LECHTANSKI.NET

1000 miles since April 2007. A thousand miles running on trails, sidewalks and roads in Bellingham, Orlando, Las Vegas, Seattle and more, baby.

This last weekend I hit that pretty cool milestone. Using my Nike+ system with my Nano, I have kept pretty meticulous track of my mileage. I was about the 8,614th 1000-miler on nikeplus.com.

But this coming weekend, daylight savings is going into effect, and just like last year, it is about time I scale back my mileage. I need to heal a couple of muscles and get a couple of massages.

It’s good timing, because I have a pretty busy month ahead of me: Michigan and Orlando, Thanksgiving and a bunch of happenings at work.

Last Saturday, me and about 150 close friends snuck out to Lake Samish for a sprint triathlon. It could not have been a nicer day. There was a 10 o’clock start, which is kind of late for a race, and by then it was on the way to being the hottest day of the year.

It was the first time I’d done a sprint triathlon and I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. I might have been a little cocky having done Alcatraz in June, because I didn’t really go for a bike ride OR a swim until two weeks before this race. But I thought: This is a sprint. 800-meter swim, 15-mile bike ride and a 5K run. Taking such a long break from cycling and swimming would mean I was just well rested…

Not so much. I did the swim in 20 minutes. That’s pretty slow. I went without the wet suit for this event, well, because the water was so warm and my transition to the bike would be less cumbersome. I killed it cycling 15 miles in 46 minutes. I felt very strong on the bike. But then I was beat coming off the bike. The juice just wasn’t there. I ran nine-minute miles for the 5K. That’s at least a minute off my race pace. End time: 1:36:39.9

The event was a fundraiser for the Lake Samish fire department, and extremely well organized, especially since this was the first year for the event. I’m glad we have good local events in which to participate. Hopefully we’ll have two or three more next year!

For some reason, I have been torn over participating in the Chuckanut Footrace. I want to do it, but I don’t feel like doing it at the same time.

It’s a seven-mile run on Bellingham’s Interurban trail from Fairhaven to Larrabee State Park. Usually, I procrastinate long enough that I miss the registration deadline or they’ve reached capacity. Well, this year, I waited until four hours before the deadline and still successfully registered. I had no excuses and had to do the run.

It was a beautiful morning. There was a 9 am start time, and nearly 1000 people showed up to run or walk the event. There were a bunch of guys from work (Don, John, Bil, Brandon), and I saw a few other people I know (Keefer, Maureen). I did the run in an hour. I’m still not sure why I’ve been reluctant to run this event. I need events to keep up my motivation to keep running, cycling or swimming. I get bored otherwise. This is a great race.

It was put on by Fairhaven Runners and they did a great job. And the Interurban trail is by far the most scenic run in the county. It runs up on the hill alongside Chuckanut Drive. So, if you’ve ever driven Chuckanut and couldn’t look at the incredible waterscapes and scenery for fear of driving off the cliff, the running trail is for you.

We are having a pretty nice summer shaping up, and Saturday was a perfect example. Sunny, clear and by the time I was crossing the finish line, it was getting hot. My only complaint is the clog dancer at the finish party. Clog dancing for some reason makes me angry. So I had to avoid eye contact with the stage, and then hurry to catch the bus back to Fairhaven.

Six months of waiting. Four months of training. One day of driving. Three hours, seven minutes of racing. June 8, 2008, I Escaped from Alcatraz.

I had a goal time (3:15) and a dream time (3 hours). I missed my dream time by seven minutes. Holy Shit!

The Swim
A mile and a half across the San Francisco Bay. The three prisoners who came closest to escaping from Alcatraz are assumed to have drowned before they reached the mainland. I, on the other hand, made the swim in 41 minutes.

We got up at 4:20. Sunday morning traffic in SF is minimal, but this morning, there were plenty of cyclists making their pre-dawn way to the race. Gavin and I rode our bikes down to the race transition area to catch a bus to the ferryboat landing. We milled about the dock for an hour or so, getting body marked, hanging out in porta-potties and trying to talk about politics to keep ourselves from getting too anxious.

About 7 we left the dock. At 8 a.m., the air horn blew and 1800 competitors started piling off the boat. A perfectly good boat. Because the tide was moving out, swimming the bay was essentially like swimming across a huge river. This made the mile and a half a very fast swim, and while at times I felt like I wasn’t moving, before I knew it a wave picked me up and buried both of my hands in sand. I had arrived! So, I got up and started running down a chute of hundreds of people cheering and leading me to my bike. It was awesome.

The Bike
San Francisco’s pretty hilly, by the way. We had driven the bike route the day before, and I was fully daunted by the prospect of surviving the bike ride. It’s basically made up of continuous uphill grades with only a couple of extreme down hill stints. In other words: lots of up with not so much down. And to make it worse, every downhill stretch is followed by a sharp turn. This totally kills your momentum.

Since the ride is 18 miles out and back, those extreme downhill parts on the way out are the extreme uphill parts on the way back. While pedaling up the worst of the hills, I was with a few other riders, joking and commiserating about the pain. I discovered the combination of joking and complaining is a great way to pass the time while climbing steep hills. Who knew?

I managed the 18 miles in 1:05. I felt great. The last few miles into the transition were either downhill or flat, and I was flying. My Softride is a pretty fast bike. So, even coasting, I was passing people.

The Run
My two primary brick workouts prior to the race left me with shin cramps (these hurt precisely as much as they sound). Here? Nothing. I had to work out the cycling stiffness, but my legs felt great.

As Gavin pointed out, this race had just about every possible running terrain: concrete, loosely packed dirt, packed dirt, bricks, wood chips, trails, sand, wood steps, stairs, sand stairs.

I settled in for eight miles. I passed a bit, got passed a bit and occasionally got stuck behind people walking ridiculously slow up some stairs. Halfway through the run, we hit the beach for a while and then headed up the infamous sand stairs. The sand stairs are 400 uneven logs leading up a sandy hill. At the top of the stairs, I had four more miles to look forward to.

The last two miles were tough. I had kept pace with a few people and I noticed a few others falling away. Eventually, I could see the huge inflatable finish line. The last mile, I turned it on. With everything I had left, I poured it on. Turning the last corner, I was pretty sure I heard Barb, Elaine, Tawsha and J yell, but I was focused on breathing and form. I finished strong at an hour and twelve minutes.

3:07.

It was 11 a.m. and I had been up for almost eight hours. I Escaped from Alcatraz without a hitch. Now I just had to wait for the photos. And then there is the video.

It’s been five weeks and I am in the thick of it. Running three times a week. Swimming an hour plus and spending more time than I care to think about on an exercise bike (three hours!).

The good: I am feeling it. Once or twice I struggled for some motivation, but I’m feeling it. The workouts are not getting easier. I’m making them longer and harder, and I’m looking forward to planning fun breaks from the routine. I met up with Gavin last week for a couple of laps around Green Lake. He and I will get together again in a bit, to see if he has any swimming pointers for me. And I’m going to do the Vancouver Half Marathon in May.

The bad: All this distance, time and sweating and I’m losing weight. I am down to 168 lbs from 178 a month ago. My goal is to be fit and 175 on race day. And I figure the way to keep the weight is to eat more and more. That’s what I’m trying. Four meals a day with snacks in between. I’m even throwing in a few protein smoothies along the way. What do you think of whey protein supplements? I’m thinking about picking up tub.

Regarding my workouts, I feel a little strange using the exercise bike at the gym, but I am just not in the mood to deal with the bike maintenance yet. My bike has been hanging in the garage since last fall, and it needs a little tuning up. Well, that and it’s been pretty crappy outside, and I am a fair weather cyclist. Rain is bad.

I think once April hits I’ll break down and get the bike out, but for March I’m going to stay with the gym. That way I can watch Family Guy reruns and CNN while I’m pedaling. And, also, when I’m at the gym pedaling, I’m literally pedaling the whole time. I’m not coasting down any hills, or taking corners. So it’s setting me up pretty well for my first real trip.

Check out my Escape from Alcatraz training plan to see how I’m keeping up. I’ve been doing pretty well.