getting up at 5am on Saturday .... why?

Today was just marvelous ... really. Not only did i spent my precious Saturday in pain (well most of it) - no it also involved getting up at 5am and spending 5+ hours in the car ... just perfect.

Our training group actually went up (its north of Salisbury, not far from BWI ) to the site of the spectacle (the triathlon race course) to do a BRICK ... meaning we went up there to Cycle the actual race course and then run the 10k to get a feel for things. See sounds like a great great plan - and in all honesty it was pretty useful to get to know the course - but maaaaaaaaann it was painful! This damn course is freakishly hard - wish for you non-sporty people, who will never appreciate such pain (and really rightfully so - why do this to yourself for no apparent reason - i mean there is no money involved - u actually lose money buying the right gear and equipment so you can inflict pain upon yourself more efficiently and more aero-dynamically - not even taking into consideration the countless of hours spent fund raising, which again translate into annoying friends and family to donate money - people really just love to talk to you after they figure out that the only reason u call ...) but i digress (as usual) ... the point was : pain on this (and probably any course) translates into HILLS ... this course is a never ending alignment of hills - and not just little ones - no no these are #$@%!* hard, long and step hills that only get worse as the course gets longer ... my favorite one comes about 5km from the finish line (when your running) it simple wont stop and at the end of it your legs are just on fire and have lost any sort of power/desire/will to continue moving ... what makes matters worse, ever since i ran cross-country in middle school i developed this annoying habit of speeding up when running up a hill (two reasons here: a) u get up the hill faster, meaning there is less time for pain and b) it really is a great way to demoralize an opponents spirit who is trying to keep up with you) and this stupid habit sticks with me till today ... the problem being: this tactic works great if a) you only run, and dont bike and swim before starting to run and b) if the hills are relatively short ... so now I run fast up the hills and then essentially slow to a crawl to recover, which allows everyone else that i was able to somewhat distance myself from to glide past me on the flat part of the course ... not really a good situation


btw: a quick note on the 3 hour goal i had set myself: maybe i should correct that to a 4 hour goal - my ambitious plan involved a flat surface ... hills makes this a bit more complicated ...

PS: thank god we did not try swimming in the lake - it was 0 C and the lake looked freezing