4th of July Weekend 2005

I am at my brother’s house for his annual 4th of July family get together. It is three weeks before Lake Placid Ironman. Last year while I was here, I tripped on the steps walking down from the second floor of his house. The last step is black granite and blends in with the granite floor. I didn’t see the step, turned my ankle and went sprawling along the floor. I spent the next 3 weeks before Lake Placid icing it and going for acupuncture. I vowed to myself, not to make the same mistake this year.

To top off my training for Lake Placid before my slow taper begins, I put in several strong workouts starting on Friday. On Friday, I headed to one of my laps and finished with 5100 meters in 1:36:00. At one point during the swim, the lane line started getting slack and the lane started to get very narrow. For a few moments I thought I was going crazy and no longer able to swim straight.

We were the fastest in the lane and needed to pass slower swimmers on many occasions. During one of these moments, Todd was coming towards me while I was attempting a pass of a laggard doing the backstroke. We had a mid-lane collision which caused all of us to stop. The slower swimming had this look of “Did I cause this pile up?”

Later, we went to Central Park and ran 6 miles. I did mile sprints with a slow recovery, while ST did a steady 6M.

On Saturday I rode a fast paced 61 miles in Prospect Park. My goal was to maintain 21-24 MPH for 40-50 miles. I was successful in this goal. Several times during the ride a pace line formed on me. I liked when this happened, because it offered encouragement to ride faster. At one point during the ride, I had a bug splatter on the lens of my glasses.

Sunday was a 21 mile run, which each loop of Prospect Park being negative splits. It wasn’t easy, but I managed that goal. I was glad it was over. My elapsed time was 2:45. This included all bathroom and water breaks.

Monday was a more interesting workout day. I went to the boardwalk in Coney Island to run 4 miles, before my swim group – www.cibbows.org, met on the beach. It was a gloriously sunny day, with a warm soft breeze. I discovered that the boardwalk has mile markers along the straight planks closer to the street. I started at approximately the .5 mile mark and ran to Sea Gate. The return to the start should have yielded 4 miles, but I was curious to see how far off I was from the .5 mile mark. The entire boardwalk is 2.5 miles long. I ran past my starting point looking for the mark, but wound up at the beginning of the boardwalk without ever finding it. The pleasant run, more than compensated for the fruitless search and I got to run 5 miles total.

After waiting around after my run, my swim friends started to show up. Fortunately, one of them had an extra swim cap and goggles, since I forgot mine, along with my money, wallet, towel, change of clothes, etc. If I drowned, I would have been completely unidentifiable.

The swim going towards the pier was easy and quick. However, the return presented a fair amount of chop and wind. Truth by told, it was a pain in the ass. I am also not acclimated to cold water and my fingers were completely numb and tingling by the time I got out of the water, despite wearing a wetsuit.

When I returned home, I played with my children in my backyard, where we just installed a partially inflatable pool. It has a 15 foot diameter and is 3 feet deep. The kids loved it. We ran around the perimeter all day long to make a nice whirlpool/tornado effect.

Overall it was a great weekend.