It’s time to see how I shape up with my preparation for the Duke Liver Center Half Ironman in a months time.  Basically I need to know if I can pull off the distances required.  While I’m not going to do a practice race in it’s entirety for sheer practicality I am going to o each of the disciplines for their respective distance.  That means the 1.2 mile swim one day, 56 mile bike ride the next, and ending with a half-marathon on the third day.  I figure if I do this now with a month to go I’ll know how much more I need to build up or if I am on track to being able to complete the race, winning has never been a goal.

So today was the 1.2 mile swim which equates to about 84.5 laps in the pool.  I did 86 laps because if you end on an odd lap it puts you on the wrong side of the pool.  The results were that Im in really good shape for the swim.  I can tell Ill be sore tomorrow as I already feel stiff in the shoulders this afternoon.  I completed the laps in about an hour, I have to estimate because the Optimist Park pool doesn’t have all the clocks around the edge like Pullen Park does.  The cutoff for the swim in the triathlon is one hour and 15 minutes so I should be well inside that discipline.  I did like swimming in the new pool because its outdoors which was a nice change, and maybe will alleviate the farmers tan from my bike shorts and jersey.

I’m not fast by any means but I did feel like I kept a good pace going.  There was another swimmer there who I could tell was a triathalete by his gear and swim cap for Inside-Out sports.  He constantly was smoking me in the swim doing about two laps for each of my one and a third.  It was kind of disheartening till later when I saw him pulling off swim fins and sticking them on the edge of the pool.  I imagine he was doing some type of drills but it made me feel better to know he was “cheating”.  I also saw him drinking some Gatorade from a water bottle on the edge of the pool which made me realize that I had forgotten to have a breakfast bar and was swimming on an empty stomach.  That did little to help my energy and my mind grasped on to that as an excuse to try and slow down and talk myself into quitting, which I didn’t succumb to.

In the end I feel good about the swim portion of the upcoming race.  I do know now that I get bored towards the end in the pool but know that the race adrenalin will take care of that.

So I find out now that Pullen Park Aquatic Center is going to be closed until September 4th for maintenance.  That leaves me without a place to swim for three weeks in the end run of my Duke Liver Center Half Ironman training.  Not to mention that I’ll be doing the Endurance Challenge Triathlon in Hillsborough in two weeks.  Needless to say I needed to find a new place to keep swimming.  While looking I came across this site, www.swimmersguide.com, which is a good resource to find a place to swim no matter where you live.  With it I found a new swimming hole to fill in for the time that my local pool is closed.  If you’re in the market for a place to swim take a look and find a new pool.

Today when I started out on my run at 8:30 it was 87 degrees, by the time I made it home an hour and a half later it was 95.  Thats not counting what the heat index was.  All I know is after half a bottle of Cytomax and 45 minutes of running I had to stop and walk.  So all in all I finished about half of my run before bonking with a shirt that was soaked transparent and an almost empty water bottle.  My heart rate stayed in the aerobic zone through the whole walk home which shows that even walking can be enough sometimes.  Of course my average pace was shot but I still pulled off 7 and a half miles even with the heat.  Hopefully this heat wave will have broken by the time I’m back from Philadelphia.  There’s only so much of this that can go on and I’m not enough of a morning person to be able to do my workouts in the morning.  Nights are out of the question because at 10:30 last night the heat index was still 96.

So Im back from the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore this past weekend.  It was a fun few days and the concert was well worth the trip.  If you get a chance catch The Police, Beastie Boys, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Smashing Pumpkins.  Everyone else was good but these acts were the highlight.  It seems almost cliche to have named the headliners as the best because its expected but more often than not they underwhelm.

So it was three days of eating, drinking, getting sunburnt, and listening to good music.  Now its time to try and undo as much damage as I can before heading up to Philadelphia to do it all over again for the Phillies vs Braves series.   It doesn’t help that the temperature for this week is supposed to be bumping 100 degrees each and every day.  Looks like a lot of early mornings and late afternoon workouts or else bonking in the heat.

I’m running another Triathlon on August 25th, its the Endurance Challenge Triathlon in Hillsborough.  It’s about 30 minutes from Raleigh so it’ll be an early morning for me.  Zack is also going to take on this triathlon also, so it’ll be a first for both of us.  It’s a short spring triathlon consisting of a 500 meter swim, 16 mile bike ride, and a 5K run.  I guess you can’t really say any triathlon will be short or easy but this will be a good break-in before the Half-Ironman three weeks later.  Brad, from Booty, already told me it was ballsy to try to take on the Half-Ironman cold but as I told him I’m good at making myself suffer.

I’m looking forward to this triathlon as a springboard to the big event.  It will definitely be a good gauge of where I am in relation to what I’m about to take on.