I only have one more week up here in Northern Michigan before I head back down to Austin. I’m already getting a little nostalgic about my time here. Coming here has really made this one of my favorite summers in recent memory. It’s been really special to be able to spend time with family and friends while being able to get in the training I needed.

Rather than tell more stories, I thought I would share with you my time in Michigan “by the numbers”:

Total weeks in Michigan: 6.5

Nice days that were not so hot that you didn’t want to be outside: 45

Number of days a Michigander would comment about it being hot and I would chuckle to myself because I know what Texas heat really is like: 3

Bike rides I had to miss because of rain: 1

Days I wished I was somewhere else: 0

Pints of fresh blueberries, raspberries, and cherries right from the farmer I ate: I think approx. 15

Pages in my Masters thesis I typed here: 130

Number of Masters theses drafts submitted for review: 1

Number of traffic lights I had to stop at on bike rides over the last 6 weeks: I think it was at 15, yes that’s right TOTAL, I’m averaging about 2 traffic lights per week!!! I can’t even do a 2 hour ride from my apartment in Austin without stopping at that many lights.

Swims per week in the lake: ~4, I would drive into Charlevoix to the community pool 1-2 times per week to do a couple solid pool sets.

Times my parent’s dog, Sydney would wake me up with a cold wet nose in my face: Every day for 6.5 weeks.

Times I minded that Sydney bopped me with her nose to wake me up: 0

Number of wild turkeys I’ve seen, almost hit with my bike, or almost hit in a car: somewhere between 100-200, they are everywhere and they are as dumb as a bag of rocks.

Times I’ve been attacked by bears: 0

Number of irate drivers I’ve encountered on the bike who thought it was appropriate to let me know how much I was inconveniencing them by riding a bike on THEIR road: 1 Note: I usually get 3-4 each bike ride in Austin, but I’ve only had 1 TOTAL in over 6 weeks here. The people here have been really laid back and friendly towards cyclists. In fact, I've had a couple nice locals pull beside me in their cars just to make sure I knew how to get where I was trying to go on my bike!

Number of times someone asked me if I brought a pizza when they saw my Little Caesars cycling outfit: ~10

Number of times a local gives me a friendly wave while I’m running or biking: About 1-6 per workout.

Times I’ve eaten fresh Whitefish or Walleye caught right out of the Great Lakes: ~10

Hours of TV I've watched: I think the total is somewhere around 4 hours over the last 6.5 weeks. That number is a little skewed because my dad and I watched the Lions opening game yesterday on the 1 TV station we get up here and that accounted for 2.5 of the total hours over the last month and a half.

Number of movies I've watched: 2, went and saw Tropic Thunder (hilarious), and Traitor (very solid movie).

Number of novels I've read: 3. Probably would have been a lot more, but I read A TON of other stuff, chapters of books, scholar articles, etc for my thesis.

That's all for now.

Pat

     My body has finally come around. It just needed one more week and the first few hard workouts to start feeling like myself again. It’s funny, I really do know that the body comes back around and the first few hard workouts feel horrible, but I always seem to forget it while it’s happening. It’s one of those selective memory things. So now in Michigan I’m in the middle of an intensity block, my coach Derick Williamson from Source Endurance designed for a few weeks, to be followed by a brief recovery block, and then a few weeks of Ironman-specific build. I’m really happy that I’m feeling good again and my body is responding to the intensity.
    
     In my free time, I’ve been hammering away on my Masters Thesis. My plan had been to complete the first draft by early May, but I allowed training, racing, and personal life to keep distracting me from just gettin it done. I pretty much had all the research done by May and June, but I still had to digest it and then pound out the 100-120 page paper. I found I was always finding something else I could do in Austin rather than work on my paper.

      So since I’ve been up here in Michigan, I’ve been chugging away at it. Easy days and between workouts, I have no distractions up here so I just read and type (I haven’t watched TV in a month). I’m up to about 75 pages done of it, but the important thing is I have the momentum now. Getting started on it each day is easier and easier and the thoughts and ideas come quicker. If I can get the first draft done by the end of this month, then I’ll be in great shape to finish it, submit it, and defend it to finally get my Masters in December. Then I’ll have a huge box checked off!!!

            Couple pictures for you this week.

     I’m really enjoying my time in Michigan. In fact when I changed my return flight to Austin, I pushed it back another until September 15^th, another full week past my original plans. The weather here is just perfect for training, cool in the morning and warm in the afternoon. I’ll be back in Austin about four weeks before Kona, so I should have plenty of 90-100 degree days to get myself acclimated to the heat. Most research suggests that heat acclimation only takes 2-3 weeks, so I’d rather get the quality workouts here and then get back used to the heat in Austin before the race.   

     Last weekend I got to spend time with some of my closest friends from elementary school until today. I also got to spend time with the friends and families I grew up with. All of those groups are so much fun that I often miss spending time with them. So now that I’ve had my family and friends ‘fix’, it’s back to training.

     This week was the transition from recovery from Lake Placid back into the Hawaii preparation. My body hasn’t bounced back as fast as it has following some Ironmans, but I know that it usually takes those first 4-5 hard workouts before I feel back in the swing of things. The real positive is that my mind is ready to go, so the body should quickly turn around. I’ve always found it takes me 3-4 weeks to feel great following an Ironman, so this is week 4, just about time for things to start clicking.
 
