Ironman Wisconsin 2009, or Why Dave Should Not Tweet

9/9/09

17:31 — Some vacation, I'm back at the office writing these short pieces on scientists.
18:43 — Boss just told me to leave. Sure, and you'll get these pieces after I'm back. Nope, she says, I need them before you go. Well, then, we have a conundrum, don't we?
20:42 — Copy filed, I'm out. On the road. Finally. Looking forward to a four-hour nap in a $100 hotel room.
21:31 — How the fuck does Burger King run out of meat???
21:35 — At Arby's, lights are off, no hours posted on the door, moving on. Way to lose some customers.
21:45 — Wendy's it is. God, I hate fast food.
23:27 — No traffic, no cops, thank goodness for small favors. Welcome to the Fairfield Inn Aurora.

9/10/09
4:00 — Sigh. It always rings too quickly.
4:09 — On the road again. Suffice to say my morning routine is quite streamlined when there's no time for breakfast.
4:11 — Imagine that. No traffic when it's still dark.
4:41 — And easy to find parking when it's not a huge travel weekend.
4:46 — People on the bus giving my bike dirty looks. Fuck you, too. What's in your bags?
4:58 — Fuck Northwest Airlines. The lady looked at the big gray box and said "Is that a bike?" Much different than everyone else, who seems to get asked "What's in the box?" That gives you some wiggle room. Yes, it's a bike. That will be not only $175 but $15 extra for being over 50 pounds.
5:15 — Hash browns, scrambled eggs, sausage patty, apple juice. Breakfast of champions. I hate fast food.
5:27 — Start metabolism with leisurely stroll around Concourse C. Shoulda flown Southwest.
5:58 — I'm on the plane! Advantage of early/redeye flights: Lots of room. Disadvantage of early/redeye flights: They're early.
6:30 — Up, up, and away. How dialed in is my normal 6:30 wake-up? I just got morning wood for no good reason.
6:36 — Aborted attempt at a nap. I can't sleep on planes to save my life. God help me if I ever go overseas.
6:49 — Breakfast, part 2: More apple juice, biscuit with grape jam, banana. Think I've covered my fruit for the day.
7:04 — This notebook is old. And I need help. Seriously.
7:06 — The kid across the aisle just took a crap. This plane will never be the same.
9:00 — Hey! Welcome to MSP!
9:15 — And we're still taxiing. Are you sure we're not at DFW?
9:30 — Sweet freedom. Holy cats, MSP looks nothing like I remember.
9:40 — Is that Vivaldi's "Summer" playing over the PA?
9:45 — Definitely time to shave. I'm scraping white crud out of my goatee.
9:50 — Two more hours. Can't take a nap or I risk missing my flight. Ugh.
9:58 — So much for local charm. The female voice warning travelers of the end of the walkway sounds like Ross's second wife (the Brit who wouldn't let him be friends with Rachel).
10:17 — The women dress far more modestly here than they do out west. Longer shorts, t-shirts vs. tank tops, hair pulled up. Or maybe the difference is between the real world and a college campus in early fall.
10:31 — I have no sympathy for people who run frantically to make flights, screaming at people to hold the door. You know you have to be here two hours before, so plan accordingly. And if you're at risk of missing a connection, you're the airline's problem.
10:33 — Better yet, the person who's cursing a blue streak right now hoofed it to not only the wrong gate, but to a flight that's been rescheduled to give him time to get there. Pay attention to the monitors, dude.
11:40 — The Midwest is and always will be a huge part of who I am, but I'll never live there again.

And that's where I stopped writing in my notebook. I don't know if I got bored or what. That is, however, about the time I got on my flight to Chicago from M/SP. It was a relatively short one, though every flight is "relatively short" when you live on the opposite side of the country from those you love.

The plan was to bust it up to Madison late Thursday afternoon to check in and get my packet, but I forgot about the abject construction around Chicago and which routes I should take. I ended up going through Milwaukee and across the ugly-flat plains to Madison, where I managed to find the hotel and get a reasonable dinner before crashing and burning at 11 p.m.

On Friday, I checked out the lake and went for a swim. I did one lap of the course, pausing to orient myself and float on my back a little. One man out at the first turn buoy mentioned he'd seen on the news that someone had drowned in Lake Monona a week earlier, and that not only had the authorities not recovered the body but the Ironman was making it hard for the searchers to dredge the lake. Lovely. I got out of the water and hung out in the sun for a bit, drying off before heading inside to check in. A Brit with an accent much like Terry Gilliam's sipped on a Coke and said, "I figure if it can take corrosion off a car battery the Coke'll kill all the shit I might have picked up in the lake." Lovely.

The check-in took longer than ever but my timing sucked. It opened up at 10 a.m. and I queued up at 10:10. It took an hour before I could get my bags into the backpack and ride (yes, I assembled my bike without alcohol Thursday night) back to the hotel to wait for my parents. They made it back at about 2:30 and we had a late lunch at Ella's Deli, an old-school kosher deli with a restored carousel out front. I continued to drink my heavily salted Gatorade and produce urine in massive volume. We took a little driving tour of the campus and watched the Wisconsin band practice for about 20 minutes (Note to self: Download drumline cadences for prerace listening). And then we headed to Mia Za's on State Street for dinner. Picked up some beer on the way home and shaved my legs and face before sleeping like a baby.

