Last post before the ironman...

It's 4AM CST (2AM PST) which means many are probably just coming back from the halloween festivities. Wish I could've joined in the fun this year. Unfortunately, P and G have their own "fun" to attend to today.

Before I get to this thing, I just wanted to send out a quick thanks to everyone for all the great support and wishes!!! It's been an awesome journey and couldn't have done it w/o everyone. I'll definitely be thinking of you all when I need that extra little motivation throughout the day (and i'm sure it'll happen many times!)

I'll see everyone on the flip side :). It's RAAAAACCCCCEEEEE TIME!!!!

IronmanLive Tracking

Follow PG of Team MPG as they suffer for an entire day!!! How you might ask? There's a handy live tracking system called ironman live available at the following link:

Ironman Website

Simply goto that site, then click on the "Live Race Coverage" link in the middle of the page. The race officially starts at 7AM CST, and hoping to finish somewhere in the 7PM - 9PM range.

Paul Manwell - #354
Gregory Lou - #212

Who needs a costume when you have a...

WETSUIT!!!

Happy Halloween!!! This calls for a quick Halloween joke!

Q: Why don't skeletons ever go out?

A: Because they don't have anyBODY to go out with!

So, it's the last day before the race. Taking the bikes out for a quick spin, followed by a short run to loosen up the legs. Then it's get all our race logistics out of the way, pick up my sis from the airport, pasta dinner, then off the feet till bedtime!

AAAHHHH JELLYFISH!!!

Just got back from the morning swim, some quick observations:

1. The gulf of mexico water is AMAZING. First off it's clear. Aside from swimming in a pool, I don't remember a time where I've ever seen my hands while swimming in the water. Second, the water temp is PERFECT. Ranges from about 70-73. Clear and warm, two things the SF Bay area water is absolutely NOT. So in conclusion, it's perfect, except for one thing...(see observation #5)

2. My left hamstring is a little tight. Not sure why, but now I smell like an old man now w/ bengay doing its thing.

3. Went by the massage tent, definitely getting one of those after the race.

4. P still does not know how to swim straight. It's actually harder than it sounds as I used to have a pretty nasty tendency to drift left (it's easy in a pool cause of the lines at the bottom).

5. JELLYFISH!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! I saw not 1, not 2, but THREE. And we swam probably 2/3 of a mile or so. Did a little research and I THINK the little buggers are called cannonball jellyfish. I've never been stung by a jellyfish, but i'm am genuinely scared. New swim strategy - Find someone to swim behind and hope the jelly gets them before me! This was the one big thing I was worried about on the swim. And I wasn't sure if ignorance is bliss is better (ie not being able to see the jellyfish I've bumped into in SF), or if I want to see it coming. The picture above is what they look like.

anyone ever been stung by a jellyfish before???

Going to swim in the gulf

Up early today (4:30AM PST, 6:30AM local time). It's FREEZING, temps say around mid 40's! But no pain, no gain, and we need to get out and give the water a shot and make sure our wetsuits still work. Here's a quick shot at sunrise from the view of our 22nd floor condo along the gulf

Hopefully we don't run into any jellyfish today!!!


T-minus 48+ hours till the race starts!!!

Day 2 Recap!

Sitting in bed right now, after a decently long and busy first full day here in Panama City. We started the day w/ a trip over to the ironman village to register and pick up our bikes. For those who don't want to read the whole story, and just want the quick hits, here are a few very distinct things that have become apparent after today:

1. I'm reasonably sure I have the ghetto-est bike here. Not that mine is some beach cruiser or cheap 10 speed bike, but seriously I have NEVER seen so many nice bikes in one place before. For those not in the know, triathletes can easily spend $3000-$5000 on their bike setups, many often getting up closer to $10000!!! In comparison, my bike was about $850. In fact some people's WHEELS cost more than my bike. And I don't even mean both wheels! Oh well, it's usually more about the indian than the arrow, right? (when in doubt, always turn to the good old golf words of wisdom) I saw some of the nicest bikes from Trek, Specialized, Cervelo, etc, etc. Mine is a Scattante. Most people ask what brand is that? Sounds exotic doesn't it? I often illustrate w/ a simple SAT analogy. Kirkland is to Costco as Scattante is to Performance Bike (where Performance bike is the Costco of bike shops). P likes to rag on it all the time, but I think he's just jealous cause my bike is more ghetto than his ;).

