While a fair part of our country is gearing up yet again for a blast from Old Man Winter, this past weekend a good chunk of us had the great fortune to bask in sunshine and warm temperatures.  Warmth spread throughout the southeast, from South Carolina through Florida and westward towards Texas. 

My friends Paul and Jeff ran the Myrtle Beach Marathon, where the temps at the starting gun were in the low 60’s.  Both said it was hot and that the heat impacted their runs in one way or another.  Paul summed it up best by saying that the temperature was 40 degrees warmer than what he had trained in for his race.  Both had what I’d consider great races – finishing in 3:37 and 3:27, respectively.

Here in Northeast Florida, the weather was what I’d call “Chamber of Commerce” weather.  It was so dang beautiful you could almost imagine someone would take a picture of it and try to sell it as a reason for coming to Jacksonville.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the afternoon highs were in the low 80’s.  Zero humidity.  An outdoorsman’s paradise.

For the first time in 2011 I was able to get on my bike.  I went on a 20 mile ride with some of the folks from my tri club and had a marvelous time.  Apparently, nearly every other cyclist in the city had the same idea that we…

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Categories: Triathlons

Thispost was supposed to be a race report.  A nice, tidy recap of a well-executed marathon run this past Sunday (2/13) at the 4th annual 26.2 with Donna – The National Marathon to end Breast Cancer.  Well, it won’t be, because it wasn’t.

You see, Sunday I did something that I’ve never, ever, done before.  I dropped out of a race on my own accord.  On my own – without having an RD tell me that he’d “highly suggest I retire” from a race like happened at IMKY in 2009.  Nope.  This time it was all on me.

Let me tell you why.  This won’t be excuse mongering, nor will it be shared in the vain hope for sympathy.  I’ll just give it to you straight.  Why I chose to DNF a marathon.

The race started well.  I found a good rabbit to follow for the first several miles.  My pace was just about where I wanted to be for my “acceptable” pace – (as opposed to my “it’s a GREAT day pace).  The run out to the beach was fun & highlighted by helecopter flyovers, lots of honking cars, and lots of spectators.  The 2.5 miles run on the beach were breathtakingly beautiful.  The crowds were spectacular.  My half-marathon time was acceptable, especially given the fact that I’d been fighting a cold for more than a week.

After about 15 miles, the run took a decidedly poor turn.  I had…

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Categories: Triathlons

Over the years, we’ve all heard of the plight of various populations on our planet.  We’ve seen the devastation that natural disasters have wrought on places like Haiti, China, and most recently Australia.  We’ve grieved and empathized with folks in the Gulf Coast region of America as they recovered from hurricanes and oil spills.  We’ve seen casualties of wars, genocide, suicide bombers, and terrorists.

While each of these types of situations are significant, and shouldn’t be ignored, the fact of the matter is, however, that there are much broader swaths of humanity placed in everyday peril due to inadequate core survival necessities.  Water.  Shelter.  Food.  Three basic needs, without which one cannot survive.  The sad reality is that all too often places with these basic needs just don’t garner the attention they deserve.  They aren’t on the nightly news.

Despite the lack of headlines, there are companies, charities, and people who are trying to make a difference.  Take, for example, In Our Own Quiet Way, a Utah-based charity whose goal is to build dams in rural Kenya to help provide clean drinking water.

Enter James Lawrence.  Triathlete.  Husband.  Father.  Philanthropist.

You may have heard of James – in 2010, he endeavored to raise money for the Give a dam program through his blog and his seemingly monumental effort to compete in more than twenty Ironman 70.3 races.  He was successful – in terms of raising awareness, raising funds,…

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Categories: Triathlons

Recently, I’ve been thinking about mental toughness as it relates to endurance sports.  By mental toughness, what I mean is how some folks have the ability to push through pain and perservere.  How folks can run and run and run and not quit.  How folks make the decision to not walk when they are tired.

Take, for example, fellow blogger Frayed Laces.  She recently completed the Hurt 100 – a 100 mile trail race in Hawaii.  Certainly this was a huge physical feat – but I suspect that the real challenge for her wasn’t necessarily how her body felt, but the fight she had with herself to keep going.  That kind of mental toughness totally blows me away.

Another example of mental toughness:  I’ve mentioned on the blog before that my son is a swimmer.  He swims on a year-round club, and is pretty competitive (he raced in 10 events at the Florida Junior Olympics last year).  Two weeks ago, he finished a truly killer workout – a main set 2200 yards of butterfly.  As we talked about it, I asked him what he did when he was tired.  I fully expected him to say that he slowed down or took an easy interval.  To my surprise, his response was, “I went harder and kept pushing.”

That response blew my mind, and I wondered if it were me would I react the same way.

I really thought about mental…

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Categories: Triathlons

You know how there’s always that one person in a crowd who has everyone laughing because she says the craziest things? There’s hardly any professional triathlete more funny than Carole Sharpless. She’s in a league of her own when it comes to well timed zingers. But there’s so much more to Carole Sharpless than great one-liners or jokes.

Carole is similar to many professional triathletes in lots of ways…she has seriously kicked ass in races (including 10 Ironman races, with a 2nd place finish at IMFL), she’d swim laps around you in a pool, she coaches lots of age-groupers, she came to triathlon with a swimming background, and she lives (like seemingly the entire triathlon universe) in Boulder, CO.

