Pinball and Beer my be the answer…

Yesterday was my long ride. I started early, it was going to be a warm day and I wanted to get it done as my parents were visiting from Winnipeg. I hadn’t seen them in three years, little drama behind it. It was time to put it behind me.

The ride was a good one, at least the first 60 km of what would be 180 km total. I was powering through those first 60 km over hills and was averaging 30.8 kph. Then it got warmer out and the wheels started to fall off, I was feeling a semi-bonk. Not eating anything other than a banana and 2 water bottles full of Gatorade didn’t help things.

There was a cool part of the ride where I caught up to and passed an old tractor on a country road. The guy riding the tractor was looking from side to side just taking in the Saturday without a care in the world. It was a timeless moment that could have been duplicated 50 years ago. Next highlight was watching a guy working along side his wife and I loved his shirt, “will work for golf and food”. I had to stop and take a photo.

After I stopped at a local country store to fill up with energy, I got some speed back. The one great thing about doing 112-mile ride is you can indulge. I indulged on more fully leaded Coke and Dr. Pepper and some grapefruit juice. All guilt free.

Long rides are awesome for thinking. Contrary to what you might think, I like doing them alone. The other secret I just realized this year was if you take the same route week after week the time goes by quicker. Because I have so many awesome road choices I used to make decisions on the fly and pick a different road. The result was what seemed to be a longer ride and the anxiety of trying to figure out if how to get the right amount of distance.

When I got home this is where the fun began. I hopped in the shower and had just pieces of a bar of soap and I needed to shave my legs, they were getting to wooly for being a triathlete.

It didn’t take long until the bar of soap no longer existed and now I was out of soap. First stop, get out of the shower-dripping wet and check the cabinet in the bathroom where Alice keeps the soap. Nope, no soap.

Next stop was walking through the kid’s rooms with a towel on dripping wet and looking in their bathrooms for soap. No, no soap and I didn’t want to look to close in fear that I might find something I don’t want to see. I’m also not into body wash.

I looked high and low, and then had an idea, how about dishwashing soap? So down stairs I went, found the Palmolive and took it up to the shower to finish. Fortunately I didn’t have to use it yesterday, I found another kernel of soap that got me through. Today was a different story, I had to use it. More on that later. Interesting experience.

The rest of the night was going for dinner with my parents, we started early, and I was fading from not eating during my run. Even though I’m off the beer, I had a couple beers over dinner. That started the process to have another 8 pints over the course of the night.

We hung out in the Pig & Whistle and for the first time in a long time played some pinball, then sat on the seats. As I was playing pinball I felt myself stretching just by the way you stand and move while playing. Then it was off to the stools, which are easy to relax on.

It was a fairly late night, wrapping up around 1 pm and off to bed. I had an interesting dream last night, I was running, and running without front pelvis pain. It felt great, it was a heavenly dream. Such that I thought it was real and then realized, damn, I’m dreaming. I’m still injured.

We woke up later today, around 10 pm and it was hot outside, about 95 F. I wasn’t looking forward to my run. Normally I like running in the heat but I was concerned I was too dehydrated to do my long run and I decided not to do a long run because of my injured pelvis area. In reality, I really didn’t want to run at all.

I pushed myself out the door and before I did I was thinking, “wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have my pelvis problem”. Last run I did on Friday in San Francisco was the most painful of all. Getting started hurt, big time.

I did a trial start in the house and didn’t feel the same level of pain. I was hopefully it was going to that way when I got outside. It was. Even though I had discomfort it wasn’t the same level of pain. I was also shocked to see I was running much faster. My first 3 km where at a 5 min per km pace. I had to check my watch a few times thinking it was broken.

The heat wasn’t even bothering me, I didn’t feel myself start sweating until about halfway through. On the way out I saw this poor little tree on the sidewalk. It looked like it was in a planter and someone threw it down and there was just the potting soil and no holder. It looked like a little child lying on the side walk. As I ran by I thought that poor tree it’s going to die.

On the way back I stopped and picked it up off it’s side and stood it up, then moved it up a side of the hill and put it in the shade. My plan was to drive back for it and take it home and plant it in our yard. Still is, but I ran out of time and had to get to the airport. If it’s not there when I get back, I’m cool with it, I hope it’s because someone found it and took it and found it a good home. It was really strange it felt like it had a real human type spirit. Or it could have been the 10 pints of beer from last night still having an effect.

The entire run I felt discomfort but not pain and the discomfort was different, it was split on both side need the hip bones. I was reluctant to push it too hard but was excited to see if I could get home at a good average pace. I did. Even though I didn’t keep the heart rate under 140 bpm due to the night before and the 35 C heat, I decided that was okay, I’d use this as a speed tempo run. I ended up finishing with a 5:17 per km average. I was happy.

By the time I got home I was dripping wet and I mean dripping. Even my socks were wet in my shoes. I took the shoes off and you could see my foot prints of water on the hardwood and tile floors.

I was thinking to myself, “why did it feel better today? What caused it to shift so much from Friday to today? Will it continue to feel tolerable or is this a one time event?”

Even as I ran I tried to be as relaxed as possible.  I was wondering if this was caused by a hip problem which screwed up alignment or was it stress related? Was I running too tight? Or was it because I haven’t had enough carbs? Or was it the beer?

When I say was it the beer I’m serious about that. When I was at the best shape of my life and competing at a high age group level I drank beer all the time, to the point that people were amazed with how much beer I could drink and still put in a lot of training hours.

For years I’ve been thinking that beer is my secret weapon. My body responds to it. It does two things, it’s great recovery food full of carbs and the alcohol causes great relaxation. I can’t tell you how many times I couldn’t walk after a hard long run or an Ironman race and I’d have a trememdous amount of beer and in no time I’d be walking around like I hadn’t even trained or raced.

So I’m asking myself, “was the beer part of my recovery? The relaxation and the carbs and was the semi-stretching while playing pinball then sitting on the chairs relaxing also helpful. It was the only thing I’ve done different that I can think of.

I’m now really hopefull that I’ll have a better run this weekend racing at Racine 70.3. It won’t be fast, I’m not delutional, but I’d just like it to be respectable, anything under 2 hours.

As I write this I’m on a plane on my way to the Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree at Summit Bechtal Reserve in West Virginia. It is also the official opening of the Summit. It’s an amazing site, I can’t even express how big of a project this is, over $400 million dollars and it seems like it has the number one or number two of everything in the world – 100,000 sq ft skateboard park, BMX trax, Mountain biking trails, whitewater rafting, 4-Olympic sized pools, zip lines, shooting ranges (over 1300 stations) and 270 plus rock climbing walls. Over 40,000 scouts are going to be there over the next 10-days. I’m more impressed with the building of the Summit than I am about them putting a man on the moon. Seriously.

This will be the 3^rd time I’ve been there in a month. Picaboo Yearbooks is one of the sponsors and we put together the Building of the Summit book, in record time, from beginning to print – 6 days – and it’s world class. I heard from our guys setting up the booth at some of the workers saw it and they figured if we had copies there we would have sold a 100 already. It’s an amazing book that tells and amazing tale. If you want to order one you can go to sbr.picaboo.com .

This is such a big deal that they think the President may show up for the opening. If you are ever out in Beckley West Virginia and they allow it, you NEED to tour this site, it is awe inspiring.

I’m only going to be there for a couple days and see the opening cermomies. My team will be there for the full 10 days. I’m more interested in trying out all the different events and pushing the kids out of the line to get on the zip lines. I definitely would like to try out the mountain biking, maybe do some laps in the pool. Not sure if I can, I may be stuck in our sponsored tent, but I really want to do some of the activities.

What do you call a lunch / dinner? Anyways that’s what I had with Alice before I left, a 3 pm dinner at Boston Pizza. I now have this awesome app and website I use for counting calories,  www.myfitnesspal.com   I’ve tried others this one is amazing, so easy to log and they have 50 million foods in it. I’m now making decisions of what I eat by looking at the app and typing in the food on my phone.

It’s helpful, I didn’t realize how many calories were in a hamburger at Boston Pizza, about 1000. I had a craving for a hamburger so instead I just ate the patty. I did have to have a beer to get the hair off the dog. After eating and having a beer I felt much better.

I weighed myself after I hydrated after my run. I like weighing after I train for the ego stroke, I know it’s going to be lighter and it makes me feel better when it’s less. Post workout I’m 191 lbs. I’m so much wanting to break that 190 lb barrier and get back to 185 lbs. If I set 185 lbs as my highest weight threshold I’m going to be a happy camper. My goal is to get it down to 179 lbs, that would be a rockstar weight and really help my racing speed. I’ve been there before, it would be great to get back there again and use 180 lbs and my highest weight threshold.

Last story. As I was getting on the plane I got a tweet from a guy in Charleston who follows me and my blog. He’s a fireman, he mentioned we should hook up. I’m up for it. I’ve met so many great people from blogging and tweeting. He’s going to meet me at the airport when I land.

Tempo Run 59:18 / 11.12 km / 5:17 per km pace.