You can't always get what you want.... But if you try sometimes.... You get what you need!

As the classic Rolling Stones song so aptly describes, things do not always go your way, but if you try, you'll get it. As we move through our lives, many things are given and taken away from us. We all experience losses and gains, weather they be material, spiritual, or mental. As we grow old friends and family move away, money may come into our pockets in greater or lesser amounts. The bottom line is that life is full of ups and downs, gains and losses, and most of all learning and accepting new ideas that come with those gains and losses.

There has been a point in all of our lives in which we have been either forced by a peer, teacher, coach, or most of all a parent, to do something that we didn't want to do. The motive behind someone forcing you do something is not always clear. As said by a wise man, you can't always see a tree through  the forest. When presented with new and foreign things its always easier to reject and not accept. The most difficult thing is to accept, learn, and become better. No one, no matter how motivating or encouraging, can make you get better at anything in life. It is evident through history that no one is more of a motivator for you than yourself. It's the minute that you decide to do something out of your own free will, for the betterment of yourself or others, that you become your biggest motivator.

A Pastor can preach all day from his pulpit, to an eager crowd of parishioners, but it isn't until those parishioners decided for themselves to follow the gospel of God, that they can begin to walk in the light of Christ. A coach can encourage you to lift weights and grow strong in the off-season to be better next year, but it isn't until YOU make the personal commitment to better yourself. A teacher can help your mind grow, but until YOU make the decision to grow your knowledge that you can truly succeed. The examples are endless.

Life is full of learning new things everyday. As a co-worker once said, if your not making mistakes your not learning. I want everyone to stop and think of a stressful time, whether it is at work, school, or in the sports arena--ask yourself why is this difficult?

The most obvious answers are:

1. Whatever you are doing is a new task or activity and it seems strange and foreign.
2. You don't feel ethically, legally, or morally comfortable with what your doing.
3. You don't understand why you are doing it.
4. You are unprepared, or unequipped to do the task completely.

All of those points are not only the reasons why a particular task is difficult, but your answers as well. Answer those questions and you undoubtedly will begin to see the light. The purpose of this post is to not let difficult times bog you down. Take on a hard challenge, by first accepting it. Once you can it accept it you can begin to solve. If you can never accept that you must face the challenge, you will never be able to overcome the difficult times. 

I wrote this because today I had a new challenge. I played racquetball for the first time in maybe 2 years. It is technical sport, but challenging. As I reflected back on the past hour of playing, I didn't get frustrated because I lost, or couldn't preform well, I get excited about practicing and becoming better. This was me accepting the challenge that is racquetball. So go into school or work tomorrow or today (depends on when you read this) and take on a new challenge. If one isn't already in your lap go out and find one. I guarantee that after accepting, solving, and mastering, you will feel a full sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

Free, Free, thank God Almighty, I am free at last !

Resting and solitude--two words that are intertwined yet powerful. Resting is a simple act. It can come in the form of sleep, taking a walk, chatting with friends or reading a book in the sun. Solitude in my opinion is a necessary part of life. But too much of a good thing is always bad. I would venture to think that many triathletes also feel this way. It is an indescribable feeling to be set out for a 15 mile run at sunrise on a crisp fall morning, or gear up for a 60 mile solo bike ride. There is a certain sense of freedom that one has while pedaling or running into a sunrise, that feels empowering. This freedom is not something that should be taken for granted, because it can be taken away.

For most of us, it can be hard to think of when or why this freedom could be taken away. We are all law abiding citizens, with jobs, families, and hobbies. Yesterday, it became all too real that there are people in this world where that is not the case. My company is building an addition to a county jail in Houston. I was at this jobsite and part of a required meeting was to enter the jail where there are current inmates and criminals. Walking around the halls with the security guards and other co-workers was an eerie feeling. Convicts were in striped uniforms working about the halls. I for an instant felt trapped and nervous. There are no windows, so the light is only that from a fluorescent bulb.

Upon leaving, I was reminded of this freedom that we all have. Lets not take it for granted, because not everyone has it. Although all of the people in that jail deserve to be there for committing, what I am sure are heinous acts, it still is a depressing thought to be couped up in that building for the rest of your life. I know this is the case because of jail yard cemetery right next to the prison.

Stew on these thoughts for a minute. I guarantee that you can not begin to understand the feeling until you step foot in a prison like that. I never want to go back. So back to the two words, rest and solitude. I think every prisoner in that jail is all too familiar with both of them and that is why I chose to start the post with those comments, to get you to think what they mean to you and how to a prisioner they mean something entirely different.