The next day we headed to town on some back streets thanks to the Badgers' home game against Fresno State and the construction that cut a six-lane main street to two lanes. We found a place to park and then headed to the convention center to drop off my transition bags and bike. In and out in 10 minutes. As I said previously, I don't do race expos any more so I chose to spend as little time at the convention center as possible. I did stop at Machinery Row Bicycles to get a couple of CO2 canisters and ogle the bikes they had.

We stopped at Jimmy John's to pick up subs and ate in the hotel. I watched Texas-Wyoming while my parents headed to the grocery store to get supplies for dinner. Mom made lasagna, which has become something of a tradition the night before my Ironmans. It's pasta, ground turkey, tomatoes and spices. So good. We watched South Carolina-Georgia until it was time to go to bed, or in my case attempt to sleep.

3:49 a.m. — Woke up to pee. It's race day, baby! Wooo!
3:51 p.m. — Put on race kit. Shorts. Heart-rate monitor. Zip top. Socks. Sweatshirt. Wind pants. Ball cap. Specs.
4 a.m. — Alarm goes off. It's 3 a.m. according to my body.
4:03 a.m. — Breakfast of champions: bagel with cream cheese, chocolate chip/peanut butter Clif bar, organic apple juice.
4:15 a.m. — Fouling up the bathroom something fierce.
4:30 a.m. — Packing special needs bags. For the bike: Two bottles of salty Gatorade, two gels, bag of tortilla chips. For the run: Fuel Belt with four little bottles of salty Gatorade, two gels, bag of tortilla chips.
4:45 a.m. — Leave hotel with long-suffering parents. I love them more than they know for far more reasons than just perfect attendance at this ridiculous hobby I have.
5 a.m. — Arrive at Capitol Square to drop off special needs. All these nervous people checking and rechecking make me laugh. You've done the training. Today is the reward. Relax!
5:05 a.m. — Walk to convention center to recheck my transition bags. Hit play on iPod (see below).

The pre-race playlist
"In Too Deep," Sum 41 (Not a good start)
"Big Time," Peter Gabriel (Much better)
"Cut the Cake," Average White Band
"Small Town," John Cougar Mellencamp (Good one for a Midwestern boy come home)
"Hungry Heart," Bruce Springsteen
"Draw the Line (live)," Aerosmith
"One Mic," Nas
"Hurts So Good," Mellencamp (All too appropriate)
"Flood," Jars of Clay (Not cool to hear a song about drowning at this point)
"El Paso," Old 97s (Nor to hear a song about dying for love)
"Feel Like I Wanna Feel," Bella Fayes
"The Only Way to Be," Save Ferris
"A Little Less Conversation," Elvis Presley, remixed (The one from the "Ocean's 11" soundtrack)
"Learn to Fly," Foo Fighters
"Middle of the Road," Pretenders
"You Get What You Give," New Radicals

