Tri Dad

For my 32nd birthday my wife got me a session at my local university's Sports Medicine Assessment Research & Testing Lab , aka SMART Lab.  My particular session included a Body Composition Analysis (i.e., body fat analysis) and a VO2 Max test.  They also offer a 3D gait analysis, but that was not part of my trip today. I think my wife got me the Body Composition analysis to finally prove to me that I am too skinny.  She pretty regularly tells me I could stand to gain a few pounds.  I respond by eating excessive amounts of popcorn, but it doesn't seem to do the trick.  Apparently all that training cancels out all that popcorn. The Lab is apparently only open in the middle of the week, which means I had to treat this like a doctor's appointment and excuse myself from work.  Finding a time that worked was difficult due to my schedule and the ebbs and flows of my job - the slots were actually very consistently available which made me think that the se...

I'm not really one for race reports, but this was kind of a special one for me.  I've run the Jingle Dash, which is a local community 5k/10k (the latter of which is simply two laps of the 5k course).  I set a PR two years ago when I broke 40 minutes and I came in second last year, which I considered to be an off year.  I was excited to see how I would fare after last year's race. This year I planned on racing with The Girl in a stroller.  I really wanted to win the race while pushing her, but wasn't confident I'd be able to do it.  Really, I wanted to use her as an excuse if I didn't win.  That excuse was taken from me at the start of the race as my wife decided she wanted to run with The Girl .  Two of our friends were running and I knew it would be more fun for her if she had The Girl while running with them.  Plus, it took away an possible excuse I might have. Since this is a community event, it took place in my neighborhood and as s...

I recently traveled to Kansas.  I've visted a few times before, but never have I done any exercising.  It's always been to visit family.  I've heard that the only thing to do in Kansas, or any Midwest state, for that matter, is to drink.  In another life, this post would be about that, but alas, the drinking was kept in moderation.  One of the few things I was looking forward to on this trip (aside from seeing my family, of course), was tagging a new state in Strava.  Not knowing what the weather was like I way over packed, but I figure I might as well fill my carry-on up all the way. I was only there for three days, and I managed to get a run in each day.  If I'm going to be honest, the runs were extremely boring, and it became very quickly apparent that Kansas does not have emissions laws in place for their vehicles.  Or if they do, they are not enforced.  They also don't really like sidewalks.  Though to be fair, there's no place th...

On Thursdays I go to my "downtown" office, which is about 25 miles away.  If I leave early enough, my commute can be as short as 35 minutes, which gives me plenty of time for a long run at work (either along the park trails nearby, or on the treadmill in the gym within the building). This past Thursday, I didn't get out of the house as early as I would have liked and my 35 minute commute morphed into an hour.  That could also be partly explained by the rain.  I typically roll right out of bed and get in my car, where I've already put my work bag and my change of clothes.  That day was essentially the same. When I got to work, I was disheartened to see that all four treadmills were being used.  I put my things away in the locker room and came back out, hoping that somebody had just finished.  They had not.  I then walked around aimlessly in the small gym for a minute or so, hoping that my presence would convince one of the runners that they didn't n...

I'm not really one for race recaps, but I'll give one a shot here. I woke up at 5am and ran downstairs to eat some breakfast and have some coffee.  My wife took care of The Girl in the middle of the night, letting me get as much sleep as possible.  I figured I would return the favor and let her get a few extra minutes of sleep that morning. We planned on leaving at 5:30, but didn't make it on the road until closer to 6.  Not bad considering we had a baby and a dog to contend with.  Also, my sister was coming along for the ride, so we had a pretty full car for the 100 minute drive. We got to Lake Anna a bit before 8, leaving plenty of time for my packet pickup and to set up my transition area.  I also heard the news that the lake temperature was such that it would be a wetsuit legal race.  I had packed my wetsuit, but since I had never actually swam in it, I was unsure if I would actually use it for the swim.  I figured I could make that decis...

Just one short month after the South Riding Triathlon, I have my longest race of the year - the Giant Acorn International .  I ran this race for the first time last year and was pretty happy with how I did, especially considering that 1500 meter swim was my first open water swimming race. I'm not going into this race with any specific goals, other than improving on my times from last year.  However, while my running has picked up since the South Riding Triathlon, it's been at the expense of my biking.  I'm not exactly feeling confident in my biking, nor my swimming, for that matter. Last year when I ran this race, I used my wife's TomTom Runner, which isn't a triathlon watch, but is waterproof.  I was actually pretty impressed with the swim track that it made for me, all things considered.  I just left the watch going the whole time, and then manually split the resulting file into three distinct activities.  This year I'll get to use my Garmin 920XT,...

As I've intimated here multiple times, the South Riding Tri is my marquee race.  I've run it every year since 2011 and since it's the exact same course, it's made it extremely easy to see my progress.  This year my goal was to continue that trend, and my stretch goal was to drop my time from 1:04:21 to sub-60. This was my first triathlon since my daughter was born, and more importantly, my wife's first triathlon since giving birth.  My mom spent the night with us on the eve of the race for The Girl duty.  Unfortunately, since my wife is still nursing, there's not too much my mother could do. I swear that The Girl has some sort sense whereby she can tell that there is an important even that we would like to be well rested for the next day and will then have a terrible night sleep.  The Girl required constant attention that night and had my wife up for the day a hair after four.  On top of that, she did everything in her power to make sure that I got ...