Ryan Schneider's Diary of Ironman Training & Life in General
My buddy Dustin sent me a brief video compilation from Wildflower this year of me biking out of the T1 area up that massive first hill, and of me finishing the race with a flourish. Wanted to share and store here for safe keeping. This is not my blog post for the day. More on that later. Heck, I still have a full cycling workout to go (weather permitting)!
Here are a few photos he took from the event with Darrin as well
174 days to go.
Warning: This is not one of my touchy-feely posts. In fact, it probably won't get much grosser than this.
Tune out now if you can't handle a little "dirty" humor. And I mean yucky, not sexy. Just to be clear.
Mom, I'm looking at you.
I never thought this would happen to me. Before every race or even any training session, I get my bathroom breaks out of the way. My innards "know" it's time to...ahem...release before I start training for an extended period. This afternoon, at the weekly LA Tri Club Griffith Park brick, I got faked out by my digestive organs.
I'm sharing this because I think it's happened to all of us at some point. Whether it's in a race or just practice...when ya gotta go...ya gotta go! Usually we hope there's a port-o-potty nearby. Sometimes, like during a trail run, there's just not.
The bike portion of the brick was just fine -- outside of what felt like a swirling headwind that kept our progress up Mt. Hollywood slow and steady. It was the run that felt like it gave me the runs.
First off, it's a good thing I was running alone today. (I had to leave early to attend a party with Steph's friends, which turned out to be a lot of fun.) Midway through the run, it was clear something wasn't agreeing with my stomach. While my pace didn't really slow, let's just say I was re-enacting that famous scene from "Blazing Saddles" where everyone around the campfire is having a toot-fest. Except I was alone, which meant I could kind of giggle a bit to myself. Jet power! Because let's face it, no matter how old you are, farts are funny. They just are. C'mon, you know it's true.
But what's less than funny is realizing that the next toot might not be so innocent. And nobody wants to relive the movie scene from "Along Came Polly" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman realizing he just "sharted." I don't think that word needs any explanation, by the way.
So, I had to find a quiet place to, well, uh, you know...poop.
Hey, everybody poops...sometime.
There are few things quite as embarrassing or demeaning than copping a squat in nature but feeling like the whole world is watching. Whether they are or not doesn't matter, it's just that feeling of knowing you A) look pathetic B) couldn't hold it and C) don't have a magazine to read.
After covering up my creation, I continued my run issue-free. Yes, I felt a little lighter. And if you know me really well, then you also know I may have had a bit of a guilty-silly grin the rest of the run.
Just don't tell anyone, OK?
Always a new adventure to be had in this sport, right? This was the first time since junior high school a situation like this occurred. I kinda hope its the last.
Now, I've got to be up in about six hours to jump in the pool. Hopefully, issue-free there too. Good night!
175 days and counting.
Today is one of those moments where I'm so glad I have work-life balance. When the two intersect and blend harmoniously, life is so much better. Of course, I only know this to be true after years of emphasizing (OK, over-emphasizing) the "work" part of the equation. It's only taken me close to 15 years in the workforce before I found a better balance. Along with one heck of a company that I've called home for 6.5 years now. I was responsible for helping manage a big news announcement from our company this morning. Normally, this would mean putting my life on hold (possibly for up to a week in advance) to plan and obsess over every detail myself, along with executing and following up. Fortunately, I have a great group of teammates and have finally taken to heart that my job is no longer to "do" as much as it is to help plan, manage and motivate. (That's a hard lesson to learn for a competitive guy like me.) As a result, I was still able to squeeze two quality workouts in -- one before work at 6 a.m. in the pool, and another at 6 p.m. in the gym with the weights. In between, my team and I worked hard to stay on top of the news cycle.
The pool workout was pretty grueling. We had a series of sprints between 50 and 100 yards to establish our T-pace for the workout. Then, we added a few seconds to it and tried to hit a specific time with little rest over the duration of the sets. It pretty much rocked me. At the end of the day, I blasted through five sets of three different exercises, with two sets of 15 reps for each. I was pretty spent after the lifting and about 10-15 minutes of abs work.
In the end, as I sit here with my head spinning after an exciting and exhausting day, I'm thrilled about how everything turned out. The announcement was a big success, with a potentially delicate situation that I believe we turned into a positive with our fans and the press. But I'm just as elated about being able to fit in my training without feeling stressed out about either my work or athletic performance. Neither suffered. If I can continue to maintain this kind of mental and physical balance over the long haul, I think it can only enhance my overall quality of life.
