Call me Mr. Big Ring

I'm a love people, use things, kind of person.

Everyone who knows me can stop laughing now.

I really need to show my equipment more respect!

So anyway, my gears are so screwed up that I can't even get into the big ring on the bike without yanking on the cable so I just leave it there all the time now.

Sick twice in a year

So I'm finally getting over this f-ing cold.... Again!

I was pretty sick two weeks ago with the sneezing and the coughing. That's pretty much passed. Last week I kept waking up at 1:00 am with a really bad cough. I have a lot of that cough syrup with codeine so that worked nicely but I decided to stop taking it last night and I slept fine.

The illness really affected my times I think. Three Sundays ago I ran 13.2 miles in 1:50:00. That's a half marathon in under 2 hours. That was the day of the PF Chang's Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. If I'd have known I was going to be that fast I'd have run it.

Then two Sundays ago my long run was 2 hours. I thought that I was going to look down at my pedometer and see around 15 miles. I only ran 13.1 miles. That's .1 miles less in 10 additional minutes. That kind of bugged me.

Then yesterday, it being a rest week, I only had to run 45 minutes. I only got 4.83 miles. That's hardly a 10 minute/mile pace. I was really disappointed. Not to mention that I have not felt my best on the rides either.

This morning was different I think. I haven't downloaded the data into my computer yet but today I had to ride for 1:20 and I had to do 4 x 10 minute intervals at HR approaching and even brushing up against LT. The ride went fantastic.

First of all, you know how a couple months ago I complained that 48 degrees was cold? It was 48 today and it was perfect out. I really enjoyed riding on the aero-bars too. It was very very very comfortable and my whole body besides my legs was very still. That means that I wasn't wasting any energy on anything except moving the pedals. It was easy to settle into a high cadence and keep my HR right where it needed to be. I even took Hummingbird on the way in and did some climbing.

A really good weekend

I kind of feel like I'm back into the swing of things. I'm almost caught up with all my work. The house is a disaster with the projects I'm supposed to get done but keep blowing off. That might matter soon because we looked at a house this weekend that I really like. My Brother says we should buy it but I think that's because he lives near it and wants his property values to stay high.

AERO BARS!!!!

I have officially become that which I used to make fun of.

I put aero bars on my bike, flipped the stem, and raised the seat to achieve the optimal time-trial position. It was pretty comfortable coming to work this morning. I think it was about 40 when I left the house. The sun is starting to come up a little earlier and it seems pretty nice outside right now. Looking forward to the ride home and tomorrow is an easy 2 hour ride. Ken and Doug might join in.

Swam 2,500 meters with no rest at lunch. Pretty easy. I still have lot of energy.

Been gone a while

It's been a while obviously since I updated here.

The weather here has been absolute crap. It's been in the 30s most mornings and it seemed like it rained here for 2 weeks straight. I'm in the middle of a rest week right now.

When my Dad died I sort of promised myself that I wouldn't miss any training and I held myself to that promise. I finished the rides and runs while it was still dark our and then made it to my brother's house where most of my family was congregating all week. Impossible to keep track of all the beer, Jack, and tequila that I drank though. I might just estimate 10 drinks / day for the week and go from there.

The week after was really difficult. I had no warning obviously before taking the week off work and everything really piled on. I still haven't caught up with year end for my clients yet. I should have that all taken care of tonight though. I missed all but 1 of the rides but completed every run. I think I did most of the swims but honestly I can't remember.

Thank you.

I want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and condolences. I started this blog really so that my Mom could see what I'm doing. I am shocked at the number of people that visit and the number of people that have taken the time to wish me and my family well. Thank you again.

Rest in peace, Dad

Kenneth Joseph Petrine 12/30/1941 - 01/08/2007

My Dad holding Kenneth Anthony Petrine.

No training today. Sorry. I was going to swim this afternoon but I received a call at work that changed everything.



On December 30, 2006 we celebrated my Dad, Ken Petrine's 65th birthday. My brother Keith remarked that he was the same age, 35, as my Dad had been when his own Father had died.

Those words turned out to be quite prophetic this morning when my Dad died of an apparent heart attack.

He was an amazing Grandpa to all his Grand kids. He used to take Paige out with him every Wednesday. They would stop at his stock broker, sometimes the library or the park, and then at Costco where Paige and him would have hot dogs for lunch. He knew Paige's names for all the parks. I could never keep track of them all and sometimes I would call him and say, "Paige wants to go to the 'brown' park, or the 'mud' park or the 'yellow' park. Where is that?"

