Bob the runner

I did it!  On Sunday I completed my first Olympic Distance Triathlon.  TriRock was held at Aurora Reservoir in Aurora Colorado and included a 1500 meter swim, 24.8 mile bike ride and a 10 kilometer run.  This is my biggest accomplishment since the marathon in January and I'm feeling quite happy with myself!  On July 1st, I visited Endurance House for their weekly group run.  They were giving a free entry to TriRock away and I was hoping to win.  Unfortunately I didn't win, but did receive a nice discount and a free TriRock technical shirt, so signed up for the event.  While at Endurance House, I also won the raffle for one of their technical shirts.  Normally, to earn the shirt, you have to attend ten of their group runs, so I was quite fortunate winning on my first visit. On Saturday, my wife and I drove to Aurora to pick up my race packet at the Expo.  There were a handful of vendors there but nothing like typical Rock-n-roll race event...

Today I accomplished a new milestone by swimming 1.2 miles in open water.  This was the longest swim I have ever done! The event was called Cancer Sucks and was held at Grant Ranch.  There were about 182 participants in the event.  My wife did the swim with me as well as 3 other folks from the Arvada Triathlon Club.  It's always more fun when you have family and friends at an event.  There were two courses, 1/2 mile and 1.2 mile.  The distance options were 1/2 mile, 1.2 miles, 2.4 miles, and 4.8 miles.  Most participants did the 2.4 mile course.  You could swim in a wetsuit if desired and there were no awards.  I chose to swim with the wetsuit.  Since this event was for charity and not a race, the atmosphere was well organized but also very low key.  This was great for me as my focus was on finishing the distance not racing for time.  We entered the water around 730am and the swim started at 735am.  There were only 5...

I finished my first sprint Triathlon of 2014 on Sunday.  TriBoulder was a fun event and I finished faster than the time I predicted for myself.  The race was held at Boulder Reservoir.  The weather (70) and the water (72) were perfect. For the swim start we were facing right into the sun.  This made it impossible to see the buoys so we were pretty much hoping the faster folks led us in the right direction!  The wave before mine veered way to the left away from the first buoy and probably cost themselves a minute or so getting back on track.  It was quite entertaining watching everyone follow the leaders in the wrong direction.    The start for my wave was announced by a countdown and then we ran into the water and began swimming.  Personally I found the entire swim to be quite congested as I was constantly either smacking, kicking, bumping, or getting it done to me.  The leaders in my age group took us in the right direction a...

The theme for the Casper Half Marathon was "Run With the Herd" so I guess that's what I did!  13.1 miles and state number 8 (Wyoming) is in the books! This race was a small scale race (174 half marathoners) but very organized. There wasn't any communication from the race directors before the race, but they did have a list of registered runners on their web site, so I had some confidence that I was truly registered.  Also in the last days before the race, some communication appeared on Facebook. This was the first destination race where I traveled by myself.  My wife had to work, so I decided to take the short flight to Casper and go for it.  I stayed at the host hotel called the Ramada Plaza Casper. I decided to stay here because the race finished on the side of the hotel, packet pickup was here, and they had a free shuttle to the start.  Once I arrived at the hotel I checked into room 209 and went to packet pickup.  Packet pickup was well organized...

I just completed my 16th Bolder Boulder!  At one time this was the highlight race for the year for me.  Though I still enjoy the event, it does not usually bring as much of a sense of accomplishment as it once did.  This is probably because I have now run half and full marathons and also competed in Triathlons. At the BB2014 start line. A selfie at the BB2014 start.  Going into the race my goals were to finish and to earn a "Beat Your Age Award".  Since I am 55, my time needed to be 54:59 (8:50 pace) or less.  This doesn't sound too difficult since I've run half marathons faster than this pace but the BB is a tough course.  The first 4 miles are pretty much rolling uphill then mile 5 is a nice downhill but the last half mile includes uphill again. The race could not have gone much better for me.  The weather was perfect (low 50's) and I felt great from the start.  I went out a little too fast for the first mile and made myself s...

For several months I have been running and living with several nagging discomforts.  While training for the Maui Oceanfront Marathon in the January, I developed bursitis in my left hip, tendonitis in my right foot and in both knees.  Also somewhere along the way I developed a sports hernia in my right groin.  Earlier this year, I went to physical therapy twice for the foot pain but pretty much ignored the other pains.  After the Fargo half marathon I had had enough and decided to go see the Dr.  My regular Dr has been out for months due to a bicycle accident, so I went to see Dr Tod Sweeney, who specializes in Sports Medicine.  He diagnosed everything I listed above and told me to go see a physical therapist.  Thanks to a recommendation from a friend, I found a P/T (Douglas Wisoff) that is also a popular running coach.  This blog post is intended to detail my visit to the Running Coach. 20 May 2014 Douglas tested my muscles for flexibility and ...

Why would anyone intentionally go to Fargo North Dakota?  A great question indeed!  Well, I intentionally went and actually enjoyed the trip.  Mostly so I could add state number 7 to my "run a full or half marathon in every state" goal.  But also because I've never visited North Dakota and was curious if people really talk like the folks in the FARGO movie! "Yah", "you betcha", the movie is kinda weird and not sure I would recommend, but it was the first thing I thought of when looking to run in North Dakota.  Now on to the trip and race review. Registration for the race was easy and there was great email communication up to the day of the event.  Hotels close to the finish were a bit difficult to find unless you registered many months in advance.  I registered in February, 3 months before the event, and the best hotel options were already taken.  We ended up staying at Comfort Suites Fargo which was about 7 miles from the ra...