     I’ve been loving the roads I have here for biking and running. I’ve been exploring new routes, which is always refreshing. Yesterday, I discovered a great road for running, sort of by accident. So I drove to a hiking trail head to do my run. The Jordan Valley Pathway is a backpacking trail through hilly, deep woods. It’s supposed to be one of the best backpacking trails in the state. So my plan was to run an out-n-back for my run.

     I start my run and I’m absolutely loving the terrain and scenery. I keep running, deeper and deeper into the woods. I mean, this is deep, dark northern woods. When I’m hiking alone, I always feel more secure because I can hear and see details better than when I’m running. So as I get deeper, the woods get thick and dark. Then my mind starts playing tricks…..I realize that there’s probably not another person around for about 20 miles, I’m alone……in bear country. Now there are not a lot of bears up here, but there are some black bears around. Once that thought was in my head, I got a little spooked. I came to a clearing about 20 minutes in and the path wound through 6 foot tall grass and there was clearly a path matted down by a large animal. Now there’s a 99% chance that the path was made by a few deer, but when I was already a little spooked, in my head it HAD to have been made by a bear J So, I turned around like a big chicken and ran back to the car. There were a couple dirt roads where I parked so I finished my run on those roads. I now call the one I ran on Scaredy Cat Lane (I don’t know it’s real name). I was probably just as likely to see a bear on the back road, but somehow I felt safe and fine on the road. I laughed at myself for being a big chicken as I drove home. As it turns out, Scaredy Cat Lane was just amazing for running.  I came back home and found it on google maps to try to plot out a running loop on it.
    
     Running on that trail reminded me of a game I played with my buddies and their dads one time when we were camping. We were out on state land, no campground there, just drive out into the forest on 2-track roads and put up tents. I think we were about 12 years old, somewhere around middle-school age. After a night of ghost stories around the camp fire, we played this game at midnight where you would walk alone down this dirt two-track road deep into the woods. You would walk as far as you could before getting scared (no flashlight of course). Just about the time when you were about to load your pants, you had to draw line in the dirt and write your initials, then turn around and run scared back to camp. Then the next guy would go. In the morning, we all walked down the path to see who made it the furthest and laughed at those who chickened out early. Of course the dads won. Maybe on my next run, I’ll make it deeper into the woods.

Just a couple pics:

Pat

Back to my roots in Michigan! Home of my Michigan Wolverines and Detroit Red Wings.

     After Lake Placid, rather than fly directly back to Austin, I jumped in the car and drove back to Detroit with them to spend some down time with my family. Our biggest occurrence on the road trip was when crossing the Canadian border back into the US, we were stopped by customs because our car set off some radiation alarms. Now I’m pretty darn sure we weren’t carrying a dirty-bomb, spent uranium rods, or had spend too much time under the X-Ray machine, so the episode was a mystery to us. After a bit of a delay and some secondary testing, they decided we weren’t a threat and let us on our way. Too bad I didn’t use the moment to display my trash-talk skills fitting for the moment, like: “the radiation is probably coming from the two nukes some people call my quads.”

     I spent a few days in Detroit and then my whole family came up to my parent’s place up in Northern Michigan. It’s on Lake Charlevoix which is about a 4 hour drive north of Detroit. So last week I got to spend a lot of family time as I recovered from the race. I don’t get to spend enough time with my parents, sister, brother-in-law, and definitely not enough time with my 2 ½ year old niece and newborn nephew.  So it was just fun to play with my family.

     My original plan had been to spend one extra week (this current week) alone up on the lake to start getting in some workouts and have some alone time to get serious work done on my masters thesis. But now my plans have changed!!

     So here’s the deal. Austin is currently on track to have the hottest summer in recorded history. I think there have been something like 43 days at or above 100 degrees in Austin this summer so far and there’s no sign of that heat letting up. Last weekend I checked the weather there and it was 106 degrees. Now, I know there are some benefits to training in the heat, but when it is so oppressive that you are constantly dehydrated and constantly in a state of heat stress, frankly it is not any fun to train. So while I’ve been sitting here in Northern Michigan where the high temps range from 76-86 this time of year, and after talking it over with my coach at Source Endurance, Derick, we think it would be good for me to stay up here and do most of my Kona build here. So the plan, as of now, is to extend my trip here until around September 8^th, go back to Austin for a couple weeks in the heat as I start my taper, then go out to Kona a little early to further get some heat acclimation.

     In addition to the nice temperatures, the cycling is just wonderful here. I step out my door and I’m on smooth, rolling roads with almost no traffic. I’ve counted stopping at a total of 3 traffic lights and one draw bridge in 8 bike rides! When was the last time that your ride time was equal to your running watch time? The scenery is great, new roads to explore, and so far the local drivers have been much nicer than some I encounter daily in Austin. I’ve also found miles and miles of rural dirt roads within a half mile from our place perfect for running. The biggest issue is finding a pool to swim. I’m about 50 ft from a lake so for the time being, all my swim workouts are in a lake (which may be good for me). I’ve found a pool about 16 miles away that I may make a trek to a couple times per week for some speed work, but other than that, I’m going to become an open water hound over the next month.

     This is the kind of place where time just kinda slows down, perfect for focusing on training. There’s no rush, you never feel like you have to be somewhere else, you can just do the workouts you need to do. I think the alone time will also be the best thing for me to finally finish my thesis. I’ve been working on it off and on for the last six months, but there’s always something I allow to distract me. Up here, there’s nothing to prevent me from training, eating right, resting, and typing.

Here are some pictures from my first week here: