Yesterday was quite a strange day for me. With no real training on tap I didn't really have a plan for what I was going to do. Since I had gone to bed quite early on Saturday because I was pretty tired I ended up awake around 7:30 on Sunday morning. I made some coffee and settled in to watch some of the Tour de France. I'll admit that it was nice to just wake up and lounge around but I don't know if I was ready for a nice day of laziness, I just felt "off" all day. I tried to go to Midtown and do some stretching and core work just to get the blood flowing but I was more tired than anything which is weird since I have gotten the most sleep I have had since probably the week after I got back from Texas in April. I found this to also be strange because last week I actually felt really good. Previous to last week I was really beaten down and tired from my last big build during the months of may and june. I thought everything had been all good last week but this weekend hit me hard. Maybe it was the bike and run on Saturday that zapped my energy a bit. It was pretty hot and humid out there...so who knows. The bottom line is that I was a big pile of tired yesterday. I sat around, napped, cleaned the apt a little, began to pack my things, and got really mad at my bike because it is not shifting smoothly. I tried to see if I could fix the problem but that was no going to happen, if anything I have just made it about 100 times worse. So this means I will be going to the bike shop immediately after work to have my shifting looked at it. Hopefully they can get it all dialed in a few minutes so I can go for a nice 30 min spin to loosen the legs and loosen the new chain that's on the bike. T-minus 6 days to get everything in working order...I can't believe the big day has come so soon.
Oh man, here I am at work, literally begging for work. I just need something that will keep my mind off of the race. Once 5:00PM tomorrow comes I am all Ironman all week but until then I really need to give myself a break and just freaking chill. Being that I have a very OCD personality the fact that my bike's shifting if "off" is really freaking me out right now. All I can think about is getting my darn bike to the bike shop so it can be made right. I discovered the shifting issue last night when I was peddling on it while sitting on the trainer just for fun. I had a new chain installed this weekend and I wanted to at least turn the gears a little to break it in. Well it is good I was smart about this and did not have the chain installed like on Friday afternoon before the race. I had this all planned in advance since I knew I would have some short bike rides this week..short yes but long enough to break in the chain and make sure everything was running smoothly. Well luckily this happened early in the week so it should just be an easy fix for Mike at Towpath. I must admit that I did try to adjust a couple screws myself and things just got worse because of that so I just decided to give up and let the professionals fix it. So after a restless night and a morning where literally all I can think about is getting my bike to the shop I am happy that in about 4 hours the bike will be in the hands of people who know what they are doing. I just have to now contain myself until 11am when I will call Mike and let him know that I will be swinging by around lunch time....then I have to wait another hour until I can take the bike down to the shop...and then I will have to wait another approx 4 hours until I can go back down to the shop and pick up the bike and then actually go for an easy 30 minute spin which kicks off my full on taper week! How exciting. Wow I literally am all over the place this morning...I can't wait until tomorrow at like 5:30PM when I am sitting in my car driving towards lake placid (which includes a rest stop at Cusetri's on Tuesday night. Corona will be riding shotgun with me up to Placid on Wednesday morning since my hotel stay begins Wednesday and his begins Thursday. According to Corona his wonderful wife Jen gave him the "OK" to ride up with me..which is cool..we will probably go buck wild in lake placid on Wednesday night. You know the typical out all night drink-a-thon that most triathletes do during race week). Seriously I need something to take my mind off of my bike...I guess I will just continue my smurfing of the team :)
The Smurfing of Team Train-This Day 2
Mike Corona - Brainy Smurf with a bit of Chef Smurf thrown in the mix.
When thinking about what smurf would best suit Mr. Corona I could not settle on just one. Mike is just to dynamic of a character...soooo I am settled upon smurfing Mike as both Brainy and Chef Smurf. I could probably fit a few more in here but that would make this blog more like a novel than a short story. Getting on with it...
Mike, as does Brainy Smurf fancies himself as the most intelligent Smurf/Train-This teammate and the resident expert on everything. Unlike Brainy who is pretty much dead-wrong on every subject he professes to be an expert on, Mike usually has some worthwhile knowledge to add to the conversation. For the sake comparing our team to the Smurfs I will use myself as an example in this situation and continue the bromance that everyone has so alluded to. In the cartoon Brainy's best friend is Clumsy. Here's a litte background on Clumsy, Clumsy Smurf is a somewhat dimwitted but amiable Smurf. His best friend is Brainy. He is distinguished by his baggy clothing, which adds to his clumsy appearance (his clothing is normal in the comics). He is known for his hobby of collecting rocks. With that said I will say that like Clumsy I tend to write emails and such to the Train-This group that may have a bit of light-hearted humor. I rarely have anything of weight to add to a real conversation about power meters, the best food to eat, which race wheels are the fastest, how to change a flat..etc..I just don't have that much technical knowledge to offer up but I am usually good for a laugh..Mike however will gladly engage in a deep and meaningful conversation about the roll of a 11-23 cassette versus an 11-27 cassette. This type of banter precludes Mike from picking up many young females at bars (Jen is happy about that) but it does help people like ME understand and figure out what I need to have a better ride in Placid, and for that I am extremely thankful. I will also use the Brainy/Clumsy comparison to discuss Mike's "planning" nature. Mike is a financial planner..that's what he does...he plans. This translates to Mike having every bike route planned out in advance via MapQuest, something that I myself have yet to use. If it was left up to me I would be wandering around on my bike somewhere in Central NY still..however Mike always had our long-ride routes planned out in advance and he would even provide me with copies of the directions. What a guy! So that's why I smurf mike as Brainy Smurf. Mike loves the numbers..he even showed me the WKO program that he uses to track his training, it had about as many lines on the screen as Scarface did on his desk right before the final shootout. (For those non-movie buffs I will just say that this means that their was a TON OF lines!) I still don't know to much about what he showed me but the jist of it was that it could track all this data and tell you whether you were race ready. In Mike's case it told him that he was race ready and that he is going to throw down a 9:30 at Lake Placid :)
I must also make a brief comment about Mike's similarities to Chef Smurf. I have had the opportunity to dine at Mike's house on a few occasions and I will just say that the dude can cook. He has made me chicken dinner, huge salads, etc.. and they have all been phenomenal...gourmet quality for sure. For someone like myself who has yet to use their stove in their apartment that they have been in for over 2 years and who lives by frying eggs and using the microwave...ITS AWESOME!
He is Papa Smurf's apprentice and assistant, and he often thinks that makes him the de facto second-in-command. He can be distinguished from the others by the large glasses he wears. The Smurfs most often respond to his self-rightous preaching by tossing him out of the village. His best friend is Clumsy. In the comics during the Olympic games, he called himself Schtroumpf arbitre (referee) and handed out yellow cards to everyone.
Ken Koppenhaver -
What else can you say about Ken. The dude can freaking swim! He can swim faster with one arm and no kicking than I can at an all out sprint pace using both arms and kicking like a mad man. He probably swims about 2000 more yards during pool workouts than I do. I sometimes will just be gliding along in my lane and peer over into the far left lane (where the fast people are) and see them just effortlessly cruising along. I tend to not look for to long since it makes me very jealous. But he does put the work in so kudos to him. I may not have been able to make it to very many Master's practices this winter due to work but when I did make it Ken was ALWAYS there. I tend to think that he just sleeps in the MCC mens locker room and whenever someone goes to swim in the pool he just gets up and joins them..there is really no other explanation. I would wager that if there was a waterproof computer that he would strap on some scuba gear and just work at the bottom of a pool or lake. I think he's just more comfortable when he is submerged. So with that said I am currently concocting some sort of apparatus that will allow me to hold onto his legs for at least the first loop of the IMLP swim. I haven't quite figured out how I am going to do this but rest assure I will come up with something before Sunday morning, otherwise Ken could be 1/2 way through the first loop before I drag my but around the mirror lake swim course two times.
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