2hr 13min 22sec

We were up early and had breakfast while it was still raining outside but it stopped by the time we were loading into the car to drive over to Pasadena. Kerrianne was hoping we'd get a parking spot in the parking structure so she could stretch out where it was dry but no such luck so while she went to find a dry spot I walked around a bit to loosen/warm up. I found a few folks from work were starting to arrive as well. It was nice to feel like I knew a few people.

Kerrianne and I walked over to the start area and checked things out. I was pretty good with just walking around and keeping loose, my beautiful wife on the other hand is pretty serious about things and checked her bag and headed to starting chute. With a kiss I said, "See you at the end." I hung out and chatted with the folks from work, next thing I knew there was an announcement to line up so they all headed over and I still had to check my bag with sweats so I'd have something dry after the race.

By the time I got into place I was quite a ways back from the start line.


Looking pretty good and feeling relaxed before the start.


As I waited for the start I did get a few comments on the floves. Ranging from, "Really? You're going to run in those?" to "Are those comfortable? I've been wanting to check those out." My response was always, "I had knee pain then I started running in them and it's gone away, of course there was some soreness in using different muscles but I was able to work through that. I'm good as long as there is no knee pain."

Flove with the timing chip.


At the start I did wonder what I had gotten myself into. My left Achilles was sore and I was favoring it for the first few miles but I was able to get a rhythm and felt good. Kerrianne had warned me that she tends to go out too fast so I made a conscious effort to make sure I didn't do that and just kept it steady and still found myself passing a lot of people. About mile 4 my Achilles loosened up and I felt no pain from it for the rest of the run.

My feet felt good until about mile 8 when the balls of my feet started to get sore. I experimented and adjusted my stride and was able to work around it. Really things felt the best when I just forgot about my feet and legs and focused on breathing and enjoying the idea that, "I'm running a 1/2 marathon!" I found that uphill was easier on the feet than down, fortunately none of the hills were real steep and my steady comfortable pace worked well and I was able to remain consistent. On the first few downhills I think I actually slowed down because that's where I really felt the impact on my feet.

Mile 11 was the start of the final downhill. You can really say "It's all downhill from here." Fortunately not too steep and I focused on trying to find the stride that was comfortable yet maintain speed and I think I was able to pick up my pace a little at this point.


Finally the last 3/4 mile I knew where the end was and I pushed to pick up the pace and was actually able to sprint for the last 1/2 through the finish. It felt good. I saw Wade, Tanja, Rog and KC waiting and cheering me on. That felt good too.

Well Kerrianne finished about 30 minutes before I did, and I finished more than 15 minutes earlier than I was hoping for. We both had a good day.


KC, Jen, Brenda, Me.

We all had a good run.

My time was: 2hr 13min 22sec. Which put me right in the middle of the men finishers which is pretty good.


Kerrianne finished in 1hr 44min 29sec which put her at 31st out of 1636 women and more than 8 minutes faster than last year. She's pretty amazing!

Longest run of my life

So, Monday was a holiday here so after hanging with the kids for the morning I figured it was the day to get a long run in before the Pasadena 1/2 Marathon next weekend. So far the knee has been recovering well and I've been adapting to the feel as I run which feels good. The feel and motion with interaction with the ground from the VFF floves is pretty amazing, there's a feedback from the ground that's hard to describe.

Back to yesterday's run. I set out from the house and headed down the hill not sure really how far I was going to go. I headed out to the bike path and was able to run on the dirt path along the side. I ened up going five miles out which was downhill or flat most of the way which meant flat or uphill for the run home. Five miles put me at the San Gabriel River where I turned around. The five miles home wasn't bad, my goal was to remain consistent. I'm not a fast runner but my endurance seems to be coming along and my time back was equal to my time out. I kept a consistent 10 minute mile and returned in exactly 100 minutes.

How did my feet feel running that far in the floves? Well there were times along the way that the balls of my feet felt a little sore and I was able to modify my stride and landing and the soreness eased up so overall during the run it felt good. That changed a bit once I got home and sat down. My feet were pretty tender when I stood up, a little bit of walking felt better. When I laid down for bed they got sore again and woke me up a couple of times. Walking around during the day today they felt better and I went for a 2 1/2 mile run at lunch just to keep loose. Again a little sore but feeling good this evening.

So, my plan is to get two more 2 1/2 mile runs in this week. I don't want to over do anything before the race on Sunday.

Hillbilly Hill Adventure Race

This year's Hillbilly Hill race was the day before we left for vacation and proved to be a fun challenge again this year. Temperatures were down from the 103 degree start of last year, it was maybe 75 at the start this time out. The field of racers was a little smaller this year with 11 entrants.

