I’d Be A Horrible Judge

IRONMAN CHATTANOOGA 2019 TRAINING

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WEEKS 7 & 8 – Monday 4/15/19 – Sunday 4/28/19

Ironman makes announcements all the time and I usually don’t give them much more than a quick glance. But this was shared on a couple Facebook group pages and it caught my eye:

The reason I didn’t pay much attention to it at first is that it looks like your standard “Register Now” announcement for Ironman, and I’m already signed up for it. But then I read a few comments and realized this was for a relay. Say what? An Ironman relay? NO!!!

Immediately I made up my mind that I hated this idea. A relay for Ironman? C’mon man, this shouldn’t be. Triathletes that do Ironman do them for the challenge of doing three tough events in one day, 17 hours typically. To do just one part doesn’t make any sense to me. The whole purpose of Ironman was to prove an argument as to who was the toughest athlete of three disciplines, the swimmer doing a 2.4-mile swim, the cyclist racing a century or more, or the runner running a marathon. Do all three events in one day and find out! – was the reason behind creating Ironman. (Note: It’s the runner if you are wondering. The strongest swimmer never wins the race. And if you followed Ironman Texas this weekend you witnessed Andrew Starykowicz destroy the bike course only to be caught on the run. And Daniela Ryf made up a significant time gap on the run to win the women’s title. Always bet on the runner. Unless the runner is me, then bet on my buddy Dave. Actually, always bet on Dave, he’s 3-0 in our Ironman racing.) But seriously, what are you proving by just doing one segment of the race? After the swim leg, what do you do while the rest of us are still busting our butts? I better not hear you call yourself an Ironman.

As I read through the many comments I was seeing a lot of similar reactions to this announcement and I was hitting the “like” button for every comment that I agreed with.

“Give me a break. It’s an Ironman! This cheapens it. The last thing I want is some fresh-legged relay athlete zip past me as I’m actually enduring an Ironman. Save the relays for the Olympic distance. I’m not ripping on the athletes, but the Ironman has been the one true test for individuals in triathlons. That’s the beauty of it. The individual challenge mentally and physically.”

“It’s called Ironman, not Ironmen.”

“It’s about that adversity. I’m signing up for the relay as “me” doing the swim, “myself” on the bike, and “I” for the run!”

But as I sorted through those comments others started making valid points.

“Embrace it. It is good for the preservation of the sport or these races go away. Those who do the relay many times will do the full.”

“This opens the door to people who have injuries or are thinking of working up to doing a full one day to experience it. The more people outside doing something, the better! Run your race, meet your goals and let others do the same!”

“Sad that people rip on the relay! I’ve done two full Ironmans and now knee injury. This is a great idea. And for all those who knock it, I hope you always stay injury free and continue being able to do fulls. Not everyone is that lucky!”

So now I am conflicted. I definitely will defend the tradition of the race and what it means to be an Ironman. But if we can get more people involved, I’m all for that too. I don’t really know what to expect when I will be racing Chattanooga in late September. If I see a faster cyclist fly by will I assume he’s doing the relay? When I’m gassed on the run and someone trots by like they haven’t done the previous 2.4-mile swim and the 116-mile bike ride, will that make me angry? I’m not sure. A few commenters mentioned that everyone should do the race their way and not worry about the other group. I guess I will need to focus on myself like I usually do. This is why I would make a horrible judge. If both sides made valid arguments, I wouldn’t be able to make a decision on a winner.

TRAINING FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS

Last week was Easter and we had out of town plans, so I did some creative moving of my workouts and got the job done. And since I was out of town last weekend I didn’t have time to write my weekly wrap-up of training. So here are the details from the last two weeks.

Week 7 was jumbled around a little. I had the opportunity to run with the local running club F’NRC in a group run on Wednesday, which meant I ran twice that day. It was fun running with the group on a nice weeknight. I ended up skipping the long bike ride up north in Minocqua on Saturday, as they still had snow and ice on the bike path up there. Instead, I opted for doing the Sunday run on Saturday as I had a long drive home on Sunday with an additional trip to Valpo to take Ashley back to school.