6:15 a.m. — Get up from moment of repose in transition near my bike to meet parents upstairs. Start pulling on my neoprene sausage casing.
6:30 a.m. — Meet the parents, snap a picture, leave my post-race bag with them, head downstairs to the lake.
6:35 a.m. — Walking down the helix to the lake is as close as a weenie like me will get to walking through the tunnel at (insert football stadium here). Spectators on both sides, wetsuit-clad people strolling slowly to their doom, music playing, ann announcer pleading with racers to get in the lake NOW.
6:40 a.m. — At the lake's edge I pause. More color in the sky to the east. Better finish squeezing myself into my wetsuit.
6:43 a.m. — Heart-rate monitor registers at 99 as I slide into the water. Checking and rechecking my goggles. It would suck out loud to get them kicked off.
6:50 a.m. — Pop! The pros take off. I'm still treading water, looking up at the sky, checking out the crowds on shore and on the various levels of the convention center, and wondering what I'd do if I discovered the body mid-race.
6:59 a.m. — National anthem done. Watch in proper mode. Let some water in the wetsuit. Let's get it on!
7:00 a.m. — Fifth Ironman under way.
(All times approximate from this point)
7:15 a.m. — Making the turn at the first buoy. Holy traffic jam.
7:33 a.m. — One lap down, one to go. Wonder if I'll pass anyone on their first lap.
7:38 a.m. — Let's try to get to the buoy line.
7:39 a.m. — What the fuck??? Cut off by someone swimming away from the buoy line?? Well. There's a worse navigator than me in this field. Who knew?
7:46 a.m. — OK, made the turn for home. Let's try this again.
7:47 a.m. — You've got to be kidding me! Cut off again? Fuck it, I'll stay to the outside. Hello, 2.6-mile swim. Christ.
7:58 a.m. — OK, I've taken care of inadvertent hydration during the swim. This water is not yummy.
8:06 a.m. — All right, out of the water. It was fun while it lasted. Where the hell is the zipper thing?
8:07 a.m. — Wetsuit strippers rule. They found the strap, got me out of the suit, and sent me on my way.
8:10 a.m. — Getting up the helix sure took forever.
8:14 a.m. — As did getting out of the changing room, having a piss, getting my bike, and rolling down the other helix to John Nolen Drive.
8:16 a.m. — OW! Fill your goddamned potholes, Madison!
8:17 a.m. — Ah yes, salty Gatorade. The first couple ounces of 96 for today.
8:30 a.m. — Finally in the country. Good to know beforehand that it's all false flat out to Verona.
8:40 a.m. — Here's Verona. Or at least suburban Verona. Hey, can I grab my special needs bag now?
8:50 a.m. — Why the hell does my watch say 2:50 and not 1:44? Time to drink anyway...
9 a.m. — Oh yeah, it's entirely possibly I didn't hit the lap button after all. Annoying, nothing more.
9:15 a.m. — Sign on the road: "Did you know that muskrats used to be as large as bears???"
9:30 a.m. — Screaming downhill. Let's pedal a bit and gain some speed.
9:32 a.m. — Back uphill. I just used 14 of my 18 gears in a span of two minutes. God damn.
9:45 a.m. — Sauk Lane was not as tough as last time. The shade helped but it just didn't feel as steep. I sat down the whole time. And there was no Satan following me up the hill. Must be hydrating properly.
9:48 a.m. — The next hill, however, was no joke. I mustered the breath to make fun of the guys with the Notre Dame flag, though.
10:50 a.m. — Fair Verona. I heard my parents yell "Go Dave!" The masses are out in force today. More water.
11 a.m. — Two more bottles of salty Gatorade. Damn, I can't wait until this race is over and I don't have to drink this shit any more.
11:01 a.m. — Knock it off. Now! Too far ahead. Let's just worry about the next bottle. Settle.
11:15 a.m. — Starting to pass a few people. Still switching gears every minute or so. My derailleurs will beg for mercy.
11:30 a.m. — Sign in Cross Plains: "Hurry up. Packers start at 7:20."
11:45 a.m. — Sign at Mount Horeb Township fire dept.: "140.6 miles until I get my boyfriend back." Sounds like a healthy relationship to me (Eyeroll).
Noon — Am I going too conservatively?
12:15 p.m. — Now people are passing me, all of them in the big gear. Sigh...
12:30 p.m. — Keep drinking. Keep drinking.
12:45 p.m. — Chips taste better with green salsa. Doubt green salsa would carry well in special needs, though.
1 p.m. — First NFL games are probably a quarter in.
1:15 p.m. — What's up with the police car? Is this guy still on his first lap? Geez, he's going to have a tough time of it.
1:30 p.m. — Sauk Lane again. Out of the saddle briefly. Love the crowd. Can't read the chalked messages.
1:45 p.m. — Saddle sore. Ow. Shit. Damn. Few other choice words. Why do I get one now???
2:00 p.m. — Home sweet home, for now. Look at that. It's the Alliant Energy Center parking lot.
2:08 p.m. — Up the helix. Smallest gear. I'm not tired. I'm not tired. I'm not tired.
2:09 p.m. — Last Ironman on that bike. Be gentle with it, volunteer who took my bike and complimented me on my goatee.
2:11 p.m. — Why the hell did the sunscreen on my neck sting so bad? Ow. Oh yeah, could be those gashes from my wetsuit and necklace. Ow.
2:13 p.m. — Sweet relief in T2. Might have to do that again at some point.
2:14 p.m. — Hey, mom and dad made it back from Verona! Hope I don't look like ass.
2:15 p.m. — Sweet. Beat the winners... OK, let me clarify, I got out of T2 before the winners finished. Tiny victory.
2:20 p.m. — Nice, easy jog. Keep drinking. Don't check the watch, just beat the sunset.
2:30 p.m. — Love State Street. Good part of the course. Hard to believe the run turn is a few blocks away.
2:35 p.m. — This railroad underpass is new. I like it better than the pedestrian footbridge of 2005.
2:40 p.m. — Running next to this guy in the Illinois kit is fun. Heard so much "Go Illini" I had to ask him what the deal was. "I figure Wisconsin's been kicking our ass for a decade, [the spectators] figure it's the least they can do."
2:47 p.m. — Circling the field at Camp Randall Stadium. The synthetic grass feels good after less than an hour of pavement. Someone just yelled "Go Blue!" in the empty stadium. And Justin Daerr of Fort C just passed me, one lap ahead and on his way to sixth place.
2:50 p.m. — Hillary Biscay passes in the other direction. Swoon. Go Hillary.
3:15 p.m. — There are mom and dad at the turn. Can smell fried things. Getting tired but holding it together.
3:30 p.m. — Odd. I'm pounding the salty Gatorade but no urge to pee. Bad sign?
4:15 p.m. — There's the finish line I can't cross yet. Come on, hold it together.
4:25 p.m. — There's Amy Marsh, heading for home. Way to rep Austin.
4:45 p.m. — Oh shit.
4:46 p.m. — Why won't my legs move? Goddammit anyway...
4:47 p.m. — And my IT bands have registered their opinion of the whole mess.
4:48 p.m. — And my brain has seconded the motion to make the last 10 miles of this shit a fucking death march. Fuck you both.
4:50 p.m — Walk. Run. Walk. Walk. Walk. Jog. Trot. Walk. God damn it.
5:05 p.m. — We're jogging through Camp Randall. Period.
5:08 p.m. — And we're walking up the ramp out of Camp Randall. Shit.
5:30 p.m. — A girl plays violin along Lake Mendota. Sweetest thing I've heard all day.
5:50 p.m. — The turn on State Street. The plaster has set on my IT bands.
6:10 p.m. — She's still playing. Save her a spot in the Chicago Symphony in about 15 years.
6:15 p.m. — A man in a Michigan State kit and a man in a Michigan kit run side by side.
6:30 p.m. — The sun is now in my eyes. At least I'm not thinking about my ITs. Oh wait, I just did.
6:55 p.m. — Sorority girls on their balcony have been cool all day. Thanks, ladies.
7:00 p.m. — OK, there's the Capitol. We're running it in.
7:03 p.m. — Hey, I've got the finish line to myself. And Mike Reilly pronounced my name right.
7:04 p.m. — Finish-line catcher escorts me straight to the food. Say that much. At least I've never needed medical intervention.
7:05 p.m. — But first, there's my mom. Who says she lost my dad. Whatever, go find him. I'm hungry.
7:06 p.m. — Sam's Choice pop. Seriously? For $550 we get Sam's Choice instead of Coke or Pepsi?
7:07 p.m. — At least they have Papa John's pizza.
7:15 p.m. — There's my dad. And he has my dry clothes bag.
7:30 p.m. — In the queue for a rub. I'm envisioning a passage from "Running With the Buffaloes," where a runner describes a massage therapist working on his IT bands. He said it felt like the guy reached inside his leg and forcibly straightened them out, like curling wrapping ribbon by pressing on it with a pair of scissors. Said it hurt worse than any workout.
7:40 p.m. — Dad found the Pepsi machine. How did I know it was there?
8:15 p.m. — OK, lady, do your worst.
8:30 p.m. — Olive oil doesn't burn open sores. Whew.
9:30 p.m. — Leftover lasagna and unsalted Gatorade. Dinner of champions.
9:45 p.m. — AAAAAHHHHHHH! Water. Soap. Gashes on my feet from shoes. Gashes on my hips from race number belt. Gashes on the back of my neck. BURRRRRRRNNNNNNN!
10:30 p.m. — Back at the finish line in the dark. Aloe is panacea. As is grande java chip frappuccino from finish-line Starbuck's.
11:55 p.m. — Last official finisher. And I head back to the drawing board.

