometimes wonder). The long answer is a bit more complicated.

The long answer begins in June 2006. At this time, I was overweight and unhappily married. How overweight? I weighed between 215 and 220 pounds and it was not muscle. How unhappily married? I filed for divorce at the end of June.

Beginning the divorce process was the turning point for me. To deal with the stress, I began walking my dog. I also was not eating as much. As I started walking and not eating as much, I began losing weight. By December 2006, I was just under 200 pounds.

Between December and March 2007, my weight loss had leveled off. I wanted to lose more weight and recognized that I needed to do something different. I decided to start weight training. Because I had never weight trained, I hired a trainer. I first met with the trainer in April 2007.

Before the training began, the trainer made me do a fitness test, which involved running a mile, push ups, sit ups, and a flexibility test. My results were pathetic. I still remember the mile run. It took me about 12 minutes to run the mile, and I was exhausted at the end. I can even remember my heart rate at the end of the run: 199. The other tests were not much better.

When I hired the trainer, I did not realize there would be a cardiovascular component. After the fitness test, the trainer wanted me to walk briskly at least every other day. By briskly, she meant keep my heart rate above a certain number. At first, I was so out of shape that it was easy. After a month or so, it became harder to reach the number from just walking. Thus, I started to run a portion of the walk. Gradually, the walks became more running and less walking.

By June 2007, I wanted to have a running goal. For the goal, I decided to do something that I had never done before, a 5K run. Having decided to do a 5K run, I needed to find a run. I knew Highlands Ranch offered 5K races so I went to the HRCA website to see if there were any upcoming races. I found one. I also saw that HRCA offered triathlon races.

When I looked at the distances for the swim, bike and run, they seemed doable: 500 yd swim, 12 mile bike, and 5K run. Until then, I had not known there were different distances for triathlons; I only knew about the Ironman distance, which just seemed crazy to me. Thus, I had never thought about doing a triathlon. When I learned there were much shorter distances for triathlons, completing a triathlon seemed like a goal that was possible to accomplish.

I would have signed up to do a triathlon that year except there was one problem: I didn't know how to swim. Although 500 yards didn't seem very far (ha, ha, ha ... little did I know), I was fairly sure that I needed to learn at least the basics of swimming before trying to do a triathlon. So I decided that I would set a goal of doing the HRCA Tune Up Triathlon in June 2008.

My first swim lesson was towards the end of September 2007. It was awful. When I signed up for swim lessons, I thought a half-hour wasn't a very long lesson. After the the first lesson, it was about 25 minutes too long. Swimming was so hard for me that I would have given it up after the first lesson if not for the fact that I needed to be able to swim (or at least be able to have some forward motion in the water) to accomplish my goal of completing the Tune Up Triathlon.

Until May 2008, I was still unsure about whether I would be able to do the swim. It was only a couple of weeks before the Tune Up Triathlon that I finally believed that I would complete the swim.

June finally came, and I raced in my triathlon. When I finished, I had completed something that I had set out to do almost a year earlier. It felt great. At that point, I guess I was hooked.

Since then, I have done things that I never would have contemplated a year ago. For example, I had planned to only do triathlons with pool swims in 2008. Somehow, I got talked into doing an open water swim triathlon in 2008 and found that I enjoyed swimming in open water. I liked it so much that I did a second open water swim triathlon in 2008.

This year, I'm looking forward to stepping up in distance. I'm a little nervous about the longer distances but I'm sure it will be fine. And when the race is over, I know that I will have a smile on my face.

Getting Better?

Last week, not so good. This week seems to be going better.

I was scheduled to do a snowshoe race at Beaver Creek on Sunday. I decided not to do it. It was a tough decision. In the end, I couldn't mentally handle spending hours in a car to maybe race 1 mile or less if my leg kept me from being able to run. Instead, I did the swim that was scheduled for Monday.

Swimming on Sunday rather than Monday was a good call. When I saw the swim, I knew it would take a long time for me to do it. As expected, it was long. If I had done it on Monday, I would have felt rushed. Doing it on Sunday allowed me to focus on swimming rather than worrying about how long it was taking to do the swim. The swim itself went well. At the end, my back muscles were sore, but it was the good kind of sore after a quality workout.

On Monday, I ended up taking an unscheduled rest day. I had planned to do an hour elliptical workout to make up for the missed BC race. However, I was unable to find time to make it to the gym so it didn't happen.

I had an option on Tuesday: 30 minute run or 30 minutes on an elliptical. I elected to do 30 minutes on the elliptical. My leg was a little sore after the elliptical workout but much better than if I would have run. Further, I was able to walk without limping. It was nice to get in a good cardio workout and be able to walk normal after it.

Today was 2 hours on the trainer. It was a great workout. In fact, it was the best trainer workout that I have had in a few months. Even better, my calf felt the best that it has in the last few weeks.

Tomorrow is a scheduled rest day. I am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and taking it easy. This has been a good week so far.

Ugh

This week has not been a good week training or otherwise. It started great on Monday and has gone downhill since then.

On Monday, I swam. Although it was a long swim, it was probably one of the best swim workouts ever for me. I felt strong and relaxed in the water. The swim was going so well that I was kind of disappointed when the workout ended. This is unusual as typically I am glad when the swim workout is done. If it is possible, I may have been on a swimmer's high. Despite the great swim, work quickly killed my motivation for the day. It was such a struggle that I barely billed six hours for the day, which was not a good start to the month.

On Tuesday, I was scheduled to run six miles. I say scheduled to run because the run did not actually happen. The day before, I had discussed this run with Steve. I was concerned about it because of my left calf. For the last month or so, every time I have run, there is a dull pain in my left calf. After a run, I typically limp around for a day or two. Because of this injury, I've not been running much lately. Thus, for this run, Steve wanted me start off very slowly to see if I could avoid the calf pain. If not, we agreed that I should stop the run.

As discussed with Steve, I started slowly. It didn't matter. Less than a few minutes into the run, the dull ache was back. I tried to give it a go for about a mile but the pain didn't go away. At that point, I just ended the run. I'm probably could have done the run but it wasn't worth it. I knew that I would just end up limping around. Later in the day I talked to Steve about the run. Steve suggested that I do a workout on an elliptical to see if there was still pain. That evening, I did exercised on an elliptical. The ache was still there although it was not as bad as it is during running.

Work was not much better than the run. Once again I didn't come close to billing the number of hours that I need to bill each day.

Wednesday was another swim. The swim was 50 continuous minutes of pulling. During this swim, I tried doing flip turns at both ends of the pool. Other than trying something new, the swim was uneventful. Work, from a billing standpoint, was a bit better than Monday and Tuesday as I least I hit the target number of billable hours.

On Thursday, Andrea once again worked on my calf. At times, it was painful as my left calf lit up each time she worked the inside of it. Afterwards, the leg felt better. Because I didn't feel like going to work, I talked with Andrea after the massage much longer than I should have. The end result was that I got into work after noon. While talking to Andrea, I also found that I was scheduled to ride 1.5 hours on the trainer. Knowing that I had to ride the trainer after work, I left work early even though I had billed less than five hours. This was the worst billing day of the week. Even worse, I already need to make up like five hours just for this month.

When I got home, Brenda wanted to go out to eat. So instead of getting on the trainer, we went to dinner. By the time we got back, it was almost nine. I really didn't feel like riding the training but did it anyway. I'm pretty sure the workout was not that great. Even though I had the bike on low resistance, I had no motivation to spin at a high cadence. After an hour, I just wanted off the bike. However, I struggled through another 30 minutes of riding.

Today was another long swim. This swim was not so good. During the swim, I felt anything but strong and smooth. In fact, I felt like a lead weight in the water, and flip turns were not going much better. It started with coming up short once at the wall. I then started to over think the flip turns and had numerous other almost not reaching the wall turns. At one point, it got so bad that I didn't do a flip. Instead, I ended up diving to the bottom of the pool, which I am sure was very funny to the watching lifeguards. Needless to say, the swim couldn't end fast enough. After the swim, I was very tired and my back muscles were fatigued.

Fortunately, I decided to work from home today. It was a good decision since I didn't get home from the swim until around 11;00. Despite the late start, I actually had a good work day. I completed a new project and got my required hours in for the day. Unfortunately, I will probably have to work either tomorrow and/or Sunday just to catch up on the other hours that I missed this week.

Riding Deer Creek

Yesterday, I rode Deer Creek Canyon with Michelle. I would never have thought about riding a bike up a canyon the last day of January. Living in Denver is amazing. During the winter, one day it is below freezing and snowing. A few days later, it is sunny and sixty degrees. Yesterday was one of the sixty degree days.

Michelle showed me the High Grade/City View loop. Last year, I rode up the High Grade side of Deer Creek once but only to just beyond the switchbacks. So after the switchbacks, it was an entirely new ride for me.

Although Michelle warned me about the switchbacks at City View, I was caught a little by surprise by the steepness of them. At one point, I just wanted to get off the bike and walk. However, Michelle encouraged me to push to the top. It was amazing watching her climb. She looked strong and smooth.

The roads were surprising dry for the most part. We took the downhills easy since there was a lot of gravel on the roads. At we were descending, we saw at least three Porsches driving the canyon. It seems like everyone was out enjoying the great weather.

Overall, it was a hard but fun ride. Michelle, thank you for being patient with me and showing me the ride.