Which is good, considering Stephanie insists on me living as long as she plans to!
I'm trying, honey. I'm trying!
176 days and counting.
Another day, another pro to meet.
Tonight, I had a chance to meet Mark Cavendish, he of the four stage wins in last year's Tour de France and winner of the first stage of this year's Amgen Tour of California. He was signing copies of his new book, Boy Racer, at Helen's Cycles. That's where I bought my Cervelo P2 about three weeks ago.
It's funny that about a year ago I probably wouldn't have known who Chris Lieto or Mark Cavendish were. Or half of the things I know now about Team Saxo Bank, Rabobank, Liquigas (does anyone else find it ironic that the proper pronunciation for Liquigas is leaky gas?), Radio Shack, Garmin-Slipstream, HTC-Columbia and of course my team of choice -- Cervelo Test Team.
Cycling, more so than swimming and running, has a way of sweeping me up in its own wave of hysteria and excitement. Next thing I know, I'm howling and hooting and hollerin' up a storm as a peloton of cyclists blasts past me at the Tour of California.
Man, I'm addicted to this sport!
***
Today was rather uneventful on the training front. I had to work from home because the fire inspector came to check fire alarms in every single condo. This meant a fire alarm going off every five minutes for about three hours. I felt like I was in my freshman year college dorm. Not a memory I want to relive. Especially the headache that followed. Yuck.
One upside of my home stay was using my lunch time to arrange and display all my race bibs in my office. That's something I've wanted to do for a while now. Turns out I've participated in 19 total races since about 2008. Not too shabby! In looking at the finish times written on each bib, I can see the progress I'm making, and sometimes the dips. But, I remind myself that each course is different, weather conditions are different, nutrition is different, sleep is different. You really can't compare too closely since there are so many variables.
Since I stayed at home, I had to skip what would have been another intense weights session, which will now have to wait until either tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm also planning a trip with Stephanie to visit a wedding venue location in Scottsdale this weekend. Which means I'll get to bike and run part of the Ironman Arizona course. Now if I can only figure out where to start and stop. Help, if anyone reading this knows for sure. Coach Gerardo told me it's near Mill Avenue and a street that starts with Rio but I can't remember the second part. I'll figure it out.
Guess that's about it for now! Wish I had more to report, but then again, a quiet night at home is a welcome relief too.
177 days and counting.
Sometimes, pictures are worth a thousand words. I've got several of 'em today. More details tomorrow, but chew on these for now!
Yep, I made it to the Amgen Tour of California!
After my Zuma swim got cancelled due to strong rip currents and surf warnings...from two lifeguards!
I got in a little trail/road run after finding a great parking spot near the King of the Mountain checkpoint!
I've got a SICK video of all the cyclists riding by the checkpoint but it's too large a file to post here. I'll think of something.
Oh, and on the way back to the car, I met Chris Lieto -- three-time Ironman winner and second-place finisher at the 2009 World Championships. Damn Word Press won't let me post the photo because the file's too big.
I'd say it was a pretty good day! And that's not including the home-cooked meal Stephanie made along with our date night movie of Pixar's UP.
Does it get any better than this?
178 days and counting.
I've got the 1,000-yard stare down cold today. That unmistakable look worn by those who have pushed themselves either to their physical or mental limits, or both. Four hours on the bike with a monster climb followed by an hour run can do that. (Thank goodness I opted to bring the road bike today and not the tri bike!) I haven't uploaded the Garmin data yet, but I think I burned north of 2,000 calories today. The amazing thing to me is that I didn't even come all that close to completing a 70.3-mile distance and I'm pretty spent. Granted, I dipped into heart-rate zone 5 on the bike and zone 4 on the run a little too. But still, I didn't swim, biked two miles longer than the standard Half-Ironman 56 miles, and essentially ran half of a half-marathon. Total time: roughly 4:50.
I know I'll be fine in less than two months when the starting gun at Vineman goes off. But getting to that point now is harder than I realized. I'm climbing a new fitness peak after plateau-ing the past few weeks.
Speaking of climbing, my Fortius teammates and I slogged our way up the big peak on Portrero Road. Most people carefully steer down that road at very cautious speeds. The climb was most certainly the steepest I've ever encountered, and it didn't help that I was accidentally in my big ring -- which I didn't realize until the peak when I started my descent and tried to switch into that gearing. Darn it, I was already there! That would explain the 35-45 rpms up the hill and feeling like I was going to tip over at any moment. The upside, of course, was the next big climb of the day -- "baby" Portrero hill by Sly Stallone's house -- was much, much easier.
