Does it take a Guru to end the cycle of choosing a cycle?

A couple of things happened over the last 10 days that have taught me once again how being patient is a virtue. I was REALLY close to buying a tri-bike, but all of these little things were happening that kept on delaying my decision, which I won't bore you with the details here (bottom line, God has a way of leading us if we'd simply shut up and listen). I'm one to over-research things at times, especially when it's a bike that I'm going to be laying out at least $3,000 for, and I have been spending a lot of time reading and learning about so many different aspects of tri-bikes and manufacturers.

Today I went to the local bike shop on a spur of the moment trip, and talked to a guy who really took the time to find out what I was trying to accomplish. He set me up on a couple of bikes, and finally asked if I had ever considered a Guru. All I knew about Guru is that they were custom made and every one that I had ever seen in a showroom seemed to be in the $7,000+ range, so I had not even remotely thought about them. After a long talk about their craftsmanship and my learning that you can get an excellent bike in the $3,000 price range that takes about 30 days to arrive once you are fitted and measured, I think now I am leaning in that direction. On top of that, you can choose your own custom colors in single or double color patterns, which is pretty neat as well. Bare in mind, I'm not choosing a bike because I can select the color, but that is a nice option. The color I liked best personally is called "Platinum" (pictured above), very plain and simple and clean.

So, if anyone out there has had any experience with Guru, please let me know your thoughts, and please be candid and blunt whether they be good or bad.

Fact: Nobody can understand me (but another runner or triathlete)

I honestly can not remember a single time in my life, even when I was a little kid, that I did not have a goal. I'm not talking about the "gosh, someday I'd like to..." type of goals, I'm referring to goals that I wrote down or things that I wanted where I had pictures posted and I had a plan as to what I needed to do to achieve or acquire something. What I have discovered is that there are very few people out there who can really relate except for other runners and triathletes.

For example, back in 1997 on my 38th birthday, I set a goal to qualify for the 2000 Boston Marathon in conjunction with my 40th birthday and the millennium. I had my training schedule lined out up to 6 months in advance, which marathons I was going to peak for to try to qualify, the whole nine yards. I was running a minimum of 40 miles a week in the Houston summer, and up to 60-70 miles a week in the fall and winter. I had a piece of paper taped to my computer monitor that read "Boston Marathon 2000 - 3:20 = 7:38 pace" and was always focused on what I needed to do to make that happen. At the time I started my quest, I had never even broken 3:30, but I was dedicated to doing whatever it took to train and make it happen. I remember talking to friends or neighbors who would say, "I saw you out running. Are you training for something?" and I'd try to explain what it was I was doing. The common answer back to me was "I could never have that type of dedication" or "I can't imagine training for 2 years for something and not knowing if you are going to make it or not". In some ways it made me feel isolated, like there really wasn't anyone that I could talk to about it (other than another runner) that would really understand.

And now I'm training for an Ironman. Talk about REALLY being misunderstood. It's almost as if now when I'm asked if I'm training for something, I don't even want to say anything about it. Here is how the conversations go now:

Person 1: Hi Robert, are you still running?
Robert: Yes (in the back of my mind, please let that be the end of the questions)
Person 1: What are you training for?
Robert: (Oh God, not that question) An Ironman.
Person 1: Isn't that where you swim, bike and run?
Robert: Yes (please ask me about something else now)
Person 1: How far is it?
Robert: 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run
Person 1: (blank look as they assimilate that information)
Person 1: Do you do all of that without stopping?
Robert: Yes.
Person 1: Well, good luck with it (this is their way of saying, "I can not comprehend what I just heard and why anyone would want to do that?!")
Robert: So what are you up to these days?
Person 1: Well, nothing as big as what you are doing. Talk to you later.

I'll take my humble pie straight up, with a side of revised IM goals

You would never know sometimes that I am a motivational speaker who talks to athletes of all abilities about setting realistic goals.
Case in point, on May 1 in my blog entry I was throwing out my potential IM finishing times based completely on my inexperience. Funny thing is that when I talk to running groups about goal setting, I always tell people (especially newbies) that you should have 3 goals: First is to finish, second is a realistic medium goal based on your average training runs, and third would be basically a best case scenario such as a PR. I tell them by setting 3 goals, you don't set yourself up for complete failure (like I did in retrospect on my May 1 post).

