Thursday, October 29, 2009

The nerves are officially killing me

The closer I am from the starting line the more nervous I am, I guess it is normal. I am jumping in the bus tonight and heading to NYC, I should be there around noon tomorrow. Then I will visit a little bit, grab my bags from the expo and try to relax and give my legs a nice break on Saturday.



Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Four days to go

Four days from now I will be running my first marathon. I will be in New York city at the starting line waiting to live a lifetime experience. Everybody that I know who ran a marathon told me that it is an awesome experience, and everybody who had the chance to run the NYC one told me that it is really special out there.

I have the chance to live both on the same day, my first marathon and the New York city marathon. To say I am not nervous would be a lie, I am nervous. I am not too sure yet what pacing strategy I will go with on race day. I am scared to go out too fast and break by the 20 miles mark. And I don't want to go out too slow and finish slower that I could.

I am in wave 2, coral D, my bib number for the race is 32511. If you ever want to follow me during the race you can use the race day tracker which will be available on the NYC marathon web site Sunday morning. Or you can sign to receive update by email every time I will cross a 5km mark and at the half marathon. If you want to use that feature go to http://athletealert.ingnycmarathon.org/Alerts.aspx

I know I did the training that I had to do, but  am still nervous about the entire experience. How will I react when I will hit the wall. Will I be able to keep my running pace for the last 10k. So many questions and I won't have the answers before I am done with my marathon.

Overall, I can't wait to see how everything will be. My first goal for the race is to complete it. I would be really happy if I can finish it under 4hours and I will be really happy if I can finish it under 3h45.

We will know soon enough I guess.

Friday, October 23, 2009

New sponsor

Yesterday night I had one of the best news ever in my mailbox. I received a email from Kestrel in which they said :

Thank you for submitting your resume to be considered for the 2010 Kestrel Team. The response was overwhelming as we received many worthy resumes. At this time, I am happy to announce that you have been chosen to represent the Kestrel Team in 2010! 


I was speechless, and really happy. When I decided to apply for sponsorship with them I was not really sure if I was fast enough for a company to get any kind of interest in me. And it seems that Kestrel decided to give me a chance, and for that I am thanking them.

You can be sure that I will do everything that I can to represent them the best that I can starting now.

Stop by their web site to check their new 2010 bikes, they have some really nice and fast bike for sure!

http://www.kestrelbicycles.com

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Thank you TriCenter!

This past Monday I won a brand new Garmin 310XT, thank you to TriCenter at competitor.com!

If you want to watch a really good show about triathlon stop by http://www.competitor.com/tricenter You can also follow them on Twitter, @TriCenter. This is where I won the watch.

Since I bought a brand new Garmin three weeks ago, I guess that my wife will now be the owner of a 310 too, lucky her.

Thank you again TriCenter.


Monday, October 12, 2009

Last long run done

It's done, my last long run is done. I ran 32km (20 miles) in 2 hours 56 minutes yesterday. I was happy because it was not as painful as the other 32km I ran two weeks ago.

Today I started with one thing in mind, to run at 5:30/km (8:51/mile) for the entire run, at first I had to slow myself down, I was feeling like running faster. But I knew I had a long way to go and that I didn't want to get those legs tired too fast.

I decided to do the same course as my last 32km run, which was to run for 27km then turn and come back for 5km to meet my wife in a parking lot. Everything went as planned until I had to turn and come back. I knew there was some wind blowing on my back and I knew it was a strong one because I could feel it even if it was a downwind. Anyway, I turned around at 27km with an average of 5:27/km which made me happy because I was a bit faster than what I expected.

At that moment I realized that the wind was really strong, I had to run the last 5km with a headwind of 30 km/h (18 mph) which slowed me a lot. I had trouble keeping my speed during those last 5km.

Now I just need to hope that there won't be any huge wind in New York city in three weeks.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

September totals

September was the end of the triathlon season, and since I still have the New York city marathon coming I had make the decision that after the Olympic triathlon I would kinda take it easy on the swim and bike side and just focus on my running until the marathon. Lets just say I guess I really took it easy on other sports because I biked once and didn't swim since the 12th of September.

Looking at this now I think I took it way too easy, but my next triathlon is in May 2010 so still have the time to restart training. Enough with my rambling, here are September's totals

Swimming - 4700 meter in 2:27:00
Biking - 272km in 10:21:00
Running - 228km in 21:03:00

As far as swimming and biking goes this is one of my smaller month of the year if not the smallest.

On the bright side though this was my biggest running month ever, which is normal since I am doing a marathon in a month. But still, I should have run a little bit more, actually a lot more. But I still have some overuse injuries that hurt sometimes and my chiro asked me to take it easy on the middle of the week runs, so I listened to him. I would be so pissed at myself to push too hard and miss the marathon.

Now that September is over I need to get my ass back on track for swimming and biking, I will setup my tri bike on the trainer tonight so I will have that option if it's too cold outside. As far as swimming goes, the tri club restart next week so I will restart swimming at least three days a week.