Rochester Marathon race report

So on Friday September 12th, 2008, I had the stupidest idea I've had in a long time. I was talking with some friends via email and telling about how even though I had just completed Ironman Wisconsin on Sunday September 7th, I was feeling okay and my muscles were relatively recovered. So, seeing as how I didn't hit the time goals that I had wanted to and that I had all of this "extra fitness that I didn't want to lose", I decided I would keep my mouth shut and sneak an entry into the Rochester Marathon.

I've always kinda wanted to do the Rochester Marathon. It's a home town race and I'd be able to sleep in my own bed the night before (those of you that travel regularly to race understand this...) and I had run the majority of the course on training runs with my friend Brian along the canal paths. Easy I thought, I got this no problem.

Brian was also racing and I wanted to keep my entry a secret. I went down on lunch to the Armory to register and ended up handing my application to Pete VP (Phil's dad aka "Mr. 1 mile") and told him that I was trying to sneak in to break 3 hours in this race because I felt relatively fresh. Big mistake. First that I thought that I could break 3 hours, and SECOND for thinking that Pete could keep his trap shut, haha! :o) He did not, and word leaked out. No worries, I just still wanted to crush a race, I was in.

Winner's of the AG got a free pair of Brooks shoes. I've never won shoes before, so I was excited as I looked at results and noticed that Brian was really the only formitable opponent in the M25-29 AG that I KNEW was registered... (a little foreshadowing for those who know the end to this tale...) Well race day comes and in order to save gas a crew of us met at Brian's and we all drove over. I think it was me, Brian, Melissa, Brian's dad, and T$ all crammed into Brian's Accord. We got there, got the chips and headed to the start line. Rochester is not really a large city, but we DO have a GREAT running talent here. Seriously when you can throw down a 16 minute 5k and NOT win a race because there are 3 people in front of you, then you KNOW it's a running town. Crazy fast. So we all get to the line and it's a nice day, a little muggy, but nice.

Gun goes off after some words from the race director and the 600+ marathoners are away and running. I of course had to represent and wore my IMmoo finisher's hat and was yammering on like a schoolgirl to everyone that would listen about what I did last weekend. People must've been annoyed with me, hah!

Well we're off, Brian fell back after not being able to hang with our stupid jokes that I tell in the start of a race and I never saw him again. (he had a rough day too) I settled in with a nice pack of about 5-6 people with the likes of Matt Kellman (did IMLP this year and it was nice to finally meet him), Jill Skivington, and Darren (doing the Canandaigua 50 I think?) But we were away and chatting at a nice pace. It was quick, but there was a large GAP behind me and I really didn't want to run alone. So I held on at a little higher heart rate than I was used to.

We were blazing. We went thru the half marathon point in about 1:30 or so (maybe even under. the 13.1 was not marked) and the group had pulled away from me a bit. I was hurting and I knew if I kept that pace up, I was going to explode...so I toned it down some.

Mile 14 hit and I IMMEDIATELY regretted the decision that I had made to do this race. It was AWFUL. I was just physically spent. The fatigue that I THOUGHT had left my legs decided to creep back in and I started walking at points. Oh, and to make matters worse, it was hot out. Hot and muggy, hot as balls... I threw off my shirt at mile 5 (and it was DRENCHED at that point) it was disgusting.

I was starting to be in a world of pain and I was wondering why I was even out there on such a day. The only thing that kept me driving forward was I didn't want Brian to catch me (as I hadn't seen anyone pass me that was in my age group) I kept on looking over my shoulder but he never came by (turns out he wasn't dealing with the heat too well either) I was doing the whole "walk a little/run a little/lose hope/see friends and start running again/then walk when they were out of sight" thing. It was rough.

