Food for Thought & Inspirational Quotes

1. Before you can accomplish something huge you must first see yourself doing it.
2. The Toughest distance you must travel in any triathlon is the distance located between your ears.
3. When faced with physical challenges, do you see your limitations or do you see your possibilities for improvement.
4. There are no shortcuts to fitness; it takes a long time to get good.
5. Overall, ironman-distance racing is not about being fast. It's about being able to swim smart, ride strong, and run tough.
6. Superior race performance results from what you do, not how much you do.
7. Success is correlated to the duration and intensity of your key sessions, no your total volume.
8. Work smarter not harder.

Hansen Dam 2nd Annual Sprint Triathlon - Relay

The Hawthorne Placers (Shannon, Richard and I) showed up at the 2nd Annual Hansen Dam Sprint Triathlon at 6:15am (approximately 1 hour before the race start).

Shannon and I are posing by the the "Swim start" sign. If you look over my right shoulder you can see a Huge shark fin... do you see it ... look again.... psych.

Shannon & Richard work out their pre-race stratagy.... Ride fast, Run Fast.




Another look at the swim venue. The swim was listed as a 500 yrd swim, however my swim split time suggested more like 600 to 650 yrds. I completed the swim in 13 minutes.




The water was a reported 83 degrees so I elected to swim without my wetsuit. You may need to put on sunglasses if the glare from my white skin is to much.

Richard took on the bike leg with honor and valor. He finished his first race in style and with a little energy in reserve. Way to go Richard!

Shannon made up the final leg of the race and finished strong. She tells me that she wants to do the complete race all by herself next year. Bring it on Shannon!

Piuma Route - 45 Mile Hill Ride

Some of the Usual Saturday Morning Valley Ride Suspects: William, Aram, Me & Pix.

We were also accompanied by a new Valley Ride Suspect named Kerri. Kerri was a great sport throughout this very long and seemly never ending hill ride. She never gave up the fight, even when she thought she couldn't go any further up the hill. This was also a new ride for me and I quickly learned that Piuma Road is a continuous 7 mile climb at 4% grade. This scenic canyon road snakes its way to the top of a mountain that over looks the Ocean.

After climbing to the top of Piuma Road we were rewarded with views like the one shown above. The blue area just beyond the far hill is the Pacific Ocean and I think the road directly below that is cuts into the hillside is Topanga Canyon. (I could be wrong)

After completing this ride, I traveled over to the Hansen Dam Aquatic Park to pick up the "Hawthorne Placers" Relay Race packet. The "Hawthorne Placers" - Me, Richard & Shannon will be racing tomorrow morning and will be at the race site by 6:15 am for the 2nd annual Hansen Dam Sprint Triathlon.

Hansen Dam Triathlon - Bike & Swim RECON

Saturday morning at 08:00, my Neighbor Richard and I performed a recon mission and scoped out the Hansen Dam Triathlon Swim Venue and 11 mile bike course. The swim will take place in a small man made lake that appears to be used for boating or sailing lessons (not really sure?). As you can see in the picture below, the water is dead still, no current, no sand and no waves ... unless you count next weekends start waves. The race experience should feel like swimming 500 yrds in a big swimming pool with a bunch of my closest friends.

Please don't turn me into the bike police... I don't normally leave it like that.

After scoping out the swim venue, Richard and I rode the 11 mile bike course. The course is mostly flat, with a couple of rollers, a couple of fast downhill sections and a couple of small climbs. Overall, this should prove to be a very fast course.

The course is essentially one big loop and never back tracks onto itself ...(duh...hence the word loop). After leaving the swim venue, you zig zag on the Hansen Dam Park property until you reach the right hand turn at Osborne St. After a flat section on Osborne, you take a right onto foothill and descend until your reach an easy 2 mile climb that takes you to Wentworth. At Wentworth, you take a right and go down a steep section that goes under the 210 freeway then levels off. Through this section you should be able to carry a lot of speed for the next couple of miles. (note: carry tire changing equipment because the bike lane is very bumpy, pitted and could cause pinch flats. This area also has a lot of sticker bushes on the side of the road so thorns may be an issue as well. Don't be surprised if you see people changing tires along Wentworth.) After one small climb on Wentworth, you head down a 1/4 mile section to a right hand turn at the beginning of the "Dam" bike trail. Once on the bike trail, you climb to a completely flat section on top of the Dam. Once on the Dam, you should be able to carry a lot of speed until you exit the dam area and head back into the Park and T2 area.

