Week 19 Report:

Swim Bike Run Swim Bike Run Swim Bike Run.....

Swim: Broke in the ocean this week.
Bike: Last big ride before Muncie!
Run: Longest run so far! 15.3 miles!

I can't believe it, I'm out of teen numbers...week 20 starts tomorrow. It's really getting serious! I think everyone is starting to feel it too. There's lots of serious discussions going on about air travel, schedule, what to bring..etc..etc.. It's all very exciting, but totally nerve racking all at the same time. I'd say I'm more excited at the moment. I suppose nervousness will take over in about 5 weeks.

This week has been a pretty fun week actually, did some things to help break up the monotony of the same type of work out. I broke out my wetsuit this week and did my first ocean swim of the season. Now, I normally hate swimming in the ocean. I don't like dealing with the waves, the water tastes really really horrible near the Marina, and I just don't like getting up that early. But it was really great this week. I normally swim on my own, so it was a nice change to meet up with my teammates. I also enjoyed just being outside swimming. I spend so much time in that crappy 24 hour fitness pool that I almost forgot what its like to be outside in the cool air with endless water in front of you. Pretty nice. I still hate dealing with the waves, and hate the taste of the water. But, It was a refreshing change this week. People are gonna start meeting every Friday morning for ocean swims, I think I may go a bit more. Even the stinky ocean is better than 24 hour fitness! haha.

The rest of the week was pretty normal with my workouts, just kinda did what Ironfit told me to do. They went well, but nothing to really write about. The weekend was a bit of a switch up for me however. My TNT coach, and fellow Wisconsin teammate hosted an amazing BBQ at his house on Sunday which included a 62 mile bike ride. So instead of my normal Saturday bike ride, I pushed it to Sunday and switched my long run to Saturday. Doesn't really seem like a big deal, but I was pretty surprised how different it was. See, normally I hit Saturday with really fresh legs for the bike, then run on tired legs on Sunday. With them being flipped, so was the leg situation. I knew I wanted to run a half marathon this weekend in preparation for Muncie. Make it clear in my mind that I can still get through that. But since I had fresh legs, I decided to add a couple miles. I ended up doing 15.3 miles. This is the furthest I've ever run. I'm happy to report I felt pretty good through most of it. Towards the end I had some pretty tired legs and sore feet. But I made it through. I think I may have found the limit to my Vibrams...I think I'll wear shoes on my longer runs from now on. But good run. Now, on Sunday, I started the day with pretty beat up legs. I'm not use to that. But it was good practice I think. Just caused me to push through the pain. By the end of the bike ride, my legs actually felt pretty good. Less tired than when I started. So all in all, it was a really fun training weekend.

The ride was followed by an amazing lunch prepared by coach Pete, and we had a discussion about what to expect for Iron Wisconsin...Lots of scary and wonderful things ahead!

Today I shipped my bike of to Indiana, and I leave for Indy on Sat Morning...right around the time my bike arrives! (I hope it makes it there safely in one piece!) I hope the heat goes down a bit in Muncie....I do hate the heat. (=

Alright, bring on week 20....I can't believe it's week 20...

Week 18 Report:

Hell week!...I mean...Hill week..

Swim: Good good, nothing to report here, just dodging bad swimmers
Bike: Did I mention hills?
Run: Solid, not fast...but felt good.


Another exciting week of training, can't believe week 18 has already come and gone. It truly is just flying by now. I'm only 3 weeks away from my next race, and only 12 weeks away from the big one!

Training has really taken over my life. I knew it would at this point. I'm happy to feel that I'm on pace for Wisconsin, but at the same time, it has become a bit isolating spending so much time exercising. I committed to this idea almost a year ago, and I'll be damned if I don't see it through. But I do look forward to the days when I can go out on a Friday night again, and not have to go to bed at 9pm. At the same time, I know after all this is over, I am going to miss it. I feel like its become apart of me. It's my time away from the world. When I'm out running, biking, or swimming, all I have is me and my thoughts. Often they are huff huff huff...I can't breathe!...but when its not that, its a wonderful time to get into your own head and dust around a bit. So I know when this is all over and I've recovered, I'm gonna look back and cherish this time, in fact, it will probably propel me to sign up for another race. I doubt it will be another Ironman...but I won't say no, because 3 years ago I would have said there was no way I'd ever do one...but here we are.

