Teaching ... myself

Want to join the millions of people in their crazed frenzy over the Triabetes project?? OK - it may not be millions....yet! Michelle is printing up these T-shirts for friends and family and fans - $10 each and you can get them from her blog - http://www.triabetesdocumentary.blogspot.com/ . If that doesn't work, just let me know ( hikeahn@gmail.com ) and I'll get one to you. Also - if anyone wants to follow any Triabetic's race on Sept 7, you can go to http://www.ironmanlive.com/ and type in your athlete's bib number to see how the day is going for them. We won't have our bib numbers until just before the race - but I will update the blog when we get them. If you follow me, just be prepared to stay up late!

A friend once told me the difference between Grace and Mercy. Mercy is when you don't get what you do deserve and Grace is when you do get what you don't deserve. Well, I was the full recipient of ironman grace this weekend. Dave and I had planned on a 7 hour ride-run on sunday and it turned out that Jon and Carole were going to their house in Damascus. So we arranged to ride to Damascus and do a run on the creeper trail - which was flat and soft. I had told myself that this would be my last long day in prep for the race...that after this, it would be all downhill. Well I had some concerns - mainly with my knee. Its been hurting whenever I try to run even though I have hardly been trying to run for quite awhile now. In fact on Thursday I had an issue (not so much pain as just something there) after just jogging slow (and having my HR go crazy) with the stroller for 3 miles. Well, I figured that I would do this last long thing and suffer. But after an absolutely glorious Sund...

Well its 32 days until Ironman . I am 35 years old. My blood sugar at lunch was 39 yesterday. I swam 32 laps at lunch to make a mile yesterday. When I got out of the pool my blood sugar was 39 again. Holy cow, everything is happening fast. Last week I did the Making a Difference camp at the High School and had a good time at that but realized that I was now on work schedule and summer was officially over. This week school starts and all the stress that goes with that. Dave and I did a swim brick this weekend out in Hampton, TN. We swam for an hour and rode for 3. The wind was decent and we got to feel what roughish conditions were like. All went well, though and it was good to not be in a pool. We just hugged the shoreline because there were a lot of boats out. Monday I had to get in a 4 hour ride (I only did 3.5) - I rode for 2 hours on the trainer from 4:30 to 6:30am (which really isn't much fun) and then I hit the road when it got light and went to our first school workday. I s...

I found a relatively flat course to ride - I mean its a loop and its got plenty of elevation change - but for around here it is really flat and nice. I was able to ride the 55 mi at an avg of 16.2mph - that is nice and gives me some wiggle room on the run if I can keep it up. Right now I am a bit out of commission due to my IT band problem in my knee. I tried to run a 7 mile trail the other day and really had some more issues. So no running for awhile. That is a hard thing to do because I really start to freak out about not being able to do the run. I emailed John to talk me down a bit and he did so like it was nothing. It will be good to see that guy in a little over a month. So anyway I've been biking more and coming up with excuses not to swim...which is getting to be a problem. Well, yesterday morning I was going to do the 55 mile route again early - I woke up at 3 to eat breakfast so I could take a full bolus - but then Zoe woke up right away with me (cosleeping). I though...

I am continually amazed at how much work it is taking to barely finish this Ironman . I have 2:20 for the swim (I can do that), 8 hours for the bike (its going to be tight), and then 6.5 hours for the marathon (also tight). However, any time I save on any part goes to the next part - the times I gave are for the cutoffs. Yesterday I went and rode 100 miles - I did 2 loops of the Blood, Sweat, and Gears 50 (and had to add on a couple of miles because the BSG is more like 48 miles) - its a pretty mountainous route from the center of the universe (Valle Crucis School - Dave's school, my old school) up to the gate to Grandfather Mountain and back around. I did it in 7:00 (minus a 15 min stop half way in to call Ash and redo water, etc) - which makes for 14.3 mph average. To make the cutoff, I have to keep 14mph. On the plus side - I kept my average heartrate to 128 (69%max) - Rick said to shoot for 70% - and I felt absolutely great. I kept the water/salt intake good and I was...

The term "Brick" has had a lot of influence on my life. Billy used to call me that. My car was named the brick-mobile (thanks again Bill). My dad (and I in the summers) worked for a Brick plant. Now it means "a way to be uncomfortable for long periods of time". I took a day off after the marathon and then did a 50 mile ride with Dave. My knee still bothered me some, so I took 2 days off and then did the long brick with dave . Supposedly in the athletic world lingo, "brick" means "bike-run"? We did the 5 hour bike followed by the 2 hour run. I got up at 3am and ate breakfast then went back to sleep. Got up at 5:00 and was out at Moses Cone Park (on the Blue Ridge parkway) by 6 and we were off. We did loops up to Grandfather mountain and back, stopping each time to weigh ourselves (yes, we brought a scale) to try to figure out sweat rates. It was cool that day so it was easy to stay hydrated... but it still took more than I would hav...

Here's the lowdown on my Grandfather Mountain Marathon. I cut my lantus down to 8 units the night before and didn't take anything in the morning. I woke up and ate breakfast at 3am so I could take a full bolus. My blood sugars that day were between 140 and 100 the whole day until the night when they rose a bit. So success on the glucose front. I then woke up at 5:30 and headed over to the marathon. It was a bit unnerving as everyone I talked to seemed to be pretty experienced and when I mentioned that this was my first one, the comment was always a variation of "well, you sure picked a hard one to start with" or "well, this is the hardest road marathon in North America"... I mean, come on - that is a little discouraging. So we go down through town and pass the mall - and there is Dave. I didn't know whether he would be there but suddenly there was company. So we went along and headed uphill. Somewhere in the first 5 miles, Dave says (in typical Dave fas...