Everyone reading this, do me a favor and don't go to jail !

The season Finale

The following is my race report from my third Ironman 70.3 race of the year. I will attempt to recount the experiences both emotionally and physically throughout the race.

I had decided for a couple reasons to really relax the week before my race. The first reason was I had been fighting some pain in the middle of gluteus the past 2 weeks. So I decided I wouldn’t run on it all the week before the race. After all I had put 30 miles of running the week before. So all I did was a swim on Tuesday of 2300m, a 2.5 mile walk on Wednesday with stretching, and a continuous swim of 35 min on Thursday. I rested on Friday and went for a 10 minute swim in the lake on Saturday.

Saturday was spent lounging and relaxing. I ate brunch at about 11am which was a hearty eggs, potatoes, toast and vegetables. This was followed by a snack at about 3pm and dinner at around 7pm. I ate pasta with chicken, bread, and a salad. I had also eaten pasta the night before as well. Not to mention I had eaten Pizza on Thursday night and pasta and vegetables on Wednesday night. I think I did my fare share of carbo loading the week prior. I was feeling really relaxed and loose all day Saturday. I went to packet pickup and got my packet and some gels at the expo. I was excited to see that we got a free Headsweats hat with our race packet. After that I went to the hotel to check in. I did this then went to the mandatory bike check in at transition. Upon arrival to the race site, I noticed the first thing I didn’t like about the race. The transition area was in a field, and there was absolutely no grass in the field. It was dirt. This poses a problem for running into transition barefoot, because you will get a bunch of stuff all over your feet before you put them in your cycling shoes and running shoes. Anyways I will start my official race report.

I got a wake up call for 3:30 am on Sunday morning. I woke up ate my usual breakfast of a banana, cliff bar, ¾ of a cup of plain instant oatmeal with a teaspoon of honey on top. I had a liter of water, and 20 oz of Gatorade. I also took 2 endurolytes and my vitamins. I was out the door by 4:15. I had met a fellow racer through a local Texas Triathlon online forum and he needed a ride to the race so I offered. I picked him up at 4:30am and we began our drive to the race site. We got to the race site at 5am and loading the shuttle buses to get to transition. We got to transition waited around for body marking. After that I went in to begin my setup for race day. This took me a while. I was in transition by 5:30am and was finally done setting up by 6:30. I had to mix all my Gatorade, lay out my gear, pack up my nutrition, get changed into my tri clothes, divvy out my endurolytes for the run and bike. I decided a while back during a training ride to use a new nutrition plan. My plan was to eat 3 times per hour, and take 2 endurolytes for each hour I was on the bike. I will get to that later. Anyways, they ended up pushing the race start back 15 minutes because of compilations with busing to the transition area. So I had some time to just sit around and relax. There were quite a few top PRO athletes racing in the race. Including, Tim DeBoom and Simon Lessing. I was set up in transition less than 100 ft from there transition racks. I snapped a few pictures of Tim DeBoom’s bike see below. Tim DeBoom has won the Hawaii Ironman before. Tremendous athlete.
So on to the race, as all the competitors gathered around the swim start the sun was just beginning to rise over the dam wall. It was a nice scene with relatively calm waters. There was still a current, but would be in our favor on all legs except the first. See the route below.

There was a wave start for everyone under 29 and some older age groups 50+. I like going first, I hate having to wait around for the start while watching everyone go. The swim started as usual, and I needed about 5 min to get into my rhythm and let the crowds thin out. I drafted off some folks for the first leg of the triangle but after that it was spread out. I like to keep my line and since there was probably less than 100 people in my wave drafting didn't work, unless I went out of my way to do so. I stuck as tight as possible to the buoy line. I didn't waste any strength going to follow someone else on a different line just to draft.

The swim moves on, I get to the last turn and look at my watch, I notice my Heart Rate Monitor (HRM) is working in the water. It indicates my HR to be around 155 bpm. What I also noticed was that my total swim time was about 18 minutes. I found this hard to believe that I was so close to being complete with only 1 short leg left. At this point I began to increase my swim speed. My HR jumped to 160's and I ended up climibing out of the water in 25 minutes and crossing the chip mat in around 27 minutes. I will do a full re-cap of times at the end.

I hustled to transition and rinsed my feet off, put on sunglasses, race belt, helmet, and bike shoes. I decided to try something new for this race that I saw an individual do at Buffalo Springs. I used Ear Plugs on the bike. When you ride at 20+ mph for 3 hours it can be quite loud with the wind and all. So I stuffed some ear plugs in and set off.