This week's training went well. My schedule was a lot better now that I'm done on Hop. I actually get to go home at 6. It feels like I'm on vacation. I come home...and the sun is still out! Amazing! Swimming is good. I think I found the sweet spot at the gym. I take a late lunch so when I get there the lunch crowd is just leaving and its about an hour until the old people show up for their swim/walks. Running is going well too, I feel really comfortable at my pace now. It's not fast, but I'm not really looking to be fast, I'm looking for endurance. So I'm feeling really good about the fact I can go for long runs and not feel horribly winded at the end. I will work on my speed the last 10 weeks. But I know its not going to be my strong event, my bike will be. So I'm content with that. I just want to finish anyway....well, finish feeling strong, not dying.


The long bike this week was a killer. 2 of my teammates, Noel and Ivan De La Torre organized a trip from Sylmar to Lake Castaic. It was a really beautiful ride, but it involved some pretty nasty climbs. It ended up being 7339 ft of elevation gain over 74 miles. At the end, the De La Torre brothers cooked some amazing tacos. So damn good! It was definitely one of the more difficult rides I've been on. However, I felt pretty good through it. My biking has very much improved over this season. I still have yet to bike over 100 miles, definitely something I'm gonna tackle after my Half Iron, but it doesn't scare me like it use to. I feel like I could go do it right now without much problem. I think these difficult bikes have been good for me mentally. Which is half of the game when it comes to triathlon anyway. I still have a lot of improving I want to do in the next 12 weeks. But I'm pretty happy with how things are going. I feel healthy and ready for the challenge.

Only 2 more weeks until I head back to Indy for my race in Muncie. I'm feeling ready for the Half....almost.. The only thing I haven't been able to train for...and something I'm gonna face in Muncie is.....THE HEAT. Its been pretty cool here in LA...while in Indiana its been hot and humid. Sadly, I'll just have to deal with it. For now I'm looking for wishing stars to hope that it cools down in 3 weeks. Oh well...I'll take whatever is thrown at me....but I'd prefer a cloudy, soft breezy 70 degrees with low humidity if anyone can make that happen...Thanks!

Week 17 Report:

I've been Hopped!!


Swim: Need to find a way to entertain myself on the long swims.
Bike: good, nothing exotic this week
Run: Good...at my slow ass pace.



This week was a big struggle for me. Not anything to do with training, it was more just finding the time to train! I had to do a lot of (unpaid) overtime at work this week. I've been working on a short for the dvd of the movie "Hop". I'm really happy with my animation in it, but they just didn't budget enough time for us. So because I wanted my shot to look good, I had to put in a few...actually a lot of extra hours into it. I still have a couple more days on it, but the hard part is over, now I'm just in clean up mode. I'm happy that bit of stress is out of my life and I can actually go home at a descent time this week. That should help considerably with my training.

Training this week was a bit of a let down. Nothing bad really, but I had so much fun on my ride to San Diego that it almost felt like a race. By that I mean the excitement of it. After every race there's always a period of the bubble bursting. I'm sure there's a proper term that is eluding me at the moment, but it is past midnight, so my brain isn't firing on all cylinders. But anyhoo, I think you get the idea. Aside from Hop getting in the way, the week was fine, just nothing too exciting.

My bike ride on Saturday was just heading north on PCH. My typical training ground. It was a 60 mile ride at race pace. There was a little excitement in the first half of the day when one of my teammates couldn't get on his breaks in time for a red light and took out another one of my teammates. Everyone was ok, but a little beat up and bleeding. Thankfully everyone was ok.

