Humbled in Galveston

I think I should stop making these pre-race predictions. Or maybe I should come up with my prediction and then add 45 minutes to it, just to be safe.

I finished the Hermann Memorial Herman 70.3 Ironman on Galveston Island yesterday. Barely. I had a decent swim and while I was 10 minutes short of my bike goal, I had a good ride averaging over 20 mph on the final 28 miles. And this was actually my first outdoor ride of the season, so I am not displeased with that result. But on the run segment, I faltered. In the first mile I got a hamstring cramp, but I was able to walk it out and keep going. At that point I still felt like I had a chance to break 6 hours for the first time, but I simply ran out of gas.

It was warm, around 76 degrees and the humidity was over 80 percent. Today, a day after the race, I weigh 183, down from a pre-race weight (after 3 IHOP breakfasts) of about 190. So that tells me despite all my hydration efforts, I got too dehydrated on the bike. I need to look at my race nutrition.

This is the worst run time I've ever recorded. Overall I finished 11^th in my age group of old guys, out of 28. I've have a lot of work to do before C'oeur d'Alene.

	Swim	/100	T1	Bike	MPH	T2	Run	Pace	Total
Galveston - Actual	41:32	1:58	5:19	2:58:39	18.8	4:29	2:48:40	12:52	6:38:39
Galveston - Goal	40:00	1:54	4:30	2:48:00	20.0	4:30	2:04:30	9:30	5:41:30

On the plus side, Amy Shelly and Pam Gould-Rashid, who are part of the group that is being trained by Craig Strong (Precision Multisport) for the C'oeur d'Alene Ironman also competed at Galveston. They were nice enough to wait for me to finish and later we had recovery Margaritas.



Pam - Amy - Len



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.