As usual it was a rolling start with Trevor counting down to 5:30pm.


I kind of teamed up with Reid as we seemed to take the first bike portion and the run up to the waterfall at the same pace. He and I got to the waterfall with 4 racers behind us, and not too ar behind two others. I was feeling prety good because they were all guys I was a long ways behind last year. So either they slowed down or I was a little faster this year.


Rog was coming up the trail as I headed down. I was able to run down the hill at a pretty good pace but still stopped for a photo.


I made good time down the run and on the paved road part of the bike ride and pulled ahead of
Reid. By the time I reached the summit of Hillbilly Hill I had gotten a ways ahead of Reid and headed down the back side of the hill. The road was hard packed and light sand, not a great combination. I came around a corner about 1/4 the way down and saw Wade and overreacted a bit to make sure I stayed on my side of the road and went over the bars. I ended with a Pete Rose style head first slide along the side of the road.

Wade stopped to see that I was OK as I got up. Some road rash on my left knee and elbow and I jumped back on the bike to find the chain off the front sprocket. I got off and had to fight to get it back on track, in the meantime Reid blew on past me. I was able to get things going again and finished the ride down to the Hillbilly Gate and was able to keep Reid in sight. The ride back down the hill I was not able to catch up to him but did make up some time.

Before I got in the pool Trevor took a picture.


I was successful on one of the 3 "Adventure Skills" which took 1 lap off of the "Adventure swim" which meant only 13 laps. I got in the pool on Reid's first lap and somewhere along the line he let me pass.

Here's Rog with his soccer ball skills test.



And getting washed off while doing pushups.



My total time was 1 hour 32 minutes which is 22 minutes faster than last year. It felt good.


Even with injuries. I did win the trophy for most blood.


After 8 years Danny finally came home with first place.... well, he didn't get to take the trophy home, it stays in Trevor's garage till next year.


Now it's time to start training on the road bike.

Bonelli Tri-Express #1

Sunday 26 April was the first of 3 Bonelli Tri-Express races for 2009 (I'm not sure yet how many of them I'm going to do.) This first race was 300 meter swim, 13.5k bike and 5k run. I've heard this series of races called the "romp in swamp", but it's a fun race for the start of the season. This is the race series that got me started with triathlon a few years ago.

As when I did this race before, my buddy Wade joined in. It's fun to have a racing team.

It was pretty cold getting there a little before 7am and only warmed up as the sun came above the valley. By 8am for start time it was getting comfortable. Kerrianne, Ethan, Junia, Tanja, Luke and David all arrived just before start time to encourage us on.

I think both Wade and I felt much more comfortable than we did 3 years ago at our first race.


The water actually felt pretty good, not too cold. Someone said it was about 65 degrees. We were in wave 4 of 5, and headed into the water about 8:15am.


I came out feeling the best I've come out of the water 8 minutes later. My best swim time yet but I still have a long way to go to make it something I can really do. I got about 1/2 way through and found my arms had nothing more so I resorted to my normal plan of "survive the swim."

I did catch up to Wade in the transition. Here he's getting his helmet on and grabbing his bike while I'm getting my bike shoes on. This was one of my best transitions yet, likely from the shorter swim and not being as wiped out but I was able to get changed and out on the bike in 2 min 16 seconds.


I entered in the Men's Mountain Bike category, Wade was in the 40-44 year old men category where everyone was on road bikes. I haven't ridden my road bike since September so I went with the mountain bike. The bike felt good, there were really just 2 big hills and the rest was just rolling hills, I actually passed quite a few people (though I did get passed by some of the long course riders that were coming around on their second lap.)


My bike and T2 times didn't get show up on the race web site but I calculated it to be just over 32 minutes all together.

Then off on the run. I got to the end of the transition area and realized I still had my bike gloves on, I decided to save the time and just wear them. I was able to actually run the whole distance, that's a first for me for this rolling hill course. I did see Wade at one point and he was running strong, we yelled at each other as we passed on the out and back part. With about 2 miles to go I saw a guy that I was pretty sure had been on a mountain bike so I thought, "I need to pass him." I didn't want to burn out so I went with a strategy of just slowly closing the distance until the last 1/4 mile when I dug in and sprinted. I guess I needed just a little bit more, I finished 5 seconds behind him.


After the race we waited around to see the times posted. Junia wanted to sit on my bike.


Scores were posted and I came up second in the Men's Mountain Bike category, 5 seconds out of first place. My time was 1 hour 9 minutes 8 seconds.