Mile 22 hit and I saw a buddy of mine on the U of R campus and he yelled out something like, "Travis! What are you doing?!?! You just did an IRONMAN?!?!" and that gave me motivation to start running again as I laughed to myself. The finishing stretch was fun and Ellen and Boots called me out en route to the tape. Here are a few shots in a sequence from the finish. Pardon the grossness, I was shirtless and still had my HRM on :-p

I ended up crossing the line in 3:28:XX and barely snuck under the 3:30 barrier. I was just excited to be done and to stop moving. I wanted that sub 3 time again, but given the heat (there was a head advisory out and temps hit about 90 that day) and the whole just-did-an-ironman-7-days-prior thing I was happy :o)

I ended up with 2nd in the AG (the first place kid was 4th overall) and 25th overall. Not my best time, but it was my best effort for that day as I was pleased. I'm done racing competitively for the year (I know, it's crazy) but I have to let the fire stoke for IMLP in July so I'm gonna let this one be a slow burn. Definitely my stupidest idea in a long time :o) But not bad for my 6th marathon (3 in IM's) -haha. (DISCLAIMER - don't try this at home!) But I survived and ate a HUGE pizza afterwards. It was delicious. But hey, I have a beer waiting for me, so I gotta run (not literally!) but take care, hope you enjoyed the report and I will be sure to get back here sometime soon to give you all an update on what's going on. Cheers folks. Rest and train hard.

A few other pics to enjoy :o)

I wanted to throw a few other pics up here that were stragglers. Some of them are a little funny, but I wanted them up here nonetheless. This obviously was the bib # for IM Wisconsin this year.A nice picture of the REALLY dorky calf sleeves that I used for the marathon (both marathons). I'm not sure if I really believe that they work or if I will ever wear them again (seeing as they retained a LOT of water during both runs) but they are pretty good for recovery afterwards and that is what I will keep using them for.

This was the BEAST hanging up in my bedroom the day before I left for Madison. Wheels courtesy of Doug Bush (thanks again!) and all of the fun upgrades. Had to get at least one shot of her up here :o)

And last but not least was a surprise for me today in my office. My brother in law, Dave, came in today with a mid-afternoon treat that my sister Jenna had baked me as a congratulations for completing Ironman number three. I affectionatively refer to this as the Ironcake. It was delicious and unfortuantely is now gone as the majority of the office helped to devour it :o) Nothing like a mid afternoon sugar rush! Mmmm mmmmm :o)

That's all, I still have yet to get a race report up for the Rochester Marathon and that will be forthcoming, so look out, there's some crazy photos with that too. I'll keep you posted. Take care folks and I will see you all soon. Cheers.

Ironman Wisconsin race report

Ok so that last post was simply just a warm up to get a few good photos up here from the trip and explain what I did over the few days leading up to the race... which is always important. But here comes the nitty gritty of what happened between the hours of 7am and 6pm the day of Ironman Wisconsin.

I had a lot of goals for the race which I had put down on the blog and been very vocal about before the race began. A good friend of mine read somewhere that if you say your goals to at least 6 people, you have at least a 25% better chance of attaining them. I'm a sucker for every little advantage I can get, so I obliged and was very forthcoming in my intent on this race. Now the only thing I can say (in the literary style of one of the greats) "even the best laid plans of mice and men..."

So without further adieu, here it is, the formal race report:

2.4 mile swim (goal of somewhere between 55:00-58:00, actual was 56:13)

I got into the water that morning and felt pretty good, anxious as always, but somehow, after getting in and splashing around in the shallows, I saw Phil and said good luck to him. Weird that with 2400 other people around (and all in black neoprene wetsuits) that I was able to find his goofy smile, but we said our good lucks and seeded ourselves accordingly. I lined up to the right about 30 feet from the inner buoy and was right on the front of the line. I actually heard some people talking about my red sweede goggles and they were saying that their 100m times didn't allow them to wear sweedes. I found this amusing as I was always an okay swimmer, but in Ironman races, you never really know who is next to you. They could be a sub 3 marathoner, but a slow ass swimmer, you never know. And besides the swim is like the easiest part of the day, it's over so quickly, it's sad...

But I digress. I saw some other people wearing swedish goggles and lined up with them. You may think it's kind of weird that I am going on and on about the types of goggles that people were wearing, but if you are sporting sweedes for an IM, it likely means that you were a swimmer once in high school or college and know your stuff. This is verified by the following situation. We're all floating in the water like 5 minutes before the cannon goes off and this guy next to me speaks up and addresses the little group that I was in. He says, "alright everyone, no kicking, no punching, no grabbing ankles, no dunking, lets just have a nice clean start" and we all laughed a little but then everyone started nodding their heads in agreement and said, "okay...yeah, that sounds good..."

