Weekly Review

Finally, over my illness. I went to the Dr. on Thursday and got a steroid shot and this seemed to do the trick. I often wonder if I'm the only person who actually goes to the Dr and asks for shots. My wife thinks I'm nuts. Funny story, I had told the Dr. I had a competition coming up, etc and at first she was concerned on giving me the shot because she thought I might get disqualified for a positive steroid test. I had to laugh at this, because when you finish where I finish at in half ironmans and ironmans its pretty obvious you are not on steroids.... :)

The week started off bad, but was able to finish pretty strong on Saturday & Sunday. Saturday may have been one of the all time windiest days I have ever ridden in. I rode about 20 miles straight into a headwind at sustained winds of 25 mph with gust of 30-35+.. On a day like this, I would typically ride East to West (wind was out of the north) but I wanted the mental strain of the wind to see if I could just focus and ride through it and it was okay.

I purposely stayed out of the pool this past week because I didn't know if I had a sinus infection or what and the pool at lifetime causes me issues from time to time. My plan moving forward will be to swim a minimum of 3 times per week.

For the week I ended up with:

• Cycling - 6:00
• Running - 3:57
• Swimming - 1:00
• Weights - 1:15

I'm over my sickness but I did manage to injure my back/neck today. I went to a broom ball birthday party with my oldest son (Ben) and got talked into playing broom ball. Broom ball was great until old Dad got a little too aggressive and decided to sprint after the ball and then try to make a hard stop. Let's just say it was a Charlie Brown moment and I ended up a couple of feet in the air landing on my head and back and then I got to lie there in pain with the wind knocked out of me for approximately 5 minutes while the entire STONEBRIAR MALL watched!!! Certainly not one of my better moments. Not sure how this is going to impact the week but right now I'm hurting.

The 5:00-5:15 half ironman is out of the question at this point. The only way I would have hit this time was to have an incredible bike split (by my standards) and I just don't see that happening for this race. Not enough time between now and IM NO Race. I played around too much this winter making excuses about the cold, the trainer etc. I think a more realistic time is going to be around 5:20-5:30.

I've got about 4 solid training weeks before New Orleans. Assuming I can get and stay healthy I plan to push hard over the next 4 weeks and then let the cards fall where they may.

Cycling Camp - Day 1

Well Day 1 officially sucked. I bagged the ride after 2 hours. No energy, no power, cycling jersey covered in SNOT and just plain old feeling like crap. I guess I'm still not over the coco family sickness. This is so frustrating. I guess I'll go to plan B and just rest until I get better. I should have done this 2 weeks ago, but sometimes the "desire", "fear of failure", etc... get in the way and cause us to make really stupid decisions.

I've set 2/27 as my deadline to make a decision regarding the New Orleans Race. If I'm not feeling better by then and back in full training mode I'll probably back out of the New Orleans race and sign up for a later 1/2 Ironman, maybe Buffalo Springs. Not what I want to do, but I need to feel confident & strong going into New Orleans race and right now, I'm not confident and I don't feel strong....

Team Seabiscuit Cycling Camp

I'm not 100% but I'm good enough to get back to training. I'm avoiding the pool as the pool seems to really affect my sinuses and that's my primary issue right now. My nose is basically a snot factory... I'm taking off work the next 2 days to participate in the 1st official Team Seabiscuit Cycling Camp. I'm meeting my partner in crime Pablo down at WR the next two days and then I'm going to try and talk him into coming up to McKinney on Saturday. Over the next 3 days I'm hoping to put in 4-5 hours a day of some "base miles" around WR and in northern Collin County. This is a desperate attempt by me to get my cycling legs back and give my fitness a shot in the arm so that I can hopefully get back on track for New Orleans.

Should be interesting to see how this turns out.

Can't shake whatever I've got...

I've had some type of illness since Monday. Flu like symptoms earlier in the week, sinus infection mid week and then bad sore throat yesterday and today. I just can't seem to shake this round of illness. Everyone at my house with the exception of Jennifer has had some type of issue this week.

