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!

Trust

Last week started off with me having to bail on a run because of a weird pain in my knee. After the run I could barely walk down stairs. A day later if felt fine. Two days later I ran again and had the same issue come up within a mile. At that point I started doing some research and self-diagnosed myself with onset of ITBS. For the next two days I aggressively stretched, foam rolled, and got massage. I found that I was very tight, especially in the hamstrings and glutes but quickly was able to release the tension with the right stretches. While foam rolling I found a very sore tendon in the top of my tibia on the posterior side which joins at the same place that the IT band joins. I’m wondering if this is the issue. I went for a test run on Saturday morning (2 miles) and it felt fine.

Yesterday (Sunday) I went for a ride with a friend and went down on some loose gravel in a turn. I wasn’t wearing gloves so the palms of my hands got ripped up pretty good as did my shoulder and hip. I got bandaged up and continued the ride. Now I’m in pain and can’t swim because of all the open wounds. I don’t want to run or ride until showering isn’t painful. So it looks like I’m going to have a forced rest week with just 5 weeks until the HIM and 9 until the IM. I’m just going to have to trust that a rest week is what I need right now and that the time left for training will be sufficient.

Greenville Triathlon Race Report

My wife, son and I drove up to Greenville on Saturday afternoon, leaving the girls behind with the grannies. We left with enough time to go to packet pickup, check into the hotel, change our clothes and get to a dinner meeting for the SC leadership of FCA-E. My son was very well behaved at dinner. He was very quiet (but also quite entertaining) for 2 hours while we met and ate dinner. He really made the trip a lot of fun for us. After about two hours at the restaurant he was ready to move on but the meeting was not over yet so he and my wife walked over to Barnes and Noble to buy some books and magazines. We made it back to the hotel around 8:30 and headed to the lobby for some cookies and then to the pool to let him swim for a while before bed. After that he insisted on a quick game of Sorry before bed, to which we obliged.

So finally around 10:00 PM we were off to bed. That’s we when noticed that our mattress had a dip the size of the Grand Canyon in the middle of it. My wife tried to sleep on the sofa bed with my son which gave me a chance to move into the bottom of the valley which was better than trying to lie on the slope of the side. She didn’t last very long on the sofa bed so we were both back on the slopes for the night. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep too well. I thought Hampton Inns were supposed to be at least decent among the chain hotels?! Guess not. Also, the room had a funky odor.

We woke up around 4:45 AM to the sound of thunder and rain. It was a full-on storm that was pouring down rain. Not good. We decided to go ahead and pack all our stuff and check-out in case the race was delayed and we couldn’t make it back by noon. We got it all done and managed to eat breakfast by 6:00 am and headed to the race site. Thankfully the race had an indoor pool swim so my wife and son could get out of the rain. They went inside while I setup transition and got body marked. It was still raining but the lightning had stopped by 7:00 am so the race was able to start on time.

This swim was a little awkward for me since I’m not used to racing in a pool, much less a 50 meter one. I think I seeded myself fairly well as I was able to pass 3 people and didn’t get passed by anyone, nor did I catch Donna Douglass or Chris Anderson who both went off 10 seconds ahead of me. The 3 people I passed must have grossly misestimated their swim pace because they had to start at least 20 seconds ahead of me (and one of them had to start at least 30 seconds ahead). Anyway, I had an okay swim. I think the newness of it all had me a little preoccupied and kept me from swimming at the intensity level that I should have been. The swim distance was supposed to be 400 meters but was more like 385 since we exited using a ladder that was about a quarter of the length from the end. The swim time also includes a run out of the building and down a sidewalk to the transition area. Swim time: 6:38. Overall rank: 30 Age group rank: 4

T1 was standard fare for me. I always give up about 20 seconds here to the Elite guys. This is something that I will work on and change before next season. Time: 0:55

Heading out on the bike it was still raining pretty steadily. It was a typical bike start for me where I pass quite a few people in the first 5 miles. About mile 5 I came past Chris Anderson and we cheered each other on. He had started 10 seconds ahead of me and had a phenomenal 6:06 swim. The course was wet, fairly hilly, and totally unfamiliar. In talking with David before the start, he mentioned a downhill section that makes a sharp turn that could potentially have washed out dirt on the road and the propensity to overshoot the turn. I instantly recognized that section when we came to it and slowed way down but still managed to overshoot the turn and cross into the opposing lane, mainly because I didn’t want to lean the bike too much on the mud and risk loosing traction. Thankfully there were no cars coming. At about mile 7.5 I realized that I didn’t know the distance of the bike leg. I decided that I would ask the next person I passed. I got the chance about a quarter of a mile later and he said it was 15 miles. In return he asked how far we’d gone. I thought that was kind of funny since we both had information that the other needed. I yelled “7.75” as I headed up a climb. The rest of the time I spent reeling people in, climbing, descending, going easy through the many turns, and hammering the straight-aways. At some point it stopped raining. No one passed me, which is a good sign, although not all that meaningful in a time-trial type start. Bike Time: 37:41 Overall rank: 14. Age group rank: 1

T2 was pretty typical for me. Time: 0:53

This was a challenging little run course. It was here that I realized the theme of the Greenville Triathlon is “Turns”. Being a pool swim there’s like 7 of them, the bike had about 10 of them and the run had a bunch of them also. Anyway, once you weave your way around and out of the parking lots you take a sharp turn onto a washed out dirt road/trail that leads you over a hill and into another parking lot where you take a near 180 degree turn to begin a square (more turns) loop. You do this twice, which means 4 trips along the washed out dirt road, two uphill and two downhill. On the last trip down this section of the course, which is close to the finish I could hear someone catching me. Then I heard someone say, “He’s coming Nick”. It was Chris Anderson that said it and I’m not sure to whom he was referring (other than himself) (it was Jeff Brandenburg who was seeded behind me and beat me overall) because when he said it I opened up and began my sprint to the finish. Neither of them caught me. Chris crossed the line 3 seconds behind me. After I passed him at mile 5 of the bike I had totally written him off, but he was hunting me down. He ran an amazing 18:20 and I barely held him off. Thankfully I had 10 seconds in the bank on him from the swim start. Run time: 19:43. Overall rank: 29. Age group rank: 6.

Total time: 1:05:49. Overall place: 11. Age group place: 1

This is the state’s largest triathlon with about 550 people racing. It was a great atmosphere despite the bad weather. By the time the post race activities had begun, the sun had come out and a beautiful day emerged. I was the first one to get a massage and didn’t have to wait in line. That was a welcomed first. We were all pretty tired by lunch time and ready to get on the road home. We packed it up, ate lunch on the way, and my wife and son passed out on the ride back. I took a short nap when we got home and then my wife and I enjoyed the bottle of Chardonnay with the Greenville Triathlon label that was given as our award while the kids ate ice cream and played with their neighborhood friends in the cul-de-sac. It was a nice end to a great weekend. Cheers!