Missing It

Steve Suffering at IMC

It's hard to believe that I miss the suffering that you go through at an Ironman but the event itself is just such an incredible celebration and achievement that it outweighs any amount of pain you are going through on the day. Amber and I watched some local triathletes compete at IMC this Sunday, the last IMC in Penticton, and it was a lot of fun to track our friends and follow along as they reached certain points in the race. I remember thinking throughout the day that- "Steve must be hitting the rollers about now" or "he's probably hurting up Yellow Lake at around this time" and it brought me back to those moments for myself in the race. All the sacrifice and training during the entire year culminates in that one day and it doesn't matter if you hit your time goals or you don't when you are out there all you are thinking of is just getting to the finish.

I'm a little excited that WTC isn't apart of the race in Penticton any more, there were getting incredibly greedy and were taking advantage of all the great volunteers and athletes that go to that race every year. The fee was absolutely exacerbating, I think it was up to $675 which okay- in the grand scheme of things isn't huge but heaven forbid you get an injury and can't race- you forfeit all but $150. At that price WTC was making $1,755,000 on entry fees and if you add in race merchandise it's probably around $2.5M per year. All the operations were mainly handled by the great volunteers and the prize purses for the men and women's winners were only $5,000 each, really! $2.5M and you're only going to pay the winner of the race $5,000!! Come on... Well challenge Penticton is promised to be as great of a race with more community involvement it's just a shame that you can't get a Kona spot there anymore. Maybe Coeur D'Alene will start to be the go to spot for most Western Canadian triathletes, which could make qualifing A LOT more difficult.

Well I still enjoy the Ironman atmosphere and it's great to be a part of the race in any capacity, even as a spectator. Amber and I decided to go to Pheonix in November to watch Kevin race and I can't wait, I'm already starting to get the training bug again and watching Kevin is probably going to really make me want to get back into it for my own race IM CDA next June. I've never been to Arizona but it'll be a lot of fun I'm sure, I just have to find someone there that will lend me a bike.

Running at 1km/hr

There hasn't been much to post lately in regards to my training, I really haven't been. After suffering a really bad achillies tear in May it's been tough to go through the summer and not be out there swimming, biking and running. I was swimming and biking consistently after my injury but after taking a full 10 days off for vacation and not doing anything but walking I realized that the kick off the wall swimming and riding hills were not helping me heal properly. I went to Calgary with Amber for a few days and met with an orthodics guy who diagnosed a severe over-pronation in my stride so he said he could help with some custom orothodics. I was always a bit skeptical of these, thinking they were really just a sales pitch but when I initially got them in 2005 while training for my first Ironman they helped the achillies problems back then so I guess I'm sold on them now. The first week in them was aweful, my entire right leg from my calf to my sacrum was in pain but I knew I had to stick with it if I was going to get better. Eventually the tightness started to ease up and now I don't even know I'm wearing them.

I still have a bit of healing to do so I can't swim-bike-run but I've been starting back at the gym lifting weights again, light weights- 20-30 reps at a time and water running. Before I was injured my average after-work go-for-a-run pace was 15km/hr or 4 minute/kms now I'm reduced to running 1km/hr in the pool, 20 laps in one hour. It's tough to get in there and stay motivated but at least now I feel like I'm doing something, I might be starting from scratch again but at least I'm moving forward. I'm going to take the next month really easy, water running, weights, walking and hopefully by September-October I'll be back to normal running again. Amber and I are heading to Pheonix to watch Ironman Arizona in November so that will be a great early winter break and I'd like to do some light running in the warm Pheonix sun.