BRYAN 2.0

Today, I headed into the weekend of week six of training, which is my long run and long bike ride. With me being in Ann Arbor, I made today my long run day, and tomorrow, when I return, it will be my long bike ride.  I got out the door of the hotel for my run around 9 am, and it was around 70F, not too hot for a long run. If you want to call a 65-minute long run.  The moment I started running, I felt like I was running with cement shoes. My legs had no strength, and I couldn't find a good out-and-back route. I like out-and-back runs because you don't have to think after you turn back around. You know when the run is going to end without having to fixate on your watch. In this case, all the sidewalks seemed to end or nonexistent on my run. So I had to run in circles and loops and keep my eye on the time the entire time, and as time went on, it got hotter. This run had a lot of walking to keep my heart rate down. As much as I should be happy that I had no calf issue, based on th...

We got to the hotel late last night, and I was so tired. By 11 p.m., I was totally out of it. My body was sore, and I was ready for bed.  At 4:14 in the morning, I woke up because I couldn't breathe with my CPAP on. My left nostril was blocked, and it was nearly impossible to breathe. I got up to blow my nose, and it didn't help. So I went back to bed without it on. Which sucks because I think using it helps my recovery.  About 30 minutes later, I could feel my breathing through my left nostril starting to work again, so I was happy to try using my CPAP again. It worked until I woke up at 8:30 a.m. Getting up at 8:30 a.m. is waking up late for me; normally, I'm up by 6 a.m. or close to it. It was definitely a sign that my body needed a rest.  When I woke up, I was stuffed up and sniffling. My plan was to work half a day and then take the afternoon off. It kind of worked that way. I was done going to work by 12:30, and then during the afternoon, I was just responding to em...

I knew today would be a crazy day. This weekend is a long weekend, and we were going to Michigan to watch the Michigan Wolverines Football season opener on Saturday.  The challenge is that we wanted to leave this afternoon in enough time to get to Ann Arbor before sundown at 8 p.m. The drive is 4 hours, and who knows what the border wait times will be. We also need to stop to eat. All in all, estimating a 5 1/2 to 6-hour ride means we must leave by 2 p.m.  Normally, that wouldn't be an issue, but this time around, I needed to get three training sessions done beforehand, and the first half-day, I'd be tied up with work stuff and trying to make half a day of work a full day of effort.  I woke up and was working by 7 am. What I was working on I thought I'd be done within an hour and it took near two hours. That meant I had to wait to get my swim session done before 9:30 am. This means I'd have to do it after my work day, which was noon.  The first training session was a...

It didn't cost much when I did my first half-Ironman triathlon in 1986. You just needed a bike, a helmet, and running shoes. Aero bars had yet to be invented, or they hadn't hit the mass market. Some had cycling shoes, but most just had shoes kept on the pedals with "rat traps" that kept your running shoes on the pedals so you could pull up and push down.  My first bike cost me $100. It was a Nishki, which was too small for me, but the price was right. I think PowerBars just came out, and before Gatorade, the drink was Exceed. Only a few people had wetsuits. Most didn't. We didn't have bike racks for many races, but instead, we put our bikes on the ground or in a homemade bike rack made out of lumber, and friends and family were allowed to stand beside us and help us in the transition. It was very grassroots and inexpensive. No fanfare. Even at the finish, there was no one but your family and a timing clock. Although I did buy one of the early one-piece triath...

I took the last couple weeks off of running due to my calf injury. It was like I had this big knot in my calf and it would hurt as I ran. When I rolled my calf to massage it I could feel the knot, it was like a big ball inside my calf.  I ran on it for 4 weeks and lived with it, but then I decided to bite the bullet and not run on it. Instead, I did some lower body strength training, and I rode my bike and swam.  I didn't feel the knot for the last five or more days as I walked, but I did before today. My calf has recently been feeling great, so today was a big test. I was only scheduled to do a short 35-minute run at a low heart rate, which is a perfect training session to test it out.  The good news is there was no pain in the calf. It was great to run without pain, albeit when I say run, I mean run and walk. I walked at least half the distance to keep my heart rate down in the prescribed zones for this session.  When I got back home I had a good stretch and I can ...

I can't believe I've completed five weeks of training, and today is the start of my sixth week. It feels like I've been training for less than six weeks. What surprises me the most is how quickly my body has adapted to the training. I know it was brutal in the beginning, yet as time goes on, I remember less. Hence, writing the blog allows me to read about those early days and how I really felt.  My fitness has definitely improved in these past five weeks. Yes, I've lost 7 lbs in the first month, and I'm sticking to the training program. I'm not fast, but I'm doing it. After each training session, I start feeling more and more like an age-group athlete.  I'm still following the diet program, but today, it wasn't easy. The issue was not motivation or willpower; it was an accident. I was slicing tomatoes and onions for my tomato and onion sandwich when the plate fell and broke into pieces all over the floor.  It's Corning plates, and I thought they ...

Sundays are supposed to be my long run, but due to my calf injury, it's become a walk, at least this week. Hopefully, this will be the last day I have to make it a long walk.  The upside of walking is that Alice and I can do it together for a portion. She has a meniscus knee issue and has to limit how far and how often she can walk. So we walked together for the first 30+ minutes, and then I went out on my own.  My walk was an adventure walk of sorts. We have a high school right behind our house across the street. It has a beautiful track, but it's fenced and locked most of the time. I used to go to that track when the doors were open, when soccer teams were playing, and football teams were practicing, and it was great.  I decided to take my walk around the fence of the track. I could only assume the kids from the school had a way to jump over the fence or cut a hole in the fence to get through. I was right. I went all the way to the end of the fence where most would not ...

Last night was a late one. I don't even remember when I went to bed. I woke up without my CPAP mask on and slept in until 10:30 a.m. This is a sign that I had a lot of Nutrls. I think I had eleven.  When I woke up, I instantly felt regret. If I hadn't had cocktails, I probably would have finished my scheduled bike ride by 10:30 a.m. Instead, I had to shake out the mental cobwebs and get myself motivated to train.  I knew it would derail everything I've done if I didn't get back on training immediately. It's a slippery slope, and I can't stress enough how I didn't want to get on the bike today. But I did. One of the motivators was that it was warm out, and I enjoy riding in the heat rather than on a cool day.  Today's ride was to be a low-heart-rate session, but immediately after starting, I knew that would not be possible. For most of the ride, I was between 133 bpm and 151 bpm. Yesterday's rest day did make a difference. I was able to maintain a cad...

It was a physical rest day from training and a mentally draining day at work. It's been a long week, and I was looking forward to the end of the day.  My diet allowed me to eat steak and a potato at a restaurant. It was a beautiful evening, so we went to 400 Brant, where we hadn't been before, and sat outside on the patio. Sitting outside was nice, and the food was decent and much cheaper than last week's restaurant bill. During dinner, I had a few Nutrl Vodka drinks, and I picked up some more on the way home. It's been a month of eating well and training hard, and having one night of cocktails and a little popcorn from my home popcorn machine wouldn't hurt. We sat outside, watched TV, and chilled. I called my sister in Florida. We had some good laughs and drank lots of Nutrls. The highlight of my day was moving down one belt hole for the first time in a long time. At one point, I was at the first belt hole, but then my stomach grew so that I had to use the last bel...

I used to wake up every morning without an alarm clock around 6 a.m., but since I started this journey on July 21st, I still wake up with an alarm, but it's more like 7 a.m., and I'm tired and a little sore when I wake up.  Waking up tired and sore can kill motivation for early morning training sessions. This morning was one of those days. I woke up so exhausted, but it was 6 a.m. I looked at my training sessions today. There were two: one was a swim session and the other a cycling session.  When I looked at the swim session, I saw a couple of time trial intervals, one 400 yards, and the other 200 yards. A time trial interval means to go as hard as you can. I visualized that workout from my bed, and all I could see was pain and suffering. Swimming is my least favorite of the three triathlon disciplines, and doing intervals is the pool with which I have a love-hate relationship.  The hate is having to do them and the pain and suffering; the love is how proud I am that I di...