Week 8 was looking to be a normal follow the plan training week. But the forecast for the weekend weather was terrible. A record-breaking late April snowstorm was predicted for Saturday, so I moved my Saturday 2-hour long bike ride to Friday and made it a bike/run brick, keeping my 1-hour run that was scheduled for Friday. That reminded me how tough brick workouts can be. I was pretty low on energy after that. My Gunner teammate Jeff asked this week as to when we start using gels on our weekend rides. I laughed at him because he’s a two-time Ironman and should know the answer by now, but I now found myself bonking because I didn’t remember that I should probably be adding more energy replacement into my workouts. Jeff’s not the dumb one, it’s me. At least he’s trying to be prepared for it. Although Saturday’s weather was crappy, we didn’t get anything more than a few ice pellets/sleet type stuff. I took Saturday off and had a great 1-hour run on a beautiful Sunday morning. So in all, the week ended well.

Week 7 Training Totals:

Swims: None > Rides: 2 total / 29 miles > Runs: 3 total / 22 miles

Week 8 Training Totals:

Swims: None > Rides: 3 total / 65 miles > Runs: 4 total / 23 miles

Gunners-2-1 — Getting closer to being done with the base part of the plan.

My Search For American Muscle – Part IV

PART IV – This Is Way Harder Than I Thought It Would Be

Time for another update in my search to add a classic car to my garage that I will probably only drive twice a week! It’s been almost two months since my last update, but it isn’t because I have slowed or stopped my search, it is just taking much longer than I thought it would. First off, winter is a tough time to buy a collector car. You don’t want it outside in the snow, and definitely shouldn’t be driven on salty roads. Buying a car in winter would mean I would have to store it inside, which means that I would have to park my regular driver outside. I don’t want to do that either. Also, it’s easy to get excited about a car you find for sale, but after the experience of looking at that Oldsmobile back in November and almost rushing into a purchase that I might have regretted, I learned to slow my roll, so to speak. Lastly, it seems like the “pickin’s” are kind of slim, especially since I have limited myself to just a few makes and models.

Speaking of that 1967 Olds 442 convertible that I passed on, I found it for sale at a classic car dealership in Ohio, with a new sticker price of about $8000 more than when I almost wrote a check for it.

Here’s the same 442 I drove with Kari back in November, looking shiny in Ohio instead of my garage.

THE DANGERS OF EBAY AND AUTO AUCTIONS

I should just rename this quest as “My Search For a 1967 Plymouth/Dodge B-body Convertible” because that is kind of what it has become. When the search began I was mostly looking for a 1970 Chevelle SS or an Olds 442 from 1967-68. I found that I really like the 1967 cars in general, they are probably my favorite muscle car year. But after looking at the cars from that era, the Plymouth GTX and the Dodge Coronet R/T just get my motor running (pun intended) for some reason. A couple of cars that I mentioned last time are still out there and I like them, but I’m still looking for one that isn’t that far away and would allow me to take a quick drive to go look at it. I have recently found a couple GTX’s that fit that need.

Car #1

First up is this 1967 GTX convertible located about 25 miles from me:

I first found this car by searching on eBay, where the starting bid was around $35,000. Now I like it a lot! So I bid on it, with my max bid at $44,000. I think it is worth more than that, I was just being conservative with my bid. I was the only bidder and I didn’t hit the reserve auction price when it ended. The dealer rep sent me a message through eBay informing me that the car had its original window sticker and build sheet. That’s great and pretty rare to have the window sticker, but I’m not buying it for the window sticker. So I went to their website and looked for more info. There they had the car listed at $59,990. Now I had sticker shock. No wonder I didn’t hit his auction reserve price. Most of the non-Hemi 1967 B-body cars I have looked into have sold for around $50,000 or under on average. He was asking way too much.