2. Only in Panama City will you find 3 Waffle Houses within a mile of each other.

3. Most of the participants seem older than us. Not quite sure what to think of this yet.

4. We've got LOTS of bags to prepare for this race (a post on this in the future).

5. The bike course is FLAT.

6. We wore our Team MPG shirts for the first time. No compliments :(.

Now for the day recap:

Registration was nothing too out of the ordinary. Except they weigh you. You might ask, why? It's because at the end of the race (or at any point during the race), they will weigh you if you stop by a medical tent, and use that to help determine if you're OK to try and continue on. The train of thought being that if you lose a certain % of your body weight (usually from dehydration), then it might not be safe to continue. Here's P at registration looking tough:

After registration, it was a bit early to pick up our bikes, so we headed over to...THE WAFFLE HOUSE. Now i had never heard of it before getting here, but apparently it's quite popular in the south? We've seen some "interesting" things in Panama City so far, so the theme has become to take a picture at anything we'd probably only see here. So here's a pic of dad in front of the waffle house!
After waffle house, we headed back to the registration area to grab our bikes from TriBike Transport. Waited on line for a bit, but luckily our bikes made it here mostly in one piece, along w/ the gear bag we paid for.

After getting our bikes, it was back to the hotel to do some real work for P and G. Dad went to play golf. Then a bit later in the day, we took the bikes out for a quick ride, w/ a short run after. Then it was dinner time, a little baseball and basketball, then to the bed where i'm sitting right now writing this blog. Will try to post some pics tomorrow, have some pretty cool ones.

Time to hit the sack, getting up early tomorrow to swim!

Panama City, FL...live, work, play...do an ironman?

First post from Panama City!!! In case anyone's never been to Panama City airport, and is dying to see what it looks like, here it is:

We arrived in Panama City last night around 9PM tonight. I had a flight from SFO -> ATL, then ATL -> PFN. The flights were pretty uneventful, except for the short pond hop from Atlanta to Panama City. Long story short, there were a couple of foreigners on the flight (who are both here for the ironman), sitting in seats 10C and 10D. Only problem is my ticket is 10D. So I get to my seat, and they act like nothing is wrong that they're sitting together, even though it's not their seat. In my infinite kindness, I say OK, and proceed to ask where their seats are. One guy says 9D and the other 7C. So NEITHER of them were in the right row. I let that pass to, and turns out 9D is only left open seat. When I get to the seat, there sat a guy who probably should've been required to pay for both (saying this in the nicest way possible). So I squeeze into my seat, then instantly get squished to the window by my neighbor. At least it's only a 1 hour flight i tell myself...

We get to the Panama City airport, and it's tiny. Meet up w/ dad, airline lost his golf clubs, the usual. Also see a bunch of other ironman people wandering around, and they said the airlines have been behind on the big luggage cause of all the people shipping bikes. So we grab the car, and dad will go back tomorrow to get the clubs.

Then Met up w/ P at the hotel, and after a little trouble getting to the room, we finally get up and get settled in. Will have some pictures tomorrow.

Time to hit the sack and get ready for the adventure known as registration tomorrow!

PS - Currently listening to Beach Boys "wouldn't it be nice" ;)

What's in a number?

North America Sports (the people who run the ironman) officially released our numbers for the race! So for an entire day, we will be nothing but a moving number.

P is #354
G is #212

Our numbers are pretty low considering there are 2000+ people in the race. As far as I can tell, they start with men, and assign numbers as you go up the age groups, followed by women in the same order (a bit of a weird process if you ask me). I know for a FACT these numbers cannot be based on projected times or performance, as I can say w/ 219841% certainty that neither of us will be finishing in the top 10-15% :).

