Category Archives: Fitness

2023 Athletic Recap

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I’ll start with a big thank you and much love to Sharon (@mtnester1) for supporting and cheering me on as I pursue my athletic endeavors. I know you are tired of me schlepping a bicycle around with me, but I love you for putting up with it :-) 

I also want to thank my coach Kimberly (@ladybaba_13) for her continued efforts to coax another iota of performance out of me.  Thankless work for sure :-)

I became a product ambassador for the first time for @nuunhydration.  It was an interesting experience and I have no idea if I’ll be invited back, but what matters more to me is that if you see a product on my posts, it’s because the product has been good to me as an athlete and I hope others will benefit .  So a shout out to many other products for which I receive nothing but goodwill (and sometimes better performance) – @wildcycler (rad designs), @altrarunning (these shoes enable me to run day after day), @zygogram (the best swim headphones ever), @formswim (smart goggles that let me focus on swimming), @desoto_sport (my tri-shorts and tops), @iamspecialized (my road and gravel bikes), @cervelo (my tri bike), @garmin (my watches, pedals, sensors) and there are others I’m sure I’m forgetting.

I did a smaller number of events this year because of injuries, scheduling and life events.  This year I only did one triathlon – IM 70.3 Honu in June.  As always, it’s a great race.  I enjoy the bike leg the most, trekking up to Hawi and back. 

I started the year with the New Year’s Cheer race in Volcano, HI at Volcano Winery.  It’s a 3 hour race – a trail run counting as many laps as possible – and it’s the first podium I’ve been on, maybe ever.  I came in second but, to be fair, there were only three of us running the race :-).  No matter – I was proud of the effort.

I also participated in a pickleball tournament earlier in the year and my partner Terri Lee (from Maui) and I secured a second place finish in our group.  As I did then, I continue to thank Terri for being a great partner.  

My biggest event of the year was L’Etape du Tour – a race on Stage 14 of the 2023 Tour de France.  It was by far the hardest ride I’ve ever done with 4100m of climbing.  I’ve posted about it before, but it was my athletic highlight of the year and one I’ll remember always.  If I can, I’m going to do another one, but not 2024 (I wasn’t very excited about the stage they are racing this year).  

Another great highlight was in April, when Sharon (@mtnester1) and I rode our bikes around the Tulips in Skagit county.  We don’t often get to ride our bikes together but every time we do, it’s special for me.  

I brought my gravel bike to Israel in October and was fortunate enough to get one good ride in before the terrorist attack on 7 October sent us to our bomb shelters and eventually home.

One interesting thing to note this year is that I started lifting weights again.  I’ve learned how to do belt squats to deal with my continuing back issues and have rehabilitated my separated shoulder so that I can now to push-ups and pull-ups again.  It feels good to be back in the gym.  

Next year’s calendar is starting to take shape.  I’m planning on doing two half-Ironman races (Honu in June and Tri-Cities in September).  I’m considering doing Levi’s Gran Fondo as one of my bicycle events.  If things are good enough to run the Tiberius race in Israel, I may do that 70.3 as well.  I’m sure I’ll find a half-marathon and other bicycle events as the year goes  but this is what’s on the calendar so far.  I hope everyone had a great 2023 and that you achieve your goals for 2024!  

Water For Long Bicycle Rides

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Someone on Reddit asked about how to secure a bike while stopping to refill water which reminded me of similar problem I face when riding in Hawaii – there is just no water to refill with on some of my routes. This happens in particular with long gravel rides, but there are areas I ride which just don’t have convenience stores or gas stations – so what is one to do?

I carry an Ottolock, which is super lightweight and enough of a deterrent to prevent some kid from running off with my bike. Before someone shouts me down about these locks, note that it’s only a deterrent. A dedicated bike thief will cut right through it but for a quick water stop, I’m more concerned about some kid doing a grab and go. If you are primarily out for the ride (versus intending to stop and have coffee or eat lunch or something), a deterrent lock should be just fine.

If there’s no place to lock it up, I often bring the bike into the store with me (like a gas station or convenience store) – no one has ever complained.

As I mentioned, where I ride I often have a different problem – no shops or water anywhere for longer rides. I just recently added a saddle cage holder to my road bike so I can carry a total of 4 bottles with me for those rides. This one in particular is pretty inexpensive, mounted easily, and left plenty of room for a saddle bag. Carrying more bottles adds weight to the ride, but this allows me to do much longer rides in places where refilling water bottles just isn’t an option. If you’ve never used a saddle cage holder, be sure to get a good bottle holder (I can’t remember what I have, but it looks something like the profile design holder). If you use a bottle cage that isn’t a “complete loop” around the bottle, the bottles will go flying when you go over bumps. You can also add a strap to the bottles to hold them in since you’ll likely stop anyway to move the bottles around on your bike. I like this configuration a lot better than using a camelback or similar.

What Distance Is A Good Starter Triathlon?

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I’ve often see prospective triathletes ask about what distance they ought to pursue for their first event. Most of the time the question is tied to concerns about the swim; everyone can sort of imagine that they will be able to bike and run (or walk) but the swim always seems daunting. The reason it’s daunting is because most swimmers don’t ever do distances like those in a triathlon. if you watch the Olympics, most of the races are far shorter. And if you’ve goofed around with your buddies in the pool, you probably didn’t race more than a length or two. So it’s hard to imagine a long swim.

Nonetheless, my answer to this question is almost always Olympic.

I was in a similar place with the swim when I did my first triathlon (it had been many years since I was really in the water and I never was a swimmer). 6 months is plenty of time to get accustomed to the distance and to get some open water practice in as well so you know what it’s like when it’s time to race.

Funny story – when my older daughter decided to do a half-IM, she jumped in the swimming pool and swam like a fish. When she was in elementary school, she was on the community swim team. That experience left her with swimming “muscle memory” and, even though she wasn’t a top swimmer as a kid and hadn’t been swimming in ages, it came right back and she was easily outpacing me.

Olympic is a good distance to start with because it’s long enough that you’ll be serious about training and it’s an endurance distance which means you’ll focus on moderating your energy throughout the event. I’d only recommend sprint triathlons to those athletes who aren’t looking for endurance events; most of the folks who ask this question, though, are endurance athletes.

While this isn’t a totally fair comparison, I tend to think of sprint vs. olympic the same way I’d think of a 100m dash vs a half-marathon. Sprint triathlons are not “starter” triathlons – they are short distances meant to be done hard and fast, kind of like a 100m dash. Olympic distances are long enough (especially for age group athletes) to become endurance events and your training will reflect that. FWIW, I’m not a “sprint” kind of athlete, so I’ve only done Olympic and longer distances.

Given my lack of real athletic talent, I think that triathlon is mostly about commitment to training. If you are willing to commit to train, the Olympic race should be a great place to start and you’ll feel a real sense of accomplishment when you finish.

Triathlon

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One of the things that happened in the break between posts (after 2013) is that I became a triathlete. I started this journey in 2016, first completing Ironman 70.3 Augusta in the sweltering September Georgia humidity and escalated from there to complete two half-IMs and my first full Ironman (Coeur d’Alene) in 2017. At this point I’ve finished 3 full Ironmans and several half-IMs. The COVID pandemic slowed things down in 2020, but I managed to do three half-IMs in 2021 and was planning on another full in 2022 until a bike crash left me with a separated shoulder.

I’m sure there will be plenty of blog posts from here talking about my various triathlon activities, but it occurred to me today that I posted three long answers to questions about cycling, swimming and triathlon that I should preserve. I’ll follow this post with those questions and answers for the future reference of others.