Dear Portland Weather Gods
You call this June?
Monday: Occasional drizzle.
Tuesday: Showers likely.
Wednesday: A 20 percent chance of showers.
Thursday: Mostly sunny.
Friday: A chance of rain.
Saturday: A chance of showers.
Sunday: A chance of showers.

T-Minus Three Weeks
CDA draws near. Yikes. After five days in New York last week, I arrived home Friday afternoon in time to get in a 2000-yard swim. Saturday, it was 60 on the bike along flat and fast Marine Boulevard, followed by a six-mile run. Today, I headed out to Hagg Lake for the Gecko Tri Club's open water races. It occurred to me yesterday as I began to get my stuff ready for the early morning outing that I had never before worn my new wetsuit. So I tried it on. Easy on and easy off, that was nice, in contrast to my previous suit. But it felt all tight and I didn't like the fact that due to the cold water (64, I'd heard), I wouldn't be advised to wear my vest and instead would have to go with the full-length sleeves. I hate swimming in full-length sleeves.

So instead of doing one of the longer swims -- 2000 or 4000 meters -- I decided to break in the suit with the sprint, the 800-meter race. Which I did, though getting to the start was a bit of a comedy. First, as I left my car to do day-of-race registration, I tore out a check to pay. But by the time I got to the reg table, the check was gone. I retraced my steps, but no dice. Gone. So back to the car to get my checkbook. Oh, no! Lost check was also last check. Throwing myself on the mercy of the volunteers, I was allowed to register with a promise to send in my check afterward. Geckos, you rock.

OK, so now it's time to put on the suit. A little Body Glide here and there, boom-boom-boom, suit on. But it feels funny. Hmm. Oh. Forgot to pull bibjohn straps over my shoulders. Off comes the top of the two-piece, up go the straps, on goes the top. OK, to the lake I trundle. "Yo, dude," I hear someone say, and it sounds a lot like the voice is aimed at me. I turn. "You dropped your goggles."

Finally, I swam. Under deep gray skies, the calm water was actually not too cold -- I could have worn the vest top. And I wished I had. The suit felt a little tight up top on the chest and toward the throat. It wasn't drastically wrong, but I didn't feel totally comfortable. Well, anyway, I swam the 800 meters in 16 and a half minutes, which is fine. Then as the 2000-meter folks went out, I put in another 1000 yards or so, looking for a decent workout and a better comfort level with the suit.

Out of the water, it was onto the bike. I figured two or three 10.5-mile loops around the lake would be a nice follow-up to the previous day's 60 miles. And it was. This was a really good ride. Pretty much all my riding on The New Bike has been on flat terrain; my goal has been to try to get used to the aero position, and straight, level roads have allowed me to do that. Hagg, however, gave me a great taste of what I'll face at Coeur d'Alene. Lots of curves, and lots of ups and downs -- no huge climbs, but a little more than rollers. I felt pretty good going up and down and staying aero, and did three loops, each of them in 33 minutes.

The ride

By the time I finished, the Geckos had the post-swim grill going (even as the 4000-meter swimmers soldiered on), so I built myself a burger. I ate it sitting beside the lake. Munching away, I peered out at the buoys, laid out in a 2000-meter sort of triangle with a very long hypotenuse. Two loops, 4000 meters. That's what I'll have to do at CDA. Gulp.

Lake News
According to plan, at 7 a.m. on June 22, I and about 2,000 other idiots dive into Lake Coeur d'Alene to swim 2.4 miles, beginning a 140.6-mile journey that will earn us the title Ironman, whoop-dee-do. Last year, white caps on the lake made the swim quite the adventure; this year, we're told, there may be another issue:

The extraordinary spring melt off not only pushed Lake Coeur d'Alene well above flood stage this year but it's also keeping the water unusually cold, which could make it extremely difficult for Ironman athletes to swim in the lake.

Right now the water in Lake Coeur d'Alene is a brisk 49 degrees and Ironman race director Andy Emberton says if the water doesn't warm up to the mid 50s by race morning they will have to make some changes.

Emberton says if the water doesn't warm up to at least 60 degrees by race day they may require all athletes wear a wetsuit. They may also allow neoprene hats and aqua socks, which under Ironman rules are typically not allowed.

In Bloom

Apple Cinnamon Pecan Raisin Maple Breakfast Pizza


We invented this today for breakfast. It's good. You should make it.

Ingredients
Cooking spray
½ cup flour
1 Trader Joe's whole-wheat pizza dough
2 apples
1 Meyer lemon
1 T melted butter
1 T cinnamon
2 T brown sugar
1/3 cup pecans
1/3 cup raisins
1 T maple syrup

Method
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Coat pizza pan with very thin layer of cooking spray.

Dust your work board with some of the flour. Roll out the pizza dough very thin. We used slightly less than a whole bag of TJ's dough, so 1 whole bag will make a very big pizza (or you can trim some off and save it for later use). After the pizza dough is pressed out, put it on the pizza pan—we like the big pans with holes in them.