If anyone knows someone else doing the race (or any ironman), and want to look them up, you can go find them here:

Participant List

This is my last post from SF!!! Leaving for Panama City (connecting through ATL), and hopefully meeting up w/ dad and P later tonight.

Seems like a good opportunity to throw in a little john denver. "I'm leavin, on a jet plane, don't know when i'll be back again (or if i survive the race!)..."

Pre-Race Playlist

Less than a week to go!!! Had a last swim in Aquatic Park with P this morning (though not very long as the water has gotten COLD in the bay!). Also started packing for the trip, as we leave for Panama City (aka the redneck riviera) tomorrow. As I came across my ipod, I started thinking about the pre-race playlist. This is what I've got so far (I know, very random, but they get me moving):

Chris Lake - Carry Me Away
Coldplay - Viva la Vida
The Outfield - Your Love (quite possibly the best 80's song ever)
Journey - Don't Stop Believing (strong competition)
Pink - So What
U2 - Beautiful Day
Jordin Sparks - One Step at a Time (a little cheesy, but need to keep telling myself this during the run)
Mr. Brightside (Lindbergh Palace Remix)
Chris Brown - Forever (Cahill Remix)

Anyone else have any favorite "get pumped" songs to recommend?

Also, congrats to Melinda and Ben for finishing the Great Floridian Ironman this past weekend!!! You guys did GREAT!!!

The Tightest Band you never knew existed...

Unfortunately I'm not talking about a rockband...

So when I originally started this blog, one of my faithful readers expressed the recurring opinion that I'm an idiot for doing an ironman (an opinion to which i'm starting to agree with =P). They also expressed interest in doing a triathlon one day, except for some persistent knee pain. More specifically pain on the outside of the knee.

Throwing on my "MD" hat for a second, I suggested that they might have a tight IT Band. What the heck is an IT band you might ask? Is it like an information technology band? (sorry, lame attempt at a geek joke). IT band actually stands for Iliotibial band, and luckily we have kosmix's righthealth to provide even more detail :)

Iliotibial Band

For those who do not like to click through my intentional product promoting links, the IT band is a thick band of "stuff" that runs down the outside of your leg to provide stability for the quads and hamstrings. Runners are notorious for having very tight IT bands from all that pounding on the pavement. I am a perfect example of that stereotype, as I probably have the tighest IT bands of anyone you know =(.

So what's a person to do w/ tight IT bands? One thing is stretching, checkout the kosmix page above for some stretching recommendations. And the other key component is something called...drum roll please...

THE FOAM ROLLER

Anyone who has used one of these things before knows that it's one of those few things in life that can be both your best friend, and your worst enemy. Using one of these is a form of "self massage" as it uses your body weight to put pressure and loosen the area. This combination, along with a good stretch routine has worked WONDERS for me. And whenever I hear anyone complaining about outer knee or upper leg problems, I usually recommend starting with one of these.

Is anyone else part of the "my best friend is a foam roller" club?

Here's a picture of mine, think I paid like $18 for it at sports basement. I call mine rolling thunder. haha, j/k.

How do you ship a bike?

Yet another concern on most people's mind when they do any kind of race is the logistics. Not just how to get there, where to stay, or how to get around, but also all the gear involved. Triathlons are especially annoying because there's so much equipment involved, the biggest ticket item being your bike. So how does one get a bike from SF to Florida with minimal risk of it getting damaged or lost somewhere in the process. The obvious choices are check it on the plane with you or ship it w/ UPS or something. The problem with the first option is I don't really trust airlines anymore with my luggage, and the second option makes me cringe because of all the videos you see of UPS workers throwing packages around like they're nothing. Luckily, i was able to avoid both of these options. How you might ask? A little service called TriBike Transport. Check out some more info here:

TriBike Transport

So the way this service works is you drop your bike at a partner sports store, then they TRUCK ship the bikes to the race. The best part is that the bikes are shipped ASSEMBLED. And since I am clearly not a great bike mechanic, that peace of mind was priceless. The full round trip deal costs $240, which might sound expensive at first, but when you factor in the cost to bring anything other than a backpack onto a plane these days, it's actually not too bad.

