The Evil Eyebrow

Month: October 2009

  • From a Slow Runner: Bite Me

    The Athena Diaries pointed me toward this NYTimes article. Here’s a quote from late in the story:

    Longtime marathoners like Julia Given, a 46-year-old marketing director from Charlottesville, Va., still find ways to differentiate the “serious runners” from those at the back of the pack.

    “If you’re wearing a marathon T-shirt, that doesn’t mean much anymore,” Given said on the eve of this month’s Baltimore Marathon, where vendors were selling products that celebrate slower runners. One sticker said: “I’m slow. I know. Get over it.”

    “I always ask those people, ‘What was your time?’ If it’s six hours or more, I say, ‘Oh great, that’s fine, but you didn’t really run it,’ ” said Given, who finished the Baltimore race in 4:05:52. “The mystique of the marathon still exists. It’s the mystique of the fast marathon.”

    My first reaction when I read this article was “You Suck”. Who are you to tell me what I am? According to this person, I’m apparently not a marathoner. My marathon pace is just under 12:00. I’ve completed a marathon and all the training. I ran the bloody thing according to my training. I’m a fucking marathoner. I’m about to be a fucking ironman and I bet my pace will be slow enough to cause this person to think, “Oh, you’re not a real Ironman.”

    If race directors want to set cutoff times for when they’ll award finishing medals, fine. If they want to close the race course, fine (although I would like to see them try and put me on the bus in Washington DC at mile 20 if I didn’t make the cutoff), but if you finish a marathon, even if you walk it, you’re a racer.

  • Penis!

    If you liked the Ghostbusters A Capella I posted a while ago, you might like this. Warning, this is a song with one NSFW lyric in 9 part harmony.

  • Taper Time

    Swim Workout

    Tonight is a milestone of sorts. It was my last lengthy workout prior to my ironman. I was supposed to start tapering on Saturday last, but swimming isn’t high impact so I think I’m still safe.

    From now until November 7, I’ll be doing some workouts, but they’ll be medium-intensity and short. Nothing to break down the muscles or wear out the system. This period of time is what’s called “overcompensation” in a periodization plan. It’s when the body rests and recovers from the stresses you’ve put on it and then goes a bit beyond what it had before you started.

    If I’ve done everything right, I’ll be at peak fitness on race morning. That has been the thrust of the last twelve months. Did I do everything right? Frankly, no, but I’m at the point where I’m confident that I’ll complete the race and that has been the goal the whole time. I have time estimates but no time goals.

    One week and three days.

  • T Minus 14 Days

    At this time, in two weeks, I’ll be hitting the water.

    I think I’ll go bike a hundred miles to celebrate.

    Swim Start; Ironman Florida 2008

  • Ghostbusters!

    I seem to be on a Youtube kick recently.

    Watch out for the monkey.

  • It's Magic!

    How could I possibly change this setting?

    Magic

  • Saturday Morning Fun

    Here I sit, procrastinating on some of the work I must do, and I find this. Much fun. Especially the animation. The robot is pretty cool, too.

  • Faster than a Speeding Bullet

  • Work work work

    Whiteboard WindowsToday’s goals:

    • Finish writing the draft of a grant application (for work)
    • Clean up the drywall dust from some contractor operations (for home)
    • Drink coffee (well under way)
    • Run 8 miles (later)
    • Possibly socialize (if we’re lucky)
    • Spend time with my wife (if I’m lucky)
    • Not spend 10 hours glued to my computer watching Ironman coverage (shouldn’t be hard. Race was yesterday)

    Good luck, me.

  • Ironman Florida: 4 Weeks to Go

    Ironman All the Time!
    I’m sitting at my desk (except when I’m taking pictures of the desk) contemplating 28 days left until the race. Today is a light training day as I’m in a rest week of my periodization plan. Two more intense weeks to go then it’s all about the taper, baby! I’ll be getting out to bike a bit and run this afternoon, but right now I’m catching up on the checkbook and other computer-related chores.

    I’m also waiting for coverage to being for The Ironman. Hawaii. Kona. The World Championships. It’s being broadcast today via the ironman.com website so check it out if you want. Coverage starts at 11:00 EDT and the first racer across the finish line won’t be until after 7:00 EDT so you’ve got plenty of time.

    It’s amazing how tri-focused I’ve become in the past six months. Yes, I can name the major players in the sport and the industry. I can barely do that with the Braves and I’ve been following them for years. Yes, I can spout tri-centric terms and discussion and I know what you mean when you say “I Fartlecked” (although that’s a runner term, not a tri term). I’ve remarked to several people recently that I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself after the race is over and I’m not spending so much time focused on one thing. I expect I’ll find something (like yardwork).

    My training is coming along and I’m no longer as freaked out as I was a couple weeks ago. I’ll finish this race, although I revised my finish time upward to 14 hours. I’ll probably come in under that, but 14 hours is my projection. There’s just no telling how well I’ll do on the various legs, but here are my assumptions. These are reasonably conservative.

    Swim Pace / 100 Yds 0:02:05
    Bike Pace (mph) 16
    Run Pace (min/mile) 12

    swim 1:28:00
    t1 0:08:00
    bike 7:00:00
    t2 0:10:00
    run 5:14:24
    Total 14:00:24

    If you knock the bike pace up to 17 mph, I come in at 13:35:42.
    If you up the run pace to 11.5 minutes per mile, the time is 13:47:18.
    If you do both, I’m in at 13:22:36.

    Going fast on the swim has no appreciable effect on these times, so I won’t be. The swim is the part that has me a bit worried. Not that I think I can’t do it, just that I’ve never done a swim under these conditions. One of the hard-fast rules of racing is “Never do anything new on race day.” Well, this will be new and I don’t have any way of training for the scrum of the swim. I can go out and do some open water swims in my wetsuit (next week) but I can’t find 700 of my closest friends to do it with, in the ocean. No fast swim for Bill. It will be go as slow as I need to to get onto the beach in good condition. I’ll remind my readers that I felt like yakking after my swim last week. I hope to avoid that for the race.

    The bike pace is a big unknown for me. When I was doing initial time projections in the winter I was figuring about an 18 MPH pace as a good goal. With what I’ve been doing lately on my long rides, I’m not sure that 18 MPH is a reasonable pace, but I haven’t ridden the actual course, which has looonnng rolling hills, not some of the severe ones I get around Atlanta (even on the Silver Comet, see the footnote).

    So 18 MPH might be achievable, but for projections I’m sticking with 16,

    The run is also a big unknown for me. My long runs have been clocking in around a 10:30 pace, but I’ve only gone up to 16 miles to date and they haven’t been after a 112 mile ride. I’m also determined to finish this race strong and not in the condition I was in at the Nike Women’s Marathon, so I will be taking it as easy as necessary during the first 2/3 of the run to keep myself in good shape. 12 minutes per mile is a good pace, putting me in at 5:14 for the marathon.

    As an aside, Jenn and I like to poke back and forth about our marathon times. She maintains that her marathon time is better than mine (which was true for the Nike Women’s, by 3.5 minutes) but I hold the line that my average marathon time is better (she’s done two, I’ve done one). The debate lies in whether I should consider the ironman marathon time in this average. I’m leaning toward no as she’s insisting I decide before the race.

    The time discussion here notwithstanding, the important thing to me is to finish. If I finish in 16:59:59, I’ll be happy. That’s my line.