Back to normal

This past week I have felt horrible! I was a mixture of a few different things. Anyone thing by itself wouldn't have been a big deal, but all mixed together is disaster.

1. My 6:02 Half Ironman finish, I wanted it to be around 5:48.. No biggie, but next time I'll be shooting for 5:45. I know now what I did wrong, not to mention I'll be gearing up for better finishes in the off season..

2. Traveling to Kosovo to do testing for crane operators and taking sleep meds while I was there. My wife pointed this out to me yesterday, I'm such and Idiot!!! If you take sleep meds from 7 time zone away even if its only for 5 nights your doing damage. So 2 days after I got back here I really felt bad, tired, groggy, slow... I thought it was from the race, nope its because I'm an idiot.. well, back to normal today, Tues night I got 12 hrs of sleep and Thurs I got 10. My wife is such a saint to let me sleep like that with a 11 month old in the house, I needed it though.. I need to make it up to her..

3. Being gone from work for a week right now really put me behind. So with today being Friday I'm done playing catch-up.

I'll be putting together my marathon training schedule hopefully within the next day or so... By Sunday I'll be back in training mode and with a new set of goals.

Ok, so two days after I completed my first Half Ironman Distance Triathlon I’m feeling like a arthritic 90 year old that has had a very hard life. The really weird thing is that it’s not only my body that’s sore but my recall and retention is suffering too. I’ve had sore muscles plenty of times, and I’ve been mentally drained a few times as well, but never like this. Nonetheless, I can’t wait for the next one! This off season I’ll be focusing on strengthen some of the weaker lengths of my Tri chain. First off my swim, it’s not bad but I can’t seem to go any great distance without doing breast stroke. I’ll be increasing my swim workouts and really focus on eliminating breast stroke from my montage on backups. I know I’m a good swimmer, but I’m a lazy swimmer, this has to stop. Second, the bike. I don’t know where to start! After the first 25 or so miles of the HIM my back starting hurting. After 35 miles it went numb, and I’m glad it did because I almost stopped the bike to stretch it out. The run, oh the run… This is what makes my existence as a Clydesdale exciting, in a lot of cases, big boys cant run. I get passed on the bike by everyone, and I do mean everyone! On the run I reel them in as I did last Sunday. Like normal I hit the ground running and started sucking up everyone the first 6 miles of the run. Even my training buddy, whom I can never catch except on the swim. I was running down everyone! Until that is I found the illusive “wall” that so many people run into. At mile 8 the pain started! My quads and my knees had enough and were screaming at me to stop. I yelled back, but they don’t seem to listen. I couldn’t even run the last mile without walking. I was happy to finish 8th out of the Clydesdales, but I was disappointed that I didn’t finish strong… I

I’m going to take a week or so off from training to take care of a few things around the house that I’ve been neglecting. Then it will be time to dive back in training for the Houston Marathon and next years tri season…

So, I have 2 serious addictions at the moment, and maybe a few dozen problems. I’ll only discuss my addictions because I’m sure no one is interested in hearing about my problems with my Bloodhound (Sanford) that enjoys chewing on 2x4’s… Number 1 addiction, DIET COKE also known to me as liquid crack, as I can’t seem to get away from the stuff. Number 2 addiction, Triathlon… One year ago I was 40lbs heavier, I couldn’t run a 10 minute mile and 50 yards in the pool was pure torture! Today, I can’t force myself to properly taper my workouts before my Half Ironman this weekend.. This past Saturday I started my traveling to Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. This is truly an amazing place. For the last 2 nights I’ve watched soldiers running the hills of the camp, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to run with the herd, even though I’m supposed to be tapering. So, as I was getting back to my room/container I see them starting their run. I did the superman phone booth thing, within 3 min I was on their tail. I didn’t stretch, I didn’t get a drink of water, and if I didn’t have elastic shoe laces I wouldn’t have tied my shoes. The route is a little over 3 miles per lap, similar to memorial park, only without the monster hills. It was a beautiful afternoon giving a great view of the hills and mountains that surround the camp not to mention the small villages that border the camp. This has been such a cool experience to run in this environment, so much to look at, before I knew it I had run over 6 miles in under 50 min. Maybe to a pro this would be a taper workout, but to me that’s “doing work”….

1st blog

No one reads these things anyway and I have some time this morning so I figured I'd give it a try. Depending on my mood and the time of day, the intensity of what I type will vary quite a bit. I have been known to rattle of some strange emails once the ambien kicks in, so just stick with me on this... I guess I will be documenting my the parts of my life that can me made public. This will include my Family, My wife Nicole, My beautiful son Elias, brother, sister, in-laws. I'll include other activities such as my Triathlon's and softball, maybe some training stuff too. Work I'll might mention now and again as it is what pays the bills and gets me out of bed in the morning. Oh, and I'll be adding photo's as I get them from everything mentioned. Again, I know no one reads these things so I guess I can announce to no one that we have another baby on the way, due May 18th 2008... We cant wait!!!