That said, Carole may be different in that doesn’t take herself too seriously. She’s known to make wisecracks. She’s fiercely loyal. Inside, though, she’s a softie. She wants folks to succeed. She’s a giver. Maybe it’s her Italian ancestry, maybe it’s because her heart is bigger than most folks.

Today, you won’t find Carole out racing (two pretty horrific crashes are to thank for that), but you will find her on the sidelines of the Revolution 3 series cheering on competitors. Carole works with Trakkers GPS and Revolution 3 Triathlon, and heads up Team Trakkers.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Carole. In once sense, it was a cool turn of events, knowing that she interviewed me…

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Categories: Triathlons
Tags: Professional, Ten Questions With

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Categories: Race Reports, Running

If you read any amount of endurance sport blogs (well, almost any exercise blog, for that matter), you’ll find the term “pain cave” easily and often.  A cursory search of Google reveals how prevalent this phrase is in the lexicon of sport, as there were almost 7 million pages returned.  Narrow the search to “Triathlon Pain Cave”, and you get 130,000 returns.  You can read about how to “make the most of that little black place that emerges in your psyche,” purchase an episode of Spinnervals called The Pain Cave, or even “Learn to Love the Pain Cave”.

You might ask, as I did, what exactly is a “Pain Cave”?  Frankly, that depends upon whom you ask or what you read.  Often, a pain cave is described as a small room or workout area where athletes go in the off season to sweat like a manual laborer in the middle of July.  Other times, the pain cave is described as a mental condition – a time and place where you are at your personal limit and must decide how you’ll proceed.

Either way, the pain cave is ubiquitous – especially in endurance sports.  Ask any marathoner.  Any Ironman.  Any couch potato working to lose five pounds.

So what is a Pain Cave to Tri Madness?  To me, the pain cave is a mental cave.  It’s the self doubt and questioning that seems to creep into my mind in the midst…

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Categories: Training, Triathlons

The Outback Distance Classic is a Jacksonville Thanksgiving tradition.  For whatever reason, though, I had never run this race prior to this year.

The Outback 1/2 Mary was the second leg in the Tri 2B Tuff Challenge, which is essentially a challenge to run three half marathons in the span of 75 days or so.  Back in October, I ran in the Jacksonville Marine Corps 1/2 marathon, and set a massive PR in the process (you can read about it here).  The third leg of the Tri 2B Tuff Challenge is the Dec 17th Jacksonville Bank 1/2 Mary.  Coming into this particular race, I had two main goals:  (1) set a new PR, and (2) run faster than two hours.

Pre Race:
This race had a relatively late start (8am) – which would play a role in my performance.  As would the fact that I awoke Thanksgiving morning with a headcold and generally felt like poo.  As you’d expect, race morning routines for me are pretty well established and routine.  Rise early, light breakfast, drink a bottle of EFS drink mixed with PreRace, drive to the race site, try to find parking, stand in the obligatory port-a-potty line.  Parking and port-a-potty were complicated by virtue of this race hosting both a 6k and 1/2 mary and by being wildly popular.  I arrived at the start an hour prior to the gun and had a…

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Categories: Triathlons

Bud Light presents:  Real Men of Genius.

Today, we salute you, Mr. Running Race Costume Wearer Guy.
(Mr. Running Race Costume Wearer Guy)

Any schmo can run a 10K, but it takes an artistic flair to run it dressed up as a turkey.  Or a superhero.  Or a banana.
(Don’t slip!)

Wearing your pink tuto and tights, you pound out the miles, trying to PR.
(Run, Dancer, Run!)

Compression socks?  They don’t complete your look.
(Squeeze me!)

And even though you’ve never won your age-group, you have been the focus of much finger pointing and laughter.
(Don’t scare my baby!)

So crack open an ice-cold Bud Light, costume boy, because at every road race you run, you’re the real character.  Not the Kenyan out in front.
(Mr. Running Race Costume Wearer Guy)

—
Apologies to the ad folks at Bud Light, but after seeing a dude dressed up as a turkey, another as a banana, and a third as a super hero at my Thanksgiving morning road race, I just couldn’t resist.  :-)

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Categories: Triathlons

Several weeks ago, I jumped on the wagon and bought a pair of Saucony Kinvara shoes.  After wearing them for several runs, it only seems fitting for me to write a product review to share with you.

First, some background:
Before we get too far, let me be open and honest.  You probably know that I’m on Team Trakkers – and Saucony is one of our sponsors.  As such, I’ve got a bunch of Saucony gear and I run in Saucony shoes.  That said, I purchased these shoes myself.  The opinions expressed below are mine and mine alone.  I was not paid to render an opinion on the shoes, nor was I given any consideration for a favorable review.

There.  Quasi-legal stuff out of the way.

Let me give you a little background on me, as I think it’s appropriate when thinking about a running shoe review.  I’m an average-build guy.  5′9″.  I’m not built like a Kenyan – I’m usually around 175 pounds.  My running gait is fairly neutral – I do pronate some (more on my right foot than my left), I am working on breaking a heel-striking pattern, and I’m currently injury free.  Right now, I’m running about 80-90 miles a month, but that is about to increase as I get into the meat of my upcoming marathon training.  My training shoe throughout 2010 has been Saucony Tangent 4’s, and I race in Saucony Fasttwitch 4’s. 

The…

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Categories: Triathlons