How to do a Triathlon

A couple of friends have either shown interest in participating in a triathlon next year or have already committed to do so and wanted more information regarding prepping for their first tri. Being a novice athlete myself and have overcome the challenge of my first tri this year, I have decided to document my training story and what to do to prep for that first tri.

A Triathlon (definition) is a multi sport event consisting of swimming, biking and running. There are multiple distances and are referred to as either a sprint, an olympic or an iron man. There is also an ultra iron man and a half iron man (70.2), but I am not considering long events yet. I am sticking to the sprint distance and will describe that more fully.

A sprint tri usually has a 1/2 mile swim, a 15 mile bike and a 3.1 mile run. Some races vary from these distances and each course has a varying degree of difficulty due to location and time of event.

Training is extremely important. everyones training regiment will be different depending on skill prior to committing to an event. I was confident in the bike but scared of the swim and hated the run prior to committing to my first event. Here are some tips to overcoming these challenges.

Swimming: Find a pool and start swimming. See if there is any adult swim classes or clubs that will push your abilities such as a masters swim class. Train similar to a high school swim team and practice intervals for speed and distance for endurance. When swimming distance, try to swim longer than your event distance.

Bike: find a spin class. Classroom environments seam to push you a bit harder than riding alone. When hitting the road, find people who ride faster than you to push you to improve. Alternate your routine between hills and flats and push yourself with intervals and distance.

Running: I still hate running. There is only one way I know to train for running and that is to run. I technique is my 5 year old on his bike. I try to run with him and to keep up to the best of my ability. He is getting faster. This fall I clocked a 6 minute mile trying to follow him which is a personal best. I finished my 5k in under 22 minutes and that is close to my best time. Try alternating running fast and long.

Tips for the race:

Swim: Get a wetsuit. They are meant to keep you warm, reduce body drag and to keep you more buoyant. Using a wetsuit can reduce a couple of minutes from your time, but if you are not an excellent swimmer it can really boost your confidence. You can rent a wetsuit for around $50.

Bike: Bikes are the biggest financial investment. For your first tri, use what you have available. Unless you know you really want a new bike, the $1200+ investment can be a bit too much. A road bike or a tri bike will offer distinct advantages in speed and efficiency. If you do feel like investing in a bike come and talk to me for more ideas.

Clothing: You want to wear skin tight water wicking clothes. The best idea is to wear the same clothing through all three events. It is very difficult to put on or take off clothing after the swim when you are wet. Some people always laugh at the form fitting clothes (my wife for starters) but you will fit in fine with all the other racers and you will be more comfortable during and after the race.

Running: Get speed laces for your shoes. Speed laces are elastic shoe laces that never need to be tied. I love slip on shoes and this is a great idea. At this point in the race you are out of breath and a bit fatigued and if you stop to take the time to tie your shoes you will spend more time catching your breath. Just flip your shoes on and run. Speed laces cost less than $10.

If you have any additional questions or comments please post them and I will try to answer them prior to next spring when we are all training for that next race.

The Chess Board

Seeing I have more free time this summer, I have been working on a few hobbies to pass the time between triathlons and searching for a new job. One hobby in particular is woodworking and I decided to try to make something that could be a family heirloom someday. My father loves chess and purchased a chess set while in the Philippines during the Vietnam War. The pieces are about three inches tall and were hand carved from different hardwoods. He never purchased the table that went with the set because it was to big to carry back to the ship.

My woodworking experience is from making a few bookshelves, our entertainment center, a toybox for Luke and a couple other inexpensive projects. I decided that this was to be the one I would take the most pride in and so I decided to use only the best materials and joinery that I could think of.

I started making the table base with red oak. I purchased pre shaped legs and cut mortise joints into each leg as well as matching tenons on the aprons. I used a router and a chisel for the mortise joints and a table saw for the tenons. The tenons slide into the mortise with a lot of glue and create a very sturdy corner. I also used the table saw to cut a slot in the apron boards to hold the bottom of the table (like a basket).

