Primal Quest Adventure Racing

At some point in my life I will do an adventure race of some note. Akin to wanting to go from just thinking of being a triathlete, to doing a sprint race to completing an Ironman. I have never done an AR but previous to getting back into triathlons in 2004, I was getting my gear sorted out to start them.

I still follow the sport closely, though some slack has been taken out of it's sails the last two years. Ian Adamson is still my favorite overall athlete of all time.

At the end of June Moab Utah hosted the Primal Quest AR which is about as big a deal as the sport will have in America this year. Imagine if there was only one Ironman in the USA this year. Team Nike /Powerblast won in a somewhat contested finish. The team is a perpetual favorite in every race it enters with all members being a world champion or world record holder.

The link above is an overview of the race some of the entirely random pitfalls that can befall any endurance event. The snippet below is cut from the article and explains the course description. The blue words are my input.

All (four person co-ed ) teams who complete the course in its entirety, covered what will be remembered as one of the hardest races of all time, comprised of: a 29-mile horseback ride/foot section (one rides and three walk, rotating saddle time); a 21-mile desert trek; a 65-mile mountain bike; an 8-mile hike and whitewater swim in the rapids of Green River; a 35-mile river kayak; a 26-mile canyoneering leg; a 45-mile river kayak; a 29-mile canyoneering section; a 68-mile mountain bike; (300 foot rappel with bikes) a 65-mile mountain bike; a 38-mile mountain trek and 8-mile orienteering section; a 41-mile mountain bike; a 14-mile trek; six miles of rope work, ascending, descending and traversing; a 2-mile flatwater paddle. (Total distance is 425 miles over 6 days for the winners, ten plus for the final teams)

Someday...I still have three Ironmans on my schedule and yet to finish one of them.

okay. not as planned

The workout did not go quite as planned. For the ride my quads were killing me. I think my seat has been adjusted lower or dropped somehow. They swelled up really quickly. At the first stop about ten miles in, I unhooked my cleats and straightened my legs out. I immediately felt this rush of blood and I damn near passed out! I lowered the bike and myself to the ground. After a few minutes I looked up and everything was white washed except the road infront of me, that lasted about five minutes then cleared up and I could see again. It was hot and very humid for Phoenix which may have also contributed.

The swim actually went okay. I was slower than normal by about two minutes. I only did one loop, a half mile.

One the run, I immediately realized I have no legs. A little shin issue, a little cramping issue, throw some lack of nutrition in there, 102 degrees, 40% humidity (its normally 3% right now), no training for the last week and I couldn't run to save my life. I would get about two hundred yards and go back to my 16 minute mile walk along the rolling hills. My HR was pretty low, mid 130's but there was no gas to move the legs. None. So that is an issue, I gotta be able to run.

There is alway something to work on. The shins getting better but the legs are still very tired. I think I will try to move my seat up a couple mm tomorrow and go for a short ride to see what happens.

I would be interested in anyone else who has experienced a sudden focus of blood and lactic acid in the quads while riding and what you did to fix it. I am not the most knowledgable cyclist.

Fly...Be Free

Today it is back to training. The Machine and I over the last few months have been ramping up the Thursday training sessions till they have become almost a bizzaro race day in and of itself.

For example today is a 25 mile bike, then long transition up to the lake for a 1.1 mile swim then a 6 mile run brick from the shore. Sounds like a freaking Olympic distance race once per week.

Now not everyone does all three sports, in the past it has only been The Machine, myself and Hardcore Mike. John when he gets the opportunity. In fact today I won't be doing all that. Since its my first day back in a week, I am doing the ride, then .6 mile swim, then power walk or jog/walk 3 miles and maybe little more depending on how the shin feels.

The rides used to be monster hill intervals / repeats for a power workout which fatiqued the legs before the uphill run 5k, downhill 5k we did after the swim, but we are switching the hills out for flat longer rides with high cadence.

The swim is what it is, but instead of running up the hill and turning around, I will run the 1.5 rolling miles to the base of the hill then turn around. Its a flatter alternative than attacking the monster and screwing up my ankle /shin again.

I actually woke up today with no pain. Its amazing what you get used to when your training hard. I think the rehab last night was a break through. I have been really tight and The Machine was able to get things adjusted (loudly I might add) which gave me some instant relief in my low back and neck. The shin has been taking the rest /ice / compression / A.R.T. / e-stem /acupuncture treatments really well. Today should be a very illuminating day.

What day is it?

Is it just me or did a Tuesday holiday really just screw up my weekly clock?

Went to an awesome wedding Monday night. Ten minute ceremony with open bar before and after and an all you could eat sushi bar at the reception. Thats what I'm talking about. I refrained from the desert table where the chocolate fountain was a bit hit, along with dipping marshmellows and doughnut holes in chocolate.

Tuesday morning Mistress and I hosted a brunch breakfast at our place with big slabs of bacon and scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. My mom blended orange julius for drinks. I cut up hawaiian bread to fit in my toaster and served it that way instead of regular bread. Not bad I must say since that was my only job. For those that don't know...I am not allowed to cook. It is verboten in my house.

