Thursday, September 25, 2008

More Sneaking around

Sorry for the delays in posting. I've been trying to fit as much training/racing in as possible in the past few weeks. I guess the theme from all of it is to race as untapered as possible. With Cajunman cancelled (and yes, it was a good call to cancel it), DForeman and I decided on Wednesday that doing a Half Ironman in Dallas on Sunday would be cool. We could just drive up there Saturday mid-morning, race Sunday and come back. For those who love the Google, it was the Prairie man half ironman. Let me just say a quick word about Jack Weiss, the race director. This guy was super accommodating, and really went out of his way to help out some Hurricane Gustav evacuees. Ok, the race was really cool and a bit different. The bike was 4 loops, with more officials than I've ever seen. And the run was a nice mental test for Florida. You were on a levy road for 10 of the 13.1 miles. That'll take the focus out of you:) We finished up the race, and headed back. But not before I tried to drink the smart water people out of all their free samples. And Dodd almost got beat up by a cop smoking a Cobb pipe. Ask him about it, pretty funny. Oh yeah, the race was a PR. And on a fairly challenging course. I'm starting to think that tapering is for the birds. Then after a few days of less training, it was back to the grind. Some big week/weekend work, then a call from Eric came. He wanted me to ride shotgun to Natchitoches, and race Meat Pie. Yet another great last minute sneak attack idea. And overall it was a pretty fun race. I had a good run, and Claire has really done an awesome job of making me not suck in the swim. So things are looking up on that aspect. The real excitement was on the way home, when someone thought it was a good idea to put their tool chest on an open trailer. Well, thanks to the fine folks at the Louisiana Dept of Transportation and their lack of interstate maintenance, that tool chest hit the pavement in front of us at 70mph. I must tell you, there is nothing quite like seeing sockets, wrenches, and other assorted metal tools bouncing down the road while you are driving into this mine field. Luckily, the pimp daddy Caravan came out unscathed. Now that I am for sure done sneak attacking races, there is only one left on the calendar. Ironman Florida. So I made an interesting decision based on pushing the limit. I'm going to smack the training for 3 weeks from an idea I got with Peter Reid's training for Hawaii, taper/rest for 2 weeks, and get ready for race week. Being a whopping 4 days into this experiment, I've decided there are only one of two outcomes that will take place. 1. I'll push my fitness and racing up a few notches, or 2. I'll explode into a million pieces. Either way, it should be entertaining to watch the fireworks. Oh yeah, and before I go, below is a picture of my buddy BRider's TT rig for Ironman Arizona. Looks fast, fast.....