EverymanTri.com

Snake Bite

I sort of just slid from the bench and onto the ground.

The doctor came and asked me if I felt bad.

I did.

I felt really bad like I was going to pass out and puke at the same time.

My son, who had just run across the finish line with me, went from tears of joy to tears of worry as they carried me into the medical tent for an IV.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself. My real Ironman Austria saga really started about 72 hours earlier and 5000 miles away from Klagenfurt in Boulder with my stepfather who asked, as we drove to the airport to catch our flight to Europe, if we had our tickets?

We did, and if we had our passports…we did not.

Oh Sheise!

It was at this exact moment that my real Ironman adventure began.

But let me cut to the chase for a second before I spill the beans on what turned into the Ironman journey of the damned to Austria.

There are three things that happened at the race that I will remember as long as I live:

3) Running across the finish line with my family as the announcer yelled “Roman Mica…you are an Ironman,” to the hoots and hollers of a grandstand full of half drunk Austrians. (It should be noted here that it is somewhat unusual to actually hear the words….Insert your name…you are an Ironman, as the announcer would have to say it about 2500 times during a typical race. This would not only get boring and painful to the gathered crowd but pretty tiresome pretty quick for all involved. I managed to hear those precious words as I, by sheer luck, happened to have befriended the English announcer of the race the night before.

2) Completing the entire bike portion of the race with zero, zip, nada mechanical and/or flat issues.

1) Coming back to my hotel room, running to the bathroom and opening my toiletry travel case and seeing the white and blue tube of Desitin (diaper rash ointment) sticking out of the inner pocket.

I’ve actually done a lot of thinking about this sensitive issue the last two weeks. Perhaps too much some of you may conclude.

However, I can tell you that after a 180-kilometer bike (the race was in Europe after all) and marathon in 95-degree heat the boys got pretty raw and red. In fact the entire nether region with all the serious private parts was as red as a freshly boiled lobster.

The problem is that this chaffing issue with the boys or girl, for you female triathletes, is pretty common but often ignored as it really has no formal label that you can discuss without a wink and a giggle or two. So just like the conservative right has turned global warming into climate change, to make it less threatening and more socially acceptable, I now propose that we rename this very serious affliction to something much more acceptable.

I suggest we call it a “snake bike”

It not only sort of describes what happens when you rub something the wrong way for 8 hours, but more importantly it sounds pretty darn cool.

With this new label you can now have a very real and serious conversation with your fellow triathletes about how your race went. Here’s an example:

Triathlete #1: “So Jim how did the Disney half Ironman race go?”

Triathlete #2: “It went great Sandy, I kicked some Mickey butt…except that I got a really nasty snake bite on the bike.

Triathlete #1: “Ouch I hate when that happens. I got the same thing last week.”

Triathlete #2: “Wow what a coincidence Sandy, what race did it happen at?”

Triathlete #1: “It wasn’t during a race…come to think of it Jim let’s not go there. Nice weather we’re having!”

Back in Boulder 72-hours before the race I wasn’t thinking about Desitin or snakebites. I was wondering how we were going to get on the plane to Europe without passports.

We quickly returned home as we could not find the passports in the car and began to tear apart the entire contents of our well prepared bags on the front lawn. It kinda looked like a front lawn garage sale (you know when it is about noon and the garage sailors have torn into everything and you’ve given up trying to put it back in and sort of logical order). I sguess we lwere ucky as this was a Thursday or somebody would have asked me how much I wanted for the bike helmet. Sadly the passports were still missing.

At this point my well-laid plans and packing were out the window as I saw my second Ironman crash and burn before my eyes.

In hindsight I had made some pretty stupid travel decisions that would haunt me for the next two days. I opted to fly on Thursday for a Sunday race in Europe (remember that you lose a day traveling to the old world). This meant that we had no margin of error in our travel schedule. It also meant that I would race more or less completely jetlagged.

The latest you could check in for the race was on Saturday morning and our flight would only get us to Frankfurt on Friday afternoon. And Frankfurt is still 400-miles from Klagenfurt.

As we searched in vain for the missing passports my stomach began to do back flips and I wondered what IM triathlon Gods I had pissed off to deserve such a fate. Just as the situation looked the bleakest and we had given up making the flight and the trip my mom suggest that we check our other car.

