There is no “I” in team.

But there is me. On a team (a relay team). In the Half.

After my run Thursday which ended in me hobbling back to my truck trying not to bend at the knee, I came to the conclusion that I needed to follow the orthopedist’s advice and take a few weeks off running to let the tendonitis in my IT band heal, once and for all (hopefully). So on my drive back to work I called my friend Slick Douglass and told him that I was up for doing the Half as part of a relay team. Together with another FCA Endurance teammate, Anna Lee, we are going to be a big factor in the relay division race this year with Slick doing the swim, me on the bike and Anna Lee running the half marathon.

It’s not what I had envisioned for this race, but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and certainly less stressful than worrying about my knee acting up during the race. I’m really looking forward to it. As a side benefit, I get to hammer the bike course without regard for having anything left in the tank afterward. That should make for an intense 56 miles!

Good luck to all who are racing. I'll be cheering you through your run!

Still in that grey area

of indecision. I think I'm beginning to come to peace with the idea that I won't have the Ironman I was hoping for (and capable of) this year. Maybe no IM at all.

The ITBS in my right knee is still bothering me. I haven't had a run over 10.5 miles in the last 4 weeks and I have a Half Ironman in a week and a half. In the last two days I've been to an orthopedist and my ART doctor. The ortho was no help at all. He said that 1) I have ITBS 2) The only thing that cures it is to stop running and 3) I should do the races but not do any more run training for them. Really ... an ironman ... with no run training for six weeks leading up to the race? This was coming from a doctor y'all!! Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

My ART doctor seems to have the most logic answer (and hopefully solution) to the cause of the ITBS. Here's an excert from my daily training log where I wright about my experience with him yesterday. The "massive amount of bike volume" I mention is 14 1/2 hours on the bike last week (Sunday to Sunday) including a 100 mile ride, a 56 mile ride, two 40 something mile rides, and a few shorter rides:

"I had another appointment with the ART doctor yesterday afternoon. He is CONVINCED that the rubbing of my IT band is caused by a tight adductor / groin muscle. He spent almost 30 minutes getting is loose on the affected side. We discussed the possibility that the massive amount of bike volume I've been doing has been causing the adductor to get tight which wouldn't directly cause IT band pain while riding because my knee doesn't straighten enough on a pedal stroke to cause the IT band to move across the epindocyle. However, the tight groin/adductor will cause my femur to be pulled to the inside which would tighten the IT band as it is drawn across the epondicyle in my run stride, thereby causing the friction that infames the band resulting in the pain.

Long story short, he said that I have to keep the adductor loose and that I should lay off the cycling this week, keep the area loose and supple by stretching, try a 30-40 minute run on Thursday (tomorrow). If all goes well, then I should do a long run after making sure that the area in loose and see what happens. "

I'm not sure what to do about the Half. I may swim/bike it (DNF) or give it a go and see what happens. My running later this week will give me my answer. How the Half goes will, in turn, determine how and if I approach the Full. Y'all pray for me!

August Recap

Well, August didn’t turn out like I had hoped, but all’s well that ends well. It was a rather dramatic month full of epic training, milestones, fast racing, PRs, overtraining, injury and even a bike crash. I experienced some of the highest highs and some of the lowest lows. Low enough to have me considering whether the half and full Ironman races were even going to happen for me this year. But, it’s over now, and I’m happy to say that I survived. By the grace of God I made it through!


The Highs

• Continued my age group winning streak a Greenville (third 1st place in a row, fourth 1st this year)
• Finally went sub 20 off the bike for a 5k (been looking for that all year)
• Epic Double Brick (41 bike/4.5 run/33 bike/4.5 run)
• Epic Brick 2 (101 miles in 4:59 with over 10,000 ft climbing / 4.5 mile run)
• Ran 18 miles (longest ever)
• Broke 4,000 miles in the saddle for the year

The Lows

• I think I crossed the line into being “overtrained”. The good news is that I think I did it early enough to be able to regroup and build to another peak for IM. That’s my hope at least.
• ITBS: Need I say more? It’s one of the trickiest running injuries out there. Lucky I found Dr. Renick, ART doctor to the likes of Peter Reid and Gordo, right in my back yard. It took all of one visit and following his prescribed stretching to fix it. Maybe I should list “overcoming ITBS” in the Highs section? Having the injury certainly took its toll on my run fitness. I now have some work to do to get it back (hopefully before the half).
• Bike crash. Crashing really sucks. I wouldn’t recommend it. Thankfully I didn’t break anything (me or the bike). The road rash hindered my swimming more than anything else.

So here are the numbers

• Bike: 32h 08m 23s - 658.08 Mi
• Run: 12h 52m 03s - 92.04 Mi
• Swim: 6h 04m 24s - 22750 M

YTD Totals

• Bike: 202h 07m - 4191.06 Mi
• Run: 85h 09m 55s - 654.68 Mi
• Swim: 55h 22m 28s - 202375 M

I hoped to exceed last month’s volume but it didn’t happen and probably would have spelled disaster if it had.

I ended August and began September with a celebration at the lake house with my family. At one time there were 19 of us with just my folks, me and my two brothers and one sister with our spouses (girlfriend in my little brother's case) and kids. As far as kids go, I have 3, my older brother has 2 and my sister has 4. All the kids are all close to or the same in age so it's really fun to have them all together. Thankfully we only had to sleep 17 in the house since my little brother had to get back to Savannah.

I want to send a special “attaboy” out to former SCTS stud Kevin Lisska who was mentioned in this Slowtwitch article about the ITU Long Distance World Champs. Great job Kevin!