Back from England

The last two weeks i spent time in England visiting family where i am orginally from. If you didnt already know i moved to the USA at the end of 1997. I had not been home since 2003 and it sure was nice to see Mum and Dad and my brother.

We spent a day in London as my girls wanted to see the sites and see where i grew up. I always like going to my home but i dont think i could live there anymore as it has become so expensive!
We hired a mid size car and just one tank of Petrol (Gas) was $150! and its not like the people there get paid more!

During my trip i managed to run every other day but no bikeing and not much swimming. Which was kind of nice as i need a little break.

We went to many castles as old churchs/Abbeys. When you grow up there you take old buildings for granted but since living in the united states and i now really appreciate churches and castles dating back to the 1100's

Here is a few pictures to show you what i mean:

This is us in front of the Queens Summer house.

This one is a castle from around 1200. This is typical of what you find all over the place in the UK.

This is the inside. The floors are missing but the craftsmanship is amazing.

This is an Abbey we visited. The stonework is awesome.

This is the inside. I got a shot of the people so you can kind of judge the height of the ceiling.

Another shot of the Abbey

This is a shot of us driving over Tower Bridge in London.

I have soo many pictures i wont bore you with them all.

On other news i was so happy to hear Bungus Podcast back on the Air!!!!! Keep em coming.

On the race front i think i have decided to drop out the upcoming Mountain bike race and volunteer for the MS150 bike ride that goes near my home town. I feel it was time to give a little back.

I have some more Triathlons in August and my work friends wife is getting ready to run her first ever 5k. I had coached her though the Couch to 5k Program and she shoulb be ready to run her first ever 5k. So i am going to do that with them.

I did not give up on the mountain bike race completely i am just going to postpone it for now.

Ok one more parting shot

Green Bay Triathlon 2011 Part 2

Ok so now it was Sunday and my turn for the Green Bay Triathlon. It had been kind of a crazy few day leading up to it. My new bike came in on Friday and was the right size. I got my fitting done on it and had only managed to put about 15 miles on it on Sat. I was a little worried about it but everything felt ok.

I was doing the Olmpic Distance which is a 800 yard swim, a 29 mile bike ride and then a 10K. I went with my wetsuit for the swim as it seems to help me go a little faster. Here is a picture before the swim:

Swim:

 I had a weird start. The 3 waves before us they staged them and gave about 5 mins between. Then they moved my wave up to the start and i was getting ready knowing i had 5 mins..and not 10 seconds later they said GO..i was totally off guard. No big deal. Wore my mp3 swim player which keeps me calm. The dolphin divers maybe gained a few seconds on me running/ wading. Some people did it in there cycling shorts and top. I will not bore you with all the times but i came out of there 5th out of 10 in my Division so not too bad. I got my suit off to my waist as i ran to transition and i stepped out of it easy.

T1: Aggghhh SLOW! 3:05
I really need to make improvements here. It was warm so no need for arm warmers or anything.

I need Triathlon bike shoes so i dont have the sock hassle. I put glide on my ankles and that helped my suit come off. I put my team cycling jersey on over my tri suit. I think i should of worn it under my wetsuit.
Helmet on while i step out of my suit would help.
I did put baby powder in my socks but its time to get tri shoes. My next Triathlon my whole goal will be to get this T1 time down. I was 7th out of 10.

Bike:
My new bike was fast. I improved from last year and ended up 5th out of 10. Not much to say really. Would aero bars make me faster? Maybe but not by much. I averaged just over 20mph and there were some good hills.

T2:
faster T2, i am going to need to maybe practice running no socks? scary.

I did race all the way to where i had to get off the bike. sometime in the past ive slowed down too much anticipating the dismount.


Run:
CRAZY!!! I didnt know i could run this fast. I completely went for it. I puked up during the run and just kept going. I had huge strides. I really hurt myself running like this and im not doing it again. Was NOT fun.
I wanted to place but at what cost? I am not going to do this again was way too crazy and much to dangerous for me. Nearly fainted at the end. Awesome mtime but i PAID for it big time

Overall i had a great race and alot of fun. I learned i need to speed up my T1

Green Bay Triathlon 2011

Green Bay Triathlon,

Yes i owe you some reports so i will get you caught up as quickly as possible.

Well to start with my 11yr old Daughter did her first ever Triathlon. For me this was more important than my Triathlon this weekend. She was fantastic! She was a little nervous to start with. I took her up on Sat and she loved having all the attention on her. She kept saying over and over again 'thanks for doing this for me Daddy, i feel so special'.

I spent some time explaining to her that it does not matter if you come last. Most of the kids this was not their first Triathlon so i just wanted her to concentrate on finishing. We got her body marked and all of her things set up in transition. I really tried to make her feel like a superstar. The weather was really nice this day as well which really helped.

Before the race she spent some time splashing in the water to get used to it.

I told her as she gets out of the water things can seem confusing and she might have trouble finding her bike so while she was playing in the water i used the sidewalk chalk i had brought with me to help her:



She really seemed to like this idea. So here she is getting ready for the short swim, i managed to get a shoot of her just as she looked back:

And her she is on the way back in after the swim:

Then she was off to the bike. She had a little trouble getting her socks on and looked a bit worried but i cheered her on and told her everything was normal and OK and she would be fine. OK off to the bike part:

She made it the two laps around the park just great and then she was off to the 1/2 mile run. She was doing great. At one point she said i cant get my breathe but i told her it was normal to be out of breathe. I think she was worried something was wrong but i was glad i was there to keep her calm.
I was a little worried she would quit but no way! she was determined. At points i could tell she was hurting and i wanted to do it for her (typical Dad) but i knew this would help her confidence to get through it.
Here she is on the run and then over the finish line.

She did awesome! She was really pleased with herself. I didn't make her do this event it was something she wanted to do herself. There were a few kids with road bikes and all the gear but i told her just not to worry and she would only be racing herself. I had an awesome day with my Emily and i will not forget it. I hope she remembers it too!

Afterwards i took her over to Panera Bread and got her a tread for breakfast, she wore her medal pretty much the whole time. It just me and her that day and if your a parent thinking about doing this i would recommend it!

Ok next report: My GB Triathlon. But Emilys was way more fun!!!

Midweek

Hello Blog friends!
Hope you had an enjoyable long weekend. Now we are past memorial day everything here in Wisconsin goes crazy for a while. It seems every weekend there is something to do finally.
This weekend i have Green Bay Triathlon on my schedule and my 11 year old daughter is going to try the kids Triathlon.
My kids at first had this theory in their heads that if they are not the best at a sport why do it? It has taken me a little while to get this out of them. I think they are starting to understand that just taking part is where the fun comes from and not winning. After all not everyone can win, it is just not mathematically possible.

I got back some pictures and videos of the Full Marathon i did in May and they look great. Looking back at the event it took me about 4 days to be fully recovered and not do the shuffle every morning.

I will see what i can do about getting some pictures this weekend of the first Triathlon of the year.

New Bike Day...again...maybe

So i had finally got the money together about 2 months ago to buy myself a new Road bike. I have been riding and racing on my entry level Aluminum Marin Porto Fino for just over 3 years now. Now do not get me wrong. For $675 it has been an awesome bike. The only upgrade i ever really did on it was replace the rear wheel with a hand built rear wheel that cost me about $150 because my 230LBS kept breaking the little spokes. It had Shimano Sora on it which work surprisingly well for being so budget minded. I put 3200 miles on it so far with no major problems. I am still going to use it for going back and forth to work and dirty/rainy rides.

I had a budget of about $2200 and started looking. My biggest hitter is wanting a Carbon Fiber frame. Well for this kind of money i found a Kestrel on Bikes Direct with full Ultergra components on it with in my budget! Normally a Carbon frame with Ultegra and good wheels would be about 3000-3500.

I was super worried about not buying a bike from my local bike shop. I felt ashamed not to support them but there is no way i would get that spec for the money i had. So i nervously ordered it knowing i had a full 30days to return it.