There was a cool event going on while we were riding, and I'm a little pissed I didn't take some pictures...but its was the San Fransisco to Los Angeles Aids ride. The riders had been going all week, its about a 600 mile ride, and this was their last leg. So on the way back we just blended in with them. We totally felt like posers having everyone cheer for us, but really, they were on our turf anyway! haha! The plus side of having so many riders on the road was that it actually gave you race like conditions. It was great, cause we could latch on to some of the speedy groups and ride pace with them. Two groups stood out to me..."Team Popular" which was all in Hot Pink...and "The Easter Bunnys"...somehow appropriate considering Hop has absorbed my life this week. The bunnys were going about 24-25mph, which is a pretty good pace. It was a nice way to end the ride. That was followed up by a 6 mile run. Today, I did an hour on my trainer, then followed that up with a 9 mile run. Legs are a bit tired and looking forward to my rest day tomorrow.

Its getting close to my Half Iron, only 3 weeks til I head home to Indy! I feel ready for it...much better that I did when I did Vineman last year, I was scared to death...currently I'm just scared to death of Wisconsin...so that's improvement...I guess!

Week 16 Report:

Tough week, nice weekend!


Swim: Good, nothing to report, just need to go faster.
Bike: Longest ride yet, 90 miles!
Run: Feeling a little sore, makes me run slow.



These weeks seem to fly by now. A little scary to think that I only have 13 weeks til the big day. It's exciting too. I'm feeling pretty ok with my training. I'm not gonna create any records, but my hope is that I will have a strong day and feel like I didn't have to crawl to the finish line...even if in fact I have to crawl at the finish line...but hey, that's still 13 weeks away. As for this week, it really was time management hell. I'm a bit stressed at work these days, working on 2 shows, and being a mentor for an apprentice animator. So I'm extra tired each night, thus making it pretty damn hard to wake up in the morning. I've been able to get my workouts in, but just barely. I was late to dailies everyday. Only by 10 mins or so, but still, I could not get there on time. I don't want that to be a trend. Also, I really like to swim at lunch. Just gets it out of the way, and I don't have to fight the crowds in the evening. I was only able to do lunch once this week. It was pretty stressful fitting everything in, but I really hope to improve on that in the coming week. Unfortunately the stress level is going to be a bit high this week because one of the shows I'm working on delivers on Friday. Sigh, I hope it goes well.

The weekend however was much much better. Its funny, when you don't have to go to work, you suddenly have a lot of time. Maybe I shouldn't work anymore....now, how to a get someone to give me a whole bunch of money to make that happen? Saturday, several of us did a trip from Irvine (just south of LA) to San Diego! I've always wanted to do this trip, I've seen several of my friends do it and I was always jealous. We drove to the Irvine Amtrak station. We park there, ride down to San Diego and take the train back. It was a really beautiful day, aside from several cross winds and head winds. It was a really interesting route, went through heavy traffic areas, to campsites along the ocean, through an active marine corp base, and into downtown San Diego. At mile 82 we stopped at a place called "Pizza Port". I was so hungry at this point. I brought enough food on my bike, but it just was not the same as a nice greasy slice of pizza! I'm also not a very big beer drinker, but since we were stopping for Pizza and Beer, I had to join in. I must say, best damn beer ever. Its funny how good everything is when you just biked for 5 1/2 hours!

After the excellent pit stop, we split up. Some people were staying down in San Diego to race the Rock and Roll Marathon on Sunday, but me and Marty wanted to get back up to LA since we weren't running, so we took off and headed to the train station in downtown. It was about 8 miles to the station, which made it a nice 90 mile ride. Legs were pretty tired after sitting at the pizza place for a couple hours. But it was a really pretty ride along the Harbor. We jumped on the train and about 1 1/2 later were back in Irvine. Really nice and challenging day. It was everything I hoped for.

Sunday finished up the week with 45 mins on the bike to loosen the legs and a 9 mile run. I took it really easy today, but felt good during the run. I once again am really looking forward to my rest day tomorrow. I seem to look more and more forward to those each week!

Bring on week 17...after my day of rest of course!!