So what gave me the wakeup call? This past week my wife and I were in a local Loew's in the middle of the day picking up some hardware and I just happened to run into a guy (probably early 30's) wearing an Ironman Arizona shirt. Of course I asked him how he did, etc., and found out he had done 9 IM's and was going to be doing his 10th in Louisville. Sponge that I am, I was asking him lots of questions, and finally asked him what his IM PR was, which he told me was 11:15. He also told me his marathon PR was in the 2:59 range, which is 20 minutes faster than my 3:19 PR for the marathon. As we talked more and more, I began to see in my own mind how improbable it was for me to be thinking about a 10:30-11:00 IM when I had not even done one yet, and how I needed to backtrack and re-establish my goals.

So here are my revised goals as of today for my first IM in June of 2009: First is to finish within the alotted cutoff time, second is to achieve a medium range goal in the neighborhood of 13:00-14:00, and third under a best case scenario will be to come in somewhere around 12:00-13:00. After the talk I had with this guy, if I break 12:00 I will be both stunned and elated.

First 5000m swim, solid training last week, and close to buying a tri-bike

I swam a 5K (3.1 miles) for the first time ever this morning with no breaks. I treated my pace just like an easy long run and really never felt like I was getting fatigued until about the last 20 laps or so (I think the psychological aspect starts to kick in towards the end and you talk yourself into feeling more tired than perhaps you are). I doubt realistically that I'll ever be a relatively fast swimmer as compared to most experienced swimmers, but once again my endurance is what saves me in distance events.

Prior to today, I was really pleased with my training last week. I swam 4 times for a total of 7 miles (long swim of 2.5 miles) and ran 5 times for a total of 40.5 miles (long run was 10.5 miles). My average pace on the running was about 7:35 per mile.

On Saturday, I drove across town to a bike shop called Sugar Cycles to look at a Specialized Transition Comp (all carbon frame) and am pretty much sold on it. The 2 guys that I spoke to at length were very experienced triathletes and never once made me feel like I was an idiot or beneath them like the bike shop in my immediate area does. I told them I really knew nothing about the cycling aspect and they really took their time to put things into laymen's terms for me. My guess is that I'll have the bike as soon as this coming weekend and will start my cycling training then.

With a little less than 14 months to go to IM CDA, I feel like I already have a really solid foundation on the swimming and running, and I am really excited about incorporating the cycling part into the mix. Once I get a month or so of the cycling behind me, my plan is to entire my first triathlon in July or August (possibly even the Half-IM in Buffalo Springs on June 29, but I don't want to push it).

Cycle question for the triathloners - Aluminum or carbon?

ok folks, after a few months of studying triathlon-specific bikes and still feeling pretty stupid about them, I can attest that knowledge is not power, knowledge is confusion. The question is, do I get an aluminum frame or a carbon frame?

Let me tell you where I stand in my Ironman training first so you can help me to better judge the type bike I need. I'm 48 years old and will turn 49 in December. My goal is to do the Couer d'Alene Ironman in June of 2009 and try to qualify for Hawaii in my age group. I'm a sub-3:20 marathoner and am already consistently swimming 2.4 miles a couple of times a month in 1:15-1:20. Here is my thought, and I may be WAY OFF BASE considering that I have never done an Ironman before... If I can complete the swim portion in 1:20, then less than 10 minutes in transition to the bike, then 5:00-5:30 on the bike, then less than 5 minutes in transition to the run, then the run in 4:00, I have a decent shot at a 10:30-11:00 Ironman. Now the question becomes, does that sort of time potentially get me into Hawaii for my age group? I have no idea, but if the bike is the signficant factor, then I'll do whatever it takes on the bike.

I've narrowed my choices down to 2 bikes, both made by Specialized (I chose Specialized mainly because 2 local bike shops carry both Specialized and Trek, and for reasons I can not explain, I just like the Specialized better):

The aluminum frame Specialized Transition E5 Comp (about $1,900) or the carbon frame Specialized Transition Comp (about $3,000). Regardless of which one I buy, I'll upgrade the wheels to the Zipp 404's, which I understand will make a tremendous difference in performance.