Peel and core the apples. Slice medium thin and put in a large bowl. Squeeze lemon juice over apples and gently mix. Add cinnamon, brown sugar, pecans and raisins. Mix gently. Add melted butter and mix gently. Now sprinkle over a couple of tablespoons of flour and, again, mix gently.

Arrange apples slices on pizza dough in whatever kind of pattern suits you and then spread remaining topping evenly over apples.

Put in oven. Be careful to make sure the top (especially the pecans) does not burn. We put a piece of aluminum foil with a little bit of cooking spray on the inside over ours. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until crust is golden brown and slightly crispy. Drizzle with maple syrup, allow to cool down a bit, then slice as with a pizza. Makes eight pieces. Figure on two pieces (at least) for each person for breakfast.

Oh, and don't forget to top it off with a drizzle of maple syrup.

The New Bike
I read a tri blogger who has dubbed one of her bikes Bitch, the other La Gazza Ladra. (This woman is hardcore — and funny. Check out her recent post, "The Hidden Cost of Ironman Training.")

This comes to mind after seeing Infospigot's inquiry, in comment to my preceding post, regarding how long my Saturday ride took and what did I think of the bike.

The bike is the new bike, or, as I like to call it, with characteristic creativity, The New Bike.

I rode The New Bike 20 miles on Friday, 48 miles on Saturday, then another 25 today. I can report that The New Bike is must faster than my LeMond steel roadie, which was built before the Iraq War began. Another lifetime, practically. Traveling over a level stretch of smooth pavement, in calm conditions, I cruise along at 22-24 miles per hour on The New Bike, easily a couple em-pee-h-is faster than on the LeMond. And the ride is plush, the handling excellent, the shifting and braking ... all good.

Just one problem, really — one with particular resonance given the planned activities of June 22: I can't imagine riding the thing for six hours.

I know going aero can be rough at first. Some people, it's the back that's a problem. My back is OK with it. Some people, it's the butt that's a problem. No butt problem here. My issue is the back of my neck and my shoulders. After about 15 minutes, there's a whole lot of achin' going on. So I get out of my aero position for about 30 seconds, stretch things out, then I’m good for another 15 minutes of slicing through the air oh so dynamically.

Poking around online, the prevailing view among experts is that neck and shoulder pain usually mean your body needs time to adjust to the new riding style and, second, you might want to consider getting a professional fit. So I'm hopeful that as I ride The New Bike more, I'll grow accustomed to the stresses it puts on my neck and shoulders. And to be sure there's not a structural issue, I'm going to get the fit — next week, if all goes as planned.

As for how long the ride took — the Saturday ride — that was 2 hours and 45 minutes. Stop signs, traffic signals, horses (Springwater Corridor; seriously) and other impediments one wouldn't find on a triathlon course ate up a solid 15 minutes. So while actually riding, I averaged a tad over 19 mph. Not spectacular, but since I didn't really push it, not bad either.

Meanwhile, there was swimming and running over the past couple of days as well, but just a bit: 4,500 yards in the water, and a couple of little 3-mile brick runs after the bike rides yesterday and today. My vow is to run LESS in the next four or five weeks of serious ICDA prep, because I don't need to run. Five rides (at least one long), four swims, three runs — that's what I'm aiming for each week. We'll see how it goes. With a heavy load of childcare and work approaching (including a five-day trip to New York, argh), scrambling will be the name of the game!

Today's Ride

Race Report: Boston Marathon
Even after my bonks – Matfield Green Death Ride in '97; Wildflower in '04 – I was pretty well recovered within 24 hours. Even after the untrained-for 50 miles of Autumn Leaves last fall, I was eager to walk or ride within a couple of days.

But Boston has left me whipped. Perhaps you saw the report on Infospigot, based on an exclusive post-race interview. I knew then, hours after the race, that I had reached pretty deeply to run the race I did. Three days of staggering around, now with a sore throat, have only confirmed that.

So the customary race report has been late in arriving, and what it amounts to, I'm not really sure. All I know is that the race, it was everything I hoped it would be, and more. It's funny – after all these years of doing triathlon, I finally have a date with Ironman, in June. Yet Boston snuck in there and stole the prize; it became the race of a lifetime.

The crowds were the best part. Families on their front lawns in the very New England towns of Hopkinton and Ashland. Non-official aid everywhere, often from children—little hands holding out orange slices or water and looking for high (or low, I guess) fives. Everyone cheering, shouting encouragement. Of course there were the screaming girls of Wellesley (and I remember one big bearded guy in a Raiders shirt among them), and the rowdies at BC, and there were the Newton Hills, Heartbreak merely last among them, and there was the long straight shot down jam-packed Boylston to the finish.

But I’ll tell you what I also will not forget: On my dazed, wandering walk back to the hotel after it was over, I struck up a conversation with a couple of typical-looking New Englanders, a slightly heavyset mom and her braces-clad 11-year-old daughter. They were headed to South Station, on their way home to the Cape after watching the race. Had they come into town to cheer on friends or relatives? Nah. 'We always watch the Marathon,' the little girl said. 'It’s just so great to see all the runners.' Then she asked me how old you have to be to run it, because it was something she was aiming to do herself.

