"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

Never, Never, Never Quit.

FIGHT....................FINISH

Countdown to B2B

I CAN

Monday, April 7, 2008

April off with a blast

So, I when I decided to do B2B, I decided April would be the official kick off month for training. Obviously, I've been training but the idea is the 6 months leading up to the iron distance race would start to get serious. As stated in my last post I was looking to finally break 40 hours this month and after 7 days of training, I'm well on my way. Right now, I'm sitting at 11.5 hours. I've done my first 2 a days of the year, with a 1500 yard swim in the morning and a 30 mile bike at lunch and I've done this twice. I also got in a nice 50 mile ride on Saturday. I hope to get in my 2nd 7 day week in a row this week leading up to my first brick of the year. Since there are no baseball games this weekend and 2 of my kids have sleepovers Saturday night, I'm hoping to get in a 50 mile ride followed by an easy 4 mile transition run.

With 55 miles being my longest bike this year, I'm also hoping to get in a 65+ mile ride before the month is over and get in a 2500 yard swim. For most swimmers, this is nothing special, but up to now 2500 yards is my longest swim workout EVER. This will begin a slow workup to 4000+ yard swims later in the summer

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

March and Natchez Trace






OK, so March is 'in the books' and I did not hit my goal of 40+ hours but I did hit 35. Had to take too many weekend days off because of kids sports. Still a decent month overall and I did get some quality workouts in including 3 50+ mile rides and 2 different run 'streaks'. I ran 3 days in a row and then the next week put in 4 days in a row in the hills of Georgia while visiting my sister. I followed up those 4 days in a row by riding 50+ in the hills of Nashville on the Natchez Trace, which has to be one of the best spots to ride in the world. After training on the flats of Florida, riding the Trace is quite a different experience. Pretty sure there were no stretches which could be considered flat for 50 miles, just up and down. Also, very little traffic. In 50 miles, I never had to stop, except to take some pictures(above) for any crossroads. Because it's a national park(even though it's 444 miles long) no commercial traffic is allowed and since the speed limit in many spots is 35-40, very few cars frequent it. During the whole ride, I saw less than 30 cars. I easily saw more motorcycles and bicycles.

We're now 30 weeks out from B2B, which seems like a long time but really training is going to be here in no time. I really need to go over 40 hours in April as well as start to throw in some training bricks.