recovering from a PR & a new coach

Well, I'm post Redman. I was excited about my new 70.3 PR of 5 hr 30 min. I never dreamed I'd be that fast at that distance, especially considering all the rain, standing water, and mud from flooding on the bike & run course. I realize the biggest reasons for my increased speed was my low body weight- low for me anyways, and great coaching.

My coach is having me take off until Friday, then we'll evaluate how I feel & start training for the Silverman half Iron which is schedualed for Nov 7th. The Silverman is a very hard course with lots of climbing. So low body weight at the Silverman will be even more important than it was for the Redman. I feel I can get to 190-195 by then, & 180-185 by the New year. If I can get to that weight I'm going to race all of 2010 as a 35-39 AG. Racing as an AG, & under 200 pounds for an entire year has always been one of my biggest goals in triathlon. Wish me luck!

I'm ahead in the South West Challenge series. The athlete closest to me in points is a guy named George Ferland. Apparently he's very fast. He's won the Clydesdale division in every race he's competed in the last 2 years. There are 2 races left for the season. Essentially what it boils down to is if he races in either one of the next 2 he will be champion. If He doesn't compete in either of the 2 remaining I win the series. I'll keep you informed.

After the Silverman I'm going to be looking for a new coach. I've been with the coach I have now since the summer of 06. Coach Pete is awesome and he has shown me what nearly perfect triathlon coaching is like. He's good. Very very good, & he knows how good he is. Consequently and understandably he is raising his prices at the new year. I just can't afford to keep him on. $ is the one & only reason I have to get another coach.

I've had bad coaches before. Nothing is more aggravating & disheartening. I had a feeling this was going to happen with Coach Pete, so I'd been keeping my eyes open for other coaches for awhile. If this happened I was planning on hiring a retired pro cyclist by the name of James Webster who coaching here in Alb. Then, after speaking with my current coach this weekend, he told me he has some coaches who have signed on to coach for his company who are outstanding. He also gave me a discount on the coaching he's giving me until the Silverman as an incentive to stay with Mile High Multisport coaching. I'm now unsure what I'll do. 50/50 I guess.

James Webster is a local coach. That's a plus. He made a living from being a pro endurance athlete, the knowledge he'd have to offer based on his life experiences in pro cycling would be priceless. He returns phone calls very quickly, the negative side of him is that the times I emailed him, he took a long time to respond or never responded at all. Although I must point out I wasn't his paying athlete, so a slow response is understandable to a point. The other negative side of James is that he & his triathlon club has a pretty serious blood feud going on with mine. My tiathlon team, the NM Outlaws have always been such a supportive & kind group of people, I am unwilling to leave the NM Outlaws. I doubt James would be willing to coach me if I refused to join his team & race for "the enemy".

I trust my current coach whole hearted. If he says the coaches he has working for him are good I believe him. He'll also be over seeing the coaches under him, so I'll still have Coach Pete there giving advise to my new coach, explaining my strengths & weaknesses & how best to deal with them. There is also the fact that I have some serious food issues that coach Pete has been very patient with. I'm unwilling to tolerate someone saying something stupid & inconsiderate like "just be more mindful about what your putting in your mouth".

For right now I don't know which way I'll go for a new coach. I'll keep you informed.

Thanks for tuning in.

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!

Buffman race report

About 20 minutes before the Buffman & Squeaky I walked up this gigantic hill to my van. Once I got there I dropped Off my bag and headed back down to the transition area. I decided to leave my new Blue Seventy wet suit in the van because a triathlete is never supposed to try a new piece of equipment the 1st time on a race. And as usual I hadn't been swimming in many months. No swim, no test swim equipment. That simple. By the time I got to the bottom of the hill there was 15 minutes until the race and the pre-race meeting is being held. As I got to my transition area I hear the RD say "The water temperature is 64 degrees." I'm glad everyone was paying attention to the pre-race announcements or their transition area when I heard this because I'm sure I looked like a deer caught in the head light! 64 degrees? Dang that's cold! My eyes got great big and round and I took off running the half a mile or more to my van-up that HUGE hill again! By the time I arrive at the swim start I have 4 minutes left. It'll be close but I can get my wet suit on in time. As I pulled it over my shoulders and turned to ask someone to put the pull string under the Velcro for easy reach I realize I put my wet suit on backwards! AAHH, I'm panicking! I ripped the suit off as quickly as possible turning it inside out in the process! AAHH, somebody help! I was 100 pounds of potatoes squeezing into a 50 pound sack turned inside out with a time limit!!! AAHH. I finally turned it right side out and got it over my feet, I quickly stood up and tried running to the mass lake race start while trying in vain to pull my wet suit up at the same time!!! AARRR. I looked like a panguin running with a black wet suit around my ankles! I heard people giggling at the boat ramp, but I cared not! I was determined to start this race with the rest of the other triathletes fully dressed! I finally got to the edge of the water, bent over for one more big pull of my wet suit to get it up and my head jams into some into some guys butt knocking him foreward into the water. By this time I'm getting an audience, there's no one laughing anymore. I think they were to the point of pitying me. Finally I get the wet suit over my shoulders, use the draw string to zipp up, and some guy behind me is kind enough to strap the string under my Velcro without me having to run around pleading SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME! I think the RD saw my my trial and tribulations and waited until I was calmed down sufficiently before he started the race. After about a minute of me standing there at the ready position my heart rate finally started to slow, and BANG, the race starts! My heart rate promptly shoots sky high again. This is one of the problems I found I have for races where I want to do well so badly, I can't calm down because I'm so exited. At the 20 minute mark I look up and realise I am only at the half way point! If I keep this up I'm going to have a 40 minute swim!! "Come on man! Calm down! Concentrate on you breathing, relax!" I told myself. It wasn't until then that I finally started to make some progress. I passed more people in the last half of this swim than any 2 of my races combined! Only the 2nd swim of my life where I felt fast-well on the 2nd half I felt fast. I finished in 33 minutes, which was an Oly swim PR. I don't have any idea how I pulled that off with such a bad swim start! Thankfully I had a relatively uneventful transition to the bike.