Fired up, ready to go

With a glass of water by my side, I offer my last screed before Ironman No. 5. Unlike the broken promises of brief posts prior, this one will be brief. I'm sleepy, but I wanted to make sure I was packed before I head to work tomorrow. The bike is all broken down and packed in its plastic case, the suitcase is loaded with whatever provisions I'll need for the next four days (except for my toothbrush, which I will use in a moment), and the transition bag is packed with my bike helmet, sandals, magazines, cell phone charger... you get the picture.

I'm not taking my computer, first and foremost because the bag gets heavy after a while. In addition to the laptop, there's the power cord, iPod, cell phone charger, plus all the other crap I listed for the transition bag above. And I still have to find a place for my wetsuit. Other than the bike, I don't want to check anything. Odd that I would check the one thing I can ill-afford to not have in Madison, while bringing in the cabin with me things easily replaced.

By the way, Northwest will make an extra $175 off the shipping of my bike. Unless I try to lie about what's in the box, or I'm vague about it ("It's sports equipment"), or they just forget to charge me (stop laughing). I get sick of hearing about how people dodge the airline fees with boxes identical to mine, but I'm not willing to tempt karma. I'll ship it home via UPS for around $70, and next year I can ship my bike well in advance of the race because I'll have TWO bikes, a spare to ride when the nice one is getting shipped.

Finally, I'll tell you three what I've been telling anyone who asks. I'm in better shape for this one than I was for any of the other four. I don't know if I've been eating better but I've been getting better quality sleep, and I've trained much smarter for this one. My PR is 11:42:40 (Florida, 2003), and anything slower than that will disappoint me to the point of suicide, but I won't act on those impulses because there will be more opportunities for me to get better.

P.S.: There's coverage at the above link, or at UniversalSports.com. I'm No. 797, which likely will be a Boeing number in 10-15 years. Now I need Boeing or Airbus or someone else to get me to the damned race.

Birthday set: A day late, but not the least bit short

This year I learned about the birthday set, a piece of swimming lore that has the potential to be worse than a birthday spanking. It never came up when I was a high school swimmer, though there was no lack of teammates with birthdays in season.

I've heard two different versions of the birthday set. Pro triathlete Hillary Biscay, who swam collegiately at Southern Cal, described a workout over the summer on the occasion of her 30th, where she did 100x100 — for you non-swimmers, that's 100 swims of 100 yards apiece, separated by a rest interval of some kind — and called it her birthday set.

But on Slowtwitch I read more than once that the birthday set was yearsx100. What to do?

Well, considering I have Ironman Wisconsin in 10 days, I didn't think it would be a good idea to double my longest swim workout of the year with 10,000 yards and thus unravel my rotator cuffs. So I decided on 36x100 on approximately 2 minutes, meaning I start another swim every 2 minutes. That interval was cake as I did the freestyle swims and pulls in 1:20-1:25. I threw some kinks into it with some IM, some kick, a couple of them backstroke, and one of them breaststroke. On some of the freestyle I varied my pace by length and on others I just cruised.

I thought I was going to write something profound for each one, remembering how I changed it up with each 100, but that didn't happen. Not that the workout was drudgery; I love being in the pool. But in a somehow appropriate challenge to the day, the nosepiece for my goggles broke after the first five intervals, so I got my alternate pair of goggles. They too broke. I MacGuyvered a solution by tying together two pieces of the broken nose straps and went on about my business, but it's somewhat symbolic because I don't think I've had to replace chlorine-worn nosepieces since 2004. All good things must come to pass.

