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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Race Report: 26.2/2
I don't like races that start before the sun is up. That's not news. But I have to admit, it is kind of cool to be home and showered at 9:15 in the morning, a half-marathon in the books.

The Race for the Roses is a local affair, starting and finishing at the Oregon Convention Center, just a few Max stops west of my house. I love to race and the proximity of this one made it attractive. Otherwise, with Boston coming up in two weeks, it didn't make a lot of sense. (Of course, if being sensible was a key consideration, I wouldn’t have done the Hagg Lake 50K in February, and, come to think of it, would have bagged the whole Boston qualification and dedicated myself to a proper Coeur d'Alene training program all winter.)

OK, so, up at 5:30 after four and a half hours sleep for some coffee and an Odwalla Sweet ‘N’ Salty bar. Out the door at 6. There was one lone soul on the Max platform, a young woman in running gear. We chatted a bit, then around 6:10 the train pulled in and we got on, finding a couple more runners already aboard. We shared our hope for dry conditions on a quintessential early-spring Portland day: cool, cloudy and damp, with a forecast for occasional showers.

If you’ve ever driven through Portland on I-5, you know the Oregon Convention Center: it’s that building with two wacky glass spires that you see alongside the freeway after you cross over the Willamette. I had never been in the joint and for no good reason had assumed it was a bit of a dump, but it provided tons of nice, warm, clean space for registration, gear drop-off and all that jazz. And there seemed to be tons of volunteers to help with every need, a credit to the organizers and beneficiary, the Albertina Kerr Centers, a local organization that assists families in crisis.

Most folks were still hanging out inside the center 10 minutes before the scheduled 7 a.m. start, which was directly outside. I got out then and jogged for a couple of minutes, did a few short sprints, and found a spot in the 7-8 minute/mile pace area. One of the guys around me identified himself as being from Indiana. Turns out he was here in Oregon visiting his daughter, who runs for Nike’s Oregon Project. Her name is Amy Begley, and if she stays healthy, she could be a threat in the 5,000 or 10,000 at the Olympic Trials this summer. Good luck to her.

A couple minutes after 7 we crowded toward the start, to ensure that we would have to spread out once the race did get going, but whatever: with chip timing, not a big deal.

Beforehand, I hadn’t really arrived at a strategy for the race. As I crossed over the timing mat at the start line, I remained unsure. I figured I ought to be able to go faster than I had at the Champoeg 30K last month, when I ran a 7:08 pace. But with Boston just two weeks away, I didn’t want to kill myself to do that.

In the first mile we took the Broadway Bridge over the Willamette, then did a little loop around and headed south, into the occasional gust. It was mostly gray overhead, but not entirely, and didn’t look too threatening. The temperature was somewhere in the low to mid-40s. I wore shorts and two long-sleeved technical shirts and felt quite comfortable as far as that went. But the runner in me wasn’t pleased in the early going. I was struggling to find a rhythm. I had ridden my bike for two and a half hours the day before, and swum for the fourth day in a row. And on Thursday, I had done a 15-mile run. So there was no taper at all for this thing. Oh, well; I was OK with the idea that it just might not be fast day, though I hadn’t completely thrown in the towel.




I passed the first mile marker in 7:22, then picked up the pace for a 6:50 second mile as we headed south down Naito, a big boulevard that runs just west of the Willamette. Mile 3 had a little bit of climbing (7:08) and Mile 4 a lot (7:30). But what goes up gets to come down, and this course gave back the elevation in a wonderful, gentle fashion, and the next five miles came in at 6:56, 6:44, 6:43, 6:59 and 6:38. Not only did the boost from gravity improve my time, but because the downhills weren’t steep and stressful, they allowed me to relax and settle into a groove as we headed through the Pearl and into the industrial areas by the river north of downtown.

We turned around between Miles 9 and 10 and faced more than two miles of pretty stiff headwinds heading south again. The last turnaround came just before Mile 12 and it felt so good to have the wind at my back. I picked up the pace—just a mile to go—and was cruising nicely. Then came the approach to the Steel Bridge. Normally, pedestrians go on the lower level of the Steel, but for the race we had a full lane on the upper level. Which meant we had to get to the upper level. Man, that hurt! It was probably only a 50-foot elevation gain, maybe 75. But the timing was exquisitely evil, coming about a quarter mile from the finish.

Finally to the crest of the bridge, I gathered my composure and tried to cut loose with whatever energy remained. Around Mile 7, I had realized I was at 7 minutes/mile pace. I didn’t think I could maintain it, but felt good that even if I slowed a bit, I’d still finish with a reasonable time. By the Mile 9 marker, now under the 7-minute pace and feeling pretty good, I thought maybe I could indeed do it. So as I headed off the Steel, knowing I was right on the cusp of making this goal, I went hard. I felt a little silly—there was a pretty good crowd on hand, and I here I was, a 45-year-old slogger pretending like he was Pre or something. But after 13 miles of hard work, I figured I owed it to myself to finish the effort.

A half-marathon is commonly referred to as 13.1 miles, but here's something to impress your friends with: it is actually 13.109375 miles. Doing the math, my official finishing time of 1:31:49 translates to a ... 7:00 pace. Mission accomplished. What's cool, too, is that my time was more than three minutes faster than my previous best at the distance, so I'm definitely getting fitter. All in all, a fun morning outing.

