Cool tools

Want to know what you think your final time may be based on your current abilities, tri the trTri Race calculator! Itcan help you guage what your goal paces and efforts have to be if you want to reach a certain time goal or what they may be based on your current level: Tri Planner

if you are tracking calories taken in, again I go to my new favorite website "Free calorie counter", that has a huge listing of foods and restaurant foods in it, pick what you ate and "calculate" it gives you all of the nutritional value. Awesome Food Index

How about how many calories you burn during any activity: Calories Burned

Ever wanted to lead a ride but hate to have to write up a route sheet, then have Google do it for you! As always google maps comes through again. This may be old news but I discovered last night that you can ask for driving directions and then move the blue line around to the route that you want. It automatically re-writes the route info! With some finagling you can create a circularroute by moving the desitation "flag" back up towards the start. I have not tested this yet but plan on doing so very soon! Google maps

Airborne Cadence

Now that I am reminiscing, here is an oldie, but a goodie...

When I get to heaven

St. Peter's gonna say,

"How'd you earn your livin' boy,

How'd you earn your pay?"

I'll reply with a whole lot of anger,

"Made my living as an Airborne Ranger!

Blood, guts, danger

That's the life of an Airborne Ranger!"

When I get to Hell

Satan's gonna say,

"How'd you earn your livin' boy,

How'd you earn your pay?"

I'll reply with a fist to his face,

"Made my living laying SOULS to waste!"

Wake up call

Some people are morning people, Some are night folks. I am a mid-morning after 10AM but before 3PM person ;) Generally, I hate getting up early for anything. I hate getting up early period. Early is anything before lets say 8AM. Ok realistically before 7AM.

That’s why its meaningful when I am able to finally get up early to do a workout. For me when I am able to do that, it’s a signal that mentally I am ready for real training. This morning I got up at 5AM and went for a 6 mile run with Simba, my dog.

For me early morning workouts have always been symbolic of very serious training. The only other time in my life that I actually trained in the early morning was during ARMY training. Some of the best memories I have come from those days. One moment in particular really stands out, frozen in time. I was in airborne school at Ft Benning, Ga ( the REAL airborne school..HUAAA!). We would get up to do the early morning PT, but that day we were doing a Battalion level PT exercise. The Battalion had about 500 soldiers.

We were marching the battalion to the PT location and as we marched of course we sang cadence. In this case it was a song that called "Blood on the Risers". The Army never marches without a song. Anyhow here we were 500 strong and singing in complete harmony, its 5-6AM at this point, the sun is just starting to come up and we march through the “Canyon” which was a road with relatively tall buildings on either side. I remember the echo as we marched through, the rhythm of 500 sets of feet stepping at the exact same time, all of the heads of the people ahead of me moving left to right in sync. Then this Booming echo of our singing as we went through. It was awesome. Never in my life did I ever feel like part of something so big. AT that moment I felt invincible. I was 20, on my way to becoming a paratrooper, part of a long history of kick-ass soldiers, and I was surrounded by 500 of the best. As long as I live I will never forget that moment.

The ARMY had a lot of similar times, early in the morning, a lot.. not so nice like when I was "gigged" for having saw dust on my ear. Anyhow, I digress, I think because of this I think getting up early means business for me. Today I got up early and ran because I decided it was time to get real with my training, its an Ironman I am training for after all!

Until next time...

AIRBORNE!!!!!

Army Cadence Juke Box

3 hour BRICK

OK so Saturday morning comes around and Phil calls me saying that he is going to do a self supported tri. Only it has to be indoors due to the snow. He figures only 3000 meters, a couple of hours on the trainer and then a 1 hour run. Wanted to know if I wanted to join him.

Sick Bastard.

Of course I wanted to join him! But I did not have the time to do the whole thing so I would join him on a 2 hour indoor ride and a 30 minute run instead.

DEAL.

So thats what we did, I joined Phil after his 3000 meter swim on the cycling portion of his tri torture session, we watched Shrek 3, and then portions of "Airplane the movie" ("Surely, you don't mean that! Yes I do, and don't call me Surely") for 2 hours and then went for a 30 minute run. It was beautiful. Burned a total of 2200 calories!

18 Miles

So here is the planned route for my 18 miler today. I figured this out on mapmyrun.com according to the map it is not exactly 18 miles but is actually 17.7 miles. But I figured its easy to throw in a few hundred yards if my watch says I am short on the run.

I am planning on doing this at about 10AM. It is supposed to be a beautiful day in the high 40's, so any ice from last night should have melted off. Lets see how it goes.