So P and G took a trip to sports basement on wed night and dropped our bikes off w/ the tribike people. Man was that a weird feeling. It almost felt like I was dropping a dog off at doggy daycare, or dropping a kid off at school (only one of which I have actual experience). The employees quickly grabbed our stuff and whisked it away to the back room and now we just have to trust that our bikes will meet us on the other side of the country. But the scariest part is that now the race feels REALLY close.

T-minus 9 days till the race!!!

Ever seen the start of an Ironman?

All triathlon races begin with the swim, and most races send participants out in waves. For example there will be age groups, and they'll be sent out every 5-10 minutes to create a little separation. Usually these groups are up to about 100 people per wave. However one thing that makes an ironman unique, is that it's a mass start. Imagine this, 2000+ people all swimming towards the same buoys. It's often described as a "human washing machine" because of all the moving arms, legs and water. Many also consider the start of an ironman race a full contact sport where getting bumped, scratched, and kicked in the face is the norm. I've definitely taken my share of elbows and feet to the face, but I can't say any of the races I've done in the past have such large mass starts...so I decided to check out good old youtube for some videos of what's to come. I found a couple of shorts showing the start of the 2006 and 2007 ironman florida races. Check them out...crazy people =P.

Team MPG Pre-Race Meal

With M1 leaving for Florida in 2 days, a pre-race send off meal was in order. We were originally thinking of going w/ pasta carbo loading, but that sounded kind of boring so we decided to go w/ Shanghai Dumpling King. For anyone who lives in SF, the locals know the best chinese food is found out in the Richmond, and this place is no exception. I probably eat here at least a couple times a month. And for more street cred, P becomes a "vegetarian" when we go here (the soup dumplings have pork in them).

It was a great meal, we ate like there was no tomorrow (crossed the $20/person threshold which means you've eaten a LOT at this place) and seems like everyone is ready to go for their race. At least we hope so ;). Lastly here's a lame attempt at flashing MPG gang symbols:

LAST major workout before the race!

So this weekend was the time that everyone who has ever done any type of endurance race can appreciate the most...the last long workout weekend!!! Even though it's technically taper time, the detail that's often missed is that you're only supposed to taper 10-20% per week, which means it's still a pretty gosh golly darn long workout (reference anyone?).

Today was another good opportunity to try out the nutrition plan one last time before the big race. It was just PG of Team MPG and the workout was a 1 mile swim/60 mile bike/14 mile run (approx 1/2 ironman distance). This was a bit of a sad workout because we ship our bikes to Florida on wed, so this it the last time it'll be ridden in SF till the race! Anyways, I got over that REAL quick, but I was still a bit paranoid about food intake, so I focused on my "eat something solid every 45-60 minutes" plan on the bike then be gellin' like a felon on the run (second reference anyone?). Here was the total workout food count:

pre-workout:
16 oz Safeway Plain Yogurt - 280 Calories
1 cup Quaker Natural Granola (this stuff is awesome) - 420 Calories
1 Sara Lee plain bagel - 270 Calories
2 tbsp Skippy Super Chunk Extra Crunch Peanut Butter - 190 Calories
1 tbsp Welch's squeezeable concord grape jelly - 50 Calories
20 oz Gatorade - 130 Calories

swim:
2.6314 gulps of SF bay water - gross

T1:
1 strawberry pomegranate Odwalla Bar - 220 Calories

bike:
1 pack Sharkies Organic Energy Sport Chews - 140 Calories
1 pack Strawberry Clif Bloks - 200 Calories
1 package Nabisco fig newtons - 200 Calories
1 Sara Lee plain bagel - 270 Calories
2 tbsp Skippy Super Chunk Extra Crunch Peanut Butter - 190 Calories
1 tbsp Welch's squeezeable concord grape jelly - 50 Calories
48 oz Gatorade - 390 Calories
20 oz Clif Shot "Lemonade" Electrolyte Drink - 160 Calories

T2:
1 strawberry pomegranate Odwalla Bar - 220 Calories
1 Clif Shot Strawberry energy gels - 100 Calories

run:
3 Clif Shot "Razz" energy gels - 300 Calories

Total = 3780 Calories. And it seems like the plan worked again! The scariest part is that the real race will be about 2x longer than this, so does that mean I'll have to eat 2x the amount of food? Will have to wait till raceday to find out :).