I think the 100x100 is from elite high school and college programs, because swimmers at that age can't even challenge themselves with yearsx100. I mean, we did 30x100 during a practice my senior year, and not that it wasn't a challenge because of the steep intervals (1:30, 1:25, 1:20 by 10s), but the average high school kid turning 17 wouldn't be challenged by 17x100, unless he or she did them all butterfly. Or underwater.

My excuse for not challenging myself further today is my A-plus race sitting 10 days away. This is why you don't cram for exams the night before — you only end up hurting yourself. Maybe I'll try 100x100 next year when I'm between Ironmans, or during the "offseason," when I have nothing to lose.

Whoa, 10 days. I'm a single-digit midget as of midnight. Better get some rest...

Taper time!

People have reported feeling irritable, tired, hungry and generally crappy after the reduction in training in anticipation of a big event. I've never felt that way during my tapers, mostly because my tapers end up feeling more like stopping training — I blow off a few workouts for one reason or another, continue with a reduction in volume on the workouts I do, and call it good. Oh yeah, I continue eating as normal, thinking my body still is used to working like a coal-fired locomotive and burning calories faster than I replace them. Sound about right?

Further, I'm already starting to pack for my September 9 departure. The plane leaves at 6:30 a.m. September 10, but I'm crashing at a hotel in Aurora, Colo., the night before so I don't have to leave Laramie at 3 a.m. to make my flight. After my 59-mile ride today I took the big Polar bottles off my bike frame and tossed them in the sink. Immediately I realized I won't need them again until the race September 13. Same with the aerodrink thing between my handlebars. I took that off and set it aside, ready for its interminable journey in the big bike box. The list of things I won't need until race day promises to get longer as the week goes on.

Two weekends ago I took an aborted Saturday bike ride, then muddled through a five-hour ride on Sunday. Last weekend I was in Illinois for a wedding, and the morning of the ceremony I ran 20 miles along the Des Plaines River Trail in Lake County. The rides were crap but last week's run was far and away the best long run I've ever had in training for anything. Part of it was because I ran for an hour before getting in the car and looking for another access point, part of it was an abundance of oxygen, part of it was the trail being a hard-packed dirt surface, which beats the hell out of the concrete Laramie River Greenbelt. Nonetheless, I had a good run and wasn't even sore that night, so I had no excuse not to dance a bit (which might or might not have been the reason I went home alone).

The three-week taper is a staple with me, ever since high school. My senior year, the swim team had a collectively shitty conference meet two weeks before sections (the state qualifier). There always was that two-week break and we used to taper for the entire two weeks. Not this time. We showed up for practice and were shocked to see a 7,000-yard workout. Now my coach believed in quality over quantity, so we rarely topped 5,000 yards. Of course that 5,000-yard workout would go down in an hour-and-a-half so we knew how to hurt. That week after conference, coach didn't say a whole lot to us; he just posted the workout and went to his office, and we were left to our own devices. We swam 40,000 yards that week, topped off by 10,000 yards on Friday (including a set of 30x100, which we'd heard about at a meet earlier in the year). The next week, we swam 5,000 on Monday, 3,500 on Tuesday, 2,500 on Wednesday, starts, turns and sprints at the section meet pool across town on Thursday, then section prelims on Friday. Everybody on the team set PRs over the weekend, and we even qualified a couple of guys for the state meet. I know I had the meet of my life, so to this day I don't taper for more than three weeks because I feel like one more down week will compromise my fitness.

So I'm not concerned about my volume. I only did two five-hour rides and one three-hour run, which is the least I've done in any Ironman training cycle; normally you want four or five rides and two runs of the aforementioned lengths. Since this is my fifth time through this, I decided to go shorter and add some intensity. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I put my training plan on a spreadsheet and tried to keep up with it over the past 12 weeks. I missed more workouts than I'd planned, and altered the plan to suit my life, so much so that I have the original training plan in one spreadsheet and what I actually did on another spreadsheet. Quite striking.

In my concession to being silly during the taper, I've shaved my legs and grown a gnarly, two-inch goatee. OK, that's not entirely true. Rewind to the first race of the year, the Greeley Triathlon. With a pool swim and a strong swimming base (i.e., I was a competitive swimmer and can beat more than 75 percent of any triathlon field in the water), I figured I'd push the advantage as far as I could. Armed with Gillette Edge gel, one of my Sensor Excel razors, and two bottles of Rolling Rock, I smoothed out in a big way. It took 45 minutes because the forest on my legs necessitated multiple blades. I re-shaved a couple of times over the summer (to coincide with swims that wouldn't require a wetsuit), and did so again last week, this time with a Venus Embrace girly razor after my friend Kim told me the Gillette disposable girly razors would carve my legs like a Thanksgiving turkey. So yeah, I'm nice and somewhat smooth now, and I'll mow the lawn again the night before Ironman.

To understand how big a step this is, you need to know I've long thought it was pointless for men to shave while doing triathlons. This is notwithstanding a couple of skin-shearing bike mishaps, which cyclists and triathletes alike say is a compelling reason to stay smooth. Still, I've long maintained that my three biggest vices are Pepsi, beer, and hairy legs, and when the study comes out identifying those as my limiters, I'll give up two of them. All it took was feeling like an eel at the Greeley Municipal Pool for me to get on the sheer bandwagon. I feel fast, period.