And guess what? Three passports sparkled on the floor (were they had fallen from my wife’s purse) like diamonds in the rough. We stuffed the clothes back into the bags and jumped into my stepfather’s new Toyota. I flogged it mercilessly down the highway doing my best impression of Michael Schumacher on a tear at Monte Carlo. That is if Michael Schumacher drove an under-powered four cylinder blue SUV.

We made it to the airport by the skin of our teeth. But had I known that this was only the beginning of the journey of the damned I probably would have chucked the passports into the nearest garbage can and headed to airport bar for very cold and very tall beer.

Next time: How not to spend the 30-hours before your next Ironman, or proof positive that it is indeed possible to travel only 60-miles in three hours on the world’s fastest autobahn.

Life after Triathlon

What do you do after you reach the highest step of the triathlon ladder?

That’s a question that Nicole DeBoom successfully answered a few years ago when she went from professional triathlete to successful entrepreneur. Here’s how she describes her motivation for starting her active apparel business on her company’s web site skirtsports.com:

"Guess what? Even pro athletes have body issues.

On a training run in 2003, Ironman Champion Nicole DeBoom spotted her reflection in a store window. "Damn, I look like a boy again," she groaned, followed by one of her almost daily laments. "Why can't I look sexy when I work out? Why can't I feel like an athlete and a woman?"

Even as a buff triathlete, DeBoom still finds herself cruelly at odds with her behind (too big, she frets) and her upper thighs (way too big, she worries).

That reflection was the springboard for a fashion inspiration. DeBoom, winner of the 2004 Ironman Wisconsin and a former Yale University swimmer, envisioned a skirt for running, workouts, and playing afterward.

The revelation spawned the founding of her company, SkirtSports, Inc., and its first clothing line, TRIKS, launched in 2005. The pink-based skirts are feminine and sassy, slimming and flattering, a combination that is missing from the fitness apparel market.”

I recently had a chance to sit down with Nicole and ask her about her company, her professional career and life after triathlon.

This is the 24th Everyman Triathlon Endurance Podcast. There are several ways to subscribe to the show. You can click on the link below and use Yahoo.com.

You can go into iTunes and:

1) Click on the podcast link in the upper left hand corner of iTunes,
2) Click on the Podcast Directory link on the bottom of the page,
3) Now just use the search box located in the bottom left corner of the music store to locate Everymantriathlon and subscribe to my podcast.

The advantage of this is that you'll automatically get every show episode once I add it to iTunes.

Or you can listen (here and now) to the interview by just clicking the play tab below, or click on the link to the MP3 file and download it to your favorite iPod or MP3 player.



MP3 File

The New Rules Of Hydration

As a follow-up to my last story (below), I just stumbled onto something pretty interesting. It’s a though-provoking story on hydration by Matt Fitzgerald that updates the thinking on hydration for athletes.

He examines several old and new views on hydration:

Old: Drink ahead of your thirst.
New: Drink according to your thirst.

Old: Aim to completely prevent dehydration.
New: Aim to slow dehydration.

Old: Use either a sports drink or water for hydration.
New: Use a sports drink instead of water.

Racing in the Heat

It seems like every time I race this year the temperature soars well into the crazy hot (fry an egg on your forehead) range.

So I asked Mike Ricci of D3 Multisports what to do about this problem since I wilt like a weed hit with Round Up when it gets above 90 degrees.

Here's what he suggested:

Road to Ironman Austria (Part 3)

I just keep telling myself that this time next week I’ll be finished with my Ironman and hopefully enjoying a very large and very Austria Wiener Schnitzel and Pilsner. But as I get ready to leave for Europe I can’t help but worry.

In a perfect world I would have made some very important and very different decision to on my road to Austria, but instead I had to make a bunch of informed compromises. I figure when life gives you lemons, peel them, chop them into little strips and make the best darn vodka martini you can.

Here are a couple of the compromises I made along my journey to get to IM Austria.

Racing with the high altitude advantage versus racing jetlagged.

As I live in Colorado at about 6000 feet above elevation, I enjoy the advantage few more red blood cells caring extra oxygen around my body when I race at sea level. If you’ve never felt this high altitude buzz at sea level you should give it a try some day.

Basically, it feels like you can bite into the air when you walk off the plane at sea level. The air just feels so much more substantial and thick when you breathe. Running is especially rewarding, as you feel like you can never run out of air.

In fact, the racing benefits of high altitude training is one of the main reasons why so many world class runners and triathletes come to Boulder to live and train.

The newest research however suggest that the maxim aerobic advantage of this high altitude training last only a few days before your body adjust to life at sea level.

So for this reason I choose to fly to Austria on Thursday (arriving Friday morning) and thus racing on Sunday. This means that I’ll still have my maximum high altitude advantage, but I’ll most likely fall asleep on the bike if I get to comfortable in the aero position because of jetlag.

OK I’m lying. The real reason I’m flying so close to the race that I couldn’t find a plane ticket to Europe for myself and my family under like 10 zillion dollars on any other day besides Thursday. It must be all those world cup fans flying back to America this week.

But let’s face it, who really knows what voodoo science the airlines use to determine the ticket fare structures. Perhaps ticket prices were so high the beginning part of this week because of some celebrated and well attended annual German/Austrian mushroom festival in Bavaria? I’ll let you know if I see any suspicious mushroom hunter types on the fight over.

Quantity versus Quality of training time

Right from the beginning of my training for this race I knew that my swim would suffer. I made the conscious decision to cut back on my swimming to twice a week. Swimming is by far my best event of the three.

I figured that I could swim all day, every day, and perhaps save 5-minutes on the swim. In an Ironman I’ll probably spend 5-minutes in T1 just getting changed for the bike. It seemed like a waste of limited time to spend my days training for my best event.

As I’m sure you know by now the saying goes, “train your weakness and race your strength.” So I did and hopefully will.

On the other hand I spent a lot of time riding my bike and running in the mountains. But here I also made some quality versus quantity compromises. If you happen to be a 40-something-year-old dad with a job and wife…also training for the long course world triathlon world championships…while promoting a new book (click HERE to purchase a signed copy ;-) training time is a bit tricky to find.

This is especially true for the bike. As I’m sure you know, the bike takes the most time to train for properly. You just can’t go for a 1-hour bike ride three times a week and call it IM training. No, you need to ride long and far. Preferably you’ll want to do at least three-century rides before your next Ironman to get your body used to being on the bike for 112-miles.

I managed to squeeze in 2 long rides and whole bunch half-day rides climbing up and over various local mountain passes in the Colorado high county. I figure one hour of climbing is worth two on the flats.

Am I correct? Don’t know. But check back this time next week and you’ll see how I did in Austria. If I can find an Internet connection in Austria, I’ll file a full race report same time next week.

Do you suppose the Austrians will have Wiener Schnitzel on the run? Mmmm that would go would down real well with a cup of defizzed Coke and warm soup broth.

Setting a new Personal Best

If you are like me you probably have a favorite loop that you like to run around in your neighborhood. This loop is usually between 3 to 5 miles long and you probably feel pretty comfortable running it.

When you are not sure of what workout to do, or you are short on time you most likely run that loop.

And that’s fine.

But as Scott Fliegelman explained when I recently had a chance to sit down and talk with him it’s probably not the best way to break that personal best in your next race.

Scott should know. He is the Head Coach and Executive Director of Fast Forward Sports and he’s helped thousands of athletes break their personal best times.

How?

Just click on the blue player below to listen to this interesting interview.

This is the 22nd Everyman Triathlon Endurance Podcast. There are several ways to subscribe to the show. You can click on the link below and use Yahoo.com.

You can go into iTunes and:

1) Click on the podcast link in the upper left hand corner of iTunes,
2) Click on the Podcast Directory link on the bottom of the page,
3) Now just use the search box located in the bottom left corner of the music store to locate Everymantriathlon and subscribe to my podcast.

The advantage of this is that you'll automatically get every show episode once I add it to iTunes.

Or you can listen (here and now) to the interview by just clicking the play tab below, or click on the link to the MP3 file and download it to your favorite iPod or MP3 player.



MP3 File

How to write a triathlon book.

Since my new book (all 172 pages) was recently published (last month) I have gotten tons of emails (OK, just one) asking me how I managed to write (taught clever monkey to use keyboard and mouse) a book about the sport (death march) of triathlon.