The gun went off and no one touched me.

Let me repeat that, no one touched me. The ironman is affectionatively known as the "fight, bike, run" to some people because the swim can be a freaking masacre. People get pulled out of the water, punched in the head...it gets ugly at times. People swim over the top of you, it's insane to be in the middle of it. The only reason it happens is that everyone packs in so tightly vertically (because we are all treading water) and when the cannon sounds and you start swimming you go horizontally and you are suddenly on top of each other and getting kicked in the face and people are climbing all over you, it's weird. But this time...no one touched me, we all started swimming (and swimming fast) and by the time we got to the first turn, we were pretty well situated in our own space.

The first turn comes (after about a half mile) and again, no contact. Turns in the swim leg of the Ironman are notorious as well because people bunch up and try to sight on the turn and it just generally gets pretty congested. This time nothing. It was divine, amazing, and the perfect swim I think. The second lap was fast and I locked onto a good pair of feet and was drafting comfortably (or maybe a little above my comfort level) but regardless, we were cruising, so i was happy. I was pleased to be done with the second loop and as I exited the water and was going under the banner, I noticed I had split my watch at a 56:13 swim split. I was shocked, but in my head for some reason it wasn't fast enough. I think I had secretly wanted a 55, but I knew I had done it as fast as I could've. There was a long day ahead of me and the time was mine.

T1 swim to bike - goal time of 5:00 - actual time of 5:20

Not bad. I exited the water, got my wetsuit stripped off and was forced to run up the helix of the parking garage on the end of the Monona Terrace 3 floors before we hit the transition bag area. On the way up, I almost threw up a little in my mouth. My body wasn't used to running uphill after swimming so quickly and as we spiraled up the helix, my lunch almost came up. I choked it down and got into the transition zone though. Had a great volunteer who helped me with everything and I decided against the arm warmers. I put on my bike shoes and that was a bad idea because as I ran about the 300 yards around the corner, down the hall, out the door, and thru the transition area to my bike, I was clomping in bike shoes the entire time. If anyone wants to race IM Wisconsin, DON'T put your bike shoes on in the transition area. Wait until you get your bike and run barefoot holding your bike shoes, trust me, it will be MUCH faster.

Bike 112 miles - goal time of 5:35=20.3mph - actual time of 5:43:21=19.57mph

Out on the bike, we rolled down the helix (weeeee!) and onto the bike course. Dad and I had driven it on the Thursday before the race and he exclaimed, "it doesn't look that bad" and I knew better. There didn't seem to be a flat spot on the course. It's a 15 mile stretch before you get to the 2 looped 40 mile section and it's constant rolling hills.

I knew what I wanted to do on the bike and how I needed to do it. I am terrible at pacing however (most folks know this) and I attacked the first loop of the bike. Big mistake. I should've held back and kept it in the proverbial small ring (which you couldn't do because the hills were so steep and ever changing that you were shifting every 5 seconds) Regardless, I was flying thru the cornfields on the new pimped out bike with borrowed Reynolds Wheels (Thanks Doug Bush!) It was fun and I split thru the first loop directly on target at 20.31mph average speed.

Now a funny thing happened out there in the cornfields of Wisconsin. The road was really bumpy....I have an X Lab mini wing on the back of my saddle with some Profile Design Karbon Kages on it. During about every single one of my training rides this year, I launched bottles out the back whenever I went over bumps. So before the race started, I saw a bike in transition with a ruberband around the nossel of the bottle that he had in his rear cages. Great idea, so I bought a huge rubberband and tried it out. Thought it would work perfectly because I always eject bottles. It did not. Simple as that, it didn't work AT ALL.

10 miles into the ride, I reach back to grab some water after sipping on the CarboPro and Gatorade mixture that was in the chalupa and I reach back to find no bottle there, only a rubber band dangling from my cage. Ok, no need to panic, there's aid stations everywhere on the bike, I'll just grab more water in a bit. I do and as soon as I put it in, like a mile down the road, I hear it bouncing off the pavement. I had even put the rubberband around the nose of the bottle to hold it in place, but that just pushed in the nose and made the bottle slide out the BOTTOM of the cage...not cool. Now I have to wait another 30 minutes for another attempt at water.