The goatee, which probably cancels out any aerodynamic advantage of my shaved legs, is something I've done before three of my previous four Ironmans. It's kind of a point of focus, like a hockey player's playoff beard. Actually, it looks more like St. Louis Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin, only not as huge. Along with the leg hair, I might shave it off the night before the race, since I'd rather gunk up a hotel bathroom sink than my own. Or I might continue on with it as a point of focus, since I seem to need focus in the later stages of races.

Finally, I think I'm eating enough. Possibly. Maybe. I went with the extra salt in my Gatorade and it tastes... tolerable. It's a teaspoon of salt in each 24-ounce bike bottle of the stuff. My mom reminds me I grew up in a house where the head cook used NO salt in her cooking, so if I eat (or drink) something very salty, it's very obvious. As for what it'll do my insides, this is one of those things where I'll only know for sure in Madison, when I get off the bike and I have to run a marathon. Will I still feel like taking a nap in the air-conditioned ballroom at the Monona Terrace Convention Center? Or will I charge out the door ready to beat the sunset and set a PR?

Stay tuned. It could get interesting.

Call me Mr. Sodium Depleted: 5430 Triathlon

When you look at the smorgasbord of maladies afflicting the majority of obese people in the U.S., it's hard to believe someone can not only grow up in this society with a deficiency of sodium, but live with a history of heart disease in the family. Somehow, I've succeeded. The 5430 Triathlon (so named for Boulder's altitude) bore that out for me quite nicely.

The day before the race I ran a few errands and spent as little time at a prerace expo as I ever have; I guess after 30-plus races over 21 years I don't "do" race expos anymore. Plus, I didn't want to spend any more time in the atomic Boulder sun than I had to so I got my packet, made sure all the numbers matched and got out of there. I stopped by my friend Jen's condo to make sure I remembered where it was, then headed off to Loveland to get a suit for next week's wedding in Illinois. Once that transaction was taken care of, I headed back to Boulder, where Jen had left me the key to her place; she was off for a motorcycle road trip with her dad.

Through all this, I managed to not have lunch. In other weeks I'd pack a PB&Honey sandwich, some chips, some cookies and a piece of fruit. Didn't happen. Shame on me. I managed to drink quite a bit of ice (splashed with Pepsi) and munched on these really good focaccia bread sticks, while eating a banana and a couple of cookies. That wasn't enough. That night I had my salad and an organic frozen meal with several glasses of water, which might have been my folly.

The next morning, I stuck with the usual — bagel, banana, Clif Bar, 32 ounces of Gatorade. Sometimes I have water if there's a drive to the venue but since I had so much on Saturday I stuck with Fierce Grape Gatorade. Got to the Reservoir with no problem, set up my transition, got written on, jogged a warmup, sunscreened (thus wiping out the number on my arm), used the restroom, and struggled into my wetsuit. I missed the pro start while standing in line for one more pee, but I still had plenty of time to make my wave, if not get into my neoprene sausage casing properly.

For once I seeded myself in the middle of things in the swim. I knew I could get to the inside line behind all the fast dudes because I heard people talking about how shitty their swims were (a rant from an ex-swimmer for another time), so I prepared for a little rubbing. After the start I kicked like mad and stroked hard, and then found my rhythm, though no feet to help me along. The only time I had any contact with anything other than buoys was when I overtook swimmers from previous waves, and even then it was nothing more than a gentle nudge or a paw at the feet. When I came out of the water my watch said 32 minutes and something (Yet again, the run to the transition area was part of the official swim split), so I was disappointed. I was even more disappointed that I got my right arm stuck in the wetsuit and had to put my foot on it to pull the arm out. Ultimately I freed myself and went on my merry way.

The plan for the bike was to keep things comfortably hard and then give it all I had on the run. Comfortably hard on this day was spinning up the false flats in the first five miles and then coasting on the downhills while crushing the inclines. The roads of Boulder County are in perfect shape, though I later heard some grumbling about the cracks in the shoulder. They need to ride Wyoming 230 with me while dodging the inch-wide crevasses that threaten to take your spine out of alignment, so it was nice to not have to look up as much; I could, in theory, just put my head down and go.

The fueling plan was to take Gatorade on the odds (10, 30, 50 minutes) and water on the evens (20, 40, 60 minutes), with a gel at the top of every hour. I followed that plan to the letter and managed to pee at the second aid station on the bike, around 40 miles in. Problem was my diet and my race fuel didn't put enough salt in my stomach. Salt helps the absorption of electrolytes and endurance athletes generally do whatever they can to take on salt — salt their Gatorade, take salt pills, eat pretzels or tortilla chips. Gatorade Endurance Formula, which is what Ironman races have on course, is fortified with salt so it's worked well when I've taken it in. The weak Gatorade you get in stores does not have that, and here I was, trying to drink 48 ounces of the stuff during a 2:39 ride.

I ended up drinking 36 ounces of it, plus about 50 ounces of water, plus two gels, which I thought would be sufficient to fuel eight-minute miles on the run. Consider that this is the Boulder Reservoir, a place where there's no shade once you get away from the parking lot. I heard the announcer mention Joanna Zeiger (the reigning half-Ironman world champ who lives in Boulder) running past the finish line for her second run lap, so I was surprised to see her lying face-down in front of a car along the run path. Considering how I react to heat, I immediately assumed that was the cause of her malaise (she actually dropped out because of vertigo-related symptoms) and adjusted my attitude accordingly.