This fall Kirk, Keith, my Dad, and I spent a week together eating, drinking, laughing, drinking, playing cards, drinking, golfing, and drinking. He told me the other day to make sure I didn't use all my vacation time this summer doing triathlons so that we could all take another trip. He always joked that he wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread on the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach.


I spent the afternoon going through his address book calling people to let them know. If you knew him and I've missed your name I apologize that this is how you heard about it. You can contact me via e-mail and I'll give you the details of the arrangements. My e-mail address is the first letter of my first name followed by my last name @cox.net.



My Dad once said that if your kids don't do better than you did, you were a failure as a father. Well, in some respects he set the bar pretty high. I hope I haven't disappointed him.



Marc

A true renaissance man

I've added making gourmet ice cream to specialty olive oil, roasted coffee, and home brewed beer as the things that I've made in my spare time.

When I build a distillery in my backyard you'll know I have a problem.

A really great day!

Day got off on a bad foot, so to speak. I got up kind of early but bummed around for a few hours so I didn't have time to go out and run before church.

After church we went and hiked North mountain with some friends. I've lived in Phoenix 20 years now and this is the first mountain hike I've ever done. It was a lot of fun. I wish I had brought my GPS with me because there seems to be great debate about how long the hike is and how high. http://phoenix.gov/PARKS/hiknogud.html says it is a 1,500 foot climb over 1.6 miles. Could have been, like I said, wish I'd had the GPS.

I have a flannel shirt wrapped around my waist. I'm not wearing PJs. Am I really that skinny?

I don't know if you've ever gone hiking with a 3 year old. They start by walking, then they run, then they crawl, then they sit down and ask to be carried. All that takes about 100 yards. So the nice thing is I got to do the hike with Paige on my shoulders for a little "extra" workout. She was too tired to walk down as well so I carried her down as well. I really expected the tops of the thighs to be burning today but they feel pretty good considering. I left thinking that I would skip the run today because I did feel like I'd had a decent workout.

Afterwards we got home and put the kids down for a nap I changed my mind and decided to just go out and do something short at level 1. My right knee was giving me some problems so I was getting ready to bail out of the run when all of a sudden I felt great! At first I decided to just do some laps around the neighborhood so I'd be close to home but then I started going out farther. Then I'd say to myself that I'll just go out another half mile and turn around. That turned into a mile, which turned into two, and then three. Eventually I did turn around and got home with 11.31 miles under my belt.

I used the rolling pin on my legs for a long time and stretched out a bunch but my legs are really beat up right now. See how I feel in the morning.

BRICKS

I guess it's called Brick training - doing one sport after another. I was doing a little of this back in September and early October but it's now become part of my weekend.

Saturday morning I set out on a couple big loops around Carefree, Cave Creek, Scottsdale, and back to Phoenix. Doug and Ken both bailed out on me Friday night. Good thing, too. The ride was absolutely miserable! Bitter cold of course but that wasn't the worst part. There's a long 20 mile uphill stretch on Cave Creek Road and the entire ride was into the teeth of a 15 mph wind. Like I said, miserable! If there had been anybody with me it would have been easy to talk each other into quitting. Along it was easier to get the ride done.

I must say that I was a little disappointed as I finished up. It was a five hour ride done at level 2. I honestly thought that if I had a great ride that I would pull in somewhere close to 100 miles. Worst case I was thinking 90, so you can imagine my thoughts as I looked at the computer and saw 81.23 on the display. A little arithmetic tells you that if the Ironman were to be held today, on that course, with that wind, my time would be just shy of 7 hours. Not a very appetizing thought.

There wasn't much time to feel sorry for myself though. I had to ditch all the cold weather clothing I was wearing, throw on my running shoes and hit the pavement for a 20 minute run. The idea here is that physically my body SHOULD be able to take the punishment of a long run right off the bike. What can go wrong is the nutrition or fuel that you've put into your body, so a short easy run tells you whether or not you are on track.

Observations:

1. My feet felt big. I don't know how else to describe it. They felt wide and heavy.
2. The muscle (if you can call it that) just above my right ankle on my shin hurt immediately and did not stop hurting until I stopped running.
3. Nutrition was fine. For the ride I opted for an all liquid diet. I did get the sensation a couple times while riding that something solid in my stomach would have felt good. I think this weekend I'll opt for a couple gels or a power bar while I'm out there. I felt good although my legs were tired. On the bike I noticed that my right big toe kept going numb and that both my ankles hurt at times, but neither was a concern on the run.

Long run tomorrow. I'd like to get 11 miles in.

A strange encounter with a freak!

An extremely weird thing happened today on the ride to work.

There was a full moon and it was cloudy and rainy which obscured much of the light. It was kind of a spooky morning.