For the chess board, I used a beautiful curling maple for the lights squares and walnut for the dark squares. I cut 3 inch squares in both materials and then glued them into the checker board pattern. I sanded the top flat and then used the router to cut a small rabbet around the perimeter.

The outer border for the board was again red oak. I mitered the corners and then cut a slot in each corner. I inserted a 1/8" thick piece of walnut into the slots to increase the strength of the joint. I then shaped the otside edge with a roman ogee bit on the router.

Finally I coated the oak partions of the table and board with a single coat of satin polyeurathane and the walnut and maple portions with three coats of high gloss polyeurathane to give it a glass like apearance. I also lined the inside of the box with red velvet to protect the chess pieces.

Alaska! (July 11th-15th, 2009)

Earlier this week my dad and I fulfilled a promise I made for putting me through college. Being unemployed made it a bit more difficult, but I had booked the trip months ago while still employed. The best part of it was that I never told my dad where we were going. He knew we were going fishing at a lodge but he didn't learn where we were going till we got to the airport and and he checked in. Alaska?! He was so excited. Better yet, we were upgraded to first class both ways which made it a once in a life time event for him.

We arrived on the Kenai Peninsula which is south of Anchorage by three hours. We were based out of Soldatna which is located on the banks of the Kenai river, home to the largest salmon in the world. We would be fishing three days while in Alaska. We stayed at the Silver Budda Lodge which was a ways out of town and enjoyed the european hospitality of the Swiss owners.

Our first day of fishing was for Halibut out of Homer. We joined 9 other guests on the "Northern Lights" with Captain Mark and his deck hand Allison. We journeyed out by the Barren Islands where we fished for about six hours. There we caught 18 halibut with the largest (62 lbs) being caught by a 7 year old boy. For Bait, we used a fist full of Octopus on a huge circle hook. Check out this picture of the bait.

Here is a video of my dad landing a halibut the same time as another guest (both fish are about 35 to 40 lbs).

Halibut have both eyes on the same side of their head and it takes a while to get used to this. What do you think?

While on this trip, we got to play with a pod of porpoises. They swam beneath the boat and would dart out in front of the bow before surfacing, and then dive back down. I was lucky to catch this on video as well.

Here is a photo of our daily catch. If you are looking for a halibut charter out of Homer, I would highly recommend Captain Mark. His website is http://www.aurorasportfishing.net/

On day two we fished on the Kasilof (Kiss-ee-lof) River. The Kasilof was a beautiful river that we fished out of a drift boat with Captain Robert Johnson. He had nice equipment and he seemed very experienced as a fishing guide. He was not a great people person though and both my father and I didn't enjoy the time on the river with him. The whole time he was very pessimistic about catching fish, even though we saw fish being caught all around us during the day. We did catch 5 Dolly Varden (Bull trout or an Artic Char depending on where you are fishing) but the river was closed to that fish and so we needed to throw them back. Here is a photo of the river.

Our last day we fished the Kenai River (the big dance!). This river was so hyped up and we were very excited about the chance to catch a monster fish. We saw numerous fish over 40lbs caught on this day. We enjoyed the company of our Guide, Bob Estes from Moby King Charters. Bob was a much better guide than we had the day before. His wife even made us cookies. We were in a power boat for this trip and were able to zip up and down the river to the best spots. When we got on the river we noticed that the were not to be fishing the river alone this day. There were at least a couple hundred boats trying to land their monster fish as well. The DNR says that about 1000 fish enter the river each day from the ocean. That would put your odds of catching a king low. If anyone in your boat catches a fish you need to consider that a great day of fishing. We fished all day and towards the end I finally hooked a salmon! Bad news though, the old guy next to me in the boat wrapped his line around mine and I lost my fish. So after to days of salmon fishing, neither my dad or I caught a fish.

We don't give up that easy. After returning to the lodge we strapped on waders and headed to the river to fish from the bank. We didn't know what we were doing, but we both hooked salmon from the shore. We lost both fish as well, but we had as much fun doing that as fishing with the guides. My dad did hook a Seagull which was diving for his hook. This is the lodge owner cutting the line to release the bird.

