In Louisville!

We arrived in Louisville about 4:30pm yesterday afternoon. We made good time and other than one short traffic jam just past Cincinnati, had no trouble at all. We were able to get a suite on the 5th floor at the back of the hotel, which means it will be nice and quiet for sleeping. We stocked up on groceries and necessities after a stop at the Golden Corral for a huge meal. No wonder Americans are overweight, for $9.99 all the steak, shrimp, roast beef, chicken and everything else you can imagine, plus deserts! Maybe we should have saved that one fro after the race, but I’ve worked hard over the past 10 months, I deserve it! Or at least that’s what I told myself!

This hotel has a great breakfast buffet, lots of fresh fruit, waffles, bagels, anything you could want. Registration opened at 9am this morning, so we took a walk down to the Galt House Hotel after breakfast and got that taken care of. They are very well organized and it took less than 10 minutes. Afterwards we walked down from the hotel to the riverside and back along the river to our hotel. The water looks so dirty, I didn’t even want to stick my hand in it to feel it. I’ll wait until Saturday morning’s practice swim to see what it like.

We packed up the bike and took a drive out on the bike course to the out and back section on 42. I rode it back and forth 3 times for a total of 45mins. After, I ran the opposite way through a neighborhood of huge homes and horse farms for about 20mins.

The weather is hot and not humid, for a change and brilliant sunshine. The forecast for Sunday is sunny and 92, perfect!

We had a great visit with the Salvo family on Saturday night. Cathy told the kids why we are raising money and they cleaned out their piggy banks and brought all their money over to donate it to our MS fund raising. It was heartwarming to see their generosity and it’s great to see that in this day an age when so many parents get it wrong or just don’t care, that these kids are being raised with such strong moral values of compassion, empathy and generosity. Great kids!

On Saturday Nick and Justin and I rode 90k today in 3hrs. I was scheduled for a 2hr ride 1hr run workout, so I decided to do a 3hr ride instead. I really enjoy riding with the guys and my justification for that change was that the extra hour of cycling would have a lower “cost” than an hour of running. At least I convinced myself of that. The ride went well, I let Nick and Justin lead the way to that Justin could set the pace at where he wanted to ride at. We made it up to Uxbridge and as we headed through town I noticed Nick swatting at his ear in front of me. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I thought it might be a bee. It was and he was stung, right in the ear. We stopped and had a look and it was already turning red and looked like it was really sore. Luckily he’s not allergic.

Sunday morning I went for a short swim and then spent the rest of the day either tuning up the P3 or sleeping on the couch. I replaced the front derailleur cable because back in the spring, I cut the cable housing a bit short and it’s bothered me ever since. At the same time I installed a chain catcher on the front derailleur. There are a ton of gear changes in Louisville and lots of big ring to small ring changes and the chain catcher ensure the chain can’t fall off the small ring and onto the bottom bracket.

Tapering!

I’m enjoying the reduction in training volume during the taper and I’ll surely benefit from the added rest. A common mistake people make is to go into an Ironmen over-trained. The old saying is better 10% under-trained than 1% over-trained and it can't be stated enough that rest is one of the most important parts of the equation when it comes to preparing for an Ironman.

It makes little difference how much you train leading up to the race if you do not allow your body time to rest and recover and especially in the crucial final month leading up to the race. There is really nothing you can do in that last month that is going to increase your endurance or make you better prepared for the race, besides rest.

You are basically stuck with whatever preparation you have managed over the course of your training once you are a month or so away from your race. At that point it's imperative that you begin to taper down your training so your body can recover for the big effort.

It's is really counter-productive to go out and swim the entire Ironman course or head out on the bike course for a 90k ride when you are just a week away from the race.. When it is that close to your race, all you are really doing is using up valuable energy that you will need on race day. By all means go out and test the waters of at the race site, but a 30 minute easy swim is fine. Easy pace runs of 30 minutes and bikes of 45 minutes are more than enough. Dave Scott's suggestion is to cut the amount of your training down, but keep the intensity the same as it has been for most of your training over the year for the first three weeks of your taper. On that final week there should be no high intensity or distance training of any sort.