I was in the middle of a 20 minute warm up when a guy rides up to me from behind. That's weird because nobody is ever out on the road that early when it's this cold out. Not to mention the fact that I'm not used to getting caught by single riders. So he pulls up next to me. I say, "Hi" but he just stares straight ahead and I'm like, whatever. So after a minute or so I'm getting really uncomfortable having a stranger riding next to me. I'm going to speed up or slow down when he looks over at me and says, "Did you ever dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight?"

I'm thinking that this guy must know me so I ask him who he is. He tells me his name and I have no idea who he is and he doesn't seem to know me. So I say to him, "Why are you quoting Batman lines at me then?" He says that he wasn't quoting anything. Just then my bike computer said it was time to hammer the pedals so I said, "Well I'll see you later freak." And I left him behind.

100 Days and counting....

Where I think I stand with 100 days left to go...

Run: Call me crazy but this has definitely become my favorite discipline. I don't really have any clue how fast I'm going to be able to go after swimming and riding but I think I could run a 1:30 half marathon if I had to.

Bike: What can I say? I love being on the bike still. The long rides are slightly burdensome because of the "have to" aspect to them. Or as Doug put it, "We're not riding with Marc today. We're riding with Marc's heart rate monitor."

Swim: Today I really think for the first time the stroke and the breathing all came together. I think I finally have a stroke that can get me through. It's all about the drills and the speed now.

Hard ride and run

Monday afternoon (already blowing a resolution) was a reasonably short but intense ride. It included 4, 10 minute efforts at level 4 - 5a. Pretty difficult.

This morning I did get out of the house at 5:15 am for an hour run. Fantastic run. I had to do 3, 7 minute efforts again at level 4 - 5a; basically fast enough that you can't really think about anything but putting your next foot down. Each effort got progressively faster and easier. I think in the first 7 minutes I didn't really get my heart rate up into level 4. There were 3 minute "rests" at level 1 between efforts. During the second interval I was able to get my HR into zone 4 but my Garmin HR monitor kept alerting me that it also dropped out of that level quite often. By the third effort I had really found my stride.

I timed the run incorrectly so I found myself about 1/2 mile from home when the time ran out on my 10 minute cool down so I went a little further than expected. I'm not saying that I'm looking forward to next Tuesday already but it was a great time.

Happy New Year!

Doug called me on the phone Friday. He asked if I had any New Year's resolutions. Before I could answer he said, "Wait, I forgot who I was talking to. As if there were any way left to improve yourself! People should call you and ask your counsel on how they can improve THEIR lives."

In all seriousness; I'm three month's into this and it is by no means a foregone conclusion that I'm going to cross that finish line. Well, of course I'm going to finish, but I'm a long way from finishing strong. Stop by the pool any day at lunchtime and watch me swim if you don't believe me.

So as far as Ironman goes, I'm resolving to not only stick with the training but to get the runs and weekend rides done earlier in the day. Besides that I have a couple others:

1. Get a haircut every month. I was born lucky in so far as hair goes and I've still got (most) all of it. With the possible exception of my experimentation with the mullet in the 80's it looks good at every length and style. I really like it short but I procrastinate getting it cut until it's completely out of control. So I'm going to get it cut monthly this year.

2. Improve my penmanship. God, if you've read something I've written you understand what this is all about. Why do men have such rotten handwriting?

If you've ever been unlucky enough to sit through one of my motivational speeches you know it's all about goal setting. I won't bore you with the steps but this year I'm going to follow my own advice. I had two resolutions last year. One of them was to not gain weight this year. Since I'm almost 20 lbs lighter than last year at this time I'd say I was successful. On the other resolution I changed my mind on in May but until then I had kept up with it.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for a pretty good year and believe me this one is poised to be really great.

Time to get serious!

I must say something like this every time I get my next month's training plan. But this is BS!

Doug says that a BS ride is when you are out riding on a long hill and you climb and you climb until someone screams, "This is BS!"

My weekday rides now include 4, 10 minute efforts at level 4 to 5a. Believe it or not, I'm actually a little excited about this because this is exactly the kind of work I started doing when I got back from France. It's one of the things that really put some speed into my legs.

But...

My weekday runs now include 3, 7 minute efforts at level 4 to 5a. Basically this is saying that while I'm out for my usual 7 mile run in the morning I need to run 3 of those miles in 7 minutes each.

And...

On Saturday, after I get done with my 6+ hour ride (with an hour of it in level 3) I have to get off my bike and run for 20 minutes. No kidding, I remember when a 20 minute run WAS the workout. Of course Sunday I get to follow that up with a 2 hour run.

Bottom line: You see the workouts really don't seem to be getting longer, but they sure are tougher all of a sudden.

