7 Days Left!!! The Final Push!!!

Well, there's officially 1 week left until I'm toeing the line with thousands of other athletes, hoping that I can crush my first ever Ironman attempt!!! It's so unreal and I can't even begin to comprehend how I'm able to embark on this journey. It seems so long ago now that I struggled to finish my first Wildflower Long Course attempt this past May...

Since then I've been on such a strong streak of training and racing and building of my fitness level. On this road to Ironman Florida, I've accomplished:

-Raised over $3000 and awareness about Neurofibromatosis and the children and families it affects
-Completed 5 Sprint Triathlons (setting new PRs in all of them compared to previous years)
-Completed a Olympic Triathlon (setting a PR for this distance)
-Completed a Half Ironman (setting a PR for this distance)
-Completed a 2 mile Hermosa to Manhattan, Pier-to-Pier Swim (first ever, sans wetsuit)
-Completed a Century ride (first ever and not an easy one either, 5400ish ft of elevation)
-Completed a Full Marathon (first ever)
-Set PRs for my 5k, 10k and Half Marathon runs
-Set PRs for my 40k Bike
-Changed my diet and (for the most part) eliminated fast food
-Lost 6 lbs and about 10% body fat (which is about 11 lbs of fat)
-Practice discipline, fought through struggles, persevered through pain, blew past doubt
-And at least checked in with most of my social circles (for the most part)

And that's just the things that I can recall!!!

I also want to reiterate my thanks and admiration for the Children's Tumor Foundation and their Endurance NF program. Without them, I wouldn't even be able to do this race. But much more than that, I was paired with little Ava Lowell, her wonderful mother Dawn Lowell and the rest of their beautiful family. They've been a huge inspiration and have really helped to keep me mentally strong. To think that such a beautiful, wonderful and sweet little girl can persevere just helped me keep pushing forward! As the great Macca said in his book "I'm Here to Win," it really helps to understand one's motivation for racing and to really be great you need to find and race for something more than just yourself. So I thank CTF for giving me that!

So this journey has been great and the experience has got me thinking this won't be my last attempt. But for now, I'm very excited to countdown to Race Day and hopefully cross that finish line with a smile and a great time!

To close, I'll leave a snapshot of the course I hope to crush:

 

(Photo credit: www.ironman.com)

Pledge Week 15: And That's A Wrap!!!

Times eaten fast food this week = 0
Total pledge amount this week = $35 (7 days * $5)
Total pledge amount to date = $540 ($600 contributed to date)
Funds raised to date = $3070

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And so the fundraising comes to a close and I just squeaked by the required amount! Whew! That was close! But a very special thanks to everyone who contributed to my cause and to support Ava and all the other NF fighters out there!

(Photo credit: https://herdfoundationnagpur.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/international-thank-you-day-january-11/)

And while the fast food challenge comes to a close, I think I'll plan to keep up the strong work and resistance to this indulgence as much as possible. At the start of the challenge, I weighed it at a respectable 175 lbs but with a rough 20% body fat, not exactly great triathlete numbers for a guy only 5'7". Given the change in diet and the extraordinary amount of training, I weighed in at a much leaner 170 lbs with only 15% body fat. So 5 lb net loss but also a 5% change in body composition means some pretty darn good gains! Hopefully I can avoid any holiday weight gain and keep trending upward for next season!

Today I also finished my last big brick for the season. About 3 hours of biking and 5 miles of running. It was a little rough as I went to my good ol' hills in Palos Verdes. IMFL won't have any hills, but I wanted to hit up ol' Faithful. And you can see why!

But it's been a great, character building journey of first finding my lows and the depths of my struggles, pulling myself from those depths and rising to new heights as an athlete, as a person and translating that newfound confidence and zest for life to all aspects of my life.

I also can't thank CTF enough for giving me the opportunity to partner with them and raise awareness for NF! And then partnering with just the sweetest little girl in Ava who is fighting her own amazing fight! I mean she is my great inspiration. In those dark depths, I dug deep and mentally asked myself why I couldn't continue. Why I couldn't fight through pain or fatigue because Ava fights through so much more every day! And so she has been my motivation to continue pushing forward, pushing for excellence and just pushing to be the best of me!