I did fine for a couple miles, then I felt... tired. I had to pee again at about 3 miles, and I never recovered from that potty stop (In advance, it was seven hours before I used the bathroom again, notwithstanding pounding water and Pepsi in huge doses while having lunch with friends later). I felt like I wanted to take a nap, then finish the run later. The fueling plan for the run was water out of transition and at the even miles, Gatorade elsewhere (they had Endurance Formula), gels at 4, 8 and 12. The gel at 4 went down like a brick so I scrapped the gels for the rest of the run — probably not a good idea. No amount of Gatorade, water over my head, or ice down my shorts helped. what I had taken was no collecting in my stomach and sloshing around.

I walked a lot of the run, for which my split was 2:04. Total time was 5:23, and all I wanted to do was eat a lot and go to sleep. Doubly frustrating was that the weather shook down perfectly. There was little wind and aside from the relentless sun, no element of heat whatsoever, a "no-excuses day" as one story on the Bolder Boulder said in May. Both the men's and women's course records went down, and the times were crazy fast all the way around, meaning I should have had a personal best were it not for my crappy fueling plan and generally weak state of mind.

To give you an idea of how screwed I was, the clock read 4:35 when I passed the finish line. That clocked started with the pros at 6:30 a.m., and my wave was 20 minutes later. For some reason I thought to add 20 minutes to get my running time, and it never occurred to me to subtract. While thinking 4:55 had elapsed (I'd long since stopped looking at my watch, not even for the heart rate data) I again adjusted my mentality accordingly, and not for the better. If I can't do a simple math problem like that, I need to change the fueling plan, and possibly my diet.

So I consulted with my friend Gail, a triathlon coach in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Our chat yielded a diagnosis of sodium deficiency and a prescription of a teaspoon of salt in each of my 24-ounce bottles of Gatorade, plus some extra salt on the food I eat every day. I've always wondered how minor the wall was between me and some decent races, so we'll find out in the next few weeks if I was just a couple grains of salt away from being better.

• I thought the better of stalking two-time defending Ironman world champion Chrissie Wellington. "Hi, I'm a big fan of your work, I think you're pretty keen, I'd apply for whatever position (hee hee) is open in your organization, and you beat me by an hour and fifteen minutes today." She lost by less than two minutes anyway, to yet another world champion in the field, reigning off-road world champ and fellow lymie Julie Dibens, so I'm not sure how amenable she'd have been to some advances — certainly not advances as lame as those.

OT: End of some eras

A friend observed it's been a bad last 12 months for pop-culture icons. Well, it's been a bad year for icons period. Some big names have checked out to the great klieg lights in the sky.

And some have meant more to me than others...

• Anyone who asked Paul Newman his favorite role was shocked at the answer. Was it the alcoholic lawyer in "The Verdict?" Was it Butch Cassidy opposite Robert Redford's Sundance Kid? How about Brick in the equally iconic play-turned-movie "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?" Or maybe the role that earned him his one Academy Award — Fast Eddie Felson in "The Color of Money?" No, no, no, and no. It was the alcoholic, lecherous, profane hockey player-coach Reg Dunlop in "Slap Shot." He learned to skate for the role, and movie critics and sports writers could easily get him off the topic at hand by quoting Maxim Magazine's Ultimate Guy Movie. "Slap Shot" is in my top ten, and one of the greatest actors of all time made it worthwhile.

• No, Walter Cronkite didn't make me want to do journalism. My family never watched an evening news show, and Cronkite retired when I was 7. So when I headed out into the cold, cruel world of journalism in 1996, my parents sent me with a copy of his autobiography. I learned that his way was how it was done. Early on in his career, when he was working at the now-defunct Houston Post, he was the go-to guy when things were breaking on deadline. Of the copy he filed he said, "It wasn't literature but it was fast, and it was accurate." It's a lesson long since lost to the immediacy of the internet, the accuracy part, anyway. And his is a model to which all of us purveyors of information should strive.

• Obviously, I wasn't around for the Beatles. But I imagine the hysteria over Michael Jackson called to mind the frenzy the Fab Four caused when they struck their first chords. My sister had the "Thriller" record, which we played as loud as we could stand during the summer of 1983, right before she headed off to college. Her little brother adored her and if she grooved to MJ, so did he. So thanks, MJ, for showing me how little rhythm I really had early on.

• My bedtime didn't allow me to stay up for "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson very often, but when I did, Johnny's sidekick, Ed McMahon, drew as much of my attention as Johnny himself, whether he was laughing on cue at Johnny's jokes or — well, that's pretty much what he did, eh? There also was the draw of dapper bandleader Doc Severinson, but that's another story. Ed big voice also provided the soundtrack to "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes," which could also have been a journalistic influence for me; where else could you see usually polished and composed celebrities come completely unglued? Ed, please laugh when I fail at getting St. Peter to approve me.

• Of all these icons to leave this mortal coil, I don't think any of them meant as much to me — nor did their death hit me as hard — as John Hughes, for the things he brought to my life.

I bring up my sister Deb again. She was eight years older than me, so to put things in perspective, I was 10 years old the last time she lived at home. As years went by, it seemed like she subconsciously didn't accept that her little brother was going up, so occasionally we butted heads. You know where we found common ground? The brilliance of John Hughes' movies.

