I have been training for this race for months. After I completed the Shamrock marathon in March, I started targeting the Chase Corporate Challenge. My goal has been to be one of the four fastest men from my company. Last year, the four fastest men ran 20:03, 23:30, 25:10, and 25:19. I have those times memorized now. I have run the distance on a treadmill in 24:24 (about 7:00 pace). I have run as fasr as 5 miles at 7:00 pace, though it was before Shamrock. I have run 5k (3.1 miles) at 6:45 pace (also on the treadmill). But I haven’t run this far, this fast outside. One positive is that I tend to run faster outside. Last year I ran the first 2 mile leg of the Black Diamond Duathlon at 7:04 pace and that was cross country running.
My plan for this evening is to try to run at 7:00 pace for the first couple miles and maybe pick up the pace. If I feel good (a relative term) early on, I may even pick up the pace. I just need to keep going for about 24 minutes. No walk breaks. I might be able to grab some water along the way.
My company offered us tech shirts if we chipped in part of the cost ($7). I paid my $7 and got a cool Brooks tech shirt. It’s red and the graphics are good. I buzz cut my hair last night. I will wear my white Under Armour mesh hat. Not sure about sun glasses yet. I may skip them. I am planning on wear my Garmin 305 for pacing and my iPod shuffle for distraction. I want my tunes!!!!
There are 11,000 people signed up and I am planning on lining up near the very front. Maybe 10 people deep from the front this year.
I just hope I can hold the pace! There is a hill toward the beginning. Ack! I am frigging nervous about the race. I just want to get it over with!
I am planning on drinking a non-diet Pepsi before the race for some extra last minute sugar and caffeine.
Did I mention I am nervous?
I am starting my swim lessons in about 3 weeks. After which I am going to try to get into a habit of swimming laps a couple times a week to build my swimming skills and endurance. With my goal of doing an Ironman triathlon next year, I need to be able to swim 2.4 miles. According to the website, the lap swimming part of the pool is 25 yards long. I looked it up and found that I will have to swim 35.2 laps to have swum (swimmed?) a mile. So 2.4 miles would be about 85 laps. There is no way that I would able to keep track of counting those those laps in my head. I decided to by a watch with a counter. What better kind of watch to get for doing Irorman training than a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch? 
I started search the web and found there area bunch of different models. Men’s and women’s styles. 8 laps, 30 laps, 42 laps, 100 laps, etc. There are even models with heart rate monitors and GPS’s! I decided that I wanted a Timex Ironman Triathlon watch that would count up to 100 laps. I figured that would work when I try to swim 2.4 miles in the pool.
Even among the 100 lap models, there were still a variety of styles. As far as reviews about the quality of the watches, pretty much all of the reviews were postive. So I wasn’t too concerned about the quality of any of Timex Ironman triathlon watches. So it came down to style. I wanted a watch that said Ironman Triathlon! I wanted a reminder of what I will be training for.
All of the models had Ironman Triathlon on the face. Some of the models had a simple M-Dot logo on the side. I found one model that actually says Ironman triathlon on the band. It looked really cool. And the reviews were good. That was the one I wanted. I found it on amazon for about $45 plus shipping. I walked over to target, and found a couple 30-lap models on sale for $30. They also had a 100-lap model for $50. But it wasn’t the one I wanted. I searched Walmart’s website and found the watch I wanted for $46. So last night after karate clas, I hit Walmart. They had a small handfull of Timex Ironman watches. I found a 100 lap model that looked different than the one I wanted, but it was only $44. It said Ironman Triathlon of the side and was waterproof to 100 meters. Perfect for swimming and counting my laps. When I got it home, I read through the instructions which are in a dozen languages and kind of hard to follow. I managed to set the time and play with the lap timing stuff. It will work great. After comparing it to the picture of the watch I wanted, I relized it was in fact the same watch. I just looked brighter in the pictures on the net or something. It is a cool watch though!
This is the watch I bought: Timex 100-Lap Ironman Triathlon 66801.
I have a Horizon T900 treadmill. There is a little backdoor to display information or tweak the the treadmill settings. I haven’t played much with them for fear of goofing up my treadmill.
You can get into the engineering mode by holding the “incline +” and the “speed -” buttons at the same time for about 5 seconds. Then you can use the speed +/- buttons to go between the different modes. Then you can hit the Enter button to select a particular engineering mode. You can press and hold the Stop button to exit.
Engineering Mode 0 (ENG0)
Display Test
Engineering Mode 1 (ENG1)
Hardware Test
Engineering Mode 2 (ENG2)
Auto Calibrate
• Press, “ENTER” to select. Press, “START” to begin. The treadmill running belt will begin to move automatically and the auto-calibration sequence will properly set and store the speed values.
• Upon successful calibration, the treadmill will beep several times. The console will automatically exit Engineering Mode and return to the start-up screen
Engineering Mode 3 (ENG3)
Switch Function
Engineering Mode 4 (ENG4)
Information
• Press, “ENTER” to select. Accumulated time and distance will display on console.
• Press and hold the Stop button to back out of each menu. (or just turn the treadmill off).
I don’t know what the other engineering modes do. If someone else knows, I’d love to hear about them. I suppose you could just select each mode, and see what happens. But as I said, I am afraid of goofing something up on my treadmill and I need it to do my marathon training.
I have decided to try to register for the Lake Placid Ironman (Ironman USA) in 2009. This years event is on July 20th. I am running an ultramarathon over in that area on the 19th, and I heard you could register onsite. I figured I could run the ultra on Saturday, head to Lake Placid on Sunday, watch some of the event on Sunday and sign up. So I started doing some research. I found that people doing this years Ironman could register for next years on the Saturday, the day before the race. Registration for next years event opens on Monday. I have a friend who is going up to watch the event and to register for next years event. She said you have to get into line at 5am. Unfortunatly, I can’t be there on Monday. Registration opens online on Moday as well. It opens at noon, and whatever openings are still available will be there. I have read that it sells out online in minutes. So I guess I will have to be right there, and ready to register online.
If I don’t get into the Lake Placid Ironman, I will try one of the other Ironmans. I was told the Louisville Ironman was easier to get into. At least last year it was. And that is in like August. I’ll have to find out when registration opens for that. But I will have to find out what my wife’s schedule will be. I don’t even know if she will know.
If not Louisville, then there is Wisconsin and maybe Florida. I am bound to get into some Ironman event eventually. I hope it isn’t as frustrating and as big of a PITA as trying to buy a frigging Nintendo Wii!!!!
I started running less than two years ago. I have been riding a bike for a long time, though I had a long layoff of about 14 years. But I bought a bike or five, and have been doing a lot of riding, or at least spinning.
I still need to learn to swim better. I can slog my way across a swimming pool, but I would attempt to try swimming in open water. No frigging way. But I signed up for swimming lessons that start next month. Just 4 one hour classes. I may need more instruction than that, but it is a start. I some Total Immersion DVDs, and books too. So I will have too add swimming laps to my weekly workouts. Not sure how much.
Why an Ironman? Why not? I have qualified for the Boston Marathon, run an ultramarathon. It seems like a great challenge. I have friends who have done the Ironman. And when I was doing a 30 mile mountain bike recently, I saw a guy with 140.6 tatoo on the back of his leg. I asked him about it, and he commented that the Ironman was easier than the 30 mile mountain bike race. Say what? Anyway, I was intrigued.
Later this month I am signed up for a 100 mile bike ride, the Tour De Cure. Please consider sponsoring me at:
http://main.diabetes.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=4997&px=4159101
The longest ride I have done so far is about 55 miles. But I can build up. I ordered a new Tri bike. Nothing fancy though.
So hopefully next year I will try an Ironman, or at least a half Ironman. If I complete an Ironman, maybe I will get an Ironman tatoo. Maybe a 140.6 or a M.dot or something.