Memorial Herman Ironman 70.3 – Galveston Island – April 1, 2012

For the last six months I have been training for the C'oeur d'Alene Ironman in Idaho on June 24, 2012. I decided I would try a half-ironman when I was about half through my training program so I signed up for the Memorial Herman Ironman 70.3 (half the distance of an Ironman) in Galveston.

I am here in Galveston now and have registered and checked out the course for Sunday's race. In theory this is a fast course: saltwater swim in a Bayou, and a flat bike ride that is just a straight shot out Galveston Island and back. The run is three loops, which helps in pacing. I am hopeful of doing much better than on my last 70.3 race at Steelhead in 2010. However, it is a windy course – most likely it will be a crosswind, but wind never helps. And there is that saltwater. I'm not excited about that, but I'll try not to drink too much of it.

Here are my predictions / goal for this race.

	Swim	/100	T1	Bike	MPH	T2	Run	Min/Mile	Total
Steelhead 2010	39:21	2:03	4:42	2:59:26	18.7	4:14	2:21:46	10:50	6:09:29
Galveston 2012 - Goal	40:00	2:04	4:30	2:48:00	20.0	4:30	2:04:30	9:30	5:41:30

I actually believe I should do a lot better than this, but I've never beaten any of my predictions, so I'm trying to be more conservative this time. I have trained hard this winter, especially on the bike. I know I am in good shape for this race. We'll see.

The Novel so Far - 2 years later

In October 2009 I reported in this blog about my three year effort to write my novel, "American Jukebox." The novel chronicles the life of a minor league baseball player whose life unravels after he fails to make it to the major leagues. Told against the backdrop of America’s postwar challenges from Little Rock to Viet Nam, it is a story of how youthful decisions, made in haste, can reverberate through the decades, and affect the lives of everyone we love.

I am now well into my fifth rewrite. I know it sounds almost sisyphean to continue to work on the same project for years, but it is a good novel and I think I am getting close. 

Meanwhile, during fallow periods I have continued to write short fiction and in the last few months I've had a number of stories published: 

The Girl from Yesterday    was published by Specter Magazine in January. This story was a chapter in an earlier version of AMERICAN JUKEBOX.

The Bump  - Journal of Compressed Creative Arts

Nina's Song  - Absinthe Revival

This Train Makes all the Stops  - Washington Pastime

The Toll Collector  - Boston Literary Magazine

4 A. M. - Eunoia Review

Links to these stories are provided in the table of my published stories at the bottom of the blog.

Ironman C’oeur d’Alene – June 24, 2012

 Last June I signed up for my first (and probably only) Ironman competition – Ironman C'oeur d'Alene, which will be run on June 24, 2012. For years I've had no interest in trying an Ironman. The race is a 2.4 mile swim, 112 miles on the bike, and a 26.2 mile run. I've never swam, biked, or run any of those distances. Two years ago I completed two half-Ironmans and that probably was the half-step I needed to at least start thinking about what it would be like to complete an Ironman. But mostly what I thought was that it would be hell and I wasn't interested.


But last year several of the people I trained with completed Ironmen. I tracked their progress on-line and cheered their success . And surprisingly, when Craig Strong, who heads up Precision Multisport, announced plans for a group effort to train for CDA in 2012, I decided to go for it. I guess I figured if I was going to do that distance, it would be best to try it while I'm still young. Right?


A writer friend of mine insisted that I should write a book about training and competing. She recommended I keep a record of my daily training. So even though I'm technically in the "offseason" I started in September to keep a blog The Road to C'oeur d'Alene of my workouts. It's not really very interesting, but it will be helpful later if I do write a book or story about the race preparation.


So far in the eight weeks that I've been logging the workouts I've trained about 7 to 9 hours per week. Light workouts, not much intensity. When we get into serious training mode, we will average more like 14 hours a week and the workouts will be more intense.


 It will all be over in another 225 days.