When she does do Boston, I’m hoping she’ll be smart enough not to run a half-marathon PR two weeks beforehand – on a hilly course, no less. I did that, in Portland on April 6, and it cost me in Boston. After a very comfortable first half of the race – completed in 1:35:27 – I began to notice some aching in my quads. By the time we reached the hills, after 16 miles, they were seriously hurting. Not so much on flat ground and even on climbs, but especially on the downhills. After Heartbreak Hill (20.5 miles in), the course falls about 200 feet in elevation over the next three miles. I should have covered these three miles in 22 minutes. But my quads were so ravaged, all I could manage was 24:05. So there you are – two minutes lost.

I pretty much stabilized for Mile 25, but just as I approached the 40K marker (the marathon is 42.2K), my left calf began to cramp. I mean, serious Michael Chang at Roland Garros cramping. I remember thinking: This is the kind of thing that causes guys to walk it in. But I wasn’t going to have any of that, not in front of the screaming masses, the tens of thousands creating an overwhelming din that makes the whole experience weirdly hazy today. Not with 3:20 – my true goal – still within reach. I ran as hard as I could without letting the cramping get out of control. It was maybe 85 percent effort. I’d push a little harder on the gas, feel the leg began to twitch and seize, then back off just slightly. Just slightly. The 2.2K took me 10:50, a per-mile pace of 7:55. There was another lost minute or so.

But no matter: I had made it. I was rewarded for risking going out hard – which was a little scary – and for having just enough fitness not to fall completely apart before the finish line. My time: 3:18:52, nearly six minutes faster than my previous marathon best, and done on the tough, fabled Boston route. Let's see: 4,038 finished in front of me, and 17,924 behind me.

Afterward, I was happy, but in a sort of distant way. I think I was emotionally drained. In fact, I think that feeling masked how physically done in I was. I only realized yesterday, after returning home and weighing myself, how dehydrated I must have been out there. I was down about eight pounds. Eight pounds = a gallon of water. (The day was great, in the high 40s at the start as the fog broke up and sun came out, into the low 60s midway, then back down into the high 50s at the finish with the sea breeze feeling quite refreshing. It felt like a great day to run. But the sun took a surprising toll.)

So, wow, Boston, well, it was a complete effort. Yep. Boston taught me what a complete effort is. It brought it out of me. By its obvious greatness, it demanded such an effort of me. What a cool thing the Boston Marathon is. What an honor to have run it.

The splits:
1 7:55
2 7:12
3 7:05
5 7:16
6 7:10
7 7:13
8 7:21
9 7:16
10 7:21
11 7:11
12 7:14
13 7:15
14 7:19
15 7:33
16 7:29
17 7:50
18 7:58
19 7:47
20 8:07
21 8:37
22 7:59
23 8:08
24 7:58
25 7:50
26.2 9:37

The Man in Yellow
I heard some runners complaining about all the attention Lance Armstrong was getting at the Boston Marathon. It wasn't really a dig at Lance, although for some people it did morph into that. Mostly, people thought there might be other cool stories to explore beyond the famous bike rider. But the Boston Globe did capture many of those stories the day after the race, so I didn't mind seeing one about Lance's day. And reading the story, I was struck by how closely the views of a seven-time Tour de France champion running a 2:50 marathon paralleled those of a 3:18 plodder (me). Lance totally got Boston.

While he's scaled more challenging heights in the Tour de France, Armstrong was surprised by his first encounter with Heartbreak Hill.

"There's hills all around that area, so I when I went up one, I thought, 'Boy, that must be it,'" he said. "Then we went to the next one, and this guy's next to me, he said, 'Well, that was Heartbreak Hill,' and I thought, 'Well, that wasn't that bad,' but another guy said, 'No, it wasn't that one, it's coming up,' so we eventually got to it.

"But the very first one of that series of hills seemed to me to be the hardest. It's interesting because people always talk about Heartbreak Hill and everybody sort of led me to believe that that series of hills was so difficult.

"Then I had this period where everybody seemed to talk them down - 'They're not that big a deal, running the hills of Boston; don't worry about it.' They were wrong. They are harder and they do come at a difficult time in the race.

"For me, it's hard to run on the downhills. Perhaps my body weight comes into play; 175 pounds running downhill really takes a toll on your muscles, and then all of a sudden you hit another uphill.

"Where's the flat marathons? Anybody know?"

No one had an answer. But there was another question: Does he plan to come back?

"Yeah, oh yeah," Armstrong said. "If they let me come back. But there's a lot of other reasons to come back.

"I really love the event, the spectacle of a marathon and the challenges of a marathon. This is a landmark event. This was a pleasant surprise. I was expecting a beautiful experience, but the crowds here made it 10 times what I expected."

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