It hits all my wants: GTX with a 440, a convertible, and it is local. I should buy it. But it has some cons too, mainly that it is all blue, which is a lot of blue. I bet that dark-colored interior heats up pretty hot in the sun with the top down. The driver side armrest on the door has a crack in it. You would think that a car that is sporting a decent restoration would have had that issue addressed. I also noticed that the tail lights were mismatched. The 1967 Belvedere had two styles of tail lights, one with a chrome strip and one without. This car had one of each version. The dealer also adds that it has “Protect-o-Plate” which is wrong. Protect-o-Plate was GM’s warranty plan, Plymouth had a similar version called “Certicard.” All of this makes me think he hasn’t done his research on this car.

You can see the mismatched tail lights above. The left one doesn’t have the same chrome strip next to the trunk lid that the right one has.

The blue interior with the cracked armrest.

I decided to keep an eye on this car and saw that he listed it again on eBay. I found myself bidding on it again, this time with a max bid of $46,500. I was bidding on it against another bidder, but he was a bigger cheapskate than I was and the auction ended somewhere in the upper $30,000’s with me being the max bidder. Then I noticed that on the dealer website they had dropped the for sale price from $59,990 to $54,990! They came down $5000! I was starting to believe my patience was paying off.

It was listed again on eBay again this past week with the usual $36,000 opening bid. I bid again but pushed my max bid to $48,000 just to see if I was getting close to the reserve price. This time I had some serious competition in the bidding wars. I quickly got outbid until the auction ended with me losing to a max bid of $48,300, which didn’t meet the reserve, and the car didn’t sell. It’s now listed again on eBay with a “Buy It Now” price of $59,990! Did we piss this guy off with our low bidding? Their website still lists it at $54,990. I guess I might have to find some time to actually go up there and talk with them about the car and actually see it and maybe even drive it. Heck, I may find out that I’m not in love with it, just like I did with the 442.

One thing I need to be cognizant of is that whether buying a car through eBay or at an auction like Mecum or Barrett-Jackson is that without seeing it, I’m not sure what I am really getting. That is what is making this quest so difficult. Some of these cars are too far away for me to go see easily, even though I’m drooling at the photos on the auction and dealership sites.

Car #2

I went back to the old Google machine and found a newly listed GTX for sale online located coincidently enough about 10 miles from the one above, so again it’s really close to me and might warrant a trip to go see it. The downside is that it is a hardtop, not a convertible. The positive – 4 SPEED BABY!

An actual outdoor photo of the car superimposed on a dumb display background. Not sure if this color is the same Dark Metallic Blue as the other car. It looks to be a lighter shade blue, but that could just be because the picture was taken outdoors.

Another blue interior that looks to be in great shape, but with 4 on the floor.

I like it, but again my eye is catching things to be leary of. There’s a photo of the engine bay that shows that the radiator at some point in its life had a leak and has a bluish copper oxidation type material on it. Not sure if it is still leaking or not, but that could be a red flag. My coworker and fellow car nut Carl thinks that may be a sign of the engine running hot, and might have a good point. I think it may just be an old car showing its age. The thing is though, my brother was the mechanic in the family, I am “handy enough to be dangerous” with tools. I wish my brother was still alive, this search would be much easier and probably would have been over with by now.

The website does not list a price for this car. Even though it’s not a convertible, I may have to inquire about the price and go take a look see.

Car #3

The surfing the interwebs for cars is something I spend my evenings doing, and I still look at the offering from all of the big three. Although I am not much of a Ford guy, the most recent issue of Hemmings Muscle Machines magazine featured a 1967 Ford Fairlane GTA, which looks pretty cool. I may have to look at those a little closer too.

But this 1968 Buick GS convertible definitely caught my eye. The first impression is that the photos jump off the page. The sky blue color really pops. I must have a thing for blue. Another thing that caught my eye was the price – $34,900! Now we are talking! But the car is in Florida. And closer inspection of the photos show some little things here and there that give me pause, mainly the door and trunk gaps, but cars built in the 1960s weren’t really that high on that type of quality. My inlaws live in Florida, maybe I could get my father-in-law to go take a look at it. I can hear him now: “It’s very nice. It’s blue. It has four wheels.” That would be the assessment I would probably get out of him.