We woke up early the next day to return to the Anchorage airport. At 2:30 I was able to see the sun on the horizon, but it was the northern horizon! The sun was up around 4 am and would set each night around midnight. How fun! Next time I go fishing in Alaska, I will plan a whole week and will spend the majority of the time fishing from the bank for Red Salmon. They don't get as big, but a good day has between 20,000 and 30,000 salmon entering the river (compared to 1,000 Kings).

Lake Minnetonka Triathlon, June 20th, 2009

This was my first tri and and am please to be finished. I started training in January by swimming in the pool at the gym. Kelly laughed because I could only swim 6 lengths of the pool at the time. Today I swam 1/2 mile in 12:47, which is faster than I have ever done in the pool.
The bike was a disappointment for me. I am traditionally faster on my bike, but I focused all of my training on the swim. I got out about every other week for a good bike ride so far this year. I finished the 15 mile bike portion in 48:23, averaging 18 miles per hour. I can improve the most on the bike section next year.
The run was a traditional 5k. The difficulty of the run comes after the fatigue of the first two events. I still completed the 5k in 25:35 which is a good time for me and I am very pleased with this. I think I can improve this as well for next year, but I think I will focus more on the bike.
Overall, after you add in the transitions, I finished in 1:31:23 which was faster than the average time. I cant wait to do it again next year.Donny Martin, Brad Macdonald, me and Nick Lamoureux admiring our participation medals
My personal support team who valiantly cheered me on during the whole event

Rome

Rome, January 2009

I was privaledged to be invited to my companies annual sales meeting which was held in Rome. This was the first time I got to travel to Rome and I was excited about this trip for an entire year. I also got to take my lovely wife with me. So while I was in the sales conference each day, Kelly was free to roam Rome at her leasure. So after a week in Rome, this is my take away:

Great Gelato. Gelato is very good ice cream. There was a shop by the hotel that had at least 100 flavors (including over 20 chocolate varieties). Look how happy this makes Kelly!

Old buildings. There are alot of old buildings in Rome. The hotel we stayed in was an old 17th century palace. I am glad it had Wi-Fi. It was also steps away from the Pantheon, which is got to be the oldest standing church in the world. It was made about 100 years after Christ, but was originally made to worship all of the Roman gods. It wasn't until more recently that it was converted into a Christian church.

Ruins. Rome is around 2700 years old and there are ruins dating back to the original settlement. Some of these ruins are in better shape than others. This is a picture of the Roman forum. This would be considered old downtown where all the government offices and temples were located. This is also next to the colloseum.

Fountains. Romans love fountains. The most popular is the Tevi Fountain which was a couple blocks from our hotel. Tradition states that if you throw three coins with your rigth hand over your left shoulder into the fountain you will return to Rome quicker. In fact the guy who sneaks into the fountain nightly to remove the coins collects over $180,000 US dollars a year. The city says this is a public place and so anybody can claim the coins. Nice job.

Recycling. The Romans invented recycling by taking building materials off older buildings they didn't like and reuse the material in newer buildings. It wasn't until recent history that they started preserving the older buildings. For example, the marble from the Colloseum now resides in the walls of Saint Peters Cathedral. I dont think they will give it back no matter how much we complain. The tunnels under ground where were they kept all of the animals. They even flooded the Colleseum to simulate naval battles. How cool is that?
I found some remaining seats and decided to do the one man wave. Go Lions!

Art. Rome is known for Marble statues and the great frescoes you find inside all of the churchs. Michaellangelo, Rafael, Berninni, DaVinci, etc... have all had a huge impact on the artistic appeal of the city.

Theft. Romans believed that those with might were in the right. They were traditional tourists who loved to collect souvenirs from places they visited (or conquered). Thanks to this habit you will find statues, obelisks and and other things all around the city from different civilizations. They even stole the Greeks Gods (they changed their names to sound Roman of course).

All in all, I loved Rome. I threw my three coins in the Trevi and I am excited to go back. Next time on vacation though, and not for work.