Second thoughts?? No way!!!

Today is Tuesday May 22nd.  I have been through some emotional peaks and valleys since I have started this whole "Road to IRONMAN" thing.  I am always told that I need to calm my jets by my friends and family.  Maybe I really need to take heed with these goals.  If I am not careful, I may burn out early and not attain my goals.  I can't let that happen.

Saturday morning, up at 4:30 a.m. after a long night at work.  I bike to Kona where our canoe club was competing.  I get halfway there and the glass from the people throwing bottles out their window slices my tire and pops my tube.  I couldn't get the stupid hand pump to compress air, so I was a dead duck.  Luckily, one of my teammates stopped to pick me up when they saw me on the side of the road.  Thanks Chris!  So we get to the pier ( which is where the start of the IRONMAN is by the way), and the pump starts to work.  Changed my flat, but I didn't skim the tire to get rid of the glass shard( rookie mistake).  I get bored waiting around for our race, which was at the end of the day, so I bike up Ali'i drive and up the Keauhou hill to the highway.  I took the hill down and luckily didn't get the second flat until I went over a crazy bump on Kuakini Hwy, heading back towards the pier.  So I had to patch the second tube and keep adding air until I made it to the bike shop and got two new tubes.  Then I made it back to the Regatta and still had to wait for our race, in which we didn't get last place, but we had horrible timing.  After the race, I hopped right onto my bike and rode all the way back to Waikoloa to go straight to work.  About 100 miles biked Saturday. 

Sunday morning I woke up at 4:30 and rode to Kona.  It was such a beautiful ride, watching the sun come up.  There was barely any wind.  I rode to the Old Airport, where I parked my bike and within five minutes, I was running a half marathon time trial practice run with the Queen K Tri Club.  I didn't know I would be running with professional triathletes and even IRONMAN winners.  It was an awesome experience, but it really made me think that I must focus better on my training in order to perform on a higher level.  I completed the 13.1 miles in just under 2 hours and was completely dead after the race.  I had to take a nap before work.  Some of these pros did it in about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  It really put a damper on my confidence. 

I think that the moral of the story for my weekend is that I need to expect to be at the lower bracket of athletes before I can get to the top.  I need the proper training and training technique in order to be competitive at a level that fits my level of training.  I have decided to get a coach and record my workouts and together we will see how I can be more efficient.  I only have one month left before race day.

Today was the Bike Works run from the Queen's Shops.  We went to Kua Bay and it was beautiful.  On the way back, Grant and I did interval training and it really helped my performance.  When we got back to the shop, four of us went on a nice <10K run where we also did interval training.  It fealt good to push hard and then not so hard but still hard.  I think it gave us the opportunity to really expand our lungs and get the most out of our breathing and endurance.  Thanks for the workout guys.

Until next time,
Helgi Olafson