Pretty sweet! 400 cubes. Very sexy curves!

So that wraps it up for this edition. What it is coming down to I guess is that I am going to have to get off my butt and actually interact with these sellers to make a decision one way or another. I need to get on it – summer is coming quick!

The Comparison Trap

IRONMAN CHATTANOOGA 2019 TRAINING

WEEK 6 – Monday 4/8/19 – Sunday 4/14/19

I’m on a few Facebook group pages devoted to running, triathlon and some of the races I’ve done, and I have seen people post training and racing results that others will compare themselves to. I have done that in the past as well, but I learned that when you have a large group of athletes, there are going to be some that are really fast and some that are at the other end of the spectrum. I usually warn people, especially beginners to avoid comparing their times to those of others who may have been high school or college athletes, or who are twenty years younger than they are, or just simply more gifted athletically. But this week I kind of fell into that trap as well.

There was a guy who posted on a local cycling page that I was recently added to who claimed that he was going to ride on Saturday and asked if anyone wanted to join him for the two-hour ride. I was tempted to join in until I saw that he intended to ride at 18-20 mph. Really? Is your name Lance? Last week I rode very hard and out of my planned Z2 heart rate zone and could only barely manage 16 mph. Then others were commenting on his post like they would join him if they hadn’t already ridden earlier. I was taken aback by these people and their apparent ability to ride fast. I commented, “You all can go that pace?!” I really had trouble believing that some of these people could average that pace this early in the spring. I’m a 3-time Ironman dang it! Why can’t I do that too? So I got on my bike again and tried to see what I could do on a pretty windy day. My results were pretty much as I expected, 33 miles in 2 hours, averaging right around 16 mph, and way out of my Z2 training zone.

I looked up Mr. 18-20 MPH on Athlinks, a website that basically will show the results of races for anyone who has signed up and raced. Although he didn’t have any cycling results on Athlinks, he did have some running results. Those results were what I expected; a couple two hour half marathons and a nearly 5.5-hour marathon. I now doubted his ability a little more. But I know another guy on that page that struggles with running but can definitely kick butt on the bike. I reminded myself that generally cycling doesn’t make you a better runner, and running doesn’t make you a good cyclist. However, it did make me wonder what I am doing wrong that I can’t do that tempo as well. Then I realized that I fell into that comparison trap where I am comparing myself to someone I really have no idea of how fit he really is on the bike. I need to just worry about myself and progress slowly for 30 weeks to complete my goal. His goal isn’t mine, and I just need to remember that.

3OP3yT+oSFis7WPCg%A — I took a road I never use and ended up getting turned around a little. I took a quick moment to document my dumb self.

The weather this week was crazy. Some of the days were very spring-like and yet old man Winter would remind us that he’s not done yet and dump snow on us again. My Sunday run was forced indoors due to a crazy mid-April snow storm. Summer needs to get here fast!

Week 6 Training Totals:

Swims: None > Rides: 3 total / 61.6 miles > Runs: 4 total / 23 miles

One of my favorite running quotes: “Comparing our performances to the performances of other runners is not nearly as constructive as comparing our performances to our own potentials.” – Jack Nelson

I’m My Own Worst Enemy

IRONMAN CHATTANOOGA 2019 TRAINING

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WEEK 5 – Monday 4/1/19 – Sunday 4/7/19

When it comes to training sometimes I get too competitive with it. What starts out as a simple training workout, straight from the training plan, it often goes right out the door when I actually start the workout. I’m like a dog out for a simple walk until I see a squirrel, then the chase is on and I’m no longer interested in the simple walk.