Our family took epic car trips where sometimes things deviated from plan, so we guffawed at "National Lampoon's Vacation." Again, in the case of traveling I've seen some crazy shit happen so we both nodded knowingly the first time we saw "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" together. I think I woke up hung over from her wedding party and said "The Donger need food," and she laughed. Hughes' movies defined the 1980s for my sisters and I, though I needed them more with Deb to bridge that eight-year gap.

His movies also seemed to separate our family from others. Deb went to see "Vacation" close to its nationwide opening in the theatre with a group of friends. She came back and said she was the only one in tears from laughter. Her friends chuckled but Deb said it would have been nice if the projectionist could have stopped so she could compose herself, she laughed so hard. The reason? No one else's family took epic vacations like we did. Years later, when I saw it, I did have to stop the DVD to pull it together.

I saw "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" in the theatre on the second run, with a group of friends. Mind you, I was 13 at the time but got into that R movie because the owner just never checked. Same thing happened. I was in hysterics but my friends didn't really get it. The reason? Because I'd logged more travel miles at 13 than the rest of the group combined, and I'd already seen late planes, rental cars not being there, people getting bumped, finding alternate modes of transit, etc.

Point being, regardless of whether the movies age well (Vacation and Planes are two prime examples of timeless movies), Hughes got it right. Anyone who has traveled at the holidays, anyone who has taken a family vacation by car, anyone who has been in high school can relate to the things he put on screen. It's a stretch to say he had his finger on the pulse of the human condition, but he was close.

By the way, Deb's friend Sue was in "Sixteen Candles." She attended Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, Illinois, where Hughes matriculated, and where he filmed all of his high school scenes. Sue was in the drama club so she was an extra in the school dance scene, right there over Molly's shoulder. Anyway, Deb came home for Christmas one year while she was at college and demanded that we rent "Candles." She popped in the tape, grabbed the remote, and slow-motioned the scenes from the dance, pointing out Sue dancing in the high school gym, blurry behind the movie's stars.

Also, Sue told me she served time in the breakfast club. Of course, she never told her parents what it really was, so they thought it was an extracurricular she was doing to pad her résumé for colleges.

OK, one more story. The Quad-City Times did its all-star teams for the 2007-08 basketball season by designing movie posters with the starting five. For the boys, designer Nate Bloomquist did a "Goodfellas" knockoff, and for the girls, "The Breakfast Club." One of the girls, a 16-year-old sophomore who wouldn't have been a glimmer in her father's eye when "Club" came out, quoted chapter-and-verse the "Eat my shorts" confrontation between Bender and Principal Vernon — while our cameras rolled, recording the occasion for online use. Someone else want to say these movies don't age well?

Don't eat this at home

One of the perks of participating in endurance athletics is being able to eat a lot. I won't say "whatever you want" because you still have to be smart about what you eat, but the stomach turns into a coal-burning stove once you start burning calories by the thousands. Naturally, I don't buy in to the "carbs are evil" school because carbohydrates are energy for me, and while my brother-in-law did two Ironmans on the South Beach Diet, a diet devoid of or reduced in carbs won't work for most endurance athletes.

That said, consider the 101-mile ride I did on Sunday. I ate a bowl of Cheerios before I headed out, and that was burned up in the first 40 miles. After an out-and-back to the north, I headed west, and by the time I made the turn I was going straight into a 20 mph wind. The plan was to ride to mile marker 29 along Wyoming 130, aka Snowy Range Road. That marker is a couple miles west of Centennial, a wide spot in the road with four or five bars, two gas stations, one church and one school. Starting at marker 27, the road goes up at an 8 percent grade, so when I got there, not only was I fighting gusting winds I was fighting gravity.

After two stops to catch my breath on the way up, I turned around at the marker, prepared for a screaming descent. The only screaming that happened was me, uttering 100-decibel expletives and prayers as I enjoyed a tailwind, then turned to the right to make a crosswind, and held on for dear life as I did a death wobble at 35 mph. I stopped again to steady myself before I pointed the bike back toward town.

When I got home and sat down to eat, I looked at my heart-rate monitor to see that I'd burned 3,466 calories. As I've mentioned before, the American Medical Association recommends 2,000-2,500 calories a day for an average adult, so I burned a day-and-a-half's worth of calories. And so I set about replacing them...

During the ride I had three Carb-Boom gels (apple cinnamon), 50 ounces Gatorade, 74 ounces water
Afterward I had...
Three more bowls of Cheerios, with a teaspoon of sugar on each and 1 percent milk
One banana
6 ounces of apple juice, plus multi-vitamin
(Break for shower, because my nether regions hurt)
One glass, six ounces Pepsi, eight ounces ice
Peanut butter and honey on wheat
A couple handfuls of tortilla chips
Two kosher dill pickles
Some 1 percent cottage cheese
Two chocolate chip cookies
(Break to call my parents, walk to store to get more groceries and newspaper, read paper, clip coupons, watch Cubs)
Four leftover pancakes with syrup
One glass of water
One salad with arugula, mushrooms and four cherry tomatoes
Pepperoni pizza
One glass, six ounces Pepsi, eight ounces ice
One bottle Rolling Rock
Two chocolate chip cookies
Two chocolate fudge Pop-Tarts

It was like tossing toothpicks on a campfire.