The "toughest luck of the day" award went to none other than Fortius teammate and friend Mike. He got a flat as we started our big Portrero climb... and then a bee flew into his helmet on the way down the hill and he got stung on the head! As weird as that sounds, almost exactly the same thing happened to me in 2008 when I was a rookie rider with the San Fernando Valley Bike Club. The only difference was that I got stung by a yellow jacket, and I was all alone.
For me, the best part of today's bike ride was cycling on some of the roads on tomorrow's final stage of the Amgen Tour of California. The same streets I ride on regularly will now be considered holy as the likes of Cavendish, Shleck, Zebriskie, Leipheimer and all the other amazing pros blast through them. I can't wait for them to show me how it's really supposed to look.
That's all I got for today. I'm going to watch the Amgen Tour of California time trials on Versus, go to Fortius Coach Ray's house to try on our new K-Swiss sample racing team kits (woohoo!) and get ready for Stephanie to head back into town after a night out in Palm Springs with her best friend. Go go go!
One last note. I'm inside of six months until Ironman Arizona on November 21. Yet my blog countdown is WAY off. I'm nine days off. So, I'm resetting my countdown clock to 179 days and counting with this post.
Wait for it...
179 DAYS AND COUNTING!!! Less than six months to go!
Remember Jeff Foxworthy's hilarious "you might be a redneck..." rants? I think I've got a variation, albeit a slightly less humorous one. It came to me just now while I was sitting on my couch(on my day off from training) watching Stage 6 of the Amgen Tour of California...for the second time today.
"You might be a triathlon addict..."
Here goes:
You might be a triathlon addict if you watch the live online stream of a cycling race and then go home to catch the HD TV version, just for the amazing views and cyclist interviews.
You might be a triathlon addict if you realize that shaving your chest is no longer "manscaping" but rather a necessary step to reducing your swim time.
You might be a triathlon addict if you spend 30 minutes in a Sports Chalet to pick out the perfect swimsuit...since the last two were thrown out mercifully by your fiancee because people could see your butt crack.
You might be a triathlon addict if five minutes in a bike shop for Co2 cartridges turns into 30 minutes because you're debating whether you should put anything but Italian components on an Italian-made frame. The answer is no.
You might be a triathlon addict if you get just as geeked up meeting and befriending an age-group triathlete pro as you would a football, baseball or basketball star. That happened to me this week, courtesy of Caleb Sponholtz on Team Sirius.
You might be a triathlon addict if you're planning to leave work early on Monday to meet Mark Cavendish at a local bike shop.
You might be a triathlon addict if you check the waitlist for the Vineman 70.3 practically daily even though you know the likelihood of being admitted to the race is all but guaranteed and has been for weeks. Better safe than sorry, I say.
You might be a triathlon addict if you sob like a melodramatic teen girl watching the Ford Ironman World Championships DVD. Did that earlier this week.
You might be a triathlon addict if in your free time you link corporate sponsors up with elite amateur and pro triathlete teams. Been doing that with Jack Black's Performance Remedy line of men's skin care products.
You might be a triathlon addict if you think of multi-tasking like transition times, looking for every possible opportunity to shave unnecessary wasteful time out of your day.
You might be a triathlon addict if you shave your legs.
Guess I'm not a triathlon addict then! Ha!
Yet.
188 days and counting.
I remember with great fondness watching Lakers games as a kid. And as much as I'd like to say that's because of Magic, Worthy, Byron, Kareem and Cooper, my real favorite was listening to Chick Hearn announce every game with his unmistakable style and flair. Nothing could beat his signature sign-off when the Lakers were about to put another opponent away in the waning moments. "The refrigerator is closed, the butter's hard, the eggs are cooling and the jello's jiggling!"
As I flop on the couch after a rather challenging few days of training, I realized my body feels like the contents of Chick's kitchen. My legs are hard, like lead. My muscles are aching, twitching, moving all over the place like jello.
The door is closed! It's over. I'm done.
Day off tomorrow...thank goodness!
Today's workouts, combined with not enough sleep from the night before, have left me drained. I completed a 1,000 yard time-trial at the end of my Fortius swim this morning at 6. The good news is that I shaved at least 25 seconds off my last time trial of the same distance, good for a new T-pace of 1:57 (compared to 2:00-2:05 when I first started). I'm convinced I can swim a faster 1,000, but just prior to the time trial I had finished 9 x 100s at easy, medium and fast intervals with only :30 rest at end of each fast set. When I returned home to eat breakfast, I fell asleep for 45 minutes before rallying to get to work on time.