Case in point for me this week was my Friday easy run. When I say easy I mean that it was a Zone 2 out of 4 heart rate based run, for 60 minutes. Essentially, this is a run that is done at a conversational pace, meaning that you should be able to easily carry on a conversation while running, rather than a Zone 4 race pace. That’s what the plan called for, but I had other plans. It was a nice day, and I had realized that the marathon that I had already decided to forego was coming up next weekend. I had planned on skipping the race due to a couple of injuries that prevented me from training sufficiently and the fact that I had decided to do Ironman Choo with my buddies instead. But I was curious about how far off my conditioning was, or if I was even capable of holding my 8 minutes per mile marathon race pace. So I headed out the door and started running comfortably hard, essentially Zone 3 on the heart rate scale to see if I was even anywhere near the ability to race a marathon. This is essentially a bad idea and I probably should have known better.

I was feeling pretty good. My continually sore legs weren’t really bothering me, and I felt no soreness in the upper thigh area where I had just recovered from the second of two muscle strains. About 1.75 miles into the run the squirrel appeared in the form of the local high school boys track team running hill repeats on the trail ahead of me.

Now, I’m not shy about challenging myself on this hill. Someone made it a Strava segment, and I currently sit at a tie for 10th place on this segment. My brain can typically shut down my urges, especially when I’m 1.75 miles into an 8-mile run, but this time there was a squirrel, several of them.

They were standing on the other side of the bridge at the bottom of the hill and as I hit the bridge they could hear me coming and turned to look with a surprised (who the hell is this guy?) look on their faces. I had already decided to race them up the hill, but that wasn’t enough. I shouted, “DON’T LET AN OLD GUY BEAT YOU UP THIS HILL!” And with that one kid yelled “NO WAY!” and the race was on.

I guess that there were about a dozen of shirtless boys that I started with. By comparison, I was wearing a long sleeve tech shirt and long sleeve windbreaker over that. Plus I had the disadvantage of being 40 years older than them. I overheard a kid tell the coach at the bottom of the hill that this was his 7th and last hill repeat, so I guess it was kind of an unfair fight, but that equates to about the same distance I had run to get there, and I hadn’t taken it easy either.

I started picking off kids, which I found easier than I thought it would be. A few could hear me coming and kept looking behind to see how close I was getting, but they would get caught. About halfway up the hill, my heart felt like it was about to leap out of my chest. The kids I was slowly passing seemed like it wasn’t even bothering them that much, but their effort said otherwise. As I got to the top of the hill there was another coach there waiting for the group. “I just outran half your team up that hill, coach!” I told him between heavy panting. He smiled and laughed. I continued on to the nearby intersection and was glad to see that I would have to wait for the light to cross the street so I could get a much-needed rest. To my surprise, I was able to continue most of the remainder of the hour-long run around my marathon pace without much difficulty, but I knew that continuing on for a full 26.2 miles would have been a challenge.

Although this run could have easily sabotaged my week, it didn’t, but I never seem to learn from these dumb challenges. My Saturday long bike ride resulted in me pushing myself again. This was my first effort outside after spending my winter bike training on a spin bike indoors. Those indoor rides would make me sweat, but never really tire me out. I was essentially doing high spin rides and conditioning my butt to a saddle more than working my legs hard. But I wanted to prove that they were equal to my outdoor rides, so I tried to ride the same speed outside that I was doing inside. Big mistake. It was a challenge for me to keep my average speed above 16 mph, whereas indoors it was my typical easy ride. That just goes to show that riding indoors, whether it be a bike on a trainer or a spin bike, is not on the same level as being outside dealing with wind and a variety of rolling terrain. It’s still better than not riding at all.

I finish these efforts and often reflect as to how close I was to the actual workout, and often times I am shooting myself in the foot. Even with my constant achy legs and what seems like quickly diminishing ability to go fast at 55, I can’t seem to remember sometimes that the goal is to pace myself throughout the 30 weeks of training so I can adequately pace myself through 140.6 miles, or at Chattanooga 144.6 miles. I gotta stop being my own worst enemy.

Week 5 Training Totals:

Swims: None > Rides: 3 total / 51.6 miles > Runs: 4 total / 21 miles