Any help that the more experienced triathletes can give me is greatly appreciated.

So this morning I learned I'm a "Road Rat"...

For my Ironman training, I swim my laps 4 times a week at the local YMCA. I'm one of these people that comes in, says good morning or hello to everyone I see, put my stuff in my locker, head out to the pool and do my laps, come back in and shower, and head home. I'm pretty focused on what I'm doing, and although I am friendly to everyone, I don't have time for a whole lot of locker room small talk.

I've never quite been able to figure out why, but for whatever reason, it seems that the majority of the pure cyclists seem to really look down on runners. On Saturday mornings when I'm doing my long runs, there is a large group of sometimes a couple of hundred cyclists that will go by me on the road. I'll typically say good morning to them as they pass by, but very rarely do I get a response back. It's not going to stop me from continuing to be friendly, it's just my nature.

Well, this morning at the YMCA, as I'm getting dressed for my swim, there were a group of cyclists who had just finished their workout talking in the locker room. These guys are probably in their 40's like me. I'm not sure they have any idea at all that I'm a runner or training for an Ironman, nor is it important to me that they do know. For whatever reason, one of them was really belittling runners, and told the others that when his bike group sees one of us on the side of the road, they'll say "there's another Road Rat" to each other. He even went so far to say how pompous the people in his own riding group can be. I'm not quite so sure that's something to be proud of, and makes another argument for me as to why I prefer to train totally alone.

I kept my thoughts to myself, as well as the question that was going through my mind, "Why do they call us a Road Rat?" As I was swimming I thought about how sad it is that people will put down others doing something when they truly don't understand it. I've never understood why someone would only like to cycle, but you don't hear me going around calling them gerbils because they are spinning a wheel for hours. I also wonder if they know that Lance, the king of their sport, said that marathoning was far tougher than anything he had ever done in cycling or in the Tour de France. I also doubt if they realize that when a runner is tired when they reach the top of a hill, that runners don't have the luxury of sitting back and coasting down to the bottom on the other side if they so choose. Our quads hurt even worse on the downhill side, and even Lance said that the downhills at the Boston Marathon really took a toll on him, something I doubt he ever said on the downhills of a cycling event.

So, this "Road Rat" is proud to run on. I'm just wondering what I'm supposed to be called as a triathlete...

2008 Boston Marathon - I'm confused, did Lance win the race?

I am a pretty easy-going person, not a lot gets under my skin, but Lance's finish at the Boston Marathon yesterday really has me steamed. Let me explain...

As a 3-time Boston Marathoner, I understand what it means to qualify and what a tremendous blessing it is to be a part of the race. I was excited as always to watch the race yesterday, and both the women's and men's winners were phenomenal efforts. Once they had crossed the finish line and broken the tape, they both gave humbling interviews about their success. Folks, THEY were the winners of their respective categories, there should be no more finish line tapes to be broken through, period.

Several minutes later, they join the coverage of Lance, and pretty much follow him in non-stop over his last 4-5 miles. I was impressed with the fact that he qualified, with the fact that he was not given a race spot like other celebrities have received in the past, that he can run a sub-3:00 marathon which I could not do in my wildest dreams, and especially his raising money for charity. Other than that, he is simply another runner out there and should be treated exactly as such.

The race goes on with Lance, he turns onto Boylston Street heading down the last few hundred yards to the finish, the crowds are cheering for everyone...

...and then it happens. He gets to within 25 yards or so of the finish, "appears" to be a bit confused as to where he is supposed to go, and then is directed off to the right BY HIMSELF AWAY FROM THE OTHER RUNNERS, and lo and behold what is awaiting him???????? His own personal tape to break at the finish line! Are you kidding me? I have no idea who thought that up, but it was 100% TOTALLY WRONG. His effort to run that race was no better than the people that finished ahead of him nor the people that finished behind him, but he gets a finisher's moment and photo breaking the tape?????? My hope is that Lance did not know they were going to do this and that the BAA rethink ever doing anything like this again. If he did know they were going to do this, it is one of the most ultimate ego "hey look at me" things I have ever witnessed, and ratchets down my respect factor for him considerably. A classy move would have been to wave them off and continue across the regular finish line like everyone else.