A few final random thoughts, and then the numbers: The hilliness of the course surprised me, but might turn out to be good prep for Boston. And: We've had a couple of downpours this afternoon, so boy were we lucky to get our hoped-for break during the race!

My time: 1:31:49
Pace: 7:00/mile
Age group place/finishers: 8/78
Among men: 69/670
Overall: 81/1910

Mile splits:
1.…7:22
2.…6:50
3.…7:08
4.…7:30
5.…6:56
6.…6:44
7.…6:43
8.…6:59
9….6:38
10…7:03
11…7:04
12…7:12
13…7:01
0.1...0:39

Race Report: Champoeg 30K
I've been amazingly lucky with the weather for my rainy-season races here in the land of the perpetual drip, drip, drip. Since the Blue Lake 15K misery last October, I've enjoyed: Autumn Leaves, where it was dry, cool and sunny; the Cascade half, where it was foggy and mid-30s but the air was utterly calm and, going hard, couldn't have been more comfortable; Hagg Lake, all bright and gorgeous, spring nosing its way into winter; and, today, the Champoeg 30K, where overnight rain gave way to patchy low clouds, a bit of sun and mild temps.

What’s that? Mmm, yes, I should have been swimming laps this morning, what with ICDA barely more than three months away and my swim absolutely nowhere. But before that is Boston, and a good hard 30K (18.6 miles) seemed just the ticket for assessing my fitness for that race.

The plan: I told myself to go out at an aggressive marathon pace, which for me would be in the 7:30 to 7:40 per mile range, given that my PR was run at a 7:48 pace. But I was really more interested in gauging my effort by how it felt. I wanted to run hard, not on the edge but close to it.

The course was a lot like what we did at Champoeg for Autumn Leaves, 3.1 miles out to the turnaround, then back to the start, and repeat that three times. I’d guess 150 or so people were massed at the line when the folks up front got going, hearing a signal those of us even 10 yards back didn’t pick up. So we were off. As usual, I was irked to find walkers and slow joggers placing themselves up front, an especially obnoxious practice when the track is fairly narrow. But I wiggled my way around and through and pretty soon things opened enough where I could run comfortably. A fit woman in a pink top and black shorts provided excellent pacing (not to mention distraction) to the turnaround and a bit beyond. My miles were coming in around 7:10 and though faster than I had anticipated, it didn’t feel bad. So I stuck with that and finished the first lap (10K) in 44:28.

The second lap was my favorite part of the race. I was loose and cruising. My pace was just a little faster, the miles coming in generally well under 7:10, and I felt great, completely comfortable. I stayed tucked behind the three guys I’d latched onto late in the first lap for a couple more miles and thought I’d keep working to stay with them. But I had a little more pace than them and gradually pulled away. That left a guy in yellow in sight ahead, and I tried to stay five or 10 yards behind him. I thought that wouldn’t last, and it didn’t – but again, I was the guy doing the passing.

Heading out for the last lap, I wasn’t sure what would happen. I thought it quite possible my miles might slow to 7:30, maybe 7:45. It sure felt like that was happening. Everything was coming harder now. My stride, so easy and free three or four miles ago, now felt tight, labored. Fighting hard against that, I actually started the last lap with my fastest mile of the day, right at 7 minutes. But that didn’t last and I struggled not to fade over the next three miles. Finally, when I hit the four-mile marker on the last lap, and knew there was only 2.2 to go, I stopped worrying and just ran. A guy in black had passed me a mile earlier and was now about 20 yards out front. I vowed not to let him put any more distance between us – and he didn’t. I closed strong and on my clock completed the 30 kilometers in 2 hours, 12 minutes and 38 seconds, a pace of 7:07 per mile.

Going that hard was pretty stressful on my body; I was aching afterward. But I didn’t feel wrecked. As I mentioned in my Hagg report, doing longer races – like the 50 miles of Autumn Leaves, or the 50K at Hagg – had helped make me stronger both physically and mentally. Running for two-plus hours, even running very hard, just isn’t a big deal anymore.

What’s interesting to me now is what this says about my Boston plan. I tell myself it isn’t my A race, that I should just run it and have fun not damage myself for ICDA. But Boston is a great race that for that reason alone deserves my best effort. Plus, I may never cross the continent to do it again. So, assuming I won't be able to resist aiming for my best time at Boston, what can I do, using this 30K effort as a guide?

Well, I can’t maintain a 7:07 pace for an additional 7.6 miles. But what about going 7:25 the whole way? That would bring me home in 3:14:27 – a PR by 10 minutes. Hmm.

Here are the miles splits from today, with 6, 12 and 18 each 1.2 miles to complete the 10K laps:
1---7:07.2
2---7:18.4
3---7:11.1
4---7:12.4
5---7:04.3
6---8:33.4 (44:26 10K)
7---7:03.2
8---7:10.6
9---7:05.8
10--7:09.3
11--7:07.1
12--8:24.4 (43:56 10K)
13--6:59.9
14--7:15.1
15--7:11.1
16--7:18.6
17--7:05.6
18--8:21.7 (44:16 10K)
18.6--2:12:38

UPDATE: Officially, my time was 2:12:40, a 7:08 pace. That put me 20th out of 110 finishers, 16th out of 75 men, and 2nd out of 11 men aged 45-49.