T-minus 2 weeks and counting!!!

Team MPG+

Just realized the other day that I forgot to mention a few other team members! They're definitely part of Team MPG...only we met them after the official name was formed...and their names don't being with M...P... or G.

Team MPG+B - Ben - Great Floridian Ironman - October 25, 2008
Team MPG+S - Suzy - Beach2Battleship Ironman - November 1, 2008
Team MPG+T - Tim - Beach2Battleship Ironman - November 1, 2008

Somehow we all ended up in the same SFTriClub, same spin class, on the same day, on the same side of the room, rode our bikes through the same rainstorm, and are all equally stupid for deciding to do an ironman. I guess birds of a feather do flock together, right?

Good luck in your races everyone!!!

You WILL do this

Variety is the spice of life

In my previous post "Ironman by the numbers", I gathered some rough numbers on how many calories get burned over the course of the race. That number came out to about 12,500 calories. So how do you deal w/ losing all that energy? Obviously it's virtually impossible to take in that many calories over the course of a day (unless you're Michael Phelps), especially if you're on the move the whole time.

Throughout this training process, nutrition has become one of my bigger worries for the race, as I will need to consume MUCH more food than I ever have during a race. So the problem boils down to needing to eat a lot of food (which of course I never object to), but the kicker is that you need to eat food that won't upset your stomach as you're moving. Usually that means eating products that begin w/ Clif or Power, but i've recently gotten pretty sick of them. This past weekend in the peak training workout, I decided to roll the dice and mix it up a little bit. The workout was an 85 mile bike + 20 mile run brick workout. I felt pretty good on the fitness side, but the greatest thing to come out of it was I ate a variety of food to keep me going, and no digestion problems! Here's the rundown:

pre-workout:
16 oz Safeway Plain Yogurt - 280 Calories
1 cup Quaker Natural Granola (this stuff is awesome) - 420 Calories
20 oz Gatorade - 130 Calories

During Bike:
1 pack Sharkies Organic Energy Sport Chews - 140 Calories
1 crunchy peanut butter Clif Bar - 250 Calories
1 strawberry pomegranate Odwalla Bar - 220 Calories
1 Sara Lee plain bagel - 270 Calories
2 tbsp Skippy Super Chunk Extra Crunch Peanut Butter - 190 Calories
1 tbsp Welch's squeezeable concord grape jelly - 50 Calories
1 package Nabisco fig newtons - 200 Calories
1 pack Sharkies Organic Energy Sport Chews - 140 Calories
48 oz Gatorade - 390 Calories
20 oz Clif Shot "Lemonade" Electrolyte Drink - 160 Calories

Transition:
1 strawberry pomegranate Odwalla Bar - 220 Calories
1 18 Rabbits Funky Figs and Cherries veritas granola bar (whatever that means?) - 220 Calories
20 oz Gatorade - 130 Calories

Run:
4 Clif Shot "Razz" energy gels - 400 Calories

All this came to a grand total of 3810 calories and overall I felt like i had enough nutrition in my system to keep me going! Now that the nutrition plan is set, and taper officially begins this week, bring on the ironman!!!

Countdown is at 18 days!!!

Team MPG!!!

Lots of people have asked if I've been training with anyone. The answer is Team MPG. I can run OK w/ an ipod by myself, but swimming and biking solo can get boring real quick. This is who makes up Team MPG:

M1 = Melinda - Great Floridian Ironman - October 25, 2008
M2 = Mary Anne - Ironman Arizona - November 23, 2008
P = Paul - Ironman Florida - November 1, 2008
G = Me

From spin class, to scarfing down In-N-Out AND McDonald's after loooooong weekend bike rides in napa, to the whirlpool/bumping into jellyfish/*running away from baby leopard sharks* while swimming in aquatic park, to the endless turns in the beacon pool, there's no way I could've done it w/o the team! Can't wait till the post-race celebration with everyone!