This journey has been crazy and now I'm exactly 2 weeks away from Race Day! I can't wait!!!!

Race Report: Hermosa Beach Sprint Triathlon

This race wasn't really ever part of the plan. But seeing as it is my hometown race that I've done every year since I've been doing triathlons, I figured why the heck not!!! The effects of the century just a day earlier will forever be unknown...

Race details:
Hermosa Beach, California
Swim: 0.25 mi - open water, ocean
Bike: 10 mi - road, 3 loops on Valley/Ardmore between Artesia and 2nd, fairly flat
Run: 3.0 mi - run, out and back along The Strand

Course Recorded Finish: 1:02:02

Garmin Splits:


AG Finish: 6/32 (top 18%, currently my best finish at a larger event)
OV Finish: 73/559 (top 13%, currently my best finish at a larger event)
AG Race Factor: 1.28
OV Race Factor: 1.08

Race Analysis:
Transitions:
Nothing much to say here. It was a sprint so I chose no wetsuit. That kept my transition time down a relative amount. I could've opted for no socks or no Giro Shield, but I didn't want to deviate too much from my Ironman transition plan for a few seconds. In the end, minutes were the difference between me and the podium so no harm in this category.

Swim:

The swim was relatively good. But let's start with the bad. Waves were somewhat big on this morning so getting out was tough. I had to duck dive early and then on my second dive, a 2-wave-set came in. So I dove the first one and then when I was coming up after the second one, I ended up on some other guy's shoulders who apparently duck dived behind me and around the same time. So as I was getting ready to swim ahead he was standing up and kinda flipped me forward a little bit. I lost my goggles and had to take a second to recover. After that, battling the current was tough. And then coming in I was riding a lot of waves towards the beach when suddenly a big one came and threw me straight down. I was kinda swirling around at the bottom and again lost my goggles. I ended up walking probably a second or two sooner than I wanted to, but it wasn't a terrible loss.

So I didn't know this at the time, but I had a relatively strong swim. Hermosa results show up as a basic text file and I was too lazy to copy and format into Excel to then sort it. But of the top 10 guys in my AG, I came out of the water 7th :D

Bike:

Looking at the race after the fact, the bike is basically where I lost it. For those that have never done Hermosa, it is 3 loops that are flat along a two lane car road. The turns are REALLY tight, it gets VERY congested and there's not much passing room. I rode well and during the race I felt like I was pushing but I had a sinking feeling that I was probably losing it here because I didn't pass a ton of guys.

Sadly, post race this proved to be true. Again, looking at the top 10 guys, I tied Michael Vick (HAHA HEARING THIS NAME CROSS AFTER I WAS DONE WAS HILARIOUS!!!) for 9th. As in I basically bombed the bike despite doing well for my own personal time. My 29:30 time was 3 minutes behind the winner's time of 26:47. In hindsight, this is exactly where I lost the race.

NOTE TO SELF: Offseason training plan should include MASSIVE amounts of bike training. You're a terrible cyclist. Fix this ASAP!!!

Run:

The run was good. Immediately after crossing the finish line, my legs locked up with cramps and I was at the food table, leaning on it and scarfing down bananas, oranges and water. It was a rough run because of the challenge of trying to push for the podium and also not really being geared up and ready for sprinting due to IM training. So while it was a good run, it was rough.

Looking at the results, my 23:43 run time was 4th of the top 10 guys. 4th!!! But the spread here wasn't very wide. So again, the bike is very clearly where I lost the race.

All in all, I can't really complain. I had a good time. I beat last year's Hermosa time by over 11 minutes. For this random set of distances (most sprints don't follow the same standard), I did really well and PRed. But it's hard to feel good when you finish 6th and 1 minute outside the podium.

Pics:

Pre and Post Race:

Creeping the Results Page (no podium... sad...):

Post Race Brunch @ Good Stuff:

Post Race Dinner:

My amazing roommate made a delicious pulled pork and brussel sprouts dinner while I lay on the couch all day. And we had it with this awesome Presidio Syrah Rose I got from Solvang!