My comings, goings, new teams, new gear, and upcoming races...

Hello Again!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week! The weather in Georgia is great again, and my training is probably at about 70-80% of being normal again. I will not bore you like previous posts and try to update all of my workouts since my last post on March 26 (not that there has been a workout every day, but there have been enough to make it long and boring).

My first race of the year is this Saturday morning at 8:00am at John Tanner State Park in Carrolton, GA. It is a sprint race and is part of the Tri the Parks Series in GA. There are about 20-21 people in my age group, and I am not planning to try and podium after the year I have had thus far.

The following weekend is the 5 Burrow's Bike Tour in New York. If any of you are going to be in it, please email or post to my blog to let me know. It is a 42 mile bike ride beginning in Manhattan and ending on Staten Island. It will be fun, since we will be riding with her uncle, as well as meeting some more of her family and also probably going to see 1 or 2 of my fraternity brothers whilst I am there. And oh, I have NEVER been to New York before (other than sitting in JFK for three hours).

Then two weeks later it is................ Ironman FLORIDA 70.3. I am really exicted. Again, due to training, I am not expecting anything, although I would like to at least match last year's time, if not beat it by 1-2 minutes. What I am excited about is that it is a real sanctioned Ironman event. So hopefully I will get a small taste of what I am up for in 2008 with a full Ironman (except for the distance part!!!) I completed the Gulf Coast Triathlon last year (which is a great race and copies most of the bike and all of the swim and run for the Ironman FL course every November), and I know what I did wrong there. This year I have had lots of trouble with training and getting my act together, but since I am not trying to break any records, I should be ok.

And.........................Say hello to my new friend, Garmin!!!

Garmin Forerunner 305 to be exact (with speed/cadence sensor on the bike, of course)

I still have not hooked up the bike sensor yet, and I have not installed the computer software, but I THINK that this is the last gadget I will ever need with respect to a HRM or stopwatch, etc.

The only drawback is that I have read a couple of reviews that it does not do too well in water, and Garmin says that you should only wear it in water for no longer than 30-40 minutes (my half iron swim is 45 min). I would think they would have fixed this problem. Splashing water ok, swim, the jury is still out with me.

I also would not trust the calorie burning monitoring unless you are running or riding at slower speeds. When you get up fast enough at long distances it tends to skew it (I dunno, can you possibly burn 4100 calories riding 56 miles averaging 18.5mph for a 27yr old male???)

I would not even consider the calorie thing as a drawback, since that is not why you are purchasing the garmin in the first place, and if you are dedicated enough, you will probably know how many calories you burn per hour anyways.

I could probably write for an hour about all the cool features for the forerunner 305, but I will let you buy one from Amazon.com for really, really cheap (over $100 off) and experience it for yourself.

In other news.....

I am officially on the Javelin (amateur) triathlon team!!! For those of us who cannot be on a real triathlon team (other than my beloved team raceAthlete, you are my favorite!!!)

Above is the 2007 official race outfit. The only thing I had to do other than a small fee is to make sure I wear it at all my 2007 triathlon races. And I really do not have a problem doing so, since almost everything I wear is Sugoi, and I am very comfortable with the brand.

Jackie got a new suit for my birthday for me, and when I get some pictures together I will post them for you. Be looking next week early for some pictures of this weekend's triathlon. I should have results of the race by then as well, but do not look for me to be breaking any records. I should be a bit faster on the swim and the bike, but I am not sure how I am going to do bricking all three sports together with my broken training (am I beginning to sound like a broken record with this year's training, just let me know).

That is about all I have for now, be looking for something early next week, and hopefully after the next 25 days I will be closer to 100% back on track for this year.

Murtha Out....