In the spirit of teamwork, it was decided that we needed some cheesy t-shirts. Here they are, customized for each person's race of course :).

What is an Ironman?

Have gotten a surprising amount of responses to the blog so far, so I guess I'll keep typing!

Quick post this time, and it's to address a question multiple people have asked me. The convo usually goes something like this, "Wow, ironman, that's cool...what is it again? Isn't he like a superhero?"

First the obligatory Kosmix Topic Page :)

Ironman Triathlon (I recommend watching the "Ironman Triathlon from the Inside Out" in the YouTube module)

To quickly summarize, an ironman is simply a specific distance triathlon. The main "types" of triathlons are sprint distance, olympic distance, half-ironman distance, and ironman.

The ironman was created by a naval commander named John Collins who was trying to figure out which athletes were in better condition: runners or swimmers. Then somehow they decided to just toss in the cyclists too and do a combination of races from each discipline in Hawaii (that were the distances used to this day).

After all that, the ironman consists of the following:

2.4 Mile (3.8 km) Swim
112 Mile (180 km) Bike
26.2 Mile (42 km) Run

= 140.6 total miles = one tough day

They have Ironman distance races all across the US and also internationally.

Countdown is now 21 days!!!

A Quick Kosmix Shout out

In a mostly unrelated post...I'm not sure if anyone has tried the links I've embedded in this blog so far, but if you did, and were wondering where these great links come from, I offer an answer.

The answer is a quick a shout out to Kosmix (the startup I work for). We create these things called topic pages in an effort to organize the web. They're great if you want to explore something on the web. There is a subtle, but very significant difference to finding something specific, which google would of course be the best for. Anyways, enough of the kool-aid talk, but do keep an eye out for them as they'll definitely be showing up in future postings =P. And let me know what you think of them!

If you'd like to check it out yourself, goto www.kosmix.com. Or for health, auto, travel related information, try www.righthealth.com, www.rightautos.com, www.righttrips.com.

Ironman by the numbers

A friend asked me this question the other day: "How many calories do you burn during the ironman?" I didn't really know the answer, all I know is that I eat more than my life's allocation of food starting with names like Clif or Power or Hammer during long workouts. Since I didn't have a concrete understanding, I decided to do a little research.

Ironman veterans have told me that nutrition is sometimes considered the sport's fourth "event". It's definitely much different than doing say a marathon, where you could probably get away with not eating anything for the few hours you're out there (not recommended but definitely possible). Here are some numbers that show why it's considered a fourth discipline:

1000-1500 - # of calories burned during the swim
5000-6000 - # of calories burned during the bike
4000-5000 - # of calories burned during the run

that's a grand total of up to 12,500 calories that get burned in one day! huh?!?!

To put this in perspective, 12,500 calories is roughly equivalent to:

18 In-N-Out Double Doubles
or
50 Clif Bars (pick your flavor)
or
25 Sprinkles Red Velvet Cupcakes
or
3 LARGE Giordano's deep dish chicago style pizzas
or
60 Krispy Kreme Donuts
or
5 days worth of burned calories for the average american male

Yikes!

First post of 2008

So I haven't exactly been keeping up to date all that well on this blog, but I figured since it's less than a month away, better late than never! Promise to keep it updated till raceday!

Long story short, training is coming along well, though I must say it's taken a bigger toll out of me than I could've even anticipated. There's definitely been some great stuff along the way, but it's also affected other parts of my life in ways I would've never hoped.

I'm definitely starting to feel the effects of some of the longest training days of my life, as I basically eat non-stop all day long (which i guess isn't the worst problem to have), can't ever seem to get enough sleep, and don't get to see friends/family nearly as much as I'd like. It's really brought me a new level of appreciation for people who do these things regularly. I suspect this will be both my debut and grand finale of ironman distance triathlons ;).

But let the official countdown begin, 23 days to go!!!