Next week I’ll take three full rest days and will do very short bikes and runs in the early morning when the heat of the day is not a factor. Friday is the key day to rest completely, and to also get your best night’s sleep as it can be tough to sleep soundly the eve of the race.

Tuesday Night Ride

Nick and Justin and I got out for our Tuesday night ride. Justin had his brand new ride out for the first time. He just bought a P2, same colour scheme as mine and had it decked out with Nick’s spare set of H3’s on it, it looked great! And very familiar, as my P2 was exactly the same. He hadn’t had time to set it up and adjust it so we decided that we’d do it on the fly. Right away we saw that the seat height was way too high and Justin wanted to move the seat forward so instead of taking the chance of hurting his knees, we stopped and spent a few minutes getting him squared away. Moving the seat to the forward hole is not an easy job and it took us a lot of fiddling around to get it on right.

Once we got going we headed up 30 to Bloomington and then west over to McCowan, it was getting dark so we decided to beat it back home and head down McCowan. It’s a nice downhill ride from Bloomington and Nick and I opened it up and hammered at 40kph plus all the way to Stouffville Side Road. I thought that maybe I was able to open up a gap on Nick, no way! I took a quick look and he was right on my tail the whole way. We joked with Nick that now he’s going to have to get a Cervelo. Those exposed cables on the Orbea and just too hard for Justin and I to look at!

So true!

I almost got my ass kicked at Tim Horton's!

So I’m standing in line at Tim Horton’s this morning, to get my coffee and as I get up to the front, this red neck truck driver is giving the Sri Lankan or East Indian woman behind the counter a hard time. He’s being really rude and saying things to her like, to her “do I need an interpreter here” and “you people should learn how to speak English”.

He finally moves off and now it’s my turn to order. As I’m giving the woman my order, she has tears in her eyes now because the jerk has really upset her. To even further insult the woman, the guy wanders back over and starts pretending he’s talking to her in a gibberish language. I turned around and said to him, “Are you finished being a jerk, I’d like to place my order”. He says to me “What are you some sort of paki lover”. Unbelievable, no one deserves to be disrespected like that.

Now he’s looking at me like he’s about to either punch me in the head or eat me and I’m thinking to myself well if I run out of here right now I can make it to work and walk back later for the car. After what seems like an eternity of me starring at him and him looking at me like I’m a bug on his red neck pickup truck windshield, the woman next in line behind me chimes in and tells him he should be ashamed of himself for speaking to her like that. Then finally some guy in the back of the line, shouts out “Keep movin jerk, there’s a line up here”. Fortunately that got his attention off me and he wandered away with his coffee and out the door. We all just shook our heads in disbelief as he drove away.

Catching Up

On Saturday I headed out for my last long ride before Louisville. I headed up 30 past Bloomington and went up to David Drive. I went over to the 2nd and headed up to Zephyr. There was a nice tail wind to I was able to cook along pretty well at about 34/35kph. From Zephyr I headed over to Udora and yes I took the hard road. On Zephyr Road over toward Udora there are 3 tough hills, but I figured, hey Louisville is hills, so get on with it. Went up to Udora, refueled and headed a bit more north to add a few more km and then turned around and headed for home. I decided to give myself a break and take Ravenshoe Road back to Zephyr instead of retracing my steps and climbing those hills again. The ride home was a tough. Battling that wind (with the H3’s) and the hills on the 2nd were more than enough to provide a good workout.

When I arrived back home Nick had just been there so I called him and we headed out for a run together. He wanted to get in 15k and I was looking for about the same. He headed out across 16th and then up 10th to Elgin Mills and back. It was great to run with him and it made the time pass much quicker. All we needed was a water station out there, unfortunately there is no place to fuel up unless you run all the way to Stouffville.


On the schedule tonight, a swim and tomorrow, a run during the day and then back out on the roads with Nick and maybe Justin if he’s finished his exams. Last week Nick almost did me in on our ride on Thursday, the man rode like he was possessed. Holy smokes, good thing for the traffic lights on Bloomington or I don’t think I would have seen him until we were back on 16th. I think we averaged 32kph for the 55k ride!