So in the meantime, I still need to intake as many calories as possibble so I'm drinking the chalupa mixture and it's very concentrated. I should be washing it down with water but I can't seem to hang on to a bottle to save my life. So, I finally rolled thru the first loop and felt okay. As I said before I split thru in 20.31mph, not bad, but I knew I needed to back off a little because I could feel my legs getting a little more and a little more smoked as I rode on.

Miles 60-90 were rough. I hit a definite rough patch and saw a lot of 17mph readings on the speedometer. It was a trying time. I had already launched several bottles and at the halfway mark I got an actual plastic, green, gatorade water bottle handed to me at the bottle hand up. I was stoked. Maybe this one wouldn't fly out the back I thought. NOT A MILE DOWN THE ROAD, I heard it bounce off the pavement and it landed like a grenade ready to take out the people behind me. I apologized as they went past and they didn't look too happy at my inability to keep a bottle on my bike.

At this time, the chalupa mixture was just about gone and I had no liquid on my bike, only a Clif Bar which I unwillingly choked down sans water because I needed to. I had a rough patch at this time and the hills were hurting my legs. For an hour and a half I just wanted to be off of my bike and I was watching that average speed dip well below where I thought it should be (which kind of made things worse for my mental state) It was tough, but I survived it. I rolled back to the split off to go back to the transition area and gladly realized that was all net downhill, what a nice surprise. That might have just saved my average speed. My butt was sore from bouncing over all the lumps in the road and I just wanted to start running and have a good marathon.

T2 Bike to run - goal time of 2:00 - actual time of 2:22

Nothing really special here, I climbed up the helix (how awful after 111 miles of hills) and jumped off my bike at the top leaving my shoes in the pedals. I gladly gave my bike to a volunteer and ran into the terrace and grabbed my bag and sat down. A kid about 15 years old came and helped me. He couldn't get my bag open so I just told him to, "RIP IT!!!" and then apologized because I yelled at him. I got my shoes on and calf sleeves and was off. Nothing special, just happy to be running. I ran down the helix and was off on the run course.

26.2 mile run - goal of between 3:20-3:30 - actual time of 3:57:40

I was off and running. I said before that I have a really hard time pacing myself sometimes and running is a problem. I split thru the first 4 miles in 28:07 and knew that was trouble. I wanted to split 7:43's all day (or at least 7:45's) and that would get me to a 3:30 marathon. At 4 miles I was on pace to split a 3:00...that wasn't likely. But the thing is I was getting passed by SO MANY people in my age group on the bike and I wanted to make up the ground that they had taken from me. I desperately wanted to be on the podium again and this was my time to shine.

I split thru 8 miles really well. I was feeling good, passed about 15 people in my AG and then something hit. It was mile 9 and I suddenly felt weird. My legs were tight and my abs were too on my left side. I had been drinking Coke at the aid stations and that was okay, but I felt off. I stopped to breifly stretch my quad and pulled it up to my butt and instantly my hamstring seized. It was terribble pain, so I let go and tried the other leg, same result. It didn't cramp FULLY, but it was close. You know the feeling. I started walking a little to ease it out and just remembered the motto of dad's quarter and this blog, "Keep Moving Forward". I would start to run only to have my abs cramp so that I wasn't running upright anymore. For those who know him, I looked like I was Frank Farrar. It was crazy, but I soldiered on.

I think what had happened was that I was cramping from lack of water in my muscles from the bike. I hadn't taken any salt that day because I only peed once on the bike and it was not a lot and I wasn't intaking enough liquids anyway. So the combination of low salt and low liquid left my muscles ready to stop working at any time. But I made it thru loop one in 1:47 and multiplied that thru my head and realized that I could still pull off a 3:34 marathon. Pretty close to goal time.

