Internal Mono(b)log

I was visiting my folks yesterday for Mother’s Day. I love my folks and don’t see them near enough.

Anyhow. Soon after I got there, they asked me if I had seen my picture from the Toronto Marathon in the National Post.

!!!

Well, no I hadn’t, but here it is. That’s me at the bottom, in the forefront. Too bad it was a not great day for me otherwise but fun to make the national press

Ok…. yes it’s exciting that there’s a potentially new carbon fiber material out there that’s stronger and lighter and sustainable, but their 1st product:

The first product, called FXR (Front Xtended Range), is designed to be mounted in between aero bars and carry a Speedfil A2 bottle.

Weighs in at:

just 20 grams compared to competing systems weighing 25 grams

Karbon Speed launches all-new Flax Carbon Hydration Product Line for 2013 » Endurance Sportswire.

Now come on… 5 grams?  I really did laugh out loud.

Extending this small piece into the full size of a bike frame and I start getting a little excited.  Say there’s 100x the quantity of carbon fiber in a frame than this little prototype.  That’d be a savings of 500g – that’s pretty serious.

Outside running today in a few degrees below freezing, it occurred to me that I’ve mastered the snot rocket.  I don’t remember the last time is botched it and ended up wearing the effluent

For those of you who haven’t yet mastered this handy hanky-saving trick:

5 Steps to the Perfect Snot Rocket – Runner’s World | Runner’s World & Running Times.

Well this is a different spin on the “one and done”.

WTC Announces End Of Ironman NYC.

Can’t say I’m terribly surprised.

They could go just slighly upstate and have so much better of an event for a lot less cost (think Catskills Mountains).

In fewer than 7 days, assuming nothing goes terribly wrong, I will have heard the words “Rick Yazwinski, you… are.. an.. Ironman” for the 1st time in my life.  It’s all starting to get real.  I’m mid taper and my non-workout-inspired-angst is raising along with my desire to be excited and nervous.  I’m trying to keep all this rampant emotions in check and just focus on mechanical task completion.

• I have my race number from the site (1176).
• I’ve assembled my packing list.  I do this days ahead of time so I don’t forget things.
• I’ve built my race number holder for the bike and just need to get some longer bolts to attach it. (The Storck doesn’t really have a “good” place to attach a number, so I’ve made a bracket to attach under the Di2 battery holder.)
• I’m stretching a lot to keep flexible as muscles repair, strengthen and otherwise tighten up
• I’ve picked up 6 disposable water bottles that I’ll exchange on the bike ride (don’t want to ditch “clean bottles” or fancy souvenir bottles)
• And finally, I’m in the super-strict “race weight” diet stretch.  Super-clean eating, targeting zero deficit or excess.  No calories in after 9pm.

2 days of work and then I’m off for a week.  Wednesday will be a busy day: van pickup, packing, (hopefully none, but probably some) last minute pickups.  Thursday morning I hit the road for Tremblant. Hopefully I’ll leave early (6ish) and be there early afternoon.  I’m taking my laptop and my GoPro, so I’ll be doing some updates later in the week from on site.  My race-day nutrition plan has evolved since Panama and I’ll do an updated post on that here.

Weeeeee!

I Am The Motor | StomachOfAnger.

I’ll take a medium please if anyone wants to send one my way

Just do a whois on the domain for the address to ship to

Secret Summertime Santa… and… GO!

Gertie is, as you well know, my new bike.  I’ve never raced her before and as such, never had to put a race number on.

This evening while prepping to put her into the bike check tomorrow, I started pondering where to put the number…  this proved to be an issue.

There’s nowhere on the frame that a big race number fits well… So off to the dollar store I went and I have to say, I’m pretty happy with my MacGyver-ing™

• 2 flexible gel rulers (I was looking for hacksaw blades, but these work and have no risk of marring the frame or seatpost)
• some black electric tape
• a few zip ties

This will do for this event, but it has a few issues:

• the rulers, even taped together, are still a bit flexible
• the rulers are too wide (tall?) and impinge on the Di2 battery release track

I was thinking that the frame has a hole for a traditional brake set and so utilizing that and maybe a plexiglass sheet could make for a better and less flimsy solution.  For Sunday though, this will definitely do

Rode a new road today, no speed bumps on this one and closer to home.  It’s a nice road, a little narrow, but not heavily trafficked and with very few potholes.  It climbs from the highway up into the nearby mountains.

No, I didn’t go bike mountain climbing today, that’s not what a taper is made of, but I did ride down and up the foothills… twice.  The 1st time down was lotsa fun!  Fast! Oh my fast.  The 2nd time, I got stuck behind a tractor trailer pulling a massive backhoe and belching black diesel death clouds as it went.  Course, I still had to do the climb, but didn’t get the super-fun of the descent.  Oh well

I rode with the GoPro again, some nice scenery on this ride and the camera angle is a bit better.   I’m uploading now, but it says 5 hrs to go (yea not great bandwidth down here).  I’ll post a followup with the youtube link when its done (probably in the morning).

Some things I’ve found about the Torhans 30oz system that I have:

• the lids need a way to secure them to the bottle or straw in case they pop off the top (yea it happened today, check the video)
• the straw needs a bite valve – until the fluid level is down 50% you risk wearing a spray of your hydration whenever you take a drink
• the aero cowling on the straw needs a dab of glue to stay on the bottle
• don’t fill it until you’re planning to immediately put it on the bike (or fill it after you install it) because there’s no way to stand it up
• (but with all these “issues”…) having a straw in my face is way more efficient and probable way to for me to onboard hydration.  I’m using the Torhans for fuel and the speedfil for water.   I’ll probably put about 800 calories in the Torhans and have a bottle behind my saddle with another similar 800 calorie bottle to refill the Torhans with.

Did some speed work in the pool today.  Didn’t get to swimming until later in the day and the ocean was crazy, the pool was definitely a winner.  Had it to myself and it was easy to judge sprint lengths, etc.

Mid-day today was groomin’ time.  Went in and got plucked like a Christmas Goose.  I’m now all smooth, aero and hydro-dynamic. LOL.  No really… I felt smoother and “slicker” in the water tonight.  Maybe its psychosomatic, but I’ll take every edge I can get  Today was also the day that I had planned and scheduled my toe nail trim.

I scheduled my toe nail trim?!  You bet!  Ever trim your nails a bit too close and have a tender toe for days?  Ok, imagine having that tender toe, trapped in a cycling shoe, or running shoe for hours.  Not fun?  You bet!  So, what do you do?  You trim your nails early so that on race day, if you were too aggressive, you’re not suffering.  Yea this is me leaving little to chance.  But hey!  Be prepared, eh?

As promissed, here’s the vid of yesterday’s bike ride.

Today’s swim was much like yesterday’s: open water, fighting chop and wind on the way out, faster and easier on the way back.  Life was pretty grand until I swam straight into a jellyfish!  At first I thought I’d hit a piece of seaweed, and then my arm lit up.  That was no seaweed, that was a fully jellyfish!! Fortunately not a Portuguese Man-O-War

Anyhow, other than my arm feeling like I’d slept in a bed of stinging nettles for about 2hrs it was all good.

Enjoy the vid.

Ok, kinda off topic, but I can’t resist.

Annoyed by the cellphone during dinner.  I know I’m guilty of being distracted by mine rather than having a conversation.  Here’s a cool piece of social engineering that, I bet, works:

Kempt – The Phone Stack.