So here are the top ten steps you know need to know in order to write and publish a book about triathlon. Please note that you first have to have at least some triathlon experience before you can write a 172-page book, which has more than one sentence that reads, “Triathlon is a really goofy sport made up of crazy people who swim, bike and run in the wrong order.”

10) Crazy competitive friend

One day your crazy competitive friend calls you and says something like this, “Guess what…you’ll never guess…give up? I just entered a triathlon and guess what again? You’ll never guess in a million years. I also entered you!”

I would not necessarily recommend this as a way to start your own triathlon career, but it does eliminate all the angst and worry of signing up for your first race.

9) Perform really badly in your first year of racing

The only way to write a book is to stay in the sport for a while. There is no better way to stay in the sport than to crack like a walnut in your first half-dozen races. This enables you to set the bar really low thus almost guaranteeing that you’ll do better next year.

If you almost drown in the swim, crash on the bike, and your legs lock up like vise grips on the run, you’ll be assured of topping your personal best next year. This means that you can drink beer like a sailor on shore leave and still race the following year with a 100 percent chance of setting a PB (Personal Best) every time you race.

8) Make every Newbie mistake in the book

The thing about writing a book is that you need to have some interesting stories to tell. Let’s face it, nobody really cares about how you broke a PB by going under 14 hours in your first Ironman.

On the other hand if you, for example happen to flat eight times (hmmm…like I did) in your first Ironman, you’ve got an interesting story to tell that folks will want to read. So how do you flat eight times in one race?

Simple.

You break the number one rule of racing (that being never try something new in a race) by purchasing a new bike just a few days before your Ironman. It also helps to plan your race around a hurricane to keep the readers wondering if you actually managed to fix eight flats in pre-hurricane conditions.

7) Computer or functional typewriter

Note to young authors: Most publishers today frown on manuscripts written in pen or pencil. Unless of course your manuscript happens to be about pens or pencils in which case it might be a clever marketing ploy.

6) The inability to spell or use proper grammar

I must confess that my complete inability to spell or put together a “classic” or “old school” sentence had been a huge help to my writing career. A manuscript full of “obtuse” or did he really mean “obvious” errors gives your editor a real sense of mission and purpose?

If you submit a grammatically perfect manuscript your editor has nothing to do but send the book to get printed. On the other hand if you are like me and have a hard time typing, let alone spelling, your editor will gleefully correct your errors while feeling great for getting the job done well.

5) Geographical Luck

It really helps to live in a place like Boulder, Colorado, or perhaps Kona on the big Island of Hawaii. You can of course “right”or did he mean “write” a book about triathlon sitting at home of the farm in deepest, darkest Iowa, but it really does help to live in the Mecca of triathlon.

To be honest you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a professional triathlete in Boulder. So if you happen to be writing a book about triathlon and you have a question like, “What comes first the run or the swim?’ You’ll soon discover the answer. Just walk out your front door and chances are you’ll get run over by a professional triathlete on a tempo run.

4) Poor training discipline

If you are a hardcore triathlete you’ll never be able to write a book. You spend most of your time training or recovering from a hard workout.

If you happen to train like me you always have two choices. You can get up some crazy early hour in the morning and go for a painful track workout or you can sleep in, make yourself a big breakfast and pound away on the computer keyboard for a bit. It also helps to train a monkey to spell triathlon so you can forget about the keyboard bit and just turn on the TV.

3) Poor diet

Triathletes are meant to be lean mean endurance machines. Authors are expected to be rollie-pollie and perhaps “jolly” or did he mean “jowlie” by nature? Believe me it is a lot easier to be a writer than a triathlete when it comes to your diet.

2) Blog

When you have a Blog and people actually read it, you’ll end up with great comments on that Blog like, “I learned more from watching my dog do his duty this morning than I did reading your latest post on swimming”

Such feedback is tremendously helpful as it gives you great ideas for the next Blog post entitled, “The greyhound approach to super-fast bathroom breaks during your next race.”

1) Hairy Legs and a washtub belly

Everyone knows that true triathletes shave their legs and have washboard stomachs. But to really relate to your readers you must be one of them.

To know the everyman you must be the everyman.