Miles 9-19 were rough again. I was doing a combination walk run thing (no rhyme or reason to it) and by the time I got to Badger Stadium again, I thought that I could run the entire field and then just walk up the exit ramp to the rest of the run course. I ran down the field, over to the other side and my abs cramped again. I walked halfway back and ran until the ramp and walked up it. It was not pretty. I finished the first loop, gave a hug to my dad and a little ways down the road at the special needs station, I changed my socks and shoes because they were wet with sweat and water. I think I was just looking for an excuse to stop again. I was tired...

In retrospect, I should have removed the calf sleeves because they were retaining so much water. But I kept them on. After running a few miles it felt like there was a stone in my shoe, so I had the excuse to stop again and check it out. Turns out it was the stem of an apple...wtf?!?! I don't know how it got there, but I'm glad I took it out. I was finishing up the first loop and going up a main street to get to the start of the 2nd loop and all of the sudden a lot of people started cheering for what I thought was me. Turns out it was Chris McDonald coming up behind me and I slapped him five and congratulated him as he ran past on his win. Cool. :o)

At about mile 17 or 18 at an aid station, I knew I needed to do something drastic. I walked thru it and picked up a handful of pretzels, 2 powerbars and as much solid food as I could. My stomach was feeling weird from all the coke and I needed something. It worked. By mile 19 I was running again. I ran with a really cute girl in my age group from Colorado who was a PT and that was a good thing to distract the pain. We chatted a while and it made the miles click by faster. I got to the motivational mile and saw a message that my dad had written to me. I don't remember what it said, but it was something my dad would say. I was running and wanted to stop by soldiered on.

I crossed the line and tried to flast a #3 with one hand and the "hang loose" with the other, but i was tired. Even my post race photo looked tired. I somehow sneaked in under 10:45 for an official finishing time of 10:44:56. I'm pleased, but unhappy at the little things that went wrong that day. I feel like I could've done some things differently and had a different result. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm happy at my time, I know it's quick, but when you have a goal time in your head and it ends up different from that, it's unsettling... I ended up 25th in my age group and no where near the podium. I would've had to go sub 9:43 to get in the top 5 and sub 9:40 to get to Kona.

So that's how I'll leave it. I don't know if I will ever go back for the IM in Wisconsin. It didn't really suit my riding style on the bike. It was a fun one to check off the list and I'm already signed up for IMLP in 2009 anyway. I hope you are happy this is done, I sure am :o) Done and done. Take care (whomever is reading) and I hope that you train and rest hard. I know I'll be resting hard. Cheers.

Ironman Wisconsin 2008 pre- race report

Just call me Mr. Consistency I guess... well for those who were wanting my thoughts and (semi-skewed) views on this race, grab a bagel and a power bar, make sure you are adequately hydrated and be prepared for my rendition of the journey thru the farmlands that I like to call the Ironman Wisconsin pre-race report.

Most of you probably know by know that I went a 10:44:56 a few weeks ago and I'm generally pretty happy about that. (I say generally because a few things went wrong that were preventable and I am still stewing a little about that...but I digress, we will discuss that later on)

I signed up for my third attempt at the Irondistance race back last September when I realized that a good buddy of mine that I have known since the wee years of our adolesence was going to be graduating from parajumping school in the airforce in May or June and would be free to race with me in September. His name is Phil VanPeursem and he just married his high school sweetheart Kelly (also a dear friend of mine) and moved out to Portland, OR where he is stationed curently. We decided upon Wisconsin because it was the only IM race where you could still sign up online and it was almost halfway for us at that time.

Cool, we both got it...I was finally going to be racing an IM with the guy that originally got me into triathlon in the first place by convincing me to do the Penn Yann/Keuka Lake sprint triathlon in 2004. Yes it was still the Penn Yann tri at that point... :o) He's always been a big brother to me and this was finally my chance to show him the ropes as this was my third and Phil's first one. Neat :o) We were both rather eager to race together again.

Well, I was driving out to Wisconsin with my dad (as we always road trip to IM's together) and we left on a Wednesday morning to get there late on Wednesday night. It was a fun drive and a lot of goofy things happened (dad almost sitting in dog poo when we stopped for lunch) but I won't bore you with the details. It was fun and it's really cool to spend some good quality bonding time with my father every year and chat about a lot of things. (we had a 13 hour drive to yammer on...) And for those of you that know my father, he doesn't like to travel with the radio/CD player on, so that means no music and we end up chewing the fat about a variety of subjects during the ride. It really is one of the most enjoyable parts of doing an Ironman race, travelling with dad.