Here is how it came:

Looked good so far. I took it out the box and gave it a quick once over. All looked good. Here it is out the box:

I took it to my local bike shop to put it together. That cost me $40 and they did not make me feel bad for not buying one of theirs.
Here is what it looked like made:

It was VERY light and rode extremely fast.
I put about 40 miles on it and i had some trouble changing gears on the rear derailleurs. I just thought it was the cables setting in. It got worse though. On a ride the chain snapped! What the heck. It was an Ultegra Chain and i took it in. They said they had never seen the Ultegra chain snap before! I got new links and go it going. I used a really good mechanic and he could NOT get the rear derailleur in adjustment no matter what he did. He said he would have to pull the handlebar tape off and re run the cable costing me more money. This gave me a very bad feeling about this bike. So i packed it back up and shipped it back for a full refund. They were very good about giving me 100% refund.

So i selected a Specialized bike at my local bike shop that i am meant to pick up today. It is much much less of a bike than this one but i feel more confident about having the local bike shop help me if there is a problem. It is still a Carbon Frame and i am OK with the gear set but the wheels on it are heavy.

We will see how it goes and i will let you know.

--Update...went for the fiiting on my new bike and the 54cm frame was just too small for me. The LBS is going to have to order a 56CM for me. Means i will have to wait another week. Very frustrating but i would rather have it correct. Group ride tonight is going to be on my Marin again.

Green Bay Cellcom Marathon 2011

Yep that me in that photo on the far right of the group.
Back in Novemeber of 2010 right after i did the Turkey Trot, a lady at work i run with sometimes got killed in a car crash. She got completely side swiped by another driver out of the blue at an intersection.
She was meant to do the Half Marathon here in Green Bay yesterday.
Because of this my company decided to put together a team to run it in her honor. I have never done a full Marathon before but have done a few Halfs.
I decided to man up and run this one. Her brother works here at our company also.

I had done my training for this Marathon but only ran about 3 days a week for it. I do not like to run more than that as i get really sick of running fast when i do it this much. I had no idea how i would handle a full Marathon.

I am so lucky that my family said they would support me and meet me on the course wherever i asked them to. Thank YOU! I could not have done it with out them. We live about 50 mins drive from Green Bay so we did not need to spend the night.

So i packed up a large bag with everything i thought i may need and asked them to bring it to the spots i was to meet them at. I meet them about every 4-6 miles which really helped as i knew i only had to focus on seeing them at the next point.

I managed to forget my ipod so i thought i would be running the first 9 miles with no music until i remebered i could use Pandora on my Black Berry...phew!

The weather was dry but extremely windy. 40mph winds were blowing.

 I was trying to enjoy it. I was surpirised to see i started to speed up towards the end. It was all about management. I even sent status on my facebook on my phone during parts of it to keep me going. The crowds were great! they really got me throught the hard parts. I didnt walk any of it which i was also surprised about. With 1/2 mile left i nearly tripped badly but managed somehow to stay upright.


About Mile 23-24 is when i started to hurt and good bit. No cramps or blisters or sores just the top of my feet hurt and good bit. I ran through the pain as i kept telling myself people with cancer have to go through more pain than this.

For my first Marathon i did surprisingly well.


Marathons are not really my thing. It does not seem healthy to be in this much soreness. I cant workout for two-three days either and thats going to bug me. I will stick to half marathons unless it is a special circumstance. This one was for you Amy.

Here is some pace Data my total time was 4hours 48mins

Start 7.08am
Mile 5 56:26 Pace 11.17 8.04am
Mile 10 1:50:23 Pace 11.02 8.58am
Mile 13.1 2:23:06 Pace 10:55 9.31am
Mile 15 2:43:50 Pace 10:55 9.52am
Mile 20 3:37:54 Pace 10:53 10.46am
Finished at 11.56am

Coming up

Ok so somehow my last blog got deleted?

Very weird.

Anyway really quick this Sunday will be my first Marathon in Green Bay!

If you want to get live results my number is 1686

Full report coming