Wade had a good race too. He ended up with 2nd place in the Men 40-44 years with a time of 1 hour 46 seconds. A very encouraging thing for me was that even if I had rode my mountain bike in the age group category I would have come in 3rd place. Which means even with my slow swim I did really well on both the bike and the run to make up time.


Here's the stats:
Swim Time: 08:08
Swim Rank: 53

T1 Time: 02:16
T1 Rank: 45

Bike Time: 32.:30 including transition
Bike Rank: 42 - 45 somewhere depending on how much of my total bike time was due to transition

Run Time: 26:14
Run Rank: 27

2nd Place Men's Mountain Bike
3rd Place Men 40-44 (not officially but looking at the times, that's where mine falls.)

Overall:
Overall Time: 1:09:08
Overall Rank: 37

There were 90 male entries overall, so I finished in the right side of the percentages.

Check out the course, be sure to select hybrid view to see the satellite picutre.

The Next Race

Tonight I registered for the LA Tri-Express on April 26......doh! That's just over a week away! Actually I've been planning on it but had to work some things out at work since I'm supposed to be on-call. Since I haven't been on the road bike since September I'll be doing this one on the mountain bike even though it's a road race. I entered in the category for mountain bike so hopeully that will even things out.

Details on the race are at: www.trievents.com

I'll be doing the race with my buddy Wade. He and I got into this whole triathlon thing together a few years ago.

Results

So they posted the results from the Renegade Off-Road Triathlon. Apparently I was in the water a lot longer than I even imagined.

I'm happy that I finished but would have liked to have done better.

Here's the stats:
Swim: 29.23
T1: 4:03
Bike: 1:46:39
T2: 1:23
Run: 45:57
Total: 3:07:26

Which put me in 83rd place overall.

Renegade Off=Road Triathlon

A beautiful day in Southern California, I was up early and off to Bonelli Park. It was perfectly clear as the sun came up. One of the great things about races at Bonelli is they are 15 minutes from home. I arrived just after they opened the gate and had plenty of time to check in, find me a transition spot and wander around to relax.

Here's the starting line about an hour before start time.


I chose a spot next to the fence so I wouldn't get crowded. That really didn't prove to be a problem as this was a much less crowded event than others I've been to.


KC and the kids arrived 15 minutes before the start to cheer me on.


On my way to test the water.


The swim was long.... well it felt long. I haven't trained for swimming, and haven't done that well even when I was training so I did about as I expected. There weren't many people coming out of the water after me, but I made it.


From the swim I headed to the transition, got changed, hit send on a pre-written Facebook status update on my phone and headed out on the bike.


The ride was good. Some pretty killer hills that I wasn't the only one walking up. The first lap was pretty strong and things started to hit me on the second lap and I walked a couple more of the hills. There was one point when riding down a path line with 5ft tall weeds in full bloom, I took a deep breath and could feel the polin enter my lungs. I kept pushing on and could feel my allergies coming on in full force.

Back to the transition I racked the bike, changed shoes, grabbed my visor and headed out.


KC actually got a great parking spot right out of the transition area so the kids were able to hang out in the car and watch the runners and bikers go by, including me. It was a great encouragement to hear them yell, "Go Daddy, Go!"


The run was 2 miles of some killer hills that I did my best to try to run. At one point my right hamstring started to knot up, a slow stretch and walk it was OK. Later the same thing happened with the left quad. I saw a guy limping along who said he had a knot in is quad so I guess I was lucky it worked out and I was able to run most of the last 1.2 miles. Not fast, but I was able to run.

Overall, I don't think I did as well as I had hoped, I wanted to finish in under 2.5 hours and I think I was over that. Official results are supposed to be posted tomorrow.


Overall it was a good race and I have a good feeling of accomplishment.

KC's return to racing

Usually this is all about me, this time only indirectly.

My wonderful wife had signed up to run the Inaugural Pasadena 1/2 Marathon back in November but it was canceled due to local fires. Something about smoke in the air and the insurance company that is one of the major sponsors decided they should postpone the race... at 4am the day of the race they made the decision.

Fortunately the race was rescheduled and they have now called it the "Inaugural Redux Pasadena 1/2 Marathon".

The race seems to be cursed, first canceled due to fires now after weeks of sunny weather the only day there was forcas for rain was, of course, Sunday, race day. The rain started early in the morning and by the time the kids and I, along with Wade, Tanja and the boys arrived everything was pretty wet. And dark.

We found a spot about 3/4 mile into the race, right at a corner to watch and sure enough we saw KC come running by. Of course everyone screamed loudly. She's the one in the pink top with "KC" on the back.