Dad always was and is really goofy (now you all see where I get it from) and when he climbed into the car, he taped a quarter onto my dashboard. I found this a litle weird and looked at the coin to inspect. It was a Wisconsin state quarter with a state motto of FORWARD which we both found rather appropriate. That kinda became the motto of our trip, thanks dad. :o)

I also wanted to mention that the funniest publication that I have read in a while is the onion newspaper. They apparently print it in Madison, WI and they have it for free on the street corner. If you ever get a chance, just go to http://www.theonion.com/ and check it out. It is freaking hysterical and here is a shot of my dad doing a goofy face and reading the Onion one day during lunch :o)

Well, we got there in one piece and settled in, did all the fun pre-IM stuff like the Gatorade morning swims, visited the local bike shops, went and checked in and got weighed (I was 158lbs!!) We checked out the beautiful Minona Terrace which was built by the amazing Frank Lloyd Wright. As dad was a draftsman back in the day, we had a lot of good conversation about styles of architechture and buildings. We also checked out the capitol and took some photos.

As the days drew nearer to the race I got all the fun things done, organized by transition bags, cleaned and lubed up the bike, dropped everything off the day before, stole an extra swim cap at registration (third year in a row!!!)

Now it was the day before the IM and we were done with everything by 11am. Dad and I kind of looked at eachother and wondered what we were going to do for the whole day. On our ride up, we had discussed the possibility of driving to Iowa from Madison, Wisconsin. We have this competition to see who can get to all 50 states first and neither of us had IA. So what did we do, but climbed back into the car and drove the 2 hours each way to Iowa... and had lunch there at this place called the Brickhouse. We both had really spicy Chicken Alfredo that made your nose run. We stopped in the visitors center before and picked up a few pamphlets, took some photos. For those of you that remember hammerfest swims - pat yourself on the back because the were "kind of a big deal" ;o)


This photo below was actually taken via cell phone in Dubuque, IA in front of the visitors center. Pardon the terribble shot, it was a self portrait and I have the ugly blue Tifosi's on my head because the oakley's were already in the transition bag that I handed in that morning...
We were looking for a place for lunch and saw a large neon sign that read "laughing ass lager" and knew we had to go there for lunch. It was the brickhouse and it was really good pasta. I treated dad to lunch and we ate and then walked around for about 5 minutes, then drove back to Wisconsin. :o) Cause that's how we roll.

Ok, enough of the pre-race stuff and now onto the actual race. I'm going to post the RACE REPORT in a different post so that it breaks up the monotony of this story. So cheers, I'll be back in a minute.

Catchup-IMoo screen shot, ramblings

Yeah yeah yeah, I know I need to get a race report up here sometime and I think I'm close to getting my thoughts collected about that race (it's just a lot happened in it...and the weekend after it) so that's taken some time to process everything in my puny little head. :o)

For the people who read this (hi, mom! - haha, yeah right, bet she doesn't even read this!) I raced Ironman Wisconsin on 9/7/08 and I survived. A screen shot of my results is below:

So, there were the results...I promise that I'm gonna try to get a honest to goodness race report up here with some photos (managed to steal them all from ASI Photo :o) haha!) and all that good stuff, but in the mean time,I'm a little under the weather and not really feelign like slopping thru an entire race report (in painstakin detail) right now.

You see, I came home from Wisconsin and knew that I coulda raced faster (lots of reasons why, but I won't get into those until the report) I was very pleased with the consistency of my finish, but you know how it is to expect one thing and have something else happen. So, me being VERY stupid me, I signed up for the Rochester Marathon on 9/14/08 seeing as how my legs were feeling ok and the soreness was virtually gone from them....bad idea. Well, I completed both (only 7 days apart) and my legs are now fried (and so apparently is my immune system...)

And all in all, I owe myself (and you the readers) TWO race reports. I wanted to keep the Rochester Marathon a secret because I have a feeling a lot of people would've yelled at me for being a moron and attempting something as stupid as that, so I didn't tell too many people. But the cat's out of the bag now and I made it thru the both in one piece, so now I owe it to myself to get the reports up there. I'll try to at least get the IM one up ASAP (maybe by the weekend?) We shall see.

I'm done racing competitively for the rest of the year, so I hope to get some good beers in me and back to normal people life for a while. I'm out for now, but a good race report is forthcoming, so be aware :o) Take care, rest (chicken soup for me!) and train hard and I'll talk to you later folks, cheers.

GOALS for my 3rd IM....

Well, it wouldn't be an ironman, and I doubt that I would have gotten as far as I have without goals in my life. I have a knack for being able to predict a goal time pretty reasonabbly for future races as I was able to hit the IMLP time within 5 minutes.

I have several goals for this race in Wisconsin coming up that I feel like sharing tonight....

1. Have fun - look at the photos from last year's IMLP, I was beaming in every photo. I want to have that in Wisconsin too.
2. Just go out there and do what I do, race smart and get to the finish line
3. Now here's the nitty gritty - get a PR in an iron distance race (sub 10:27)
4. Go sub 10:10
5. Sub 10 hours and place on the podium of my age group (M25-29)
6. Sub 10, AG placing and slot.

Obviously they tend to get harder and harder the farther that you go down the list. But without that "pipe dream" goal at the very end, what would we have to chase after? A good friend once advised me of an old Chinese curse, "may you attain all of your goals"....Very relevant.

I think that a majority of those goals are attainable with the training that I've put in this year. I don't want to jinx anything, but I also want to be pretty reasonable. Obviously if the weather does not cooperate (headwinds on the bike) the times will be slower than expected, but that's kind of out o my control. If I race to my potential and have one of those everything-went-exactly-according-to-plan type of days, then I think there is a slim chance that I could grab all six goals above. But things would need to really bend my way.

I have other little goals too. I want to be between 55-58 for the swim (reasonable considering that the swim is a strength of mine and I've been swimming with a masters group for quite some time now. I just need to seed myself accordingly) I would also like to bike strong enough to be in contention but not too strong that I blow out my legs and have a shitty marathon.

My marathon goal is the big thing here. I'm almost using Wisconsin as a stepping stone to going sub 10 in Placid, but I'm obviously racing it to the best of my ability and not holding anything back. I just want to race hard enough and to my potential. The best thing for me would be a bike split that allows me to run something in the 3:2X range for the marathon. I did a 3:41 in Placid and a 2:53 in Boston and a 2:55 in Philly, so I don't think a 30 minute drop off my PR for an IM run is unreasonable. Now that I know how to properly run a marathon, this should be interesting...

I plotted it out on my friend Beth's birthday last year on a post it note and hung it in my cubicle of what I thought my ideal everything-went-exactly-perfect race could come out to at IMmoo and it showed as a 9:55...I would be elated if a week from now that was my time. I guess we'll see what happens.

So those are my goals. I'm being COMPLETELY honest and not holding anything back. I want to come back with some hardware. Once you get on the podium, it's hard to do a race and not want to be on their again. My good friend Sarah (whom I met on the podium at Placid) endured the crazy conditions of IMLP this year and was a repeat AG placer. I don't want to dissappoint, I want to do that again too. But this year, I aged up into the M25-29 from the M18-24 AG, so it will be a little tougher, but nothing I can't handle. We'll see what Sunday Funday brings folks.

These are goals though. I obviously realize how fortunate that I am to be able to have the ability to race as hard as I do and as fast as I can. It hurts and as athletes we sacrifice a lot. But that's not all that I am about. My world will not be crushed if I on't hit the time goals that I want to or something happens during the race. Dissappointment will creep in yes, but the sun will still come up tomorrow and there are bigger fish to fry in the world. I'm just sharing these as a little added pressure on my ass that I don't want to let anyone down. I will race hard and do my very best, and however that shakes out is how it will be listed in the results. So on that note, I'm bringing my "A-game" to Wisconsin in a few days and you better bring yours to all of your races. Until then, dream big... cheers.