I'll keep you posted as to my progress.

The rest of the Rest Week

Pretty uneventful Monday - Friday. The rides were supposed to be less than an hour. On Wednesday I rode to work and then rode and met Paige and Katie and Ken at an ice skating rink. I ate wings and drank beer and played with Ken while Paige and Katie ice skated. If I find a picture of Paige in her outfit I'll post it. Somehow I just missed getting rained on Wednesday night.

Tuesday and Thursday were short 25 minute runs. I'd say no problem but my right hip never stopped bothering me after last Sunday.

I blew off the Friday ride figuring I done enough Wednesday to cover it and just swam. I swam Tuesday - Friday with some serious yardage on Thursday.

Saturday was just a fun easy 2 hour ride out to Cave Creek.

Today was a blast. The end of the rest week and my plan called for a 45 minute run with 20 minutes at level 2. I did the ride while pushing Paige in her stroller. I can't say for sure but I think the stroller made the ride easier. I still had to do the time at the HR level but we definitely covered 1/4 to 1/2 mile more than I think I've done in the past.

The weekend and now a rest week

Saturday's ride was spectacular. I left my house at 7:30 am. The temperature hovered around 35 degrees. I met Ken and then Doug as we traveled south. A funny thing happened when we approached downtown. The fog was so thick you couldn't see 200 feet in front of you and the temperature dropped suddenly.

Doug threw in the towel and went home. He hadn't even worn full finger gloves so he was miserable from the start. When we got to Tempe town lake it was spooky. You couldn't see the water as we crossed the Mill Avenue Bridge. The water looked awfully cold. I really need to remember to go pick out a wetsuit.

Anyway, Ken was concerned about time so he bailed out as well. I completed the ride. While I didn't do the entire ride as fast as I wanted to I climbed the hill from Tempe to Fountain Hills averaging well above 18 mph and never let my pulse out of level 2. I think I can go down that road about 26 easy! The Ironman course has 3 big loops that include that up and down.

The run on Sunday was great! I think I ran about 10 miles in 1:30. I was a little beat up at the end of it. There are some days that you can't wait to get out of the house and work out, like Saturday. Then there are days like Sunday where you just procrastinate until you just decide to get it over with. I'll tell you something, I don't really even feel good until 15 minutes into my runs now, but after that I feel fantastic. As the run was coming to an end and I started my cool off (10 minutes at level 1) I really felt like I could have run forever. When I finally stopped I realized how taxing the ride had been. I didn't really eat that day and I wasn't as hydrated as I should have been. I also kind of hurt my right hip. All these will heal of course.

I'm now in the middle of a rest week. Rest week rides and runs are very relaxing. Actually I guess this is my second rest week of the month since I took almost an entire week off because I was sick.

Halfway home

3 months down, 3 months to go; more or less.

I was asked what a typical training day consists of. Basically it looks like this: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I ride my bike for 1:30 at varying levels of difficulty. I usually ride to work so I get an additional 1 - 1.5 hours in the evening. Tuesday & Thursday I run for an hour or so, again at varying levels of difficulty. I try to swim each weekday between 45 minutes and 2 hours depending on what work looks like. Audit and tax season is approaching so time management will get critical.

Saturday is the long ride day. I go for 5 hours at level 2. The time for this ride might increase to approximately 8 hours in March. Sunday is the long run day which is around 1.5 hours now but will grow to 3 hours by March.

I lift weights 3 - 4 times / week, work my core muscles (abs & back) for 15 minutes , and stretch for 20 minutes or so or so every day.

The workouts get progressively longer and/or more intense for 3 weeks and then I have a rest week. A "rest" week really just cuts the workouts in half. All except the swim.

Best place to live.

After 18 years Arizona just passed Nevada as the state with the fastest growing population. One of the reasons is the 350 plus days of sunshine.

So I mentioned that I've got all this cold weather gear that makes the ride reasonably comfortable when it's cold. The one thing it isn't, is water proof.

I mention the 350 days of sunshine because today has turned into one of the 15 days of the year. Hoping Katie can come get me. I really don't want to ride in this weather.

Coughlin's Laws - Please let me know if I've missed any.

Anything else is always something better.

Bury the dead, they stink up the place.

No matter how liberated this world becomes - a man will always be judged by the amount of alcohol he can consume - and a woman will be impressed, whether she likes it or not.

When you see the color of their panties, you know you've got talent.

Never show surprise, never lose your cool.

Never tell tales about a woman. No matter how far away she is, she'll always hear you.

Beer is for breakfast around here, drink or be gone.

The Luck is gone / the brain is shot / but the liquor we still got.