From there we took a short cut.... straight line to catch her around mile 3.5. We got there in plenty of time to see her come running up Marengo.


From there we decided to head to just past mile 10 because we weren't sure we could find a spot any closer. We found a spot on the corner of Raymond and Orange Grove. We go there in time to see the first runners coming through, and they were mixed in with the bikes from the Bike Tour.

The first person I saw that I recognized was KC's friend Shannon from work. She ended up finishing as the first woman, I think she's run before.


A bit later we saw the KC coming down the street, catching up to and passing some bikes.


Looking strong for 10 miles done.


After she passed we headed over to the finish line but apparently she had more energy left than we thought ro we were pretty slow. We stood around the finish line watching and waiting and then my phone rang, KC said she had been done for 15 minutes got cold waiting around for us and went to the car.

She came back out to meet us and watch or some friends to finish.

All smiles.


Brenda and Jen finished with the rain pouring down. Of couse Jen went by so fast I didn't see her in time to get a photo.


We went out to breakfast to celebrate.


Here's her stats:

Overall: 368 out of 2974
Women: 80 out of 1654
F 40-44: 13 out of 224
Age/Grade: 61.35% Place: 263
Finish: 1:51:55 Pace: 8:33
Tag Time: 1:51:55
Gun Time: 1:52:26

Happy Birthday Wade, who's your buddy?

Wade's birthday was back in October. Since we've done triathlon's together my present to him for the big 40 was to enter us into the Muddy Buddy race. It's a 5 1/2 mile, 2 guys, 1 bike race where teams trade off running and riding, then crawl through a mud pit together.

Here we are ready to go... unaware of what we're getting into.


I started on the bike, Wade with the run. On the first leg there was one excellent downhill that I saw a guy go over the bars.

Obstacle 1 was a climbing wall with rope ladder on the back, then I was off for the run. When I finished the run and did my climb over obstacle 2, an A-frame I didn't see Wade yet. He soon followed on the bike and traded off. Soon after I came around a corner to see the road flooded out and a big mud hole. Most everyone was circling around it on the edge where it was dry. I was following someone that stopped and put their foot down so I quickly made the choice to go through the mud. About 3/4 the way through the bike stopped, my foot went down, and the bike went down, now it would be covered in mud for the rest of the race. I heard someone yell, "right on!!" There was then a lot of uphill riding.

The next obstacle was walking across a beam. Normally easy but with wet, muddy shoes a different story. Then I was off running again. Somehow Wade ended up with the long downhill ride on pavement and passed me going pretty fast. Actually good for me because I'd rather run that part than the part Wade had just finished running.

The last obstacle was the bouncy house slide. Again, wet, muddy shoes made climbing the rope ladder a little more challenging.


Then I was off on the bike. A lot of uphill again and I never caught up to Wade until the end where he had to wait for me to go through the mud pit together.


Who's your buddy? Wade going to give Tanja a hug.


The kids were pretty scared that I would give them a hug. It was great to have them there and hear Junia yelling "Go, Daddy Go!"


Right before Kerrianne got her hug.


It was great fun. Happy Birthday Wade!

Is it a sign?

Well, Wade and I have the Muddy Buddy race in the morning. On the positive side it's the time change tonight so even though the clock says it's 11:34pm that I'm writing this it's only 10:34pm... that's where the positive side ends.

I went out to the garage a few hours ago to get the bike loaded into the truck and get things ready... I started rolling the bike and flat tire! I know I have a tube around somewhere but I haven't seen it since we moved 2 years ago. The only place I could think of that would be open at 9pm was Target so off I went. I picked up 2 tubes so we'll have one on the race tomorrow and while I was at it got a new pump for on the bike. Back home, change the tube... all good. Then I went to start the truck, it's been sitting for a couple of weeks, battery dead. I think the jumper cables are with that tube, haven't been seen since we moved. About that time work called with 3 different problems they wanted me to look at. (Bad planning on my part being on-call the weekend of a race.) I spent the next hour fixing problems for work and decided I'd try to fit my bike in the other car for tomorrow, as I was moving stuff to put it in I came across the emergency kit my wonderful wife got me for Christmas last year.... in it were jumper cables. Gave the truck a jump start and let it run for a while while I got the rest of the things together.

Right now things look OK, except when I look at the clock and see that it says 11:42pm.......

More Race Pics

I got a few more pictures from the race.

Riding down PCH.

The turn into the parking lot, about 1.5 miles to go.


Headed up the beach.


Into the finish.