Tuesday afternoon, Mighty Mo and I went to The Machines for a cookout with some other familys and their kids. Had a good time. Mistress was not feeling well so she stayed home. Mostly the kids stayed in the pool and we watched Ironman Kona 2005 and some high school football highlights of The Machine Jr. , himself an accomplished and sought after athlete at only 12 years old.

I had just recieved a size kit from Sugoi, who is making our AzTriClub uniforms and we tried on different fits and sizes to see what is best to order. On top of the racing/training apparel we are ordering running jerseys with the same color and sponsorship information for us to wear for training or daily wear but also for our spouses and support teams to wear at our races. We all think it says alot when people in the crowd are wearing team apparel too. Plus it makes the spouses and children feel more a part of the organization when they also have the team gear. They are after all in this thing as much as the rest of us.

So it already feels like Friday. Thats a good thing right?

Happy Independance Day

I truly love the 4th of July, the day which we celebrate our country's forefathers signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Do not confuse the Declaration with the Constitution which frames our form of democracy and was drafted in 1787 and by the way, I carry a copy of in my bible.

The Declaration has three parts; the first discussing the rights of all men to be free and the legitmacy to revote against oppression, the second part a set of specific grievances the 13 colonies had against King George III and finally a claim of independence. I would like you to take the time today and read or scan just a bit of it.

So today while your eating your hot dogs, having a beer, sampling mom's hot apple pie and hopefully sharing the day with people you love and respect, take a moment and thank your god that America was created. The greatest nation on this great earth.

This video, my first YouTube, by the way, was taken by a spectator at last years Gasworks show in Seattle Washington. I used to go to this every year. In the beginning I would sit on the hill of Gasworks park with tens of thousands of others and watch the show. As I got older a friends father lived on a massive boat moored at the end of a dock a few hundred yards away. So close that the debris from the rockets would land on us. The last few years I lived in Seattle, I and some friends would kayak to just beneath the barge as close as we could get. This is the closest I have come to a fireworks show in almost ten years, watching it on tv or computer feed. There are many shows of low caliber around town at churches and ballparks, a few big ones such as at Tempe Town Lake (IMAZ site) where my company actually hosts the main stage for musical acts, but too crowded, too hot.

Sit back and enjoy the show.

Vertical Man emerges

No not Superman, though I did see the movie yesterday and it was great. No I got an e-mail from an old friend. Vertical Man for those of you not familiar, is a true friend of the Triathlete Alliance and one of our original compatriots. He, Wil and Shelley last July did a whole bunch of training together for Steelhead. Some of IronWil's best writing is about her SEBA outings, but read the whole month of July to truly fall in love with her prose and to get a feel for hardcore 1/2 Iron training.

VM has done some relocating and some personal introspections and promises to be back online soon, charming us with his hardcore, high speed training and quite amazing cooking reportoire. Here's VM in his own words, with permission to post from him.

Things are going OK in Omaha. The new job is awesome - the best ever. The city is growing on me though I still REALLY miss Chicago. In fact I'm back in the Great Suburban Outback writing this, visitng friends and family over the July 4 holiday.

Training is one thing that has really suffered. I talked to CoachKaryn yesterday and decided to defer my Ironman dreams to, maybe, IM WI 2007 or IM Cour d"Alene 2007. I got way behind the training curve and the looming IM WI 2006 deadline had just become another major stress in my life. Triathlons should be fun and rewarding, not something you dread and that's sorta where I was. I'm still doing Steelhead in early August and a few other races, but not IM this year.

I'm starting to get into a training community in Omaha - swimmers, bikers and runners - so that should help. I'll be back to the blogging gig before too long. I don't yet have a computer at home in Omaha and don't want to blog from work for obvious reasons.

Hope to see you back soon VM, your still one of the best out there.

What to do with me...

My first Saturday morning without training since I don't know when. Went to bed at 9 on Friday and woke up a midnight feeling like I had a full nights sleep already.

Mistress and I took Mighty Mo to his swim lessons together and I was not happy. The two instructors were just teenage girls more interested in talking about boys and who got raises rather than helping the parents there with their kids. I figured it out about ten minutes into it and kept asking them to move onto the next drill or next event or next anything to keep us from horsing around in a pool twenty minutes from our house paying them do what I do with my son almost everyday in our own backyard pool. Unfazed. Mistress had a stern conversation with the managers after and she will probably cancel the class.

Mistress kept asking me if I wanted to do some laps since I was getting tense, so I stroked a little bit and even though I still didn't have any preconcieved notion of training I was sucking air and tired after 50 yards. Yup, I need this rest.

Mistress doesn't really know what to do with me. It is as strange a thing for her that I am home all day today as it is for me. She has asked me atleast a dozen times if I want to leave and do this or that. She finally confided that she is asking me these questions about leaving the house because she is not used to me being in it on our days off together.

Geesh. Guess I got her trained a bit too well.