Heart Break Hill Duathlon?

I thought about something today and decided to ask my friends, family, and church members what they think.
I was thinking about putting on a benefit duathlon for our church building. There is only 1 triathlon and 2 duathlons for all of central NM. Alb and Santa Fe are 2 of the largest cities in NM. Most of the duathlon in NM are raced by people from those two cities and most du's/tri's are at least 4 hrs drive from Alb.
I have friends at the NM Outlaws, NM tri club, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and the Tri-atomics triathlon teams. They would probably be willing to send out emails to all their members and serious competitors in NM. And if we also put fliers at all the run and bike shops in Alb and Santa Fe at minimum we could get 50-100 racers at $40 per that's $2000-$4000. But I don't know why we wouldn't get more like 75-150 racers. If we decided to put it on in early 08, perhaps late Feb-late March, we could probably get into the SW Challenge series. If we did that I'd be willing to bet we could get between 100-450 competitors. The Jay Benson gets 450 racers every year and it is a rough road with allot of switch backs. It's not very pretty terrain.
We could have the transition area at the Entranosa/344 church property. The run could go up Entransoa and back. The bike could go south on 344, down heart break hill and turn around right before highway 14. An absolutely beautiful and challenging ride. Not very much traffic. No major intersections to worry about. And heart break hill is famous in this area among cyclists and multi-sport athletes!
Another great thing about a benefit duathlon is it could possibly get some people to come visit my church or be a great way to reach out to believers or non-believers alike. I could put out church fliers in the race packets. Mark or one of our elders could give a pre-race prayer. It could be a fun way to reach out to the community and also a great tool to help get funding for building our church.
*The hardest thing with duathlons is usually getting enough volunteers to hand out bottles filled with gator aid for the bike leg and cups of gator aid for the run leg. But since it's for the church I bet we'd have more than enough volunteers from our members.

*I would need to see if we could get enough sponsors for enough $ up front to purchase enough gator aid to be handed out on the bike and run legs to every competitor, water bottles for each competitor on the bike leg, small paper cups for the run leg, 26 medals for top 3 males and top 3 females in each age group, 6 plaques: 3 for top three overall male and 3 for top three overall females.

*I would need to find out where to purchase insurance for a duathlon and how much it would cost.

*I would need to see what it takes to become USAT sanctioned race, and if it is even worth it.

So what do you think? Please leave feed back with your opinions. All opinions positive and negative would be appreciated. I don't know anything about putting on a multi-sport race, but I'll do anything to spread Gods word and to support our local multi-sport athletes!
Cody Hanson

Turning over a new leaf

As many of you know I have been struggling with my weight. In Feb/March I was down to 211 and was faster than I'd ever dreamed I could be. At that time I weighed less than I'd weighed in over a decade. But now I'm struggling to keep off the lbs. What changed? My motivation is what changed. The last two years I'd been racing against 2 really fast guys in the Clydesdale 39 and under division. Jay Engebretson and Arnold Ceniceros. They were fast, and the competition drove me. I ended last season 2-2 against Jay. And 1-3 against Arnold. I have to say the only reason I even got 1 win against Arnold was because he wrecked. By the end of last season I was obsessed with training, diet, and racing. I wanted to beat these guys so bad!

By the Dec 06 Polar Bear triathlon I had made major time improvements. It was the 3rd time I'd done that course and I beat my PR by over 13 minutes! The closest Clydesdale in my division was 3.5 minutes behind me. In April of this year I placed 9th overall at Sully's super sprint and 15 overall at the Atomic man duathlon. But alas, Jay and Arnold never showed at ANY SW races at all.

Turns out at the beginning of this season Jay moved away and Arnold took this year off to concentrate on college. By April I had 5 1st place finishes and one 5th place (due to 2 flats at MVTC). Without those two triathletes there, there wasn't really anyone in my division to compete with me. So as I got more comfortable with mounting wins I became lazy and started cheating on my diet.

I got news recently that Arnold graduated and he has stated training again. Hard. He plans on competing again next season.
Struggle alleviated.
-I haven't cheated on my diet in 7 days.
- I've givin up coffee for the first time since 2000 because I want to ensure I'm always well hydrated. If a person is hydrated they recover faster.
- I've been making sure I get a full 8 hrs sleep (very unusual for me).
-I even started swimming.
-For the first time ever in my life I've started doing portion control when eating.
-I'm eating every 3 hrs to speed up my metabolism.
-Any workout under 2 hrs I make sure to do first thing in the morning on an empty stomach to burn more fat.

I'm back. I am now in predator mode and I have sighted my prey.

I'll keep you updated on how the hunt goes. So farThis week:
hrs trained 14.05
swim 1000 yards
Bike 50.1
Run 13
Brick 50.1
Running stairs 2 miles
Weight 233lbs

Lance an Ironman?

Just read an article that says there is a rumor floating around that Lance armstrong will be competing in Ironman. The article has some convincing arguments. Just wanted to see, after some of my fellow bloggers read the article if they think it's true, and if so how they feel about it? Personally I'd be stoked to watch him try any Iron! I'd call in sick to work if I had to just so I could watch it. That's saying allot because I usually only call in to work if there's a race on Sat I really want to do! I even force myself to go to work when sick so I have race/sick days accumulated! Say, did you know he is a former Texas state age group champion in the 1500m freestyle? Yup, true story.
http://www.joereger.com/entry-eventid4352-Whats-Next-for-Lance-Armstrong.log

Future triathlete

Carb building
Swim leg
Bike leg
Run leg
Recovery

I'm very lucky in the fact that my wife and I work opposite days off. Consequently every Mon, Tue, and every other Wed I get my daughter all to myself. I make sure to do allot of fun things with her. Her favorite thing is swimming. She has learned to go down the pool slide all by herself both face up, and face down. The pool is indoors and there is an indoor track upstairs that I take my daughter to every day after the pool. I started having her run one time around the track because once we get home she goes to sleep after we eat. The swim and run combo really makes her sleep well. She's gotten pretty good at keeping up a slow jog the entire way around the track which is one tenth of a mile. A long distance for a 21 month old. I've also been teaching her how to ride her bike, but so far that isn't going very well. Her legs just aren't strong enough to peddle yet. Swim, bike and run. Gee I wonder what sport I want her to do when she gets older? I've posted some pictures of her triathlon training:)

Weekly miles

13 hrs 32 min
Swim 3116.8 yd
Bike 49.75 mi
Run 12.06 mi
Brick 52.71 mi
MTB 10.77 mi
Stairs 2 mi
Weights 1 hr 46 min

Hey everyone, look! I swam a little 2 weeks in a row! I think I might of actually earned the name Triathlete this month!

Weight loss lost

Well, to say the least I'm not very good at this whole weight loss thing. I had gotten down into the high 220's. I'm back to 236. I really suck at portion control. I'm not so good at eating the foods I'm suposed to either. come to think of it isn't those 2 things all it takes to lose weight? 0-2. Not so good.

I've decided to try something a great blogger and all around great guy, couch-potatoe-to-Ironman, suggested. I'm going to start logging everything I eat into a log book. Even on days I splurge- which seems to be allot these days- I'm going to write down each and everything I eat. Perhaps if everytime I open that book I see recent accomplishments and failures I'll be less willing to keep stuffing my pie hole!

I'll keep tou informed on how my diet goes. Seems when it comes to my blog I only write it down when the news is good. No news is bad news:)

On another note I found the most incredible web sight. It has thousands of race results from races all over the world. Once you sign on you can claim any races you did under your name. It copares you to other racers and does many other pretty cool things automatically. I found 2 marathons, 1 half marathon, 2 70.3's, and 1 oly tri that I'd done all on the same page just waiting for me to click on it. http://www.athlinks.com/

Peace!

Weekly miles

12hrs 24 minutes trained last week
Swim 3312 yards
bike 13.46 miles
run 10.41 miles
Brick 25.5 miles
Race 11.43 miles
MTB 11 miles
I tapered this week for the state club championships

Great team members makes for an amazing team!

This weekend was the Bottomless lakes triathlon in Roswell NM. The bottomless lakes tri was going to be the state club championships race. Last year the Outlaws won the club championships, we were hoping to repeat, a feat that has only been done by one other team before.



Sat night I met most of the club members that were there that night to race the following morning for dinner. I had an awesome time hanging out. Truly some wonderful people in our club. I was able to meet some triathletes there that were new on the team: Matt H, Michale L(more about Michael later), and his girl friend(can't remember her name). Great people, and a great time.



The town of Roswell only has about 50,000 people living there, and this weekend there were almost 50,000 visitors there to celebrate the UFO crashes that happened many years ago. After dinner we all watched a parade go down Main street, many people were dressed as Aliens, star wars characters, there was even a Santa Clause that had an outfit on that made it look like he was fighting an abduction. That one creeped me out:)



One of the Outlaws I met was Matt H. He is 19 and just completed the college nationals. He finished in 2:28 finishing 300th out of 500 competitors. Turns out the nationals was his first race ever! Can you imagine the pressure of your first race being the college national championships race? I ended up sharing a room with this guy. I was very impressed by him. very friendly, mature, really seemed to have his head on straight. I know I sure didn't at that age! He also had a real thirst for triathlon knowledge. I tried answering as many questions as I could, things like training by HR, how to test your HR, the importance of training in Z-1 & Z-2 to build mitochondria and capillaries, race equipment, the differences between tri and road bikes. This guy was a sponge. He caught on quick. While explaining bike fit(I did warn him I know very little about a good bike fit) I noticed he had an older Treck bike that he seemed to be taking very good care of. I knew his bike was older because it had the shifters on the bottom bar, but it was a Treck so I knew it was top end at the time it was new. I decided to pick up his bike to see how light an older bike like that would be. HOLLY COW! That sucker weighed more than my 21 month old daughter does! How the heck did he do an Oly in 2:28 pedaling a tank around! I pulled off one of his wheels and just about broke my back. Those wheels would be great for dumbbell curls, not for racing!



A quick side note here, I guess I acclimated to night shift better than i thought. I just laid there looking at the ceiling until 4am. Ah well, sleep is totally overrated.



The next day at the race sight I start telling some of my fellow Outlaws about Matt's tank-of-a-bike. Steve Hall goes over and offers to let Matt use his disk. Michael (one of the new members) without missing a beat tells Matt he could use his road bike to race. The bike is probably worth over 3 G's. The disk wheel is a HED-C. Also pretty dang expensive! The 2 of them offered this without ever meeting Matt before. They had no idea if the kid would take care of it or not. They just chose to trust in him blindly. I was touched and really proud to be an Outlaw. Great team members makes for a an amazing team.



Matt finished the race which consisted of a 400 meter swim, 14K bike, 4K run in 48:02 finishing 6th place overall! 1st place 19 and under! Very impressive! Steve Hall(the guy who lent his disk) ended up taking 3rd place overall. Michael L(the guy who lent his bike) took 7th overall. I took 2nd place Clyd and placed 30th overall. One of my Idols and Outlaw leader the Clydeologist took first place Clyd by crushing me by over 5 minutes!!!! Geek girl took(the clydeologists beautiful wife) took 1st place athena. Sw tri gal finished 2nd place even after having a pretty bad crash and getting road rash all over her face, her husband (whom I have to say is one of the most laid back great guys I've ever net) took 1st place in his div. Helen Crane took one of the top 3 in her div. Stuart, Helens husband raced an amazing race! I saw him on the run. He looked in allot of pain. But kept pushing long after most would of slowed to ease some of the pain. Seemed to me like almost every Outlaw there either placed top 3 or was dang close. It's not official yet, but I'm pretty sure the Outlaws won the NM team championships for a 2nd year in a row. No team has ever won it 3 years in a row. But I think with the kind of team work and camaraderie I saw that day there isn't another team out there that doesn't deserve it more than my fellow Outlaws!

Junes miles

48 hrs training in June
Bike 170 miles
run 60 miles
running stairs 9.7 miles
MTB 41 miles
Brick 191 miles
raced 16 miles this was the Gallup triathlon. I did 400 meters swimming during that event. Which means I did actually swam this month:)

The 4th week of June I was only able to do 2 workouts. A Co-worker got stabbed at work so we've been slammed with overtime. Unable to workout regularly.

The 3rd week of June my family and I went to Co. for vacation. Had no internet service, so that's the reason the last 2 weeks I haven't been able to keep up on my fellow bloggers entries. I'll play catch up today. Sorry fellow bloggers, I didn't mean to neglect you!