Tonight, my run consisted of cruise intervals featuring 3 x 8-minute build-ups to heart-rate zone 4 and 5a. The beginning of the run felt like the end of most of my workouts -- it took a solid 15-20 minutes to get relatively loose. But, I rallied and did the work. Sometimes, that's what I think this is all about. Simply acknowledging the pain and moving past it. Overcoming. Outlasting myself and creating a new threshold.
That's victory enough.
***
I can't help but comment on the Lance Armstrong-Floyd Landis controversy. A few of my friends and family have asked me what I think, since I'm their resident "crazy cycling expert." Here's my take:
Cycling is an allegedly dirty sport. While it seems to have been cleaned up a fair amount, doping is a constant problem. And it was probably worse over the past several years. That said, I really want to believe Lance. He's essentially the last of the sports heroes out there that people can look up to as an inspiration. He has given thousands upon thousands hope, and that means a lot. That said, if cycling was filled with dopers and dirty experiments, and you had one man absolutely dominate that sport during that period...how can you not at least wonder how he did that completely clean? Now I totally get that his VO2 threshold is much higher than anyone else's. I get he's a cancer survivor and can deal with pain on a level that most everyone else on the planet cannot. Still, is that alone enough to dominate the way that Lance has during his career? I honestly don't know. Part of me doesn't want to know. I want to be entertained. I want to be amazed. And as sad as it is to say, sometimes I just don't want the curtain pulled back too far to show what's really going on. My entire childhood of sports heroes has been mowed down because they all did drugs of various types.
Can't I just have one guy left to look up to?
Please, Lance, please be telling the truth.
189 days and counting
I need to work on my transition times.
I've been going non-stop since 6 this morning. Did a 2.25 hour brick this morning (getting more comfortable on the tri bike, though hills are tougher than expected!) followed by a full day at work, picked up Stephanie for a Dodgers game (total snooze-fest loss to the Padres) and just walked in the door now. It's 11:10 p.m.
I have to be up at 5:45 a.m. for swim practice.
Clearly, my transition times are holding me back from accomplishing more in the day. I need to shave time from somewhere.
What's that?
Cut back on my activities? Or my training?
Preposterous.
190 days and counting.
If you are a triathlete, are thinking of doing your first triathlon, know a triathlete and wonder why the hell we do what we do, or have a penchant for the dramatic, then you must watch the 2009 Ironman World Championships DVD. I thought the DVD was a consolation prize for not being selected in the 2010 Kona Ironman lottery. How wrong I was.
A few weeks ago I started watching the DVD during a bike trainer session. This morning, I finished the video.
Maybe it's better put that the DVD finished me. I was emotionally drained as they showed the final few finishers cross the line -- staggering, delirious, pained. Some joyous for barely making the cut-off time. Others absolutely crushed for missing their goal after spending 17 hours trying their best. The Ironman can be quite cruel. Trying your best simply isn't good enough -- if you don't hit that 17-hour deadline, it's as if you didn't even show up.
Watching competitors' dreams either exalted or annihilated tore me apart. I sat on the couch eating breakfast, feeling a wall of emotion flood my eyes. The tears started pouring down my face as footage was shown of a man with one leg completely breaking down on the final few miles of the marathon, even with his entire family trying to encourage him with every step. Another woman, 76, called her friend to pick her up during the bike ride because she was having trouble maintaining her balance.
All these tales led me to do things in front of a TV I don't normally do. I clapped with people finished. I shouted encouragement as if I was in the stands.
And I found myself repeating one phrase over and over until I was practically sobbing: "I WILL finish."
"I WILL finish."
"I WILL FINISH!"
"I WILL finish."
I can't tell if I was trying to convince myself I'd finish my Ironman no matter what, or that I was above the physical and mental breakdowns and those images of demise and dejection won't touch me that day. I think it's a little bit of both.
It doesn't really matter though. What struck me as the DVD ended was just how vested I am in this journey. It is a statement about who I am. A competitor. And I want this so damn bad. I really hope nothing will stand in my way on November 21. But if it does, I will most certainly remember this morning on the couch. I will remember the tears. The visions. My solitary oath.
I WILL FINISH.
191 days and counting.