That’s why I have worked long and hard to resist the temptation to shave my legs. And that’s also why I have worked long and hard to build up my washtub belly (OK, I got the washtub and washboard belly thing mixed up. That’s my story and I’m sticking it.)

Can’t get enough of Everyman Triathlon?

Purchase my new book "My Training Begins Tomorrow: The Everyman's Guide to IRONFIT Swimming, Cycling & Running" by clicking HERE.

Not only will I sign the book for you, I’ll also inscribe it with your name. And unlike your computer, the book can be read anywhere without the use of a power cord, battery or Internet connection.

Does wearing a helmet decrease the size of your manhood?

This is a brief description of the IMAX film Wired to Win that I recently went to see with my son taken from the film’s web site:

“A jumpy home movie shows a six-year-old boy learning to ride his first bicycle with help from his father. The narrator tells us that with each moment, each new experience stimulates growing networks of cells in our brains. "We used to think these changes happened only in childhood, but now we know that our brains never stop developing — they keep wiring and rewiring themselves with every experience and every challenge." After several initial failed attempts — and even crashes — the boy begins to show improvement and confidence. Finally, he is riding alone in a seaside park, amazed at his own accomplishment.

Cut to a spectacular full-screen aerial shot descending the steep eastern escarpment of the Col d'Aubisque in Southern France. As the camera drops down the mountainside, we discover a ribbon of cyclists and vehicles streaming down a narrow, twisting, corniche road. This, says the narrator, is the legendary Tour de France – a 3,400-km, three-week bicycle race that has been called the world's most grueling sports event, and the ultimate test of the human brain.

Australian pro cyclist Baden Cooke and his French teammate Jimmy Caspar are two of the 200 riders competing in the legendary race. Just to finish in Paris, they will need to avoid danger, stave off crushing pain and fatigue, control their emotions, seize fleeting moments of opportunity, and stay highly motivated. It's the brain that controls all of this.”

What the film’s description fails to mention is the next scene of the film that shows Baden Cooke’s cycling team practicing for the tour by repeating taking a sharp right hand corner on a steep mountain descent as fast as possible. The edge of the tight right hand corner is outlined by those little square stone blocks that Europeans love to use to mark the side of the road.

In a often repeated shot the team flies around the corner getting closer and closer to the square stones until they clip the edge of the apex just right thus carrying the maximum amount of speed around the corner and down the mountain.

This is pretty impressive stuff and a wonderful demonstration of bike handling skills, not to mention fearlessness and bravery, until you happen to notice that the pro cyclists featured are not wearing helmets.

In fact, it was just a few years ago that the Tour de France actually mandated the use of helmets during the race.

For most of the tour’s history the riders wore those little colorful cycling caps to protect their heads. When they did wear helmets they were these old-school leather thongs that at best kept the pieces of your skull together after you crashed. This made for easy after crash clean-up I suppose.

In recent years, the high profile crashes and deaths of prominent racers prompted the tour organizers to cancel a stage of the race in respect for the fallen cyclist. However it did not occur to anybody to even suggest that the deaths may have been avoided by the mandatory use of helmets.

Now for the most part I consider folks that ride a bike or a motorcycle without a helmet a great example of natural selection at work. If you guys don’t want to pass on your helmetless genes to your potential offspring that fine by me. It is your God-given right, and I respect your decision to feel the wind and perhaps concrete in your hair.

I did however find it somewhat ironic that the movie was sponsored and produced by a physician group made up of brain surgeons. I was a bit confused though. Were the docs soliciting for new business with these helmetless scenes in the movie? Or, did somebody fail to notice the irony of this thus promoting the warning at the end of the film and on the web site that says…"Use Your Head - Wear a Helmet"

At any rate the movie did get me thinking about why somebody would not wear a helmet flying down a twisty French mountain road at speeds that would make Mario Andretti reach for the depends.

Here are the top ten reason that I came up with:

10) Helmet makes me feel hot
9) Helmet makes me look fat
8) Helmet doesn’t match my team jersey
7) Helmet catches too many bees
6) Helmet and bike shoes are a fashion no no
5) Not wearing a helmet is my freak flag
4) I can’t scratch me head in a helmet
3) Only wussies wear brain buckets
2) Can’t give my team mates a proper noogie…
And…
1) Wearing a helmet decreases the size of my manhood