On to the bike leg. I had previously ridden the bike leg back on Labor day weekend. I am now a firm believer that if you can ride a bike leg of any triathlon prior to race day do it. It made the bike course go by twice as fast and I felt really comfortable because I knew what to expect the entire time. Its a feeling that you can't get just driving the course. I will say that if all you can do is drive the course than that is better than nothing. Take a look at the bike course elevation profile.

To start the bike off I didn't want to hammer as hard as I did in Lubbock, because I had no legs left for the run. I knew the hills on the bike course wouldn't kill me either. So I tried to keep a pace of about 20mph and a HR around 150 - 160. This was easy for me to do and at times I felt like I could have gone faster. I held myself back some. Note that I say some, I did after the half way point allow myself a little more speed.

My nutrition on the bike I knew was key for this race.In past races I knew I had not been eating enough while I was on the bike. I learned this on one of my long brick days in training. I did a 41 mile ride followed by a 7 mile run and ate a bunch more on the bike and felt twice as good on the run. I averaged sub 8 min miles It was as follows. A gel right as I got on the bike. I drank my gatorade and water as I wanted to as well. No rhyme or rhythm to my drinking fluids. I would then eat a second gel no less than every 30 minutes. After the first aid station on the bike I grabbed another gel and figured to myself, I was hungry so I began to eat them every 20 min. I consumed around 8 or 9 gels, 2 salt pills on each hour, and around 75 oz of gatorade, and another 36 oz of water during my ride. I ended up with a time of 2:42:41.

Whenever I do a triathlon, no matter what distance, I am always excited to get off the bike and run. The longer the races, ie Half Ironman distance, I am always ready to just go run. I can't imagine what it will be like when the Ironman distance comes around. The bike overall went great and couldn't have asked for more. The entire time I was on the bike I was thinking that I might be able to break 5 hours in this race. I remembered my swim time was around 25 minutes and I knew I would be off the bike in almost under 3 hours. The thing is my HRM doesn't show total time elapsed view when its also shows my splits. I would rather see my splits to ensure pace is correct than total time. My transistion times didn't help my under 5 hour goal either.

On to the run, I hoped off the bike and felt fresh and ready to run. The first thing I did was put on my socks, shoes, and hat. I also wore my sunglasses. I ran out of transition and popped 2 salt pills. I planed to take 3 gels every 3o minutes. I ended up only eating 2 but ate about 6 more salt pills over the next hour. The run was hilly. I set out to run the first 6.5 at even pace and then hammer the second 6.5 My splits and heartrates are as follows:

Mile Time AVG HR

1 8:30 155

2 7:25 157

3 9:25 155 (bathroom break)

4 8:13 158

5 8:34 158

6 8:37 160

7 8:51 159 (cramping occured in left quad stopped for a second and massaged out and took more salt pills)

8 9:26 157 (the effects of the hills were beginning to wear on me)

9 9:19 154

10 9:27 152

11 9:12 153

12 9:59 155

13 7:16 157 (this was all psychological. I was able to strum up the strength to finish fast

Overall the run was okay. A few lessons learned. Since almost 3 miles of each 6.5 loop were on trails don't wear racing flats. The support of a racing flat is not kind to running over dirt and rocks. Second, since its a hilly run as shown below, do some specific hill work before racing it again. If this run was flat, I could have probably broken 5 hours. I know for a fact if I went back to Galveston where I did my first Half Ironman, I would break 5 hours easily. Much learned through these races. I feel, this season of racing I have shown the most growth on the bike. I can now easily average 20mph at a Half Ironman Distance race without wrecking my legs for the run. Now goal for next season do that at the full Ironman distance... :) Check out the elevation profile.

To sum it all here are my times and splits

Total time -- 5:10:30

Swim split -- 27:07 averaged 1:24 / 100M (course was about 200 - 400M short)

Swim AVG HR -- 156

T1 -- 3:22 (rinse off feet and put in ear plugs)

T1 AVG HR -- 160

Bike Split 56 miles -- 2:42:41 averaged 20.7mph

Bike AVG HR -- 150

T2 -- 2:09

T2 AVG HR -- 148
Run 13.1 miles-- 1:55:08 averaged 8:47 / mile
Run AVG HR -- 156

I am very pleased with this race and think it was a great race and way to end the triathlon season. Now on to strength training and marathon running. See some pictures below.