On the bike I was pushing my best but couldn't seem to get much speed out of these X-large thighs of mine. I think that was because of the slow base mileage I'm putting in for my Iron in Nov and because of me coming down off my pre-swim adrenaline rush. I kept praying to God to either let me have fast race, or for him to give me the strength to accept a slow one. By the time I got off the bike I was at 2 hrs flat. That was exactly the time I got out of T-2 last year, but last year I didn't push myself as hard on the bike or swim, and last year I ended up having the 2nd best run of my life(next only to Soma 2005)! So I wasn't optimistic about breaking any PR's. This is usually a sweltering hot race but almost as soon as I started the run a whole bunch of clouds covered the sun and a nice breeze started up from across the lake. Felt great and I think that God answered my prayers because that sure helped my performance allot. As I was finishing the run I saw my wife and baby girl standing about 50 yards in front of the finish line. I looked at my watch and realized I had enough time to run over and pick up my daughter so that I could run the last 50 yards with her in my arms while still beating my best Oly time.

Best part of the day was that I finished with my 19 month old daughter in my arms! As we crossed the finish line my daughter saw everyone clapping for her and she got this huge smile on her face and started clapping those little hands as fast as her little arms possibly could while screaming "Hurray!" at the top of her lungs! No one can tell me Jesus doesn't love me. Life is good. Every Outlaw who showed placed in thier division Stuart & Helen Crane, Carl, Onearm bandit and her husband, Misty(El Chivato's Mom), & El Chivato finished in 3:35, breaking his old PR by an HOUR!!! Another Outlaw and a fellow Clydesdale we call Miles(who is El Chivato's Dad) ended up breaking his PR also with a 2:37! Miles had the 3rd fastest Clyd finish in Buffman history! I ended up 1st place Clyd 39 and under with a 2hr 52 minute race. I PR'd by 2 minutes. I love you too Jesus, and thank you for a perfect ending to a wonderfull race.

my first attept at blogging

Sat May 19th

Tomorrow I will compete in my favorite triathlon, the Buffman & Squeaky Olympic distance triathlon held in Lubbock Tx. Today I'm planning on a 1.5hr Z-1and z-2 bike then an easy day of packing and a 5-6hr drive from Santa Fe NM to Lubbock Tx made tolerable by the company of El Chivato a 16 year old fellow New Mexico Outlaw hitching a ride, my wife, and my 19 month old blond headed baby girl Bell. This will be Chivato's 2nd Oly distance tri. Last year he placed 1st place in the 19 year & under division @ the Las Vegas NM Oly at the young age of 15 with an admirable time of 4:30.My first year doing the Buffman & Squeaky was 2005. It was my 2nd race ever, I finished in 3:07 taking 3rd place Clydesdale which was pretty good considering I still weighed 260lbs. In 2006 I showed up 30lbs lighter and by that time I'd completed 3 Oly tri's. I finished 2:54 taking 3rd place again and setting an Oly PR (personal record), which is impressive because it's a very hilly and windy course. This year I come in with a 3 goals. Some of them doable, some a little lofty. But I can do the unthinkable, anyone in doubt of this can simply watch me at an all you can eat buffet in amazement! Now for my goals. Once they're on paper- er, screen, type? oh you know what I mean- Than it's the real deal. Right? Well here they are set in stone-type- whatever. This blogging is harder than it looks!

-1. I want to set a new Olympic distancePR. My old PR was 2:54. I think I should be able to pull this one off. I have no idea how I'll do time wise with my 1500 meter swim. I haven't practiced swimming in any way shape or form in over in over 14 months. The only swimming I've done has been at races! My running is at an all time best. I'm guessing a sub 54 min run. My 40 kilometer bike should be sufficient to hold on to a decent pace, but this is iffy because I've been putting in allot of slow base miles for the Silverman Iron distance triathlon in Nov. Ok, now that I see it in black and white -wait this is my first time blogging, I don't have any idea what color it'll be- I see that I have an unknown swim, an iffy bike and a good run. 1 out of 3....But I refuse to readjust my goals. Add heart and determination and that makes it 3 out of 6. OK...I shave my head, which makes me more aero dynamic! Thus the odds are now in my favor! See how a little optimism goes along way?

-2. I'd like to do better than third place clyd 39 & under. 2 years in a row I've taken 3rd. I give glory to God that I was able to accomplish that. But 1st or 2nd, Oh how glorious that would be!

3. I'd like to finish faster than 2:50. Now that is a lofty goal! Like I said before this race follows the same course as the Buffalo Springs 70.3 which is known as the most difficult half Iron in the world! This course has it all. Cold water(usually in the low 60's) hills, heat, a very windy bike- someone remind me, why in the world is this my favorite triathlon? Since 2004 there has only been 4 clydes to go sub 2:50. One of which is the Honorable Sportsman himself Arnold Ceniceros with a 2:46.

Well we're off to the races! I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks for reading.