Devil Dog Duathlon Pics

A couple of photos from Karla's recent race - Devil Dog Duathlon

Summer is Here

This past weekend it felt like summer finally arrived - temperatures in the 80's and 90's. For the first time on Saturday, we left the house and did not have to wear multiple layers. We could leave the jackets and vests at home. We joined up with team Saturday morning out on the first miles of the RAAM course for the prescribed 4x20 min race pace intervals. The first and third efforts were ridden solo and numbers two and four where with you partner. Two minutes into the first one my body was scolding me for neglecting my IT bands. My legs were so tight and painful. I need to be disciplined and stretch more and make my foam roller my friend instead of foe. Karla rocked on her efforts. She was teamed up with Jim this week and they make a great team. She set new PR's during her individual efforts and I was 15 seconds slower than last week. It may have to do with the volume for the week. The heat was great - it felt so good to work up a heavy sweat riding. I went into the ride playing a little nutrition game. I only took 350 calories with me. This is probably not the smartest thing to do when you are going for a 5 hour ride. Karla punished me the last 5 miles home as I could feel my body bonking. Food never tasted so good when we got home. The plan was to do a long run Sunday morning followed by a easy ride. I felt horrible (probably from the nutrition experiment) and proceeded to drink a pot of coffee and eat 3/4 of an angel food cake I made the day before. With all that caffeine and sugar I felt awesome. We went out for a 30 mile ride in the late morning to refresh the legs from Saturday's efforts. The temperature hit 98 degrees yesterday with strong winds. We finished the day with a solid swim to cool down from the heat. Swimming would be easy if you could always have the sun shining and have it warm instead of the 5:30 am cold wake up call.

So for the past week:
Bike - 280 miles/15.5 hr
Run - 20 miles/2.5 hr
Swim - 7000 yds/2.5 hrs

This week we will continue to build the efforts and focus on the bike. The plan is to do 350 miles on the bike while maintaining the run and swim volume. We will do 8x1 mile hill repeats on Wednesday on the inside road at Torrey Pines and 4x25 min flat intervals Saturday on the RAAM course.

We started this morning off with a great run - it was nice to run in shorts and t-shirt and leave the jacket and tights at home (even at 4:30 am). 10 miles in 67 minutes with an avg. hr of 154. This low HR training stuff is working well. It is not long slow distance but long steady distance training as Chuckie V (http://chuckiev.blogspot.com/), Jeff Keil (http://timluchinske.blogspot.com/) and Lucho (http://timluchinske.blogspot.com/) preach. It was actually challenging to get my HR up without the help of hills.

Riding For A Purpose

For our team RAAM is not just a Race Across AMerica it is a race to better our community. North Coast Community Service (NCCS) supports the following organizations Angel’s Depot, Bread of Life, Green Oak Ranch, Michaelle House, Military Support, North County Solutions for Change, Operation Hope, Pleasant Care Nursing Home, Pregnancy Resource Center, Stand Up for Kids, and Straight From the Heart. In the past 12 months, 5,500 NCCS volunteers have completed over 450 unique service projects. The support ranges from feeding and providing shelter for the homeless, assistance to a drug and alcohol recovery program, a home for people disabled by HIV/AIDS, support of military families by providing: financial support, home improvements, baby supplies, childcare, and counseling, outreach to nursing home residences, help to pregnant teenagers and adult women, help for homeless kids, and non-profit resale for foster children. This is just a short summary of the help provided by the organization we are raising money to support. If you feel compelled to join us on our journey and support making a difference in this world you can make a tax-deductible contribution to our team. Please follow this link Support NCCS RAAM 2008

Stay tuned to find out more and thanks for joining our ride.

Glad I Swam at La Jolla Cove this morning

Extremely tragic incident here in San Diego this morning. The crazy thing is that we did a 1.5 mile open water ocean swim about 10 miles south of this beach at the same hour.

Shark Attack Kills Male Triathlete Swimmer at San Diego Beach
Friday, April 25, 2008

SOLANA BEACH, Calif. — A male triathlete swimmer was killed Friday morning in a gruesome shark attack at a San Diego County beach.
San Diego County sheriff's Lt. Mike McClain said deputies went to Solana Beach shortly before 7:30 a.m. Friday and found a shark bite victim, who was pronounced dead about an hour later.
The male victim — one of a group of triathlete swimmers training in the ocean — was pulled into shore, but efforts by medics to revive him failed, Deputy Fire Chief Dismas Abelman told FOX News.
Witnesses reported seeing the victim's leg severed at the knee.
"He had very severe injuries to both legs," Abelman told FOX.
The man, whose identity wasn't immediately released, was described as being between 55 and 60 years old on the Solana Beach city Web site.
The incident happened at a strip called Tide Beach. Rescuers took the victim to the nearby Fletcher Cove Park lifeguard station for emergency treatment, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The Coast Guard has issued warnings of sharks in the area since the tragic attack. Swimmers have been ordered out of the water for a 17-mile stretch around the site.
The county Sheriff's Department has sent up helicopters to scan the waters for the shark.

Point of View

I thought I would share a photo of the RAAM team.
From left to right - Pete Penseyres, Dave Rideout, Jeff Holmes, Mike Bennett, Jim Penseyres, Karla, Frank Peters. I am in the back.

Sometimes it is good to change your point of view. In this instance, the photographer should have changed his point of his view because I look extremely tall. I think Karla laughed for 5 minutes when she first saw this. This is a little better (Karla and I after the California 70.3) -

As for training so far this week:

Mon - 10 mile run in the AM and swim in the PM.

Tuesday - Bike Commute to and from work plus a trip to the car shop - 70 miles.

Wed AM - Easy 8 mile run. Tonight intervals 7x5 min - it will be good I tell myself.

Past, Present and Future

So here is a glimpse into our training program administered by Pete - aka Captain Punishment.

The highlights of this very simple training plan are the weekly total hours, the long ride, the flat intervals, hill repeats, and finally leg speed. We started riding together back in December on conversational rides but usually averaging 1000 ft of climbing per 10 miles (i.e. 80 mile ride with 8000 ft of climbing). This was the barometer for deeming the ride "hilly". In February we started doing the hill repeats on the Old 395 highway just south of Hwy. 76. For those of you not familiar with it, there is a consistent grade of about 7% over 1.7 miles that you can do repeats on. We tried to ride these at a HR of our lactate threshold minus 1-3 bpm. Unfortunately we don't have power meters. We would climb for 10 minutes, spin down which usually took about 3 minutes, and repeat up to 7 times. The stationary trainer intervals would be classified as VO2 max intervals. We would go as hard as you go. We did these in Pete's driveway as it is much easier to push yourself with others than sitting in your dungeon at home trying to suffer solo. The intervals have now left the trainer and we are progressing towards our RAAM specific training. The plan is to ride between 5-30 minutes each on the road during the race. In addition, we will occasionally use 2 riders in a pace line. We are now working to dial in our efforts just below our LT in the TT position. The 5 minute intervals on the schedule are done on a 1 mile stretch of road with about 300 ft of elevation gain. These are painful as the goal is to do them 1-3 bpm above your LT. Your legs are in pain at the end. Finally the leg speed drills are to increase your ability to spin out and not loose control or bounce on the seat.

So this weekend we had 4x15 minutes of flat intervals. We did these on Camino del Ray. Two were solo efforts and the alternating ones were with another rider on the team. We are trying to figure out the best combinations for the road. I was with Mike Bennett, who stands about 5'-6". I am 6'-7". Although I am pretty skinny, people say that it is like drafting behind a VW bug when you tuck onto my rear wheel. Mike on the other hand is pretty low to the ground. Hopefully there are some pictures I can post so you can see the difference. Anyhow, I ended up with 95 miles and avg. of 20.1 mph for the day. Sunday I caught up with Joe Beeson, a member of a 4 person RAAM team, and we cruised up the coast to Las Pulgas and back catching up. A nice easy 50 miles followed with a flop in the pool late in the day.

Enough for now -

We'll talk later.

NJB

T Minus 52 Days

Welcome to our blog. My hope is to chronicle the preparations of our team in preparation for RAAM. For those of you not familiar with RAAM, this summary from the official website (www.raceacrossamerica.org) pretty much sums up the race -

"RAAM is more than a bike race. It is about ordinary people being great. It's about realizing dreams, a journey of the heart and soul. It's about being the toughest of the tough. It's about camaraderie, teamwork, and the incredible RAAM family. It's about taking the stage for a charity or cause that matters, to raise awareness and funds. It's about the vastness, richness, beauty, and generosity of the United States of America and the people who live here. It's a lifetime experience never to be repeated."

It is a transcontinental race that departs Oceanside California on June 11 and the clock will not stop until we arrive in Annapolis Maryland, some 3000 miles away. Our team will ride around the clock and hopefully arrive some 6 1/2 days later. We will climb approximately 100,000 ft during the ride, or the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest 4 times on a bike. Another way to think of it would be climbing to the edge of space. Pretty far I would say.

I will leave the complete history of how we are here today for another post, but last year I was called out leaving church by a guy named Joe Torres who asked if I was a triathlete. The Polar heart rate monitor gave it away I guess. He invited me to join their group that was training for RAAM. I saw the rest of the guys and noticed they were 20-30 years older than me (I am 29) and I thought they would be slow. So finally after last year's race, Joe talked me in to riding with them on a Saturday ride in North County San Diego. I had no clue that two of those "guys" that looked a whole lot older than me happened to be RAAM legends, Pete and Jim Penseyres. They will never tell you that they both hold records but after chasing them you have no doubt of their accomplishments. Google their names for your own interest. Pete's solo RAAM record from 1986 still stands today. There is a great piece on the RAAM website about his performance. Check it out if you get a chance. When we arrived the first decent climb of the day (Lake Wuhlford for you SD folks), Pete took off and I jumped in after him. We quickly gapped the group and raced to the top. I managed to hang on but not by much. In between gasps, Pete invited me to join the team for this at the top of the climb. I couldn't believe how he could climb. A couple of weeks prior I had raced the Vineman 1/2 Ironman and averaged 22.25 mph. I was pretty proud of that until a 64 year old put me in my place. From that point I gained an immense respect for Pete and Jim and the rest of the team and started training with them on a regular basis.

Pete has laid out a training plan based upon his record team performance in 1996. We started "formally" training in February and will build to a 17 hour week before it is all over. Stay tuned for a whole lot more. I plan on posting the training progression, the team's logistic's and approach to the race, thoughts on crewing, and information on the charity we are raising awareness and funds for.

Thanks for reading.

We'll talk later.

NJB

Saturday April 19th Karla's Devil Dog Race

So this is my first posting for our training for RAAM 2008. We are 7 1/2 weeks away from the start of the race on June 11th. Today I didn't join the team in interval training because I had a duathlon to compete in. My friend Colleen and I raced the Devil Dog Duathlon at Camp Pendleton. It was a 5K (3.1mile) Run, 30K (18.6mile) Bike, 5K Run. Here is the link to the race information http://www.camppendletonraces.com/duathlon.html. This was our first duathlon we participated in last year. We both improved considerably on our time from last year. I placed 3rd in my age group again with a time of 1h41min36sec, which is almost an 8 minute improvement over last year. Colleen was 4th in her age group and her time was 1h37min27sec. We celebrated by having lunch at Hill Street Cafe in Oceanside.