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!