How better the to end the year than with more one final crazy thing? Today I battled the Loch Ness Monster! A couple of weeks ago before I left for Scotland I was joking with my fellow Training Captains (Ann & Christy) that we should have an open water swim in Scotland and that Loch Ness would be the best place for it. ...

Today's Ironteam practice featured the first open water swim of the season. Despite the flashbacks of the chilling water and feeling like my head was stuck in an ice fire, from the swim at Aquatic park back in January; I still managed to get the courage to drive up to the city arrive late, spend an unusual amount of time putting on my wetsuit, ...

Well I couldn't possibly imagine begin all that things I've experienced over the past year, here is a (fairly) quick recap of the past year:

August 26th 2006: In final preparations for my second Half-Ironman (Big Kahuna), I crashed my bike quite spectacularly on our team practice Triathlon. After a few hours waiting in the hospital, I found out I'd fractured my arm and would not be able to do my event ...

Swimming has been my weakest of the three and after a disappointing swim at Vineman I wanted rebuild my confidence with one last big open water swim in before Ironman. Having just decided to do the Donner Lake Swim, at around 3pm yesterday, I started the long drive up to Donner lake just before 9pm, I arrived in Truckee just gone midnight. Having ...

Work has been eating up more and more of my free time, that said I was able to get in a good swim practice this week and ride on Saturday. The Saturday ride was not as long as I had planned but still had a decent amount of climbing, tackling La Honda (Highway 84) to reach Skyline.

2hours 14mins
4,628 Feet of Climbing...

Today involved and early morning start and by early I mean early! The team was to meet down at Pacific Groove (home of the kelp crawl) for a swim and long run at 8am. Luckily I was carpooling so didn't have to be fully coherent for the drive down. We got there early and the weather was no how you expect it to be ...

Friday night was a late drive up to Lake Berryessa, arriving at 11:30pm. Then up before 6am to be ready for the 6:45am swim start. I missed the talk about the swim as I was running late, so I just jumped in and followed everyone else. The water was a good temperature and clear enough to see to the bottom in shallow parts. ...

This morning was one of our longest Swim workouts totaling around 3,600 yards. We were at Gunderson High school again, but this time the pool was set up for 50 meter lanes, when your going long distance things quicker this way. As usual we started with a number of drills then went in the main set, which was followed by some sprints. I have to say today was the first time I can really really ...

(Ok, I promise to come with better titles for future posts :-)

Tonights swim with the team was notable not for the many laps we swam, but the swimming drills we did after the main set. Focusing on what to encounter in a open water swim with thousands of people. The first thing is closeness, you become every friendly with your fellow swimmers, to simulate this we swam four people wide down ...

A beautiful sunny morning, one of those days where you think "wow this is California". The hardest part of working out is often getting out of bed, I was determined to make the swim and managed to drag myself from bed at the last possible moment. I arrived just past 8am and quickly got in the pool to start the workout. It felt great to be in the water and was a perfect morning, however ...