It's become very frustrating because I know I still have a lot of work to do to get ready for New Orleans. The 5-5:15 half ironman is slipping away. I'm not quite ready to restate my target goal for the race, but I'm getting close. If I'm better by tomorrow, then my plan will be to take a few days off next week towards the end of the week and simulate a "cycling camp" for 2-3 days. Big mileage at slow to moderate pace. I've got to get my bike legs back.

This week has been so sorry that I probably won't even bother posting my workout stats for the week. Hopefully, I'll heal up tomorrow so I can get back to training next week.

The Flu has hit the Coco house

Coco Boy #1 (Ben) officially has the flu and I think I may have a touch of it as well. Perhaps that explains my fatigue on Sunday morning or that's what I'll continue to tell myself to keep my confidence high. I'm sure this round of sickness will take a few weeks to clear the house. It really sucks because we all had flu shots this year. We can always tell when Ben gets the flu because it tends to cause pain in his calves. Poor little guy has to walk around on his tip toes because his calves bother him so much.

Hopefully this won't linger too long and we can get back to our routine....

Weekly Review

Had a pretty good week. This is probably the best weather we have had in DFW in at least a month. All my bike rides and runs were outside this week which was nice. For the week I ended up with:

• Cycling - 5:57
• Running - 3:51
• Swimming - 2:00
• Weights - 1:52

I'm hitting all my marks for running & cycling but I'm still slacking in the swimming department. My swims are solid I just haven't been able to coordinate that 3rd swim. I'll probably start cranking up the swimming in mid to late February.

This morning I did experience some fatigue on the bike. Not sure if it's lack of sleep or just tired from the training...

Today was my middle son Reed's birthday (He turned 4). He woke up as I was getting ready to leave for my bike ride at 5:15am and declared to everyone in the house that "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" and he constantly reminded us of that today, specifically if we were doing something he didn't want to do. We had his birthday at The Little Gym with a Power Ranger Theme. Everyone is worn out and the kids went to bed at 7pm and Daddy plans to be asleep by 8pm.

Here's some pics from the party....

it's very difficult to get 3 boys to "pose" for pictures :)

the birthday boy...

Feeling Better

Starting feeling better on Sunday and got in a solid bike ride. I'm getting back into a good groove on the bike and enjoying myself. I'm starting to bump up the intensity a bit to see how I respond. It's too early to tell how hard I can push the bike at New Orleans but right now I feel behind where I was in the early fall on the bike. I think I can make this up, but I've got about 7 weeks to really dial in the bike. I think I can, but there's no BS time left. I've used it all up :)

Just got through looking at the weather in DFW for the week and I'm pumped... Lows mid 50's High's Low 70's for the rest of the week. I may actually be able to ride my bike this week without putting on every item of cycling clothing that I own.

Interesting workout for people with kids. Today, I took my two older boys to a track near our house. The workout was essentially 800m repeats with a twist. The boys and I would line up at the 50 yard line on the football field and then I would take off on the track. The boys would run across the football field trying to get to the other side of the track. I would stay on the track and try to beat them to the other side of the football field. This would continue until the 800M was complete. We did this around 6 times. Kicked my butt and the boys. They were worn out afterwards but they enjoyed it. They told me it's fun to do triathlons with daddy....

Let me take this opportunity to tell my good friend Ryan Brasher congratulations on his finish at the Mardi Gras Marathon in New Orleans. He had a solid day and at the rate he is progressing will be qualifying for Boston soon. Ryan and I grew up together in Alexandria, La. We use to ride our bikes all over town, through the zoo, through the mall... We rode those bikes everywhere. Ryan had a CW and I had a Redline and we were the raddest dudes in the neighborhood or so we thought. There wasn't a ramp we wouldn't jump and we both have the SCARS to prove it.... I often wonder if kids still ride their bikes like that. Back then that's just what we did. Maybe that's why I like cycling so much now. Ryan and his wife Lesilie recently bought a tri bike so I'm hoping Ryan joins me on the Ironman quest soon. With his "drive" and pure hatred to lose to me in anything we do, I know he would do well...

Bring on the week... I'm ready to enjoy this weather!!!