I've been waiting for this day for the last month. It's my first official weigh-in day after 30 days of eating healthier and starting my training program for the Florida Half Ironman.  I woke up tired from the training. I jumped on the scale. I lost 7 lbs.  I'm not sure how I felt about it. The scale still says I'm at 233 lbs. Yes, it was 240 lbs, and now it's 233 lbs, but 233 lbs is still very much in the fat zone. It's not a number to be happy about.  I was 230 lbs for a long time, then bam, I went up to 240 lbs in a short period of time. Now, I'm still not back down to 230 lbs.  On the one hand, I'm pleased to see I'm down 7 lbs, and I tell myself it's probably a little more if I factor in the muscle gain that offsets some of the fat loss. I guess the feeling is that it's sobering to see how far I have yet to go.  If I average 7 lbs for each of the next few months, that will be a 21-lb weight loss by November 21st. That means I'll stil...

It's been 30 days since I started this journey from being extremely unhealthy, with lots of drinking and zero fitness, then jumping right into half Ironman training.  The other day my daughter mentioned her partner couldn't believe I could go from doing nothing to my first week of training being 7 hours and adding more per week since then. He couldn't believe it. After she told me that, I started thinking about how I could do it? I didn't really think about it being a big deal. I've done 12 Ironmans in the past, trained at a world-class level for an age group athlete, and qualified for Kona and the 70.3 world championships in my 40s. When I looked at the hours required to train for this Florida 70.3, which is only 6 - 9 hours a week, I thought that was nothing, as I had been used to training 15 - 20 hours weekly for over 3 years.  When she told me that I couldn't answer how I could do it at the time, I told her that the first swim I kicked off the training with ...

Today was my first back-to-back swim. I swam a hard session yesterday, and today, I had another session. Even when I was training big time in the past, I don't know if I did back-to-back swim days. Not that it's a bad thing; most swim clubs swim daily, as swimming is not hard on the body.  As always, I wasn't looking forward to going swimming and waiting until 8 p.m. to leave the house. I mentally got myself motivated by telling myself it would be my first back-to-back swim, and it could only be good for me. My last swim was 2.1 km, and this swim was 2 km, so in 24 hours, I've now swam over 4 km.  I'm following the program as best I can. I did all the drills and even bilateral breathing. When it told me to go hard, I went hard to the best of my ability, and it was not fun and a little painful at times. I did lots of huffing and puffing when I was done with the set.  The strange thing is I feel really fast, yet I'm going so slow. I know this because I look at the...

I remember my first swim on July 22nd. It was the kickoff to my half-ironman training for the Florida 70.3. It was a brutal swim. I had never experienced a swim like that in my life. Immediately, my arms felt like lead, and I was sore as I swam. It was the first realization that I was extremely out of shape, beyond what I thought. It's now been 28 days and 4 weeks of training. From the start, I said it would take at least 4 weeks for me to struggle until I got in somewhat better shape. I don't know why I thought it would take 4 weeks, but it was intuitive.  These four weeks have flown by, by the way. In fact, it's hard to believe I finished my first four weeks. I put in a decent number of hours, starting from zero to at least 6 hours of training that first week. Unfortunately, I didn't document the total time for that week; it might have been 7 hours.  Things have changed over these last 28 days. My resting heart rate has gotten lower, and I'm not sweating, which se...

Since I injured my calf and can't run, I've upped my biking mileage. Before the injury, I was scheduled to do three rides a week. This week, I did three rides on back-to-back days, and then, after one rest day, I did a long ride, which was today. The ride was scheduled for one hour and 55 minutes at a primarily 122 bpm pace.  The one thing I haven't been enjoying about the bike rides is the route I've been taking to get out to the apartment, which is all country roads. My route is on a busy street with a lot of trucks, many gravel trucks, and stones all over the road. I worry that they will cause a flat or cause me to wipe out into traffic.  Instead, I took a route through my old neighborhood today, which avoided all those hazards and had very little traffic. It was great, very relaxing. I was not on edge like the other route, and I decided that going through our old neighborhood would be my new route. I'm not sure why I hadn't been doing that before.   I was lo...

I was looking forward to today. It's my rest day.  It was also a day that I got to eat a lot according to my diet plan. The plan says I can eat pasta and three baked potatoes for lunch. Yeah, right, like I can eat three baked potatoes. I had the pasta and then just ONE baked potato, and I was full.  It was Friday, and although I was on a diet, that didn't mean Alice had to suffer, so we went out for dinner. Prior, I checked the menu, and they had fish. My diet plan had me eating seafood and fruit for dinner, but I had seafood and vegetables instead.  I'm not going to say the name of the restaurant, but it's a steakhouse. I just had cod and some sushi, and Alice had a filet steak and two cocktails. The bill was $300. That's nuts. My bad. I won't be going back there again. Doh. My relaxation tonight was booking a road trip to Ann Arbor to attend the season's Michigan Wolverines College opening game. It's only five hours away, and if the weather is good, we...

It was another warm day, and work was busy. By the end of the day, I was brain-dead and did not really want to do any training. In fact, I was actually dreaming about how it used to be: We'd go out for lunch or dinner, and I'd have a cocktail or five to relax.  I snapped out of that pretty quickly, thinking about staying on track with my diet and training to get into the shape I needed to be in to finish the race. There is a bit of self-sabotage in thinking about it this evening.  The training choice was to ride my bike or go for a swim. Swimming is my least favorite session, and biking is something I like, but today would be my third straight day of riding, and I'm not sure how my legs would feel.  I chose to go for the bike ride, which would be 1 hour and 20 minutes. That amount of time has been my long Saturday ride, and today, it was just a normal ride because I changed my training to do more biking as I can't run.  The upside is that in 1 hour and 20 minutes, I ...

Since I'm not running due to injury, I've updated my training schedule to include more biking and swimming. Because of this, I had my first back-to-back bike ride today. I was actually looking forward to it, as it was to be an easy ride and keep my heart rate at 122 bpm or less. The reality is I had no chance of keeping that heart rate at 122 bpm. First off, I'm fat, over 40 lbs overweight, and secondly, it was 32 C and sunny outside.  I really tried to keep my heart rate low, but after about the first 5 minutes of riding, I gave up. I would have had to walk my bike to do it, and even then, it may not have stayed that low. Instead, I just focused on keeping my cadence between 85 and 90 rpm.  As I rode, I realized that I needed to stop being so paranoid about traffic. For all the years I rode, I never thought of that. Now, after my first crash and not having any accidents with a car with the 60,000+ miles I did prior, I keep thinking the odds are against me.  Instead, I de...

Today's training included a bike ride and weights. I wasn't sure when I would do them, but it turned out they would be after dinner at 7 p.m. It was a great night for a bike ride. There were perfect conditions: it was warm, 32 C, and the sun was going down, so it wasn't too hot, and there was no wind.  For the first time, I did one of my old routes—a loop, not an out-and-back. I didn't care if it would take longer than the one-hour scheduled because I'm not running until my calf heals, and putting more time on the bike at least makes up for the runs from a cardio standpoint.  On the one hand, tonight, I didn't want to go on a ride; I was a bit brain-dead from work. Yet, on the other hand, I knew if I did go for a ride, it would clear my head and put me in a completely different, chill reality, which it did. I averaged 25.5 kph on the ride for just over an hour. That's a major win. I think I started at averaging 22 kph. Also, for the first time, I didn't ...