My neighbor Richard on his smokin Red Felt Roady

Richard did a great job on the course and is sure to burn up the field on Sunday! Go Richard!!!!!!


Todays Workout: 800 yrd open water swim in Lake Castaic

Still in Transition - (Triathlon Off Season)

Todays workout: 5:00am - (1000 Yard Swim)

Warm up: 200 yards easy
Drills: 2 x 25 under skate , 1 x 50 String finger/fist
Main Set: 1x500 steady
Cool down: 8 x 25 Bi-lateral Breathing

A typical triathlon season usually runs from March through October and sometimes into November. By November, athletes have been training and racing for over 8 months and are ready for a well deserved break. During the following 4 month off season (Transition Period), athletes do various things. Some hang up all their gear and enjoy the winter holiday foods and take shelter from the cooler winter training conditions before starting back up sometime after January 1st. Others are the classical diehards that push on strong and don’t take any time off for mental and physical recovery. Since races don’t typically start until March, athlete will usually start focusing on limiters and weight training (Preparation Period) roughly 8 weeks before starting their base level training for a specific race or series of races.

I have decided to have a 8 week preparation period prior to starting my base training on January 1st. This will leave me approximately 6 month to dedicate to my base, build and peak periods.

In order to get some kind of mental and physical break, I have decided to be very low key with my training and racing between now and October 1st. This two month period is the only time I have to rejuvenate my body and mentally gear up for Ironman CDA (Coeur d’Alene) next June.

During this two month period, I have the two following "Fun" races scheduled:
1) Hansen Dam Triathlon - Sprint Relay.
2) Pumpkinman Olympic Triathlon in Las Vegas - Club Championship.

The Hansen Dam race is going to be GREAT FUN. The relay team is made up of me, Shannon and my neighbor Richard. I am doing the 500 yrd open water swim, Richard will be racing the 11 mile bike coarse and Shannon with finish up the race with a 3 mile trail run. I can’t wait to see the excitement on their faces as the race unfolds. I’m going to do my best to get some pictures of the event.... stay tuned.

My last race this season is the "Pumpkinman" - Club Championship in Las Vegas. I normally wouldn’t be doing such a late season race with my Ironman race so early in the following season but my Dad is competing in it. This will be our second race together and first Olympic race together. My Dad is soon to be 60 and placed 2nd in his age group in his first Olympic distance triathlon. Truth be told... there were only two people in his age group and he was one of them. With that said, I am very proud of his accomplishments in triathlon. Less than a year ago, he couldn’t swim 25 yards and after countless lessons and hours in the water he is now able to navigate near mile open water swims with relative ease. Way to go pop! So without a doubt, I wouldn’t miss this race for the world.

In Transition

After completing the "World Toughest Half" Triathlon on 5/20/2006, I elected to take a couple of weeks off from training (5/21-6/4) to recuperate from "burnout" and spend some much needed time with my family. The last two months of training leading up to this race were very hard on the family and especially Shannon. I was gone on 4-5 hr bike rides on Saturdays, 1 mile ocean swims and transition runs on Sundays. During the work week, I was in bed by 9pm, up three days at 4am to either swim or run and up one day at 3 am to get in a two hour bike ride. To say the least, we were all ready for a break.

After this short break, I spent two weeks doing light base-transition training (6/5-6/18) and one week tapering for my next race called "Breath of Life" on 6/25. I approached this Olympic distance race (1.5K swim, 40K bike, 10K run) in a relaxed nature and decided to just have fun and not worry about my split times. The race went well and afterwards, the whole family spent a couple of fun hours at the beach.

After the race I spent the next week doing lite active recovery/transition training (6/26-7/2).

The following week I was on Vacation. My parents came down from Sacramento and we spent some time at Disneyland. (7/3-7/10). During this time I did absolutely no training. I forgot how nice is was to sleep more that 6 hours a night.

After my parents when home and the vacation was over, I caught a goofy cold (Disney Joke). I felt run down and had a sore throat for a few days. Blah...blah... blah... you know typical story. After I felt better, I went for a run... then the cold came back for a few more days. Again, I felt better..... went for a run ... then it came back a third time. Dang......What a pain in the butt... I was not use to being sick and missing exercise.

By the week of 7/24, I finally kicked the cold and was ready for full duty. My workouts went as listed below:
7/25 - 5 Mi Easy Run
7/27 - 1000 Yard Drill Swim
7/29 - 35 